9. THE MONGOLIANS.
It has been contended by Depauw, and others that the ancient Egyptians were of the Mongolian race. I find nothing like Mongolian features in any embalmed head in my collection, unless some general resemblance can be traced in a solitary instance from Thebes, (Plate [XII]., Figs. 1, 2,) which, however, partakes more obviously of the Semitic form. This observation sustains the opinion of Professor Blumenbach, who in comparing the Egyptians with the several races of men, asserts, that “they differ from none more than from the Mongolian, to which the Chinese belong.”[[118]]
That the Chinese had commercial intercourse with the Egyptians in very early times, is beyond question; for vessels of Chinese porcelain, with inscriptions in that language, have been repeatedly found in the Theban catacombs.[[119]] Yet in every instance wherein we detect Mongolians on the monuments, they are represented as foreigners and enemies. The annexed wood-cut, with the small and somewhat depressed nose, shaven head, and crown-lock, scanty beard, moustache, and sallow complexion, seems clearly to indicate a man of that race. It is copied from a drawing in Rosellini, in which Rameses the Third is represented fighting against the Sheto or Scythians, among whom the Mongols appear to be allies or mercenaries.
REMARKS.
Since the physical characteristics of the ancient Nilotic population, as derived from history and the monuments, coincide in a remarkable manner with the facts derived from anatomical comparison, it becomes in the next place necessary to offer some explanation of these results; or, to show at what periods and under what circumstances several different branches of the Caucasian race were blended into a single nation possessing more or less the characteristics of each, and this again modified in degree by another race wholly different from either. It is in the first place necessary to recur to the fact of the very long occupation of Egypt by successive dynasties of Hykshos or shepherd kings, and that these were not of one but of several nations—Phenicians, Pelasgi, and Scythians; while to these followed, at a long interval, an Ethiopian or Austral-Egyptian dynasty. Each of these great revolutions must have tended in turn to the amalgamation of the Egyptians with other nations; and this result may be referred to three principal epochs, independently of several subordinate ones.
The first epoch embraces the dynasty of the Hykshos or shepherd kings, commencing before Christ two thousand and eighty, and having a duration of two hundred and sixty years.