These pictographic ideas circulated unabated in 1894, particularly during the pashas' trial, when Herbert Kitchener, the sirdär (commander) of Egypt, suggested that `Alï Pasha Sharïf's harem be searched for three other slaves, “white women being identified by their hands and allowed to pass without being examined.” In the eyes of these British officials, the black hands and black skin of any woman living in an Egyptian household automatically sig- nified a slave: thus black women in Egyptian homes could only have been brought there illegally, in a state of criminally imposed bondage.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 706