Fra. 152.28t : This head we regard as a most interesting
one, in connection with theEgyp-
Fig. 153.
tian type; because it gives the Egyptian
idea of their own people, whom the
accompanying hieroglyphics call | the
RoT, that is, “ race, ” par excellence —
viewed by the Egyptians as the only
human species, to the exclusion of “ outside
barbarians” of every nation around
the “ land of purity and justice.
Row, although this effigy was designed,
at Thebes, as typical of the Egyptian nation
during the XVUfth dynasty, to us
it* seems rather to he the long-settled
type of that race, handed down from early
tithes; for, assuredly, it does not correspond
with the royal portraits of the Rew
Empire, which, we have seen, .were
strongly Semitic in their lineaments, and
therefore chiefly Asiatic in derivation.
This RoT, if placed alongside the monographic
monuments of the IVth, Vth,
and YIth dynasties, is closely analogous
¿to the predominant type %f that day;
I which fact serves totetrengthen our view
that the Egyptian^ of the early dynasties
were rather of an’ African or Negroid
type -—resembling the Bishari, in some,
respe'cts, in others, the modern iFellah, or
peasantry, of Upper Egypt. To show1 its
analogy to the primitive stock, we reproduce
a better copy of the colored h^ad
of Prince M e r h e t (Fig. 154), “ Priest of
Shufu” builder of the great pyramid,
and probably his son {supra, p*;177, Eig.
118). More than 1700 years of time Jepa-
rate the two sculptures, and yet how indelible
.is the type!
Eig. 155 is taken from the temple of Aboosimbel — Wars in Asia
of Ramses H., XVllLth dynasty, during the fourteenth pentury b. e.
This head is one of a group of full-length portraits of the same type,
and they are Egyptian picked soldiers of the royal body-guard — pro