The above heads are from patrician tombs of the YIth dynasty,
which, according to Lepsius, commenced about the year 2900 b. c.
Concerning the type of these, and numerous other effigies of this
epoch, admirably figured by the same author, there can be no dispute ;
but, the plates being unaccompanied by text, we are unable to supply
historical details of the personages represented in these early dynasties.
Lepsius himself will ere long elucidate them.
The following two (Figs. 118 and 114) are selected as examples of
the same type, in the anterior Vth dynasiy, and are Egypto-Cauea-
sians, no less clearly defined. In Fig. 113, the facial angle is actually
Hellenic.
F ig. 113.209 F ig . 114.2»
Lastly, here are some of the earliest portraits of the human species
now extant — effigies 5300 years old.
F ig . 115.211 F ig . I I 6.212
1 2
Fig. 117.2)2 . F i B. 118.2«
3 4
The preceding four heads are all from painted sculptures in tombs of
the IVth dynasty; which commenced at Memphis, according to Lepsius,
about 3400 years b. c. The second and third of these heads
assimilate closely to many of those already given of XVIHh. and
XVLIth dynasties; demonstrating that mixed Caucasian types inhabited
Egypt from the first to the last of her surviving monuments.
We have stated our reasons, in another place, for regarding this special
physiognomy to be commingled with foreign and Asiatic elements;
and not representative, consequently, of the aboriginal Egyptian stem.
The third of these heads is strongly Chaldaic in its outlines; and we
think there is little reason to doubt that the ancestral Mesopotamian
stock of Abraham had long been mingling its blood with the royal
and aristocratic families of Egypt; because, in the IVth, Vth, and
Vlth dynasties, we find two distinct types sculptured on the monuments—
the one African or Negroid, and the other Asiatic or Semitic.
Of course, when speaking of Abraham’s ancestral stock, the reader
will understand that we make no reference to this patriarch’s individuality.
To us, his name serves merely to classify some proximate
or identical Chaldaic family of man, originally connected with a common
Euphratic centre of creation, of which the existence very likely
preceded Abraham’s birth by myriads of ages.
Our fourth portrait (Fig. 118) is the only one we can identify, and
its associations are most interesting. Prince and Priest Merhet—
probably a relative, if not son, of King Shoopho, Cheops, builder of
the Great Pyramid — is the man whose tomb, transferred from Memphis
to Berlin, and now built into the Royal Museum, has escaped
the vicissitudes of time for above fifty-two centuries. His bas-reliefed
visage has endured almost intact; whilst, of the “ chosen people,”
every Hebrew portrait, from Abraham to Paul, has been expunged
from human iconography. In his lineaments, we behold the pure
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