Part 10

For the proofs that these effigies are really portraits of the persons represented, the reader is referred to Rosellini’s chapter entitled, “Iconografia dei Faraouni e dei re Greci de ’Egitto,” in his _Monumenti_, M. S., Vol. II., p. 461. Portraits of the same king sometimes differ very considerably from each other, I grant, but the instances are few in comparison, and may have been intended to designate different periods of life; nor are these differences greater than we are accustomed to see in the physiognomy of modern kings, as represented on their respective coins and medals. But even if it could be demonstrated that the Nilotic paintings are not portraits, it would not diminish their ethnographic value, for they at least delineate the characteristic physiognomy of the Egyptians. See also, Champollion, “Lettres écrites de l’Egypte et de la Nubie.”

Footnote 66:

Champollion, Monuments, Tom. I., Plate I. The annexed figure is greatly enlarged from Champollion’s drawing. See also Rosellini, M. R., Plate XXV., in which the _eye_ is wanting.

Footnote 67:

Champollion-Figéac, Egypte, p. 293.

Footnote 68:

Rosellini, M. C., Plate 33.

Footnote 69:

Antiquités, Tom. I., Plate 68.

Footnote 70:

Rosellini, M. C., Plate 13.

Footnote 71:

Idem. M. R., Plate 96.

Footnote 72:

Rosellini, M. R., Plate 158.

Footnote 73:

The Semitic race extended from the Mediterranean sea on the west to the confines of Persia on the East, and doubtless possessed great variety of feature and complexion. They derive their collective name from Shem, “from whom, in the table of nations in the book of Genesis, entitled Toldoth Beni Noah, many of them are declared to have descended.” Prichard, Researches, II., p. 208, 2d ed. The principal of these nations, adds Dr. Prichard, were those of Elam, to the north-west of the Persian Gulf; the Assyrians; the Chasdim, or Chaldeans, who are the ancestors of the Hebrews and Arabs; the Lydians; and the Syrians, or people of Aram. They are also called, collectively, Syro-Arabian nations.

The Jews were immensely numerous in Egypt during the Ptolemaic and Roman epochs. _Vide_ Josephus, Book XII., chap. ii—Sharpe, Egypt under the Romans, p. 13.

Footnote 74:

Letter to the Chev. Bunsen. See Wiseman’s Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion, 2d edit., p. 62; and a note at the end of that most learned and instructive work, “on the conformity between the Semitic and the Indo-European grammatical forms.”

Footnote 75:

“Toutes leurs formes sout anguleuses,” says Denon; “leur barbe courte et à mèches pointues.” Voyage en Egypte, I., p. 92.

Footnote 76:

Bedouins and Wahabys, p. 28.—Clot Bey, Aperçu generale de l’Egypte, I., p. 161.

Footnote 77:

Edinburgh Review, Vol. LX., p. 297.

Footnote 78:

_Apud_ Mengin, Hist. de l’Egypte, III., p. 406.

Footnote 79:

I have stated, in my “Crania Americana,” that the Hindoos appear to have the smallest heads of any existing people; and that in the Inca Peruvians the brain was but a fraction larger. Later observations, however, have led me to believe that the _Nigritos_, or aboriginal Negro race of the Indian archipelago, present a nearly parallel example.

Footnote 80:

Rosellini, M. S. H. II, p. 174, 238.

Footnote 81:

Prichard, Egyptian Mythology, p. 35.

Footnote 82:

Crania Americana, p. 37.

Footnote 83:

Bibliotheca, B. I., C. 2. “Khem, of whom Osiris is a form, is the great deity corresponding to the Indian Siva; Phthah, of whom Horus is another form, is the Indian Brahma; and Kneph is the counterpart of Vishnu.” Cory, in Harapollo, Pref., p. x.

Footnote 84:

Trans. Roy. Soc. of Literature, I., p. 173. (London.)

Footnote 85:

Prichard, Researches, Vol. II., p. 218.

Footnote 86:

Ancient African Nations.—That the Indo-European race (of which the Hindoos are a branch,) has been among the most enterprising and widely distributed nations of the earth, is incontestably proved by the prevalence of the Sanscrit tongue as an element of many languages from Hindostan westward to the shores of Iceland, and eastward to the Polynesian Isles.—Malte Brun, Geography, Vol. I., p. 660.

Footnote 87:

It is curious to observe that although the Hindoos in our day have little intercourse with Nubia and the adjacent provinces, the circumstance is owing to a want of those incentives to commerce which existed in antiquity; but Burckhardt describes the remains of Indian traffic as now seen in Mecca and Djidda, in Arabia, where the Hindoos yet sell the manufactures and other productions of their own country.—Travels in Arabia, p. 14, 119.

Footnote 88:

The opinions of Sir G. Wilkinson are eminently entitled to respect on all Egyptian questions; and I need not apologize for quoting his opinions (however they may differ from those just given,) as briefly expressed in the following passage. “In manners, language, and many other respects, Egypt was certainly more Asiatic than African; and though there is no appearance of the Hindoo and Egyptian religions having been borrowed from one another, which many might be induced to conclude from their great analogy in some points, yet it is not improbable that these two nations may have proceeded from the same stock, and have migrated southward from their parent country in central Asia.”—Ancient Egypt, Vol. I., p. 3.

Footnote 89:

St. Augustine states that the Punic or Phenician tongue was in _his_ day (the fifth century) a living language, and very like the Hebrew; and that the _Canaanitish_ language was _mediate_ between the Egyptian and the Hebrew. Mrs. H. Gray. Hist, of Etruria, p. 124.

Footnote 90:

Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Vol. I., p. 140.

Footnote 91:

Appeal to the Antiquarians of Europe on the destruction of the monuments of Egypt. By George R. Gliddon. p. 27. The portrait of Atenre-Backhan, another of these Hykshos kings, will be found in Wilkinson, second series, Plate XXX.

Footnote 92:

Prichard, Researches, Vol. III., p. 441.

Footnote 93:

Champollion, Monumens, Tom. I., Plate XXXVI.

Footnote 94:

Mrs. H. Gray, History of Etruria, Vol. I., p. 31, 39.

Footnote 95:

Voyage en Egypte, I., p. 206.

Footnote 96:

Trav. in Egypt, II., p. 168. See also Volney, Voyage, I., p. 70.

Footnote 97:

Trav. in Africa, p. 77.

Footnote 98:

Modern Egyptians, II., p. 310.

Footnote 99:

Monumenti, M. C. II., p. 77.

Footnote 100:

Prichard, Researches, II., p. 238.

Footnote 101:

Trav. in Nubia, p. 217.

Footnote 102:

For ample details of this interesting question, see D’Avezac, Esquisse générale de l’Afrique, p. 55; and Hodgson on the Foulahs of Central Africa, p. 5, _et passim_.

Footnote 103:

Trav. in Nubia, p. 353.

Footnote 104:

Prichard, Researches &c. vol. II. p. 174.

Footnote 105:

Voyage à Meroë, II., p. 276.

Footnote 106:

Edinburgh Review, Vol. LX., p. 311.

Footnote 107:

Idem., p. 307. The antiquity of the name Nubia, is of some importance in this discussion. Heeren and others state that it first occurs in history during the epoch of the Ptolemies; but Rosellini has now discovered that it is at least as old as the age of Menepthah I., (B.C. 1600,) on whose monuments it is found.

Since the above note was written, Mr. Gliddon has obligingly furnished me with the following interesting memorandum: “The name Nubia, with its derivatives of Nouba and Noubatæ, may be readily traced to _Noubnoub_, a Nubian divinity in the hieroglyphical legends of Menepthah I. and Rameses II. and III., and may possibly be derived from the root _noub_, gold, from the proximity of Nubia to the Ethiopian gold countries. The word _Berber_, as applied to the people of Nubia, (now called Berabera in the plural, from Berberri, the singular,) is without question derived from the hieroglyphical name _Barobaro_, by which at least one tribe inhabiting Nubia was known to the Egyptians of the 18th dynasty.”

Footnote 108:

Clot Bey states the present black population of Egypt to be twenty thousand; and he adds that Negresses form the greater number of women in almost every harem. Aperçu Générale de l’Egypte, I., p. 329.

Footnote 109:

Sir G. Wilkinson observes that “no difficulty occurred to the Ishmaelites in the purchase of Joseph from his brethren, nor on his subsequent sale to Potiphar on arriving in Egypt.” Ancient Egyptians, I., p. 404.

Footnote 110:

A passage in Manetho establishes at the same time the antiquity and the power of eunuchs in Egypt; for he relates that king Ammenemes, of the twelfth dynasty, was slain by them. This event will date, by the received chronology, upwards of twenty-two hundred years B.C. Cory, Frag., p. 110. Eunuchs appear, also, to be figured on the monuments. Vide Rosellini, M. C. III., p. 133.

Footnote 111:

Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, II., p. 64.

Footnote 112:

Notwithstanding this mixture of nations, Mr. Hoskins observes, that the higher classes of modern Ethiopians (Nubians,) pay great respect to the distinctions of race; that they esteem nothing more than a light complexion, which the petty kings or chiefs make a prerequisite to the selection of wives; and that, with this class, “all mixture with the Negro blood is carefully shunned.”—Travels in Ethiopia, p. 357.

Footnote 113:

Rosellini, Appendix, No. 13.—Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, Vol. III.

Footnote 114:

Hoskins, Travels in Ethiopia. Procession, Part First.

Footnote 115:

Topography of Thebes, p. 136.

Footnote 116:

Champollion, Monumens de l’Egypte, Plate CX.

Footnote 117:

Vide Champollion, Monumens de l’Egypte, Tom. I., Plate LXXI., LXXII.; and Rosellini, Monumenti, M. R., Tav. LXXV. A glance at these illustrations will convince any one that the slave-hunts or _ghrazzies_, as now practised by the Arabs, Tuaricks and Turks, and which are so feelingly described by Cailliaud, and by Denham and Clapperton, were in active operation, with all their atrocities, in the most flourishing periods of Pharaonic Egypt.

Footnote 118:

Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1794, p. 193.

Footnote 119:

Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, Vol. III. p. 108.

Footnote 120:

See Mrs. Hamilton Gray’s History of Etruria, Vol. I., p. 29.

Footnote 121:

In my _Crania Americana_, Note p. 29, I have employed this passage to show, that those _Colchians_ whom Herodotus mentions as forming “part of the troops of Sesostris,” might have been Negroes acting as mercenary or auxiliary soldiers. I am now satisfied that such explanation is at least unnecessary, and I, therefore, take this occasion to withdraw it.

Footnote 122:

Polhym. Cap. lxx.

Footnote 123:

Among the meager facts which history has preserved in relation to these intrusive kings, the following is the most remarkable: “Sabakon (the first king of the Ethiopian dynasty) having taken Boccoris (the legitimate sovereign) captive, burnt him alive.” Manetho _apud_ Cory, Frag. p. 126. Could any circumstance have rendered the Ethiopians more detestable in the eyes of the Egyptians than this first act of barbarian policy?

Footnote 124:

Egypte Ancienne, p. 207.

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

End of Project Gutenberg's Crania Ægyptiaca, by Samuel George Morton