Part 4

Hamilton, in his Ægyptiaca, when describing the paintings at Elytheias, says that “the labourers are dressed in a kind of skull-cap, and have very little if any hair on their heads; while that of the others who superintend them spreads out at the sides, as with the Nubians and Berabera above the cataracts,”—and yet among these very labourers the hair of some is represented so long, that it projects beneath the cap and falls upon the shoulders.[16] If I may judge from the heads that have come under my notice, I should infer that the women, as a general rule at least, allowed their hair to grow; but that the practice was much less frequent among the men.

In the heads of every Caucasian type in the series now before us, the hair is perfectly distinct from the woolly texture of the Negro, the frizzled curls of the Mulatto, or the lank, straight locks of the Mongolian.

Of the eight Negroid heads, four are more or less furnished with hair, one is closely shaved, and two are entirely denuded. In those which retain the hair, it is comparatively coarse, and in one instance somewhat wiry. The hair of the solitary Negro head possesses the characteristic texture.

I find a short beard (perhaps half an inch in length,) on three Theban heads of the Caucasian part of the series. (Plate IV., Fig. 1, Plate VIII., Fig. 1, and Plate X., Fig. 5.) The Egyptians habitually shaved the beard; but on their statues and paintings we frequently see a _beard-case_ which, as Rosellini remarks, appears to be merely emblematical of the male sex and of manhood.

_The Teeth._—Professor Blumenbach, in his Decades Craniorum, long ago pointed out what he considered a peculiarity in the conformation of the teeth in some Egyptian mummies; namely, that the crowns of the incisors are very large, thick, and cylindrical, or obtusely conical, in place of having the characteristic chisel-like form.[17] I have given especial attention to this supposed peculiarity; but although the incisors remain more or less perfect in forty-five crania, embracing upwards of two hundred teeth of this class, I have not been able to confirm the preceding observation. On the contrary, there does not appear to be the smallest deviation from the ordinary form or structure; and I feel confident, that the learned and accurate Blumenbach was deceived by the worn condition of the crowns of the teeth, obviously resulting from the habitual mastication of hard substances. Mr. Lawrence expresses the same opinion, from personal observation; Dr. Prichard inclines to a similar view of the case, and remarks, that “the most satisfactory method of obtaining information is by inspecting the mummies of children.” Here, again, I have been so fortunate as to examine the crania of three children from one year old to five years, and five others between the ages of five and ten years. The result is entirely confirmatory of the opinion I have already advanced, and also coincides with the observations of Mr. Estlin.[18]

What the masticated substances were, has not been ascertained; but the teeth of some Hindoos, even in early life, are as much worn away as those of the Egyptians. The latter, as a general rule, are remarkably free from decay, and in a number of instances the whole set remains unbroken. There are various examples in which the teeth appear to have been extracted; thus reminding us of the statement of Herodotus, that there was a class of physicians whose attention, like that of our modern dentists, was bestowed exclusively upon these organs.

_The Nose._—A review of the preceding Anatomical details, and a glance at the accompanying delineations, will serve to show that the form of the nose in the Caucasian series was straight, or slightly aquiline, as in the Hindoo; more prominent, as in the Pelasgic tribes; and long, salient, and aquiline, as in the Arabian race, and more especially in the Semitic nations of that stock.

It may be here observed, that the nasal bones have in many instances been more or less broken in forcing a passage through the ethmoid bone, for the purpose of removing the brain. This operation, which appears to have been almost uniformly practised at Thebes, was comparatively unusual at Memphis; for of the twenty-six heads from the latter necropolis, five only are perforated; while of the fifty-five Theban crania, all are perforated but two; and in a third the ethmoid is so little broken that the brain could not have been removed through the orifice. I moreover detect three instances of complete perforation of the nose, in which the brain had been extracted through the foramen magnum, by cutting the neck half across behind; the bandages being folded over the incision. The absence of the ethmoidal perforation in the oldest heads from Memphis, and in many others of a later date from the same necropolis, leads me to suppose that the brain may have been primitively removed through the foramen magnum; and that its extraction through the nose, as already suggested, may have been a subsequent refinement of the embalming art. Again, the different provinces of Egypt may have had peculiar and conventional details in this as in other usages; for all the heads from Ombos and Maabdeh have the ethmoidal opening; all those from Abydos and Debod are without it; while of the four from Philæ, one is perforated and three are not.

Denon long ago pointed out a peculiarity of the Egyptian profile, as seen in the remarkable distance between the nostrils and the teeth. This feature, with a small receding chin, is of frequent occurrence both in the mummies and on the monuments.

_Position of the Ear._—Every one who has paid the least attention to Egyptian art, has observed the elevated position which is given to the ear; and I have examined my entire series of heads, in order to ascertain whether this peculiarity has any existence in nature, but I can find nothing in them to confirm it. The bony meatus presents no deviation from the usual relative arrangement of parts; but the cartilaginous structure being desiccated, and consequently contracted, may not afford satisfactory evidence. Clot Bey and other authors have remarked an elevation of the ear in some modern Copts; and the traveller Raw, quoted by Virey, notices the same feature in the Hindoos, and it is said also to exist in degree in the Jews. There may, therefore, be _some_ foundation for this peculiarity of Egyptian sculpture and painting; but I feel confident that in nature it is nothing more than an upward elongation of the auricular cartilages, without any modification of the bony meatus. It has also occurred to me that the appearance in question may be sometimes owing to the remarkable vertical length of the upper jaw in some heads (those represented Plate IV., Fig. 2, and Plate V., Fig. 2, for example,) in which it is manifest that the ear would possess a remarkable elevation in respect to the maxillary bones, without being any nearer to the top of the head than usual. These hints may possibly afford some clew to a satisfactory explanation of an almost invariable rule of Egyptian art.

Dr. Prichard (Researches Vol. II., p. 251,) has given an abstract of some observations made by M. De La Malle, on the mummies contained in the Museum of Turin. “In the skulls of these [six] mummies, as well as in many others brought from the same country, although the facial angle was not different from that of European heads, the meatus auditorius, instead of being situated in the same plane with the basis of the nose, was found by M. De Malle to be exactly on a level with the centre of the eye”! Unless M. De Malle is an anatomist, and accustomed to comparisons of this kind, I can imagine that he might be deceived by the mere position in which the head was placed for inspection; for the more the face is drawn downward, the higher will be the relative position of the ear, until it may be brought on a level either with the nostrils or the eye, at option. I am the more disposed to offer this suggestion because we are told that in the mummies in question “the facial angle was not different from that of European heads.” I need hardly remark, however, that the higher the external meatus of the ear, the less will be the facial angle; so that M. De Malle’s two observations manifestly contradict each other.

In the annexed plates the reader will find seventy-four accurate delineations of mummied heads, among which he will search in vain for the alleged peculiarity of the Egyptian ear. It is equally absent in the Pelasgic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Negroid forms: and yet the Egyptians, on their monuments, bestowed it alike on the people of all nations, of all epochs, and of every condition in life. See Plate XIV.

_Complexion._—On this point our evidence is, perhaps, less conclusive than on most others connected with Egyptian ethnography. Yet, meagre as it may seem, we cannot pass it by without a few remarks.

Herodotus, in the passage already cited, (p. 115,) speaks of the colour of the Egyptians as if it were black; yet this is evidently a relative, and not an absolute term. This remark applies, also, to the hackneyed fable of the two black doves, who are said, in mythological language, to have flown from Egypt, and established (at least one of them) the oracle of Delphi. Here, again, Herodotus supposes that because the doves were black, they must have represented Egyptian personages. But the Greeks, observes Maurice, called every thing black that related to Egypt, not excepting the river, the soil, and even the country itself; whence the name [Greek: Ermochymios]—the black country of Hermes.

Again, in reference to the statement of Herodotus, on which I have already, perhaps, too largely commented, it may be well to give the evidence of another eye-witness, that of Ptolemy the geographer, who is believed to have been born in Egypt. He wrote in the second century of our era, and his observations must consequently have been made something more than five hundred years later than those of Herodotus. His words are as follow:—“In corresponding situations on our side of the equator, that is to say, under the tropic of Cancer, men have not the colour of Ethiopians, nor are there elephants and rhinoceroses. But a little south of this, the northern tropic, the people are _moderately dark_, ([Greek: êrema tynchanousi melanes],) as those, for example, who inhabit the thirty Schæni, (as far as Wady Halfa, in Nubia,) above Syene. But in the country around Meroë they are already sufficiently black, and _there we first meet with pure Negroes_.”[19]

Here is ample evidence to prove that the natural geographical position of the Negroes was the same seventeen centuries since as it is now; and for ages antecedent to Herodotus, the monuments are perfectly conclusive on the same subject. I could, therefore, much more readily believe that the historian had never been in Egypt at all,[20] than admit the literal and unqualified interpretation of his words which has been insisted on by some, and which would class the Egyptians with the Negro race.

On the monuments the Egyptians represent the men of their nation red, the women yellow; which leads to the reasonable inference that the common complexion was _dark_, in the same sense in which that term is applicable to the Arabs and other southern Caucasian nations, and varying, as among the modern Hindoos, from comparatively fair to a dark and swarthy hue. “Two facts,” says Heeren, “are historically demonstrated; one, that among the Egyptians themselves there was a difference of colour; for individuals are expressly distinguished from each other by being of a darker or lighter complexion: the other, that the higher castes of warriors and priests, wherever they are represented in colours, pertain to the fairer class.”

That the Ethiopians proper, or Meroïtes, were of a dark, and perhaps very dark complexion, is more than probable; and among other facts in support of this view, we find that the mother of Amunoph III., and wife of Thotmes IV., who was a Meröite princess, is painted black on the monuments. Thus the different complexion of the great divisions of the Egyptian nation must sometimes have been blended, like their physiognomical traits, even in the members of the royal family.

It is not, however, to be supposed that the Egyptians were really _red_ men, as they are represented on the monuments. This colour, with a symbolic signification, was conventionally adopted for the whole nation, (with very rare exceptions,) from Meröe to Memphis. Thus, also, the kings of the Greek and Roman dynasties are painted of the same complexion.[21]

Professor Rosellini supposes the Egyptians to have been of a brown, or reddish-brown colour, (rosso-fosco,) like the present inhabitants of Nubia; but, with all deference to that illustrious archæologist, I conceive that his remark is only applicable to the Austral-Egyptians as a group, and not to the inhabitants of Egypt proper, except as a partial result of that mixture of nations to which I have already adverted, and which will be more fully inquired into hereafter.

The well known observation of Ammianus Marcellinus, “Homines Ægyptii _plerique subfusculi_ sunt, et atrati,” is sufficiently descriptive, and corresponds with other positive evidence, in relation to the great mass of the people; and when the author subsequently tells us that the Egyptians “blush and grow red,” we find it difficult to associate these ideas with a black, or any approximation to a black skin.[22]

The late Doctor Young, in his Hieroglyphical Literature, has given a translation of a deed on papyrus of the reign of Ptolemy Alexander I., in which the parties to a sale of land at Thebes are described in the following terms:—“Psammonthes, aged about 45, of middle size, dark complexion and handsome figure, bald, round-faced and straight-nosed; Snachomneus, aged about 20, of middle size, sallow complexion, round-faced and straight-nosed; Semmuthis Persinei, aged about 22, of middle size, sallow complexion, round-faced, flat-nosed, and of quiet demeanour; and Tathlyt Persinei, aged about 30, of middle size, sallow complexion, round face and straight nose, the four being children of Petepsais of the leather-dressers of the Memnonia; and Necheutes the less, the son of Azos, aged about 40, of middle size, sallow complexion, cheerful countenance, long face and straight nose, with a scar upon the middle of the forehead.” In another deed of the same epoch, also translated by Dr. Young, an Egyptian named Anophris is described as “tall, of a sallow complexion, hollow-eyed and bald.”

Independently of the value of the other physical characters preserved in these documents, the remarks on complexion have a peculiar interest; for they show that among six individuals of three different families, one only had a dark complexion, and that all the rest were sallow.

From the preceding facts, and many others which might be adduced, I think we may safely conclude, that the complexion of the Egyptians did not differ from that of the other Caucasian nations in the same latitudes. That while the higher classes, who were screened from the action of a burning sun, were fair in the comparative sense, the middle and lower classes, like the modern Berbers, Arabs, and Moors, presented various shades of complexion, even to a dark and swarthy tint, which the Greeks regarded as black in comparison with their own. To these diversities must also be added others incident to a vast servile population, derived from all the adjacent nations, among which the sable Negro stood forth in bold and contrasted characters.

Dr. Wiseman, after a critical examination of the evidence in reference to this mooted question, has arrived at the following philosophical conclusion;—“It is not easy to reconcile the conflicting results thus obtained from writers and from monuments; and it is no wonder that learned men should have differed widely in opinion on the subject. I should think the best solution is, that Egypt was the country where the Greeks most easily saw the inhabitants of interior Africa, (the Negroes,) many of whom, doubtless, flocked thither and were settled there, or served in the army as tributaries or provincials, as they have done in later times; and _thus they came to be confounded by writers with the country where alone they knew them, and were considered part of the indigenous population_.”[23]

_External Configuration._—On this subject I have nothing to add but the following external measurements,[24] (taken with my own hands,) derived from each group, and embracing all the denuded adult crania excepting two of the Semitic form.

_Table I. Pelasgic Group._

┌──────┬─────┬──────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬───────────┬─────┬─────┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ No. │ │ │ │ │ │ │Occipito-Frontal│ │ │ │ in │Plate.│Longitud.│Parietal│Frontal│Vertical│Inter-mastoid│Arch.│Horizontal│ │ │Cat. │ │Diam.│Diam.│Diam.│Diam.│Diam. Line.│ │Periphery.│ ├──────┴┬────┴┬─────┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬───┴─┬─────┬────┴┬────┴┬──── │Thebes,│856 │IX. │7.5 │5.6 │4.5 │5.2 │15.1 │4.2 │15.6 │21. │ │Thebes,│859 │ VI.,│7.1 │5.1 │4.3 │5.3 │14.1 │4.1 │14.5 │20. │ │ │ │ 5.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Thebes,│850 │ VI.,│7.4 │5.3 │4.3 │5.4 │15. │4.3 │15.3 │20.5 │ │ │ │ 4.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Thebes,│893 │ VI.,│7.2 │5.4 │4.4 │5.3 │14.6 │4.1 │14.7 │20.3 │ │ │ │ 3.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Abydos,│817 │V., 3.│7.1 │5.7 │4.5 │5.4 │15.6 │3.9 │15.3 │20.5 │ │Memphis,│803 │ III.,│7.5 │5.6 │4.3 │5. │14.8 │4. │14.9 │20.8 │ │ │ │ 8.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│808 │ II.,│7.4 │5.7 │4.8 │5.1 │15. │4. │14.9 │21. │ │ │ │ 1.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│816 │ III.,│7.4 │5.1 │4.3 │5.5 │15. │4. │15.1 │20.6 │ │ │ │ 5.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│802 │ III.,│6.8 │5.2 │4.3 │5.4 │13.9 │4.2 │14. │19. │ │ │ │ 7.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│812 │ II.,│6.8 │5.5 │4.5 │4.8 │13.6 │4. │14.1 │19.9 │ │ │ │ 3.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│815 │ II.,│7. │5.2 │4.1 │5.4 │14.6 │3.9 │15. │19.9 │ │ │ │ 2.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│799 │ III.,│7.2 │5.7 │4.2 │5. │14.9 │3.7 │14.8 │20.4 │ │ │ │ 4.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│814 │ II.,│7.3 │5.8 │4.6 │5.2 │15.4 │4.3 │15.5 │20.8 │ │ │ │ 5.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│805 │ II.,│7.4 │5. │3.9 │5.3 │14.4 │3.9 │15. │19.8 │ │ │ │ 7.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│838 │I., 1.│7.5 │5.5 │4.4 │5.5 │14.7 │4. │15. │20.7 │ │Memphis,│837 │I., 2.│7.8 │5.7 │4.6 │5.7 │15. │4.1 │15.6 │21.2 │ │Memphis,│798 │ III.,│6.9 │5.5 │4.4 │5.1 │14.2 │4.1 │14.5 │19.5 │ │ │ │ 6.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│825 │ III.,│7.5 │5.7 │4.3 │5.3 │15. │4.2 │15. │20.7 │ │ │ │ 9.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Memphis,│840 │ II.,│7.3 │5.4 │4.6 │5.2 │14.8 │4.1 │15. │20.6 │ │ │ │ 9.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │Philæ,│821 │ XII.,│6.9 │5.2 │4.4 │4.9 │14. │4. │14. │19.5 │ │ │ │ 6.│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ├──────┴─────┴──────┼─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┤ │ Highest in the │7.8 │5.8 │4.8 │5.7 │15.6 │4.3 │15.6 │21.2 │ │series, │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Mean, │7.25 │5.44 │4.38 │5.25 │14.6 │4.05 │14.85│20.33│ │ Lowest in the │6.8 │5.1 │3.9 │4.8 │13.6 │3.7 │14. │19. │ │series, │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └───────────────────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┘

The _frontal diameter_ is taken between the anterior inferior angles of the parietal bones.

The _vertical diameter_ is measured from the fossa between the condyles of the occipital bone, to the top of the skull.

The _inter-mastoid arch_ is measured, with a graduated tape, from the point of one mastoid process to the other, over the external table of the skull.

The _inter-mastoid line_ is the distance, in a straight line, between the points of the mastoid processes.

The _occipito-frontal arch_ is measured by a tape over the surface of the cranium, from the posterior margin of the foramen magnum to the suture which connects the os frontis with the bones of the nose.

The _horizontal periphery_ is measured by passing a tape around the cranium so as to touch the os frontis immediately above the superciliary ridges, and the most prominent part of the occipital bone.

_Table II. Egyptian Group._