About the time tbe preceding letter was penned, Dr. Morton was
in correspondence with a Very distinguished savan in Paris■ —i- our
mutual friend, M. le Dr. B o u d in , latterly Médecin en chef de l’armée
des Alpes — who proposed to translate and republish the Crania
JEgyptiaca. The work was to be rewritten; and we have before us
its MS. emendations for a second edition. Writing to Gliddon, then
in London, in May, 1846, Morton holds the following language: —
“ In this work I maintain, without reservation, the following among other opinions—that
the human race has not sprung from one pair, hut from a plurality of centres; that these
were created ab initio in those parts of the world best adapted to their physical nature;
that the epoch of creation was that undefined period of time spoken of in the first chapter
of Genesis, wherein it is related that God formed man, ‘ male and female created he them;1
that the deluge was a mere local phenomenon ; that it affected but a small part of the then-
existing inhabitants of the earth; that these views are consistent with the facts of the case,
as well as with analogical evidence.”
In anotber letter to Gliddon, at Hew York, December 14,1849, we
read ítete r
“ By the hands of the person to whom you confided them, I last night received Lepsiiis’s
“ Chronologie,” and the tin case of fac-simile drawings.280 These, when studied in connection
with the Egyptian heads [s&wZZs], and especially with the small series sent me [from
Memphis] by your brother William [seventeen in number, and very ancient,], compel me
to recant so much of my published opinions as respects the origin of the Egyptians. They
never came from Asia, but are the indigenous or aboriginal inhabitants of the valley of the
Nile. I have taken this position in my letter to Mr. J. R. Bartlett {New York Ethnological
Sod. Journal, I.): every day has verified it, and your drawings settle it forever in my
mind. It has cost me a mental struggle to acknowledge this conviction, but I can withhold
it no longer.” [See confirmations'in the MSS. of Dr. Morfon; infra, Chap. XI.].
Again, to tbe same, January 30, 1850: —
“ You allude to my altered views in Ethnology; but it all consists Yn regarding the
Egyptian race as thejindigenous people of the valley of the Nile. Not Asiatics in any
sense of the word, but autocthones of the country, and the authors of their own civilization.
This view, which you will recollect is that of Champollion, Heeren, and others [excepting
only that they do not apply the word indigenous to the Egyptians] j in nowise conflicts with
their Caucasian position; for the Caucasian group had many primordial centres, of which
the Egyptians represent one.”
Here, then, we behold tbe matured and deliberately-expressed
opinion of Dr. Morton, that the earliest monumental type of Egyptians
was not Asiatic, but that of an aboriginal African race.
A few months ago tbe writer (J. C. H.) addressed the Chevalier
Lepsius, stating tbe impressions relative to what we shall call a
Negroid type, left on our mind by an examination of his plates of the
IVth dynasty. We received from him a most obliging and comprehensive
letter: an extract below indicates its nature.
We ought to premise that the Chevalier, like Baron von Humboldt;281
is a sustainer of the unity of races, for linguistical and other reasons
to be detailed by his own pen some day. We wish here simply to
present the results of some of his “ linguistique” researches — a department
of science in which be is so justly renowned. His reply to
our interrogatory begins — “ Je laisse de coté le point de vue théologique
qui n a rien à faire avec la science.” Our clerical adversaries
need not lean, therefore, upon savans whose sole object is scientific
truth; nor, for ourselves, can we refrain from admiring the philosophic
tone with which such intelligences as Agassiz, Lepsius, and
Morton, have pursued it.
i’Vousj parlez d’une gradation des peuples du continent d’Afrique depuis le Cap jusqu’à
dans le nord. Il y’a un fait bien curieux, que les langues des Hottentots et des Bushmans
sont essentiellement différentes des langues de tout le reste du continent jusqu’à l’équateur.
Et ce qui est, peut-être, encore plus curieux, leur langue porte quelques traits chatactéristiques,
qui ne se retrouvent que dans les langues du nord-est de l’Afrique.................Tout le
continent Africain avait, selon mon idée, dans un certain temps, une population parente, et *
les langues par conséquent analogues aussi. Plus tard les peuples Asiatiques immigraient
du nord-est^ Le mélange des races produisait ce large bandeau de peuples et de langues
dispersés et apparemment incohérens qui se trouvent maintenant entre la ligne et le 15me
degré lat. nord. Ces langues ont perdu leur caractère Africain sans acquérir le caractère
Asiatique ; mais le fond dés langues et du sang est Africain................. |
, “ J® comprends ce que, vous appelez un type negroide dans les figures Egyptiennes, et je
n’ai rien contre cette observation ; mais cela n’empêche pas que leur caractère principal
ne soit Asiatique. Pendant le temps des Hyksôs, la race ancienne se changeait considérablement.”
We repeat that Prof. Lepsius declares, in the same letter, his ¿on-
firmed belief in the unity of races ; hut the occurrences he speaks of
must antedate, the era by him defined for the foundation of the Egypi
tian EmpireW3893 years b . c., as Frenchmen ' express it, by “ des
millions et des milliards d’années.”
Hot less do we esteem, on these archaic subjects, the high authority
of Mr. Birch, of the British Museum ; who, in a private letter (to J.
C. H.), dated October, 1852, writes : —
“ You are, I agree, quite right as to the intermediáis relation of Egypt to the Asiatic and
Nigritian races. Benfey and others have already, I think, pointed out that the so-called
Semitic languages are principally spoken in Africa, and the hieroglyphs are of Semitic connection
resembling the Semitic languages in the construction and copia verborum; at the
Same time they differ in many essential points, and have a fair claim to be considered a
separate species of language. The astounding fact is, that Egyptian civilization was the
oldest—and that the Assyrian and other nations have left no remains to compare with them
in respect of time.”
It cannot fail to be remarked, that certain of the portraits on the
earliest pyramidal monuments already represent a very mixed people ;
and,, consequently, it is clear that Egypt, for anterior centuries unnumbered,
must have been, so to say, the battle-ground of Asiatic impinging
against African races. Some of the heads we have selected as illustrative
of the antiquity of a high “ Caucasian ” type, might readily
pass unnoticed at the present day in the streets of London, Paris, or
Hew York ; while others, again, are so strictly African, that the
30