authority to arguments hereinafter presented, without, in either case,
infringing, upon the sanctity of private correspondence. — J. C. M.]
Although Dr. Morton had insisted strongly upon his conventional
Egyptian type, nevertheless, a critical perusal of his work will show
that, even in 1844, he felt hy no means certain as to its Asiatic origin
— glimmerings of the light that was ere long to break through
“ Egyptian darkness” already dawning upon the mind of our acute
anthropologist. In the Crania, he says: —
“ We have already alluded to the opinion of Prof. Bitter and others, that the old Bejas
and modern Bishareens were derived from the Berber or Libyan stock of nations. I am
ready to go farther, and adopt the sentiment of the learned Dr. Murray, that the Egyptians
and monumental Ethiopians were of the same lineage, and probably descended from a
Libyan tribe.
“ This view of the case [he continues] at once reconciles the statement of Champollion,
Rosellini, Heeren, and Riippell, that they could detect the Nubian physiognomy everywhere
on the monuments; but, at the same time, it supersedes the necessity of their inference
that Nubia was the cradle'of civilization, and that the arts, descending the river, were perfected
in Egypt.”
In further support of the common origin of the Egyptians, Berbers,
and other tribes of Northern Africa, Morton refers to evidences furnished
hy Ritter, Heeren, Shaler, Hodgson, &c. — showing how “ the
Libyan or Berber speech was once the language of all Northern
Africa,” and infinitely more ancient than the Coptic-—probably as
old as the monumental language of Egypt’s pyramidal period.
[For the sake of perspicuity, and to convey to the reader some idea
of the chronological order -of linguistic developments in Egypt, it may
he well to mention, that the name Coptic (i. e. Christian Jacobite) represents
the vernacular Egyptian from the seventh century after Christ
back to about the Christian e ra ; that Demotic, or Enchorial, refers to
the colloquial idiom thence used backwards to the seventh century
b . c . ; that Hieratic, or Sacerdotal, means only the cursive character
in which the lingua sancta” of the old hieroglyphics was written, in
every age, hack to at least the YIth dynasty, or 2800 years b . c. ; and
finally, that the hieroglyphics, “ sacred sculptured characters,” represent
that antique tongue which was the speech of Egypt when, long
prior to .the pyramids of the IVth dynasty (that is, centuries anterior
to 3500 years b . c.) phonetic hieroglyphs succeeded an earlier picture-
writing. With the reservation that where our Anglo-Saxon tongue
counts centuries, the language of Egypt reckons up its thousands of
years, if we were to call the English of Thackeray, Bulwer, and Irving,
“ Coptic” — that of the forty-seven translators of King James’s Version,
“ Demotic”—that.of Chaucer, “ Hieratic,” and that of the.old
Doom’s-day Book, “ Hieroglyphic,” we should perceive, in modern
English, some of the linguistic gradations and some phases in the writings
of Egypt during 4000 monumental years, down to the introduction
of Christianity into the Valley of the Mile.279 Consequently, all
philologers who, when comparing Coptic with Atalantic Berber dialects,
imagined they were dealing with ancient Egyptian lexicography,
have committed, ipso facto, a wondrous anachronism;, and science
must set their futile labors respectfully aside — L a th am ’s inclusive.
G.R. G.]
We must remark, in passing, that Dr. Morton’s mind had not yet
freed itself from the old, arbitrary, divisions of races, and that he here
attempted to force into one common stock many African races which
in themselves merely constitute a group of proximate, hut quite distinct,
types. But, it is interesting to observe the change gradually
working in a brain so eminently reflective, as new archaeological facts
offered themselves to its well-disciplined scrutiny; nor can we adequately
express our admiration at the i simple-hearted honesty with
which Morton sacrificed many hard-earned opinions, in the ratio that
the field of Egyptian science widened before his contemplation. We
derive extreme pleasure in offering some instances.
On the 26th of February, 1846, hut two years after his Crania
JEgyptiaca had appeared, in a letter to Gliddon at Paris, he thus
utters thoughts which it seems had been half-formed for years previously,
though proofs were yet wanting to mould them into definitive
shape: —
“ I am more than ever confirmed in my old sentiment, that Northern Africa was peopled
by an indigenous and aboriginal people, who were dispossessed by Asiatic tribes. These
aborigines could not have been Negroes, because the latter were never adapted to the climate,
and are nowhere now, nor ever have been, inhabitants of these latitudes. Were they Bera-
bra V& ¥ some better raoe> m°re nearly allied to the Arabian race ? ” *
This gleam of light received expression long previously to the pub
lication of any of the pictorial results of Lepsius’s Expedition. To
our view, Morton here struck the true key to the type of the Egyptian
population of the Mew Empire. They were then already a mixed
race, derived from Asiatic superpositions upon the aboriginal people
of the lower Mile. From the dawn of monumental history, which
antedates-all chronicles, sacred or profane, we see the whole basin of
the Mile, together with that part of Africa lying north of the Sahara,
inhabited by races unlike Asiatics, and equally unlike Megroes: but
forming in anthropology a connecting link, and, geographically,
another gradation. To say nothing of Egyptians proper, such were
and are the Mubians, - the Abyssinians, the Gallas, the Bar4bra, no
legs than the whole native population of the Barbary States; which
last, in those ancient days, were absolutely cut off, through want of
camels, from communication with Migritia athwart the Saharan wastes.