1. 2. 3. 4.
Fig. 1, is the head of a weaver, from the paintings in the very ancient tomb of Roti and Menoph at Beni-Hassan, wherein the same cast of countenance is reiterated without number.[[36]]
Fig. 2, a wine-presser, is also from Beni-Hassan, and dates with Osortasen, more than 2000 years before the Christian era.[[37]]
Fig. 3, is a cook, who in the tomb of Rameses the Fourth, at Thebes, is represented with many others in the active duties of his vocation.[[38]]
Fig. 4. I have selected this head as an exaggerated or caricatured illustration of the same type of physiognomy. It is one of the goat-herds painted in the tomb of Roti, at Beni-Hassan.[[39]]
The most recent of these last four venerable monuments of art, dates at least 1450 years before our era: the oldest belongs to unchronicled times; and the same physical characters are common on the Nubian and Egyptian monuments down to the Ptolemaic and Roman epochs.
The peculiar head-dress of the Egyptians often greatly modifies and in some degree conceals their characteristic features; and may at first sight lead to the impression that the priests possessed a physiognomy of a distinct or peculiar kind. Such, however, was not the case, as a little observation will prove. Take, for example, the three following drawings from a Theban tomb, in which two mourners have head-dresses and two priests are without them. Are not the national characteristics unequivocally manifest in them all?[[40]]
In addition to the copious remarks already made in reference to the hair, we cannot omit the annexed picture from a tomb in Thebes, which represents an Egyptian woman in the act of lamentation before the embalmed body of a relative, while the long, black hair reaches even below the waist.[[41]]