of measuring the internal capacity of the cranium, devised by my
friend Mr. John S. Phillips. The material used for filling the
skull, as there directed, was white pepper seed, which was chosen on
account of its spheroidal form, and general uniformity of size.
Finding, however, that considerable variation occurred in successive
measurements of the skull, I substituted leaden shot one tenth of an
inch in diameter, in place of the seeds. The skull must be
_completely filled_ by shaking it while the shot is poured in at the
foramen magnum, into which the finger must be frequently pressed for
the same purpose, until the various sinuosities will receive no
more. When this is accomplished, the shot on being transferred to
the tube, will give the _absolute_ capacity of the cranium, or _size
of the brain_, in cubic inches.
Footnote 10:
I have in my possession seventy-nine crania of Negroes born in
Africa, for which I am indebted to Doctors Goheen and M’Dowell,
lately attached to the medical department of the Colony at Liberia,
in western Africa; and especially to Don Jose Rodriguez Cisneros, M.
D., of Havana, in the island of Cuba. Of the whole number,
fifty-eight are adult, or sixteen years of age, and upwards, and
give eighty-five cubic inches for the average size of the brain. The
largest head measures ninety-nine cubic inches; the smallest but
sixty-five. The latter, which is that of a middle-aged woman, is the
smallest adult head that has hitherto come under my notice.
Footnote 11:
Rosellini, M. R. Plate 102, Fig. 47.
Footnote 12:
Idem, M. C. Plate 43, Fig. 45.
Footnote 13:
Rosellini, M. C., Plate 128, Fig. 2.
Footnote 14:
Idem, Plate 101, Fig. 2.
Footnote 15:
Rosellini, M. C. Plate 127.
Footnote 16:
Description de L’Egypte, Antiq. T. I. pl. 68, fig. 114.—HAMILTON,
Ægyptiaca, p. 55.
Footnote 17:
“Dentes vegrandes, et incisorum quoque coronæ crassé cylindricæ
magis aut obtusé conicæ, quam scalpriformes.” _Decas prima_, p. 12.
See also Trans. Royal Soc. of London, 1794.
Footnote 18:
_Prichard_, Researches, Vol. II., p. 250.
Footnote 19:
Ptolemæi Geog. Lib. I., cap. ix., as quoted in Edinburgh Review,
Vol. LX. p. 312.
Footnote 20:
Did any one ever read the EUTERPE for the first time without some
misgivings of this kind? I ask this question with a profound respect
for the venerable historian and traveller.
Footnote 21:
It is a curious fact observed by Rosellini and others, that the
Greeks painted some of their divinities red, as Jupiter and Pan; and
even Venus herself appears to have been sometimes represented of the
same colour. _Monumenti Civili_, II., p. 169.
Footnote 22:
“By saying that the Egyptians, _for the most part_, are of a
brownish or somewhat brown colour, and of a tanned and blackened
hue, the writer shows that this was not the case equally, at least,
with all of them; and the expression _subfusculi_ and _atrati_ are
very different from _nigri_ or _atri_.”—PRICHARD, Researches, II.,
p. 232.
“Tra le specie d’uomini non affatto neri di pelle, e di fattezze
diversi da quelli che noi siam soliti chiamare Africani, furono gli
antichi Egizi: e quando Erodoto afferma che i Colchi erano una
colonia d’Egitto, perché dessi pure avevano nero colore, non vuolsi
già intende rigorosamente di quel colore, che proprio è dei Neri; ma
tale ci lo chiama per rispetto al colore dei Bianchi e dei Greci
stessi; e perché veramente l’incarnato degli Egiziani al nero in
qualche modo si avvicinava. Noi lo diremmo con più giustezza color
fosco; e questo epiteto diedero anche i Latini agli abitanti
dell’Egitto, come si legge in Properzio: “An tibi non satis est
_fuscis_ Egyptus alumnis?””—ROSELLINI, Mon. Civ., II., p. 167.
Footnote 23:
Lectures on the connexion between Science and Revealed Religion, p.
102, 2d edit.
These remarks will also serve to explain why Aristotle has placed
the Egyptians and Negroes in the same national category; which is
not more surprising than his referring the Thracians to the
Mongolian race, and attributing to them a _red_ complexion.
Footnote 24:
The _longitudinal diameter_ is measured from the most prominent part
of the os frontis, between the superciliary ridges, to the extreme
end of the occiput.
The _parietal diameter_ is measured between the most distant points
of the parietal bones, which are, for the most part, the
protuberances of these bones.
Footnote 25:
I have been engaged for several years past in obtaining and
arranging a series of measurements of the nature here indicated,
under the title of Craniometrical Tables; but it will be readily
conceived that the difficulty of procuring the requisite materials,
renders the progress of such an undertaking extremely slow and
uncertain.
Footnote 26:
I have reason to believe that this cranium, which I obtained
separate from the rest of the mummy, belonged to another Egyptian
skeleton subsequently procured from the same source.
Footnote 27:
Champollion, Monumens de l’Egypte, Tom. II., plate 160, fig. 3.
Footnote 28:
Rosellini, M. C., plate CXXXIII., fig. 3.
Footnote 29:
Hoskins’ Travels in Ethiopia, plate XI.
Footnote 30:
Cailliaud, plate XVI. to XX. For the use of the only copy of this
work now in the United States, I am indebted to the politeness of
Colonel Pleasanton, of this city.
Footnote 31:
Rosellini, Monumenti, M. C., plate CXXXIII.
Footnote 32:
Champollion-Figeac, Egypte Ancienne, p. 356.
Footnote 33:
Rosellini, M. C., plate XCVII., and Wilkinson’s Topography of
Thebes, p. 109.
Footnote 34:
Rosellini, M. C. Plate 126.
Footnote 35:
Idem. Vol. 1, Plate 4.
Footnote 36:
Idem. M. C. Plate 41.
Footnote 37:
Idem. M. C. Plate 37.
Footnote 38:
Idem. M. C. Plate 86.
Footnote 39:
Idem. M. C. Plate 29.
Footnote 40:
Rosellini, M. C. Plate 132, Fig. 1.
Footnote 41:
Idem. Plate 127, Fig. 1.
Footnote 42:
Trans. Royal Society of London, 1794, passim, and Plate 16, Fig. 2,
of that work.
Footnote 43:
Ancient Egypt, p, 46, 47.
Footnote 44:
The learned Dr. Beke reverses the route, and supposes that the
“Cushite descendants of Ham” first settled on the western side of
the Arabian Peninsula, crossed thence into Ethiopia, and descending
the Nile, became the Egyptians of after times.—Origines Biblicæ, 1,
p. 162.
Footnote 45:
I use the terms Libyan and Ethiopian as they are handed down to us
from antiquity. “Speaking with all the precision I am able,” says
Herodotus, “the country I have been describing is inhabited by four
nations only; of these _two are natives_ and two are strangers. The
natives are the _Libyans_ ([Greek: Dibyes]) and the Ethiopians,
([Greek: Aithiopes]); one of which possesses the northern, the other
the southern parts of Africa. The strangers are the Phoenicians and
the Greeks.”—Melpomene, 197. In the days of Herodotus nomad Libyans
still inhabited the vicinity of Avaris.
Footnote 46:
I use the word _aboriginal_ in this place with some reservation. It
has been supposed by learned authorities that Africa was peopled by
Negroes before the Hamitic tribes entered that country. I do not
suppose Ham to have been the progenitor of the Negro race; and, with
Dr. Wiseman, Mr. Lawrence and many others, I regard as a
“conjecture” in Science, that doctrine which would attribute the
physical gradations between the white man and the Negro to any other
natural process than that of direct amalgamation.—Lawrence, Lectures
on Zoology, 8th edit. p. 264. Wiseman, Lectures, 2d edit. p. 158.
Beke, Origines Biblicæ, Tom. I., p. 162.
Footnote 47:
These Letters, which are addressed to Peter S. Duponceau, Esq., are
contained in the fourth volume of the Transactions of this Society;
and to this source the reader is referred for a mass of interesting
details which is necessarily excluded in this place. The valuable
communications of Mr. Shaler, also addressed to Mr. Duponceau, are
published in the second volume of the same work.
Footnote 48:
“The phrase _a shepherd fed his flock_, is thus rendered in that
language:—_amiksa iksa thikhsi_. These words, moreover, constitute a
beautiful illustration of the genius of the language. In _amiksa_ we
have the formative particle _am_; and in _thikhsi_ there is the
feminine prefix _th_, a peculiarity alike of the Berber and the
Coptic. The prefixes and suffixes _t_, _th_, are Berber indications
throughout the whole extent of north Africa.” Vide also Hornemann,
Voyage, Vocab. p. 431.
Footnote 49:
In Jeremiah Cush and _Phut_ are names of African nations; while in
hieroglyphics Libya is called _Nephaiat_, the “country of the nine
bows.” The root of Nephaiat being _Phut_ (in Coptic a bow) connects
the Libyans with _Phut_, the son of Ham, (Gen. x. 6,) and confirms
the affiliation of the Libyans and Egyptians. See Gliddon, Anc.
Egypt, p. 25, 27, 41.
Footnote 50:
Sketches of Algiers, p. 91. Capt. Lyon’s observations are to the
same purpose. _Trav._ p. 109.—Denham and Clapperton, p. 73.
Footnote 51:
Denham and Clapperton, Introd. p. 67. To give some idea of the
number of the Tuaricks, these gentlemen mention that no less than
two thousand were executed at Sackatoo, in Houssa, on a single
occasion, for a predatory irruption into the territories of the
Negro sultan of that country.—_Journey from Kano to Sackatoo_, p.
107.
Footnote 52:
Ibid. p. 941, 213, 237, 263, 315.
Footnote 53:
Denham and Clapperton, p. 50. See also Hornemann, Voy. en Afrique,
p. 147.—All the Tibboo tribes appear to be Negroes modified by
intermixture with the Arabs and Berbers who surround them.
Footnote 54:
For the funereal rites of the Guanches as compared with those of the
Egyptians, see Bertholet, “Mémoires sur les Guanches,” in Mémoires
de la Société Ethnologique de Paris, Tome I.—See also Blumenbach,
Decad. Cran. Tab. XLII.
Footnote 55:
I use the word _Meroë_ in a comprehensive sense for all the ancient
civilized region south of Egypt.
Footnote 56:
Travels in Ethiopia, p. 329. Wilkinson, M. and C. Vol. I., Plate
LXII.
Footnote 57:
Idem. Plate X.
Footnote 58:
Travels in Ethiopia, Plate XIV. See also Cailliaud, Voy. à Meroë,
and Hoskins, Plate XXIX.
Footnote 59:
See Gliddon, Ancient Egypt, _passim_.
Footnote 60:
Modern Egyptians, Vol. II., p. 32.
Footnote 61:
Jomard, apud Mengin, Hist, de l’Egypte, p. 408. To this valuable
memoir the reader is referred for various additional analogies which
are unavoidably omitted on the present occasion.
Footnote 62:
“Le front haut et large, découvert et un pen fuyant.”—Jomard.
Footnote 63:
In addition to the few remarks already made in reference to my use
of this term, I may observe that the Pelasgi were generally regarded
as the aboriginal inhabitants of Thessaly; but their warlike and
roving propensities led them to extend their migrations in various
directions, until we find it difficult, if not impossible, to
distinguish between them and the affiliated tribes of Dacians,
Macedonians and Thracians. At one period they ranged nearly the
whole country from Illyria to the Black Sea, and gave the name of
Pelasgia to all Greece; and, as every one knows, the Greeks or
Hellenes were their lineal descendants. See Prichard, Researches,
Vol. III., and Mrs. Gray’s History of Etruria, Vol. I., p. 86.
Footnote 64:
Cory, Frag. p. 114.
Footnote 65:
For the proofs that these effigies are really portraits of the
persons represented, the reader is referred to Rosellini’s chapter
entitled, “Iconografia dei Faraouni e dei re Greci de ’Egitto,” in
his _Monumenti_, M. S., Vol. II., p. 461. Portraits of the same king
sometimes differ very considerably from each other, I grant, but the
instances are few in comparison, and may have been intended to
designate different periods of life; nor are these differences
greater than we are accustomed to see in the physiognomy of modern
kings, as represented on their respective coins and medals. But even
if it could be demonstrated that the Nilotic paintings are not
portraits, it would not diminish their ethnographic value, for they
at least delineate the characteristic physiognomy of the Egyptians.
See also, Champollion, “Lettres écrites de l’Egypte et de la Nubie.”
Footnote 66:
Champollion, Monuments, Tom. I., Plate I. The annexed figure is
greatly enlarged from Champollion’s drawing. See also Rosellini, M.
R., Plate XXV., in which the _eye_ is wanting.
Footnote 67:
Champollion-Figéac, Egypte, p. 293.
Footnote 68:
Rosellini, M. C., Plate 33.
Footnote 69:
Antiquités, Tom. I., Plate 68.
Footnote 70:
Rosellini, M. C., Plate 13.
Footnote 71:
Idem. M. R., Plate 96.
Footnote 72:
Rosellini, M. R., Plate 158.
Footnote 73:
The Semitic race extended from the Mediterranean sea on the west to
the confines of Persia on the East, and doubtless possessed great
variety of feature and complexion. They derive their collective name
from Shem, “from whom, in the table of nations in the book of
Genesis, entitled Toldoth Beni Noah, many of them are declared to
have descended.” Prichard, Researches, II., p. 208, 2d ed. The
principal of these nations, adds Dr. Prichard, were those of Elam,
to the north-west of the Persian Gulf; the Assyrians; the Chasdim,
or Chaldeans, who are the ancestors of the Hebrews and Arabs; the
Lydians; and the Syrians, or people of Aram. They are also called,
collectively, Syro-Arabian nations.
The Jews were immensely numerous in Egypt during the Ptolemaic and
Roman epochs. _Vide_ Josephus, Book XII., chap. ii—Sharpe, Egypt
under the Romans, p. 13.
Footnote 74:
Letter to the Chev. Bunsen. See Wiseman’s Lectures on Science and
Revealed Religion, 2d edit., p. 62; and a note at the end of that
most learned and instructive work, “on the conformity between the
Semitic and the Indo-European grammatical forms.”
Footnote 75:
“Toutes leurs formes sout anguleuses,” says Denon; “leur barbe
courte et à mèches pointues.” Voyage en Egypte, I., p. 92.
Footnote 76:
Bedouins and Wahabys, p. 28.—Clot Bey, Aperçu generale de l’Egypte,
I., p. 161.
Footnote 77:
Edinburgh Review, Vol. LX., p. 297.
Footnote 78:
_Apud_ Mengin, Hist. de l’Egypte, III., p. 406.
Footnote 79:
I have stated, in my “Crania Americana,” that the Hindoos appear to
have the smallest heads of any existing people; and that in the Inca
Peruvians the brain was but a fraction larger. Later observations,
however, have led me to believe that the _Nigritos_, or aboriginal
Negro race of the Indian archipelago, present a nearly parallel
example.
Footnote 80:
Rosellini, M. S. H. II, p. 174, 238.
Footnote 81:
Prichard, Egyptian Mythology, p. 35.
Footnote 82:
Crania Americana, p. 37.
Footnote 83:
Bibliotheca, B. I., C. 2. “Khem, of whom Osiris is a form, is the
great deity corresponding to the Indian Siva; Phthah, of whom Horus
is another form, is the Indian Brahma; and Kneph is the counterpart
of Vishnu.” Cory, in Harapollo, Pref., p. x.
Footnote 84:
Trans. Roy. Soc. of Literature, I., p. 173. (London.)
Footnote 85:
Prichard, Researches, Vol. II., p. 218.
Footnote 86:
Ancient African Nations.—That the Indo-European race (of which the
Hindoos are a branch,) has been among the most enterprising and
widely distributed nations of the earth, is incontestably proved by
the prevalence of the Sanscrit tongue as an element of many
languages from Hindostan westward to the shores of Iceland, and
eastward to the Polynesian Isles.—Malte Brun, Geography, Vol. I., p.
660.
Footnote 87:
It is curious to observe that although the Hindoos in our day have
little intercourse with Nubia and the adjacent provinces, the
circumstance is owing to a want of those incentives to commerce
which existed in antiquity; but Burckhardt describes the remains of
Indian traffic as now seen in Mecca and Djidda, in Arabia, where the
Hindoos yet sell the manufactures and other productions of their own
country.—Travels in Arabia, p. 14, 119.
Footnote 88:
The opinions of Sir G. Wilkinson are eminently entitled to respect
on all Egyptian questions; and I need not apologize for quoting his
opinions (however they may differ from those just given,) as briefly
expressed in the following passage. “In manners, language, and many
other respects, Egypt was certainly more Asiatic than African; and
though there is no appearance of the Hindoo and Egyptian religions
having been borrowed from one another, which many might be induced
to conclude from their great analogy in some points, yet it is not
improbable that these two nations may have proceeded from the same
stock, and have migrated southward from their parent country in
central Asia.”—Ancient Egypt, Vol. I., p. 3.
Footnote 89:
St. Augustine states that the Punic or Phenician tongue was in _his_
day (the fifth century) a living language, and very like the Hebrew;
and that the _Canaanitish_ language was _mediate_ between the
Egyptian and the Hebrew. Mrs. H. Gray. Hist, of Etruria, p. 124.
Footnote 90:
Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Vol. I., p. 140.
Footnote 91:
Appeal to the Antiquarians of Europe on the destruction of the
monuments of Egypt. By George R. Gliddon. p. 27. The portrait of
Atenre-Backhan, another of these Hykshos kings, will be found in
Wilkinson, second series, Plate XXX.
Footnote 92:
Prichard, Researches, Vol. III., p. 441.
Footnote 93:
Champollion, Monumens, Tom. I., Plate XXXVI.
Footnote 94:
Mrs. H. Gray, History of Etruria, Vol. I., p. 31, 39.
Footnote 95:
Voyage en Egypte, I., p. 206.
Footnote 96:
Trav. in Egypt, II., p. 168. See also Volney, Voyage, I., p. 70.
Footnote 97:
Trav. in Africa, p. 77.
Footnote 98:
Modern Egyptians, II., p. 310.
Footnote 99:
Monumenti, M. C. II., p. 77.
Footnote 100:
Prichard, Researches, II., p. 238.
Footnote 101:
Trav. in Nubia, p. 217.
Footnote 102:
For ample details of this interesting question, see D’Avezac,
Esquisse générale de l’Afrique, p. 55; and Hodgson on the Foulahs of
Central Africa, p. 5, _et passim_.
Footnote 103:
Trav. in Nubia, p. 353.
Footnote 104:
Prichard, Researches &c. vol. II. p. 174.
Footnote 105:
Voyage à Meroë, II., p. 276.
Footnote 106:
Edinburgh Review, Vol. LX., p. 311.
Footnote 107:
Idem., p. 307. The antiquity of the name Nubia, is of some
importance in this discussion. Heeren and others state that it first
occurs in history during the epoch of the Ptolemies; but Rosellini
has now discovered that it is at least as old as the age of
Menepthah I., (B.C. 1600,) on whose monuments it is found.
Since the above note was written, Mr. Gliddon has obligingly
furnished me with the following interesting memorandum: “The name
Nubia, with its derivatives of Nouba and Noubatæ, may be readily
traced to _Noubnoub_, a Nubian divinity in the hieroglyphical
legends of Menepthah I. and Rameses II. and III., and may possibly
be derived from the root _noub_, gold, from the proximity of Nubia
to the Ethiopian gold countries. The word _Berber_, as applied to
the people of Nubia, (now called Berabera in the plural, from
Berberri, the singular,) is without question derived from the
hieroglyphical name _Barobaro_, by which at least one tribe
inhabiting Nubia was known to the Egyptians of the 18th dynasty.”
Footnote 108:
Clot Bey states the present black population of Egypt to be twenty
thousand; and he adds that Negresses form the greater number of
women in almost every harem. Aperçu Générale de l’Egypte, I., p.
329.
Footnote 109:
Sir G. Wilkinson observes that “no difficulty occurred to the
Ishmaelites in the purchase of Joseph from his brethren, nor on his
subsequent sale to Potiphar on arriving in Egypt.” Ancient
Egyptians, I., p. 404.
Footnote 110:
A passage in Manetho establishes at the same time the antiquity and
the power of eunuchs in Egypt; for he relates that king Ammenemes,
of the twelfth dynasty, was slain by them. This event will date, by
the received chronology, upwards of twenty-two hundred years B.C.
Cory, Frag., p. 110. Eunuchs appear, also, to be figured on the
monuments. Vide Rosellini, M. C. III., p. 133.
Footnote 111:
Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, II., p. 64.
Footnote 112:
Notwithstanding this mixture of nations, Mr. Hoskins observes, that
the higher classes of modern Ethiopians (Nubians,) pay great respect
to the distinctions of race; that they esteem nothing more than a
light complexion, which the petty kings or chiefs make a
prerequisite to the selection of wives; and that, with this class,
“all mixture with the Negro blood is carefully shunned.”—Travels in
Ethiopia, p. 357.
Footnote 113:
Rosellini, Appendix, No. 13.—Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, Vol. III.
Footnote 114:
Hoskins, Travels in Ethiopia. Procession, Part First.
Footnote 115:
Topography of Thebes, p. 136.
Footnote 116:
Champollion, Monumens de l’Egypte, Plate CX.
Footnote 117:
Vide Champollion, Monumens de l’Egypte, Tom. I., Plate LXXI.,
LXXII.; and Rosellini, Monumenti, M. R., Tav. LXXV. A glance at
these illustrations will convince any one that the slave-hunts or
_ghrazzies_, as now practised by the Arabs, Tuaricks and Turks, and
which are so feelingly described by Cailliaud, and by Denham and
Clapperton, were in active operation, with all their atrocities, in
the most flourishing periods of Pharaonic Egypt.
Footnote 118:
Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1794, p. 193.
Footnote 119:
Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, Vol. III. p. 108.
Footnote 120:
See Mrs. Hamilton Gray’s History of Etruria, Vol. I., p. 29.
Footnote 121:
In my _Crania Americana_, Note p. 29, I have employed this passage
to show, that those _Colchians_ whom Herodotus mentions as forming
“part of the troops of Sesostris,” might have been Negroes acting as
mercenary or auxiliary soldiers. I am now satisfied that such
explanation is at least unnecessary, and I, therefore, take this
occasion to withdraw it.
Footnote 122:
Polhym. Cap. lxx.
Footnote 123:
Among the meager facts which history has preserved in relation to
these intrusive kings, the following is the most remarkable:
“Sabakon (the first king of the Ethiopian dynasty) having taken
Boccoris (the legitimate sovereign) captive, burnt him alive.”
Manetho _apud_ Cory, Frag. p. 126. Could any circumstance have
rendered the Ethiopians more detestable in the eyes of the Egyptians
than this first act of barbarian policy?
Footnote 124:
Egypte Ancienne, p. 207.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
End of Project Gutenberg's Crania Ægyptiaca, by Samuel George Morton