They all resembled the one whom I have described, and were all occupied in selling exactly the same class of articles.

They all differed slightly, as I thought, from the ordinary Egyptians in their appearance, and were decidedly unlike them, in being neither importunate for money nor disagreeable in their manners.

But though they were certainly Gipsies, none of them would speak Rommany, and I doubt very much if they could have done so.
Bonaventura Vulcanius, who in 1597 first gave the world a specimen of Rommany in his curious book "De Literis et Lingua Getarum" (which specimen, by the way, on account of its rarity, I propose to republish in another work), believed that the Gipsies were Nubians; and others, following in his track, supposed they were really Cophtic Christians (Pott, "Die Zigeuner," &c., Halle, 1844, p.

5).

And I must confess that this recurred forcibly to my memory when, at Minieh, in Egypt, I asked a Copht scribe if he were Muslim, and he replied, "_La_, _ana Gipti_" ("No, I am a Copht"), pronouncing the word _Gipti_, or Copht, so that it might readily be taken for "Gipsy." And learning that _romi_ is the Cophtic for a man, I was again startled; and when I found _tema_ (tem, land) and other Rommany words in ancient Egyptian (_vide_ Brugsch, "Grammaire," &c.), it seemed as if there were still many mysteries to solve in this strange language.
Other writers long before me attempted to investigate Egyptian Gipsy, but with no satisfactory result.