to discover other foreign captives occupied in the siiine manner, overlooked by similar * task-
masters,’ and performing the very same labors as the Israelites described in the Bible.”
The same author again insists —
“ They are not, however, Jews, as some have erroneously supposed, and as I have elsewhere
shown.”
Notwithstanding the palpable anachronism and contradicting figurative
circumstances, certain evangelical theologers have wasted much
crocodilean grief over these unfortunate and oppressed, however apo-
chryphal, Israelites; forgetting, in their exceeding-great-thankfulness
over a wondrous “ confirmation,” to weep for the Egyptian brick-
makers, who toil in the same scene.
The following items may assist the reader in forming an independent
opinion: —
1st. The hieroglyphics do not mention the name or country of
these brickinakers.
2d. The scene is not an historical record; but a pictorial illustration
of brick-making, among other constructive arts that embellished the
tomb of an architect, at Thebes—that is, 500 miles from “ Goshen.”
3d. The people wear no beards — their little chin-sprouts are but
the usual unshaven state of Egyptian laborers, no less than of peasantry
everywhere.
4th. They are a Semitic people — possibly, with their beards cut
off in Egyptian slavery; but whether Canaanites, Hebrews, Arabs,
Chaldseans, or others, cannot be determined.
5th. There is not the slightest monumental evidence that the Jews
(in the manner described by the writers of Genesis and Exodus) were
ever in Egypt at a ll! Their type, however, had existed there, 2000
years before Abraham’s birth.
6th. These brickmakers are not more Jewish, in their lineaments,
than Egyptian Fellahs of Lower Egypt at the present day, where
the Arab cross is strong. Indeed, they greatly resemble the living
miked race, who now make Nilotic bricks, every day, at Cairo, exactly
as these brickmakers did 3500 years ago, and think nothing of it.
.Finally — if these brickmakers are claimed to be Israelites, we can
have no objection, because their effigies will corroborate the permanence
of the Jewish type for 3500 years: if they be not, to us they
answer just as well—being tacit witnesses of the durability of Semitic
features in particular, no less than proofs of one more form of ancient
Caucasian types in general.
The next head (Fig. 87), we now submit, is really out of place among
our Caucasian group; but, from the man’s associations, he may have
a position here. We are induced to portray his singular type for
another reason: viz., that, being represented in the same picture with
foreign allies, as well as with native Egyptian soldiers, it serves to
illustrate the correctness of Egyptian out- F ra . 87.
line drawing, and also the minute knowledge
their artists had of various types of mankind
at that early day. The people of
whom this is a sample have been reputed
by many to be ancient Chinese. There are
much better reasons for believing them to
be Tartar tribes; which form the geographical
link between Mongols and Caucasians—
aboriginal consanguinity with either
excluded.
. Morton took this head for Mongolian; and too hastily adopted
ancient Egypto-Chinese connexions, on the faith of certain pseudoantique
Chinese “ vases;” which, not manufactured prior to a d .
1100, could not have been found in Theban tombs shut up 2000
years before.
Under the heading of “ Alphabetical Origins,” our Supplement
establishes that the Chinese, before the Christian era, possessed no
knowledge whatever of nations whose habitats lay north and west of
Persia. Tlie splendid tableau from which the above ethnographic record
is taken, contains many heads of the same type—some of which
are shaven, except the scalp-lock on the crown; while others, though
adorned with the thin moustache, wear the hair long and untouched
by scissors. Now, it can be seen, by reference to Pauthier, that the
Mantchou- Tartars, in A. d . 1621-’27, forced the Chinese to shave their
heads, and wear the pig-tail. Previously, the Chinamen had worn
their hair long. This scalp-lock (called Shoosheh, by the Arabs),
therefore, is a Tartar custom; and inasmuch as in the reign of
Ramses U . , fourteenth century b . c . , China and Chinese were equally
unknown to the Egyptians, Jews, or Assyrians, we- must suppose
that these fair, oblique-eyed, and scalp-locked enemies of Ramses, were
Tartars, or a branch of the great easterly Scythian'Wrdks.172
Osburn repeats this scene, calling the people Sheti, whilst striving
to restrict their habitat to Canaan, in which he-signally fails. Birch’s
more consistent geography carries them to the Caspian, where Tartars
would naturally be found; to which critical induction we may add
the recent opinions of Rawlinson, De Saulcy, Hincks, and Lowen-
stern, that the Tartar, or “ Scythie,” element in cuneatic*ins’criptions,
especially of the Achsemeno-Median style, establishes the proximity
of Turkish (call them Tartar or Scythie, for the terms are still vaguej
tribes to Persia at a much earlier period than ethnologists had heretofore
suspected.
■As such, this effigy (Fig. 87) exemplifies the remotest Asiatic people