lished Mr. Gliddon’s lecture-rooms when “ Egyptian Ethnology” was
the topic of his address.
When the authors projected the present work, at Mobile, in the
spring of 1852, they acquainted Chevalier Lepsius, among other European
colleagues, with their respective desiderata, archaeological or
ethnographical. Answering one of Gliddon’s letters* the Chevalier
complaisantly remarks : —
“ B e r l i n , 1 Novembre, 1852.
. . . “ Pour les individus vous ne pouvez vous fier que sur les empreintes que vous avez ;
et si vous en desirez je vous en enverrai encore d’avantage. . . . Les empreintes des bas-
reliefs .et les plâtres des anciennes statues sont, à ce qu’il me parait, les seuls matériaux
utiles pour étudier l’ancien caractère des Egyptiens ; et même pour ceux-là il faut admettre
qu’on, pourrait se tromper sur plusieur traits qui paraissent être surs, parceque le canon
[that is, the canon of proportion accorded by Old Egyptian art to the human figure.— Gr. R.
Gr.] reçu pouvait s’écarter en quelques points de la vérité, comme dans la position haute de
l’oreille.”
We have to record our joint obligations for the receipt, in August
of the present year, of the second collection of stamps promised in
the. above letter ; and it is from careful comparison of the duplicate
originals with their tracings, that the models for our lithographic
plates were designed. We feel confident, therefore, that our lithographs
are facsimiles—submitting them to Chevalier Lepsius for com-
* parison with the original bas-reliefs, while taking the liberty to urge
upon his scientific attention, no less than upon that of possessors of
such remains generally, the benefit they would confer upon ethnological
studies, were they to publish similar fae-similes, where the
lithographer, copying the original monument under their own critical
eyes, would attain precision from which the Atlantic debars art in
this country.
Abstraction made of the divergence from nature in the “ high position
of the ear,” to which the above epistolary favor alludes, as a
subject set at rest by Morton ;300 and repeating our previous notice of
false delineation of the eye in Egyptian profiles : there remains no
doubt that the facial outlines, and, where naked, the cranial conformation,
in these most antique of all known sculptures, are rigorously
faithful. Without hesitation, these heads may be accepted by ethnography
as perfect representations of the type of Egyptians under
the Old Empire.
Assuming such to be facts—and, beyond accidents of some trivial
slip of a pencil, none can dispute them but the unlettered in these
sciences — we may now claim as positive that the originals of our
fac-simile heads date back, as a minimum, from 3000 to 3500 years
before Christ, or to generations deceased above 5000 years ago : at