Classicist James H. Dee states "the Greeks do not describe themselves as 'white people'—or as anything else because they had "no" regular word in their color vocabulary for themselves." People's skin color did not carry useful meaning; what mattered is where they lived. Herodotus described the Scythian Budini as having deep blue eyes and bright red hair and the Egyptians – quite like the Colchians – as "melánchroes" (μελάγχροες, "dark-skinned") and curly-haired. He also gives the possibly first reference to the common Greek name of the tribes living south of Egypt, otherwise known as Nubians, which was "Aithíopes" (Αἰθίοπες, "burned-faced"). Later Xenophanes of Colophon described the Aethiopians as black and the Persian troops as white compared to the sun-tanned skin of Greek troops.