the royal families. This last, to our eyes, as portrayed in Rosellini’s
Iconography, is clearly Asiatic: and hot only Asiatic, hut Semitic; and
not merely Semitic, hut strongly Abrahamic, or, to repeat our adopted
term, Ohaldaic. From the XHth to the XVHth dynasty (a period of
some 511 years, according to Manetho, in Josephus), Egypt must
have been subjected to extraordinary disturbing causes, which, however
terrible to her denizens, to us, at the present day, are shrouded
by darkness, and as if circumscribed within a moment of time.
Ample evidence is now exhumed of the minuteness and fidelity
with..which the Egyptians, before and after the Hyksos-period,
recorded events and delineated the physical characters of their own
people, as well as of the foreigners with whom they held intercourse;
but during this hiatus our monuments are comparatively few, and
sculptured portraits, to guide the ethnographer, are wanting. The
XVIIth dynasty (about 1761 b . c . , according to Lepsius) opens to
view with a completeness and splendor truly astounding; and from
this point downward, for more than 1000 years, (we cannot too often
insist upon with general readers,) there are ample materials'for studying
the natural history as well of Asiatic as of African humanity.
In the magnificent plates of Rosellini, faithful representations of
these painted sculptures are preserved; and in order that the reader
might judge of the quantity of materials and the correctness of our
deductions, we selected (ante, pp. 145 —150) a copious« series of the
Royal Portraits of the X V 11th and A V tilth dynasties. We have
also illustrated how the same physical characteristics prevail, in profusion,
down to the XXVth dynasty, when the so-called Ethiopian
sovereigns come in for a brief season, to change a dynastic family,
but not the national type.2’8 ’
In the absence of parallel history (the “Middle Empire,” or ITyksos-
period, separating us from the Xllth dynasty), nothing remains
beyond genealogical tablets and papyri to guide us, as to the ancestral
origin of Pharaonic families of the Mew Empire, except their physical
type, depicted or carved'upon coeval monuments. There is a
family-contour about them all, which at once indicates to the observer
that they were of high “ Caucasian” caste, with but little African of
any grade, except what was derived from Old Egyptian lineage.
Having enlarged sufficiently upon the Egyptian race, as portrayed
upon the sculptures of the Hew Empire, eoetaneously with the times of
Abraham, Moses, Solomon, and Josiah; (or, from about sixteen centuries
before our era down to the apogee of Assyria’s glory); none can
now doubt that Pharaonic Egypt, at least among royalty, nobility,
and gentry, exhibited in those generations a very mixed type, wherein
Asiatic elements predominated over the Nilotic. Let us next take a
retrogressive leap, over the Wy&sos-period, from the XVIIth to the
Xllth dynasty, and inquire, What was the type of Egyptians under the
Old Empire — that is, backwards, from about the twentieth century
before Christ? But before doing so, fairness renders it incumbent
on the part of one of the authors [G. R. G.], whose province it is to
superintend “ Types of Mankind” as it passes through the press, to
give place to some general observations of his absent colleague. The
former, immediately in contact with their lamented friend, Dr. M orton,
at Philadelphia, until within a few weeks of his demise in 1851,
naturally became more conversant with the great ethnographer’s
matured views; whereas Dr. N ott’s residence at Mobile restricted his
studies within hisjown resources : so that what of merit and originality
may attach to the following analysis of the Old Egyptian type,
belongs to his individual ratiocinations.
[On the publication of Dr. Morton’s Crania JEgyptiaca, we studied
it carefully, and compared it, step by step, with the works of Cham-
pollion and Rosellini. No other conclusion than the one adopted by
him, viz., that the physical traits which he had assumed as characteristic
of the Egyptians Were really and truly typical of the first settlers
of Egypt, resulted from our researches; but, after several years, the
Denkihciler of Lepsius, (the first livraisons of which reached us about
two years ago;) essentially modified our former conclusions. Examination
of the*plates, and a more thorough investigation of the subject,
have satisfied us, that the Egyptian type as known in 1844 to
Morton, existed no longer in its pristine purity, but, after the Xllth
dynasty, was absolutely an amalgam of foreign (chiefly Asiatic) stocks,
engrafted on an antecedent and aboriginal African type; that the
latter, although not Negro, was Nilotic; and that it constituted the
true connecting grade between African and Asiatic races. When Mr.
Gliddon and the writer again met, at Mobile, above eighteen months
ago, after five years’ separation, we mentioned this conclusion to him;
and he placed in our hands various letters, received by him between
the years 1846 and 1851, from Morton; through which it became evident
that the Doctor himself had also so far changed his opinions as
to feel assured that the primordial Egyptians were not an Asiatic, but
an aboriginal population, indigenous to the Nile-land, although he
says nothing of their primitive Negroid type: the ultimatum which
our personal researches had then attained. We afterwards wrote to
Chevalier Lepsius, informing him of the impression his Old Egyptian
portraits had left on our mind, and were much gratified to learn, from
his reply, that our new convictions accorded with his own. A very
obliging letter also, from Mr. Birch, enables us to add his valid