ordinary Egyptian head. But I think an unprejudiced observer will not easily follow him so far. The first head has nothing in common with the black race, but is only a coarser representation of the Egyptian type; the second is but its mythological or ideal purification. To make out this system from monuments, two things appear wanting; first, that instead of single representations, which may be called only sporadic or casual, classes of monuments should have been pointed out, wherein the different characters are preserved; for occasional deviations from the ordinary course are to be found in every law; secondly, that some chronological relation be established between the different classes, so to prove that the change which, he supposes, occurred at different epochs in the national features. Neither of these points, however, has been attempted.

All the remains of the Egyptians oppose the statements of the classics I have quoted. For as to their colour and hair, nothing can be more clearly represented than they are on their monuments. We always see the bodies of the natives painted of a red or tawny colour, with long flowing hair, where the head-dress allows it to be seen; while we often see the negroes represented beside them, by a jet black colour, frizzled hair and perfect negro features, precisely as they really

* "Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte." 2ter Th. Gött. 1811. "Dreyerley National Physiognomie unter den alten Ægyptern," p. 130. VOL. I.

L

are at the present day.* But we have still more precious monuments than these painted representations, in the very mummies themselves, the skulls of which, as Mr. Lawrence observes, invariably have the European form, without a trace of the negro shape.† And as to the hair, we may give, for a general description, the account given by M. Villoteau of the hair of a mummy opened under his direction: "Les cheveux étaient noirs.. bien plantés, longs, et divisés en nattes retroussées sur la tête."

It is not easy to reconcile the conflicting results thus obtained from writers and from monuments, and it is no wonder that learned men should have differed widely in opinion on the subject. I should think the best solution is, that Egypt was the country where the Greeks most easily saw the inhabitants of interior Africa, many of whom doubtless flocked thither and were settled there, or served in the army as tributaries or provincials, as they have done in later times; and thus, they came to be confounded by writers with the country where alone they knew them, and were considered a part of the indigenous population. Some such hypothesis must be adopted to reconcile writers among themselves; for Ammianus Marcellinus writes that the Egyptians were only

See the coloured plates in Hoskins's "Travels in Ethiopia.” +"Lectures," p. 345.

Ap. De Sacy, "Relation de l'Egypte, par Abd-Allatif." Paris, 1810, p. 269.

dark and blackish, "homines Ægyptii plerumque subfusculi sunt et atrati."* Thus much, however, is perfectly certain, that by the Egyptian variety, which he places first among those of the human species, Aristotle means the black or negro

race.

The next upon his list are the Scythians; and Hippocrates in like manner mentions them as possessing characteristics common to all their tribes except one, no less marked and distinctive on the one side, than those of the Egyptians on the other. Though ancient Scythia occupied the country now in great measure peopled by tribes belonging to what is called the Mongul race, whom the ancient Scythians greatly resembled in the nomadic form of their lives, we cannot for a moment suppose that a tawny or olive-coloured race would be placed by writers like Aristotle and Hippocrates, as the variety contrasting with the Greek in an opposite direction from the negro. There can be no doubt but the Scythians mentioned by Aristotle, in his classification of the human races, were the Germanic tribes, which were found scattered over the whole of Scythia. This country, as described by Herodotus, is not, like the Scythia of Ptolemy, confined to northern

* Lib. xxii. in fine. "In Scriptor. Hist. Rom." Heidelb. 1743, tom. ii. p. 518.

† Οτι πολὺ ἀπήλλακται τῶν λοιπῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸ Σκυθικὸν γένος, καὶ ἔοικεν αὐτὸ ἐφυτέῳ, ὥσπερ τὸ Αἰγύπτιον.-De Aere, Locis, et Aquis, ed. Genev. 1657, tom. i. p. 291.

Asia, but also comprehended Dacia, Moesia, and all the country north of Thrace.* Now there can be no question but the inhabitants of these regions were Germanic; for, besides their representation on monuments, the descriptions given of them by Ovid in his exile, present all the traits of the ancient Germans. Thus their hair is described as yellow or light coloured:

"Hic mea cui recitem nisi flavis scripta Corallis,

Quas que alias gentes barbarus Ister habet."+

And as always unshorn :

"Mixta sit hæc (gens) quamvis inter Graiosque Getasque, A male pacatis plus trahit ora Getis,

Vox fera, trux vultus, verissima Martis imago,

Non coma, non ulla barba resecta manu."+

Ovid, too, it need scarcely be noted, speaks in almost every page of his place of exile as Scythia.

But thus far we hardly needed proof. It is far more important to note that Herodotus, with his usual accuracy, has clearly distinguished two races as occupying the wide regions of Asiatic Scythia— the Germanic, according to the ancient classification, and the Mongul. For, he tells us, that above *See lib. iv. § xcix. p. 327.

+ Epist. de Ponto." lib. iv. ep. ii. 37. The Coralli seem to be confounded with the Getæ, on comparing Ep. viii. 83, with x. 2. A fanciful etymologist might consider them as the ancestors of the Kourilians.

"Trist." lib. v. eleg. vii. 11. Lucan (lib. i.), speaking of a German tribe, says―

"Et vos crinigeros bellis arcere Chaycos."

*

the Sarmatians, and, consequently, as Breiger well observes, about the territory of Astrakan, on the Jaik, there lived a tribe called the Budini, "a great and numerous nation, with eyes exceedingly blue, and red hair."+ Here, then, we have a Scythian tribe, with all the characteristics attributed by the ancients to the Germanic nations.‡ But, in another place, Herodotus describes the Agrippæi, no less a Scythian people, with very different traits. 66 They are said," he writes, "to be bald from their births, both males and females, with flat noses and large chins."§ Their manners, he adds, are perfectly harmless and innocent. Now compare these marks with the characteristics of the Mongul race, and you will at once see how accurate Herodotus is, and how certainly the same race of nomads, as now, partly occupied the northern tracts of Asia in his time. Blumenbach gives us the following distinctives of the Mongul family:—a flat nose, nasus simus, corresponding to the ouoì of Herodotus, and a rather

* "Commentatio de Difficilioribus quibusdam Asiæ Herodoteæ." Prefixed to the cited edition, p. clxxxiv.

† Βουδῖνοι δὲ ἔθνος ἐὸν μέγα καὶ πολλὸν, γλαυκόν τε ἰσχυρῶς ¿orì kaì πvþþóv.—Melpom. § cviii. tom. i. p. 327. Cf. § xxi. p. 292.

See them collected by Corringius, "De habitus corporum Germanorum antiqui et novi causis, liber singularis." Frankfort, 1727, with a voluminous commentary by Burggraff, pp. 29-100.

§ "Ανθρωποι λεγόμενοι εἶναι πάντες φαλακροὶ ἐκ γενεῆς γινόμενοι, καὶ ἔρσενες, καὶ θήλεαι ὁμοίως, καὶ σιμοὶ, καὶ γένεια ἔχονTeg μeɣáλa.—Ib. § xxxiii. p. 293.