1.I do not use this term with ethnographic precision; but merely to indicate the most perfect type of cranio-facial outline.

2.Explorations at the Pyramids, Vol. III., p. 44.

3.The letters I. C., denote the internal capacity of the cranium.—F. A., the Facial Angle. The skulls of persons under sixteen or eighteen years of age are seldom measured, and never admitted into the computations of this memoir.

4.It will be observed, on comparing this table with the original one published in the Proceedings of the Society for December, 1842, (and since republished in Mr. Gliddon’s Ancient Egypt,) that there is a great difference in the relative number of Pelasgic and Egyptian heads; which fact has been already adverted to, and explained, (page 4.) I have been governed in the present classification, by the manifest presence of the Egyptian physiognomy, even in those instances in which it appears to be blended with an equal and even preponderating Pelasgic character. It will be observed, however, that the whole number of Caucasian heads is nearly the same in both tables; and that the relative proportion of Semitic, Negro and Negroid crania is unaltered.

5.Lawrence’s Lectures on Zoology, &c., p. 347.

6.Decas Quarta, p. 6.

7.Lawrence, ut supra, eighth edition, p. 325.

8.Description de L’Egypte, Antiq. II., pl. 49, 50.

9.In my Crania Americana, p. 283, I have described an ingenious method 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.

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.

11.Rosellini, M. R. Plate 102, Fig. 47.

12.Idem, M. C. Plate 43, Fig. 45.

13.Rosellini, M. C., Plate 128, Fig. 2.

14.Idem, Plate 101, Fig. 2.

15.Rosellini, M. C. Plate 127.

16.Description de L’Egypte, Antiq. T. I. pl. 68, fig. 114.—Hamilton, Ægyptiaca, p. 55.

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.

18.Prichard, Researches, Vol. II., p. 250.

19.PtolemÆi Geog. Lib. I., cap. ix., as quoted in Edinburgh Review, Vol. LX. p. 312.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

27.Champollion, Monumens de l’Egypte, Tom. II., plate 160, fig. 3.

28.Rosellini, M. C., plate CXXXIII., fig. 3.

29.Hoskins’ Travels in Ethiopia, plate XI.

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.

31.Rosellini, Monumenti, M. C., plate CXXXIII.

32.Champollion-Figeac, Egypte Ancienne, p. 356.

33.Rosellini, M. C., plate XCVII., and Wilkinson’s Topography of Thebes, p. 109.

34.Rosellini, M. C. Plate 126.

35.Idem. Vol. 1, Plate 4.

36.Idem. M. C. Plate 41.

37.Idem. M. C. Plate 37.

38.Idem. M. C. Plate 86.

39.Idem. M. C. Plate 29.

40.Rosellini, M. C. Plate 132, Fig. 1.

41.Idem. Plate 127, Fig. 1.

42.Trans. Royal Society of London, 1794, passim, and Plate 16, Fig. 2, of that work.

43.Ancient Egypt, p, 46, 47.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

50.Sketches of Algiers, p. 91. Capt. Lyon’s observations are to the same purpose. Trav. p. 109.—Denham and Clapperton, p. 73.

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.

52.Ibid. p. 941, 213, 237, 263, 315.

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.

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.

55.I use the word MeroË in a comprehensive sense for all the ancient civilized region south of Egypt.

56.Travels in Ethiopia, p. 329. Wilkinson, M. and C. Vol. I., Plate LXII.

57.Idem. Plate X.

58.Travels in Ethiopia, Plate XIV. See also Cailliaud, Voy. À MeroË, and Hoskins, Plate XXIX.

59.See Gliddon, Ancient Egypt, passim.

60.Modern Egyptians, Vol. II., p. 32.

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.

62.“Le front haut et large, dÉcouvert et un pen fuyant.”—Jomard.

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.

64.Cory, Frag. p. 114.

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.”

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.

67.Champollion-FigÉac, Egypte, p. 293.

68.Rosellini, M. C., Plate 33.

69.AntiquitÉs, Tom. I., Plate 68.

70.Rosellini, M. C., Plate 13.

71.Idem. M. R., Plate 96.

72.Rosellini, M. R., Plate 158.

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.

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.”

75.“Toutes leurs formes sout anguleuses,” says Denon; “leur barbe courte et À mÈches pointues.” Voyage en Egypte, I., p. 92.

76.Bedouins and Wahabys, p. 28.—Clot Bey, AperÇu generale de l’Egypte, I., p. 161.

77.Edinburgh Review, Vol. LX., p. 297.

78.Apud Mengin, Hist. de l’Egypte, III., p. 406.

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.

80.Rosellini, M. S. H. II, p. 174, 238.

81.Prichard, Egyptian Mythology, p. 35.

82.Crania Americana, p. 37.

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.

84.Trans. Roy. Soc. of Literature, I., p. 173. (London.)

85.Prichard, Researches, Vol. II., p. 218.

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.

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.

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.

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.

90.Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Vol. I., p. 140.

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.

92.Prichard, Researches, Vol. III., p. 441.

93.Champollion, Monumens, Tom. I., Plate XXXVI.

94.Mrs. H. Gray, History of Etruria, Vol. I., p. 31, 39.

95.Voyage en Egypte, I., p. 206.

96.Trav. in Egypt, II., p. 168. See also Volney, Voyage, I., p. 70.

97.Trav. in Africa, p. 77.

98.Modern Egyptians, II., p. 310.

99.Monumenti, M. C. II., p. 77.

100.Prichard, Researches, II., p. 238.

101.Trav. in Nubia, p. 217.

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.

103.Trav. in Nubia, p. 353.

104.Prichard, Researches &c. vol. II. p. 174.

105.Voyage À MeroË, II., p. 276.

106.Edinburgh Review, Vol. LX., p. 311.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

111.Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, II., p. 64.

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.

113.Rosellini, Appendix, No. 13.—Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, Vol. III.

114.Hoskins, Travels in Ethiopia. Procession, Part First.

115.Topography of Thebes, p. 136.

116.Champollion, Monumens de l’Egypte, Plate CX.

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.

118.Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1794, p. 193.