to those Negro types with whom their existence was ever coeval. ,
Indeed, this head was not found in Egypt proper, but immediately
above the first cataract in Lower Nubia.
Fia. 194.
As Mr. Birch has mentioned,
in the extract previously given,
history reposes upon the Tablet
of Wàdee Haifa for the conquest
of Upper Nubia; and also for
the earliest monumental rencontre
with Negroes, by S e so
u r t e se n L; second king of the
-XI 1th dynasty, near about 2348
years b . c. ; which is the authorized
date of the Deluge in
King James’s version;' The
tablet is small, and very much
abraded; but, Morton having
enlarged the royal portrait,350
we repeat it here, for what it
may be worth ethnologieally.
It proves, at least, that S esour-
t e s e n ’s lineaments were anything
but African.
The heads of austral captives,
surmounting shields in which
their national names are written, exist in this tablet, too mutilated
for us to distinguish anything beyond the African contour of their
features. Birch361 reads their cognomina —
“ 1. Kas, or Gas. 4. Shaat.
2. Shemki, or Temki. 5. Khilukai; or, perhaps the Shilougis, who
3. Chasaa. now are palled ‘ Shillouks’ ? ” ,
It therefore becomes settled by the hieroglyphics, that the Egyptians
had ascended the Nile, and had encountered Negro-races, at least as
far back as the twenty-fourth century b . c.
We can now add a most extraordinary fact, since discovered by
Viscount De Bougé, to the extracts we have culled from Birch’s
memoir. An inscription on the rocks near Samneh, in Nubia,362 cut
by Sesourtesen IH. (of the same Xllth dynasty — about 2200 b . c.),
in the “ VllLth year” of his reign, establishes that he had then extended
the southern frontier of Egypt to that point, viz., the third
cataract ; whereas his predecessor, Sesourtesen I., had only guarded
the passes at Wàdee Haifa, the second cataract, some 180 miles
below. M. De Bougé,363 with that felicitous acumen for which he is
renowned, reads a passage in this inscription as follows : —
“ Frontier of the South. Done in the year VIII., under King Sesourtesen [III.], ever
living; in order that it may not he permitted to any Negro to pass.by it in navigating”
[down the river].
The repugnance of the Egyptians towards Nigritian races, exhibited
in their epithet of “NaHSI— barbarian country, perverse race,” becomes
now a solid fact in primeval history; at the same time that
the above inscription proves conclusively how, just about 4000 years
ago, the geographical habitat of Negroes commenced exactly where
it does at this day: viz., above the third cataract of the Nile.
We have shown, by their portraits, that the three “ Ethiopian
kings (Sabaco, Sevechus, and Tarhaka) of the XXVth dynasty, b . c.
719-695); possess nothing Negroid in their visages. Meroe, as Lep-
sius has determined irrevocably, became an independent principality
at a far later day; and, so soon as she was cut off from Egyptian
blood and civilization, the influx of Negro concubines deteriorated
her people, until, -by the fifth century after Christ, she sank amid the
billows of surrounding African barbarism, mentally and physically
obliterated for ever.
To our lamented countryman, Morton, belongs the honor of first
rendering these data true as axioms in the science of anthropology.
Our part has been to demonstrate that the principles of his method
were correct, as well as to support them with fresher evidences than
he was spared to investigate. At the time of the publication of the
Crania JEgyptiaca, the “ Gallery of Antiquities in the British Museum”
354 had not reached him; consequently he was not then
aware that the vast tableau from Beyt-el-Walee, out of which he
had selected the following heads (Fig. 151) stands, moulded in facsimile
and beautifully colored, on the walls of an Egyptian hall in
that great Institution. The copy lies before us, elucidated by Mr.
Birch’s critical description. Here Negroes and Nubians are painted
in all shades — blacks and browns; while the red (or color of honor)
is given to the Egyptians alone.
With these emendations, which unfortunately the nature of our
work does not permit us to portray in colors, Morton’s own words
and wood-cuts may appropriately close this chapter on the Negro
Type:—
“ For the purpose of illustration, we select a single picture from the temple (hemispeos)
of Beyt-el-W&lee, in Nubia, in which Rameses II. is represented in the act of making war
upon the Negroes — who, overcome with defeat, are flying in consternation before him.
From the multitude of fugitives in this scene (which has been vividly copied by Champol-
lion355 and Rosellini, and which I have, compared in ‘both), I annex a fac-simile group of
nine heads, which, while they preserve the national features in a remarkable degree, present
also considerable diversity of expression.
“ The hair on some other figures of this group is dressed in short and separate tufts, or