that all the mummies they had opportunities of examining presented the Caucasian type.
M. Jomard, the eminent hydrographer and profound Orientalist, in a paper on Egyptian
ethnology, sustains the Arabian, and consequently the Asiatic and Caucasian, origin of
the early Egyptians ; and his opinions are more valuable, as he draws his conclusions independently
of hieroglyphieal discoveries. On the other hand, Prof. Rosellini, throughout his
‘ Monumenti,’ accepts and continues the doctrine of the descent of civilization from Ethiopia,
and the African origin of the Egyptians. Champollion-Figeao supports the same theory,
which his illustrious brother set forth in the sketch of Egyptian history presented by him
to Mohammed-Ali, in 1829 (published in his 'Letters from Egypt and Nubia’), wherein he
derives the Ancient Egyptians, according to the Grecian authorities, from Ethiopia, and
considers them to belong to ‘ la race Barabra,’ the Berbers or Nubians. Deeming the original
Baràbra to have been an African race, engrafted at the present day with Caucasian as well
as Negro blood, I reject their similitude to the monumental Egyptians in toto, and am fain
to believe that Champollion-le-Jeune himself had either modified his previous hastily-formed
opinion, or, at any rate, had not taken a decided stand on this important point, from the
following extract of his eloquent address from the academic chair, delivered May 10,1831 :
C’est par l’analyse raisonnée de la languedes Pharaons, que l’ethnographie décidera si la
vieille population égyptienne fut d’origine Asiatique, ou bien si elle descendit, avec le fleuve
divinisé, des plateaux de l’Afrique centrale. On décidera en même temps si les Egyptiens
n’appartenaient point à une race distincte ; car, il faut le déclarer ici [in which I entirely
agree with him], contre l’opinion commune, les Coptes de l’Egypte moderne, regardés
comme les derniers rejetons des anciens Egyptiens, n’ont offert à mes yeux ni la couleur
ni aucun des traits caractéristiques, dans les linéaments du visage ou dans les formes du
eorps, qui pût constater une aussi noble descendance.’ ” 250 g
[These views received considérable extension in Mr. Gliddon’s Otia
Ægyptiaca y251 and our colleague’s enthusiastic concurrence in the
work now put forth, in our joint names, sufficiently attests his adoption
of our personal modifications, derived especially from Anatomy,
compared with the more recent hieroglyphieal discoveries.—J . C. X.]
Others, however, though not so decidedly out-spoken in tone, had
rejected African delusions. Thus, Pettigrew,252 following Blumenhach
and Lawrence, had previously alluded to the prohahility of the ascent
of civilization, introduced hy an Asiatic people, along the Mle, from
north to south. De Brotonne,253 succeeded hy Jardot,254 ably sustained
the Asiatic colonization of Egypt against the Migritian hypothesis of
Volney j255 and, a hundred years ago, the academician De Fourmont256
declared, “ The Egyptians, for the three-fourths, issued either out of
Arabia or Phoenicia ; . . . Egypt being composed of Chaldæan, Phoenician,
Arab people, &c., hut especially of these last.”
Morton, drawing from his vast resources in craniology, skilfully
combined with history and such monuments as were deciphered in
1842, terminated his QraniaÆgyptiaca with the subjoined conclusions
— the utterance of which commenced a new era in anthropological
researches : —
“ The Valley of the Nile, both in Egypt and Nubia, was originally peopled by a braneh
of the Caucasian race.
“ These primeval people, since called the Egyptians, were the Mizraimites of Scripture,
the posterity of Ham, and directly affiliated with the Libyun family of nations.
“ The Austral-Egyptian or Meroite communities were an Indo-Arabian stock, engrafted
on the primitive Libyan inhabitants.
“ Besides these exotic sources of population, the Egyptian race was at different periods
modified by the influx of the Caucasian nations of Asia and Europe: Pelasgi, or Hellenes,
Scythians, and Phoenicians.
“ The Copts, in part at least, are a mixture of the Caucasian and the Negro, in extremely
variable proportions.
“ Negroes were numerous in Egypt, but their social position in ancient times was the
same as it now i s : that of servants and slaves.
“ The present Fellahs are the lineal and least mixed descendants of the Ancient Egyptians
; and the latter are collaterally represented by. the Tuariks, Kabyles, Siwahs, and
other remains of the Libyan family of nations.
“ The modern Nubians, with a few exceptions, are not the descendants of the monumental
Ethiopians, but a variously mixed race of Arabs and Negroes.
“ The physical or organic characters which distinguish the several races of men are as
old as the oldest records of our species.”
Such were the best and most natural results of ethnography prior
to Lepsius’s unanticipated exhumations at Memphis, in 1842-’31 but
the latter’s discoveries did not become accessible to the authors’ joint
studies until 1850. We can now assert, with the plates of his splendid
Denkmäler before us, that, notwithstanding the labors of our predecessors,
they have left many doubts and difficulties still hanging around
the primitive inhabitants of Egypt. Not only her written traditions,
but her monumental history, as far hack as it has been traced, prove
that, from the Menaie foundation of the Empire, she had been
engaged in constant strifes with foreign nations of types very different
from that of her own aboriginal population, and that she has been
often conquered and temporarily ruled by foreigners. Hence the
consequence, prima facie, that the blood of her primitive inhabitants
must have become greatly adulterated.
Morton’s Crania Egyptiaca issued in 1844; at which day the discoveries
of s Lepsius were in progress, but not published; at the same
time that the works of Rosellini, Champollion, Wilkinson, &c.—then
the best sources of information respecting the monuments — did not
extend, with the exception of some meagre materials of the XHth
dynasty (hy all three scholars then supposed to be the A V lith), beyond
the XVTnth, or about 1600 b. o. All these complicated data
were, nevertheless, most admirably worked up hy our revered friend;
and he showed conclusively that, while there existed a pervading
“ Caucasian” Type, which he regarded as the ¡Egyptian proper, the
population already, at the XVTnth dynasly, was a very mixed one,
comprising many diverse Asiatic and African elements.
Did archaeological science now solely rely, as before Champollion’s
day, upon the concurrent testimony of early Greek writers, we should
be compelled to conclude that the Egyptians, previously to the Christian
era, were literally Negroes ; so widely do such Grseco-Roman de