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It is fair to conclude that these Felltihs really preserve much of the
aboriginal Egyptian type. Such type bears not the slightest resemblance
(except in casual instances, themselves doubtful, when we first
see it in the IVth dynasty, about 8400 b. c.) to any Asiatic race, and
must therefore have been inherent in that indigenous race which was
created to people the Yalley of the Nile.
The authors esteem it a very high privilege that “ Types of Mankind”
should be the first work to remove all doubts upon the type
of the earliest monumental Egyptians. Further discussion becomes
superseded by the publication of the annexed lithographic Plates I.,
H. HI., and IY. Being fac-similes of the most ancient human heads
now extant in the world, and transfer-copies of impressions stamped,
by the hand of Chevalier Lepsius himself, upon the original has-reliefe
preserved in the Eoyal Museum of Berlin, their intrinsic value in ethnography
canhot he overrated \ at the same time that, like an axe,
these effigies cleave asunder facts and suppositions as to what primordial
art at Memphis, above 5000 years ago, considered to he the
“ canonical proportions” ascribable to the facial and cephalic structure
of the heads of the Egyptian people themselves.
Prefacing our exposition-of the guarantees the lithographs possess
for exactitude and authenticity with the remark, that these portraits
belong to the tombs of princely, aristocratic, and sacerdotal personnages,
who lived during the IYth, Yth, and YIth Memphite dynasties,
we proceed to state how such illustrations (alike precious* from their
enormous antiquity and for their unique excellence) have been
obtained. 'A .
Attendants on Mr. Gfliddon’s Archaeological Lectures in the United
States have been informed, yearly, from 1842 to 1852,297 of the
discoveries of the Prussian Scientific Mission to Egypt : in every case,
before the winter of 1849, far in advance of detailed publication,
whether in America or in Europe. In that year, the first volume of
Lepsius’s quarto Chronologie der Ægypter was quickly followed by the
first livraisons of the folio BenTcm'dler aus FEgypten und FEthiopien
the former judiciously constructing the chronological and historical
framework within which the stupendous facts unfolded by the latter
are enclosed. To facilitate popular appreciation of the magnitude of
these Prussian labors and discoveries, Lepsius put forth, at Berlin, in
1852, his octavo Briefe aus Ægypten, Æthiopien, &c.,; which, trans
lated and ably annotated by Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, being now
equally accessible to every reader of our tongue, renders any account
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