"Caput etiam mumis in theatro anatomico Marpurgensi servatum, cujus exacta delineatio ad manus est, nil a capite Europæo deflectit. "Pulcherrima et optime servata, forsan virilis mumiæ calvaria optimæ ætatis, qua me MIEG, Professor Basileensis benevole donavit, quæque olim in collectione F. PLATERI fuit, distincte formam Africanam, alte progrediente vestigio insitionis musculi temporalis, repræsentat; vertex non est compressus, neque ossa faciei robustiora sunt ossibus Europæorum. Densum ordinem integri pulchri dentes sistunt, non nisi inferiores incisores et canini oblique priora et inferiora versus attenuati sunt, plurimum vero medium incisorum par, brevioribus ea de causa coronis instructum, "Calvaria mumis hominis senis confecti, ab eodem MIEG mihi data, Ægyptiacam ossium faciei formam minus accurate repræsentat, verum dentes incisores exteriores inferiores, et dentes canini modo quem suprà indicavi, se habent; distant nimirum inter se, et in planum sunt atte nuati *." DENON states, of the female mummies, " que leurs cheveux étoient longs et lisses; que le caractère de la tête de la plupart tenoit du beau style. Je rapportois une tête de vieille femme, qui étoit aussi belle que celles des Sibylles de MICHEL ANGEt." The embalmed heads from the catacombs of Thebes (Quournah), engraved in the great French work, are of the finest European form, to which their abundant, long, and slightly flowing hair fully corresponds. There is a male head, with the broad and fully developed forehead, small perpendicular face, and all the contours of our best models. * De Corporis humani Fabrica; t. 1, p. 70, 71, Description de l'Egypte; Antiquités, t. ii. pl. 42. L'angle facial se rapproche beaucoup d'un angle droit ; et les dents incisives sont plantées verticalement, et non inclinées ni avancées, comme elles le seroient dans une tête de Nègre." The nose is finely arched; the jaws perpendicular; the mouth and chin well formed. The front and profile views of a female head* are of the same character; the face completely European, the hair copious, and disposed in small masses or locks, a little turned. The same remarks are applicable to another head †, of which a section is also exhibited. The skulls of four mummies in the possession of Dr. LEACH, of the British Museum, and casts of three others, agree with those just mentioned in exhibiting a formation not differing from the European, without any trait of Negro character. Lastly, so far as osteological proofs go, the question may be considered as completely decided by the strong evidence of CUVIER. "It is now clearly proved,-yet it is necessary to repeat the truth, because the contrary error is still found in the newest works, that neither the Gallas (who border on Abyssinia) nor the Bosjesmen, nor any race of Negroes, produced that celebrated people who gave birth to the civilisation of ancient Egypt, and from whom we may say that the whole world has inherited the principles of its laws, sciences, and perhaps also religion. "BRUCE even imagines that the ancient Egyptians were Cushites, or woolly-haired Negroes; he supposes them to have been allied to the Shangallas of Abyssinia. "Now that we distinguish the several human races by the bones of the head, and that we possess so many of the * Description de l'Egypte; Antiquités, t. 2, pl. 50, + Ibid. pl. 51, ancient Egyptian embalmed bodies, it is easy to prove that, whatever may have been the hue of their skin, they belonged to the same race with ourselves; that their cranium and brain were equally voluminous; in a word, that they formed no exception to that cruel law, which seems to have doomed to eternal inferiority all the tribes of our species which are unfortunate enough to have a depressed and compressed cranium. "I present the head of a mummy, that the Academy may compare it to those of Europeans, Negroes, and Hottentots. It is detached from an entire skeleton, which I did not bring on account of its brittleness: but its comparison has furnished the same results. I have examined, in Paris, and in the various collections of Europe, more than fifty heads of mummies, and not one amongst them presented the characters of the Negro or Hottentot *.” By examination of the bony head we learn that the Guanches also, or the race which occupied the Canary Islands at the time of their first discovery by the Europeans in the fourteenth century, belonged to the Caucasian variety. The name Guanches signifies men or sons in their language. The Spaniards, who conquered them, represent them as a people of strength and courage, of powerful bodies and intelligent minds, advanced in social institutions, and of pure morals. They made the bravest resistance to their European invaders, who did not completely subject them until after a hundred and fifty years of repeated contests. They had a tradition of their descent from an ancient, great, and powerful people. We now know them, as we do the Egyptians, only by Extrait d'Observations faites sur le Cadavre d'une Femme connue à Paris et à Londres sous le nom de Vénus Hottentotte. Mémoires du Muséum d'Hist. nat. t. 3, p. 173, 174. their mummies, the race being completely extinct. The entire head, engraved in BLUMENBACH'S fifth decade †, offers no essential difference from the European form. The testimony of CUVIER is to the same effect. "I present to the Academy the head of a Guanche; a specimen of that race which inhabited the Canaries before they were conquered by the Spaniards. Some authors, believing the tales of Timæus concerning the Atlantis, have regarded the Guanches as the wreck of the supposed Atlantic people. Their practice of preserving dead bodies in the mummy form might rather lead us to suspect some affinity to the ancient Egyptians. However that may be, their head, like that * The body of which BLUMENBACH's engraving exhibits a head, appears to him to be that of a female. "When brought from its subterranean abode on the island of Teneriffe to London, it was entirely and curiously sewed up in goat-skins, according to the usual practice of this ancient aboriginal race. (See VIERA Noticias de las Islas de Canaria; GLASS's History of the Canary Islands; GOLBERY Voyage en Afrique; i. p. 88-95.) It was surprisingly dry, and perfectly inodorous, although the muscles and skin, the contents of the head, thorax, and abdomen, in short, all the soft parts, had been preserved. So powerful had the process of exsiccation been, that the entire body weighed only seven pounds and a half; although a female skeleton of the same stature, in its ordinary state of dryness, would weigh at least nine pounds." Dec. 5, p. 7. + No. xlii. Although the Guanches were separated from the Egyptians by the entire breadth of northern Africa, they not only resembled them in the singular practice of preserving the dead, which was intrusted in both cases to the priests, and in some of the ornaments bestowed on the mummies, but also in language. From a vocabulary of the Tuariks, near Egypt, collected by HORNEMANN, Mr. MARSDEN traced an affinity between them and the Berbers or Numidians, with whose language it is well known that the small remains of the Guanche tongue agree. BLUMENBACH, loc. cit. p. 8. ADELUNG, Mithridates; vol. iii. part 1, page 59, 60. of the Egyptian mummies, demonstrates their Caucasian origin" The latter point is fully confirmed by two Guanche skulls in the possession of Dr. LEACH. The form of the cranium has not yet been sufficiently studied and observed to enable us to say that the several very different nations included under the Caucasian variety are or are not characterised by particular modifications of this cavity. There are, however, some peculiarities so striking, that they immediately attract notice. The completely globular form of the skull in the Turk is one of these; it is exemplified in an engraving of BLUMENBACH's first decade†, corresponding exactly to a skull which I have seen. The cranium (properly so called) is perfectly globular; the occiput can be hardly said to exist, as the foramen magnum is placed very near the posterior part of the basis cranii; the forehead is broad, and the glabella prominent. rior part of the head is very high and broad. tions of the face are symmetrical and elegant. part of the upper jaw-bone is singularly short; not measuring more than the breadth of the little finger under the The basis of the lower jaw is remarkable for its shortness; the facial line nearly vertical, so that the preponde rance of the parts placed in front of the occipito-atloidal articulation is reduced as much as possible. nose. The poste The propor The alveolar Two other Turkish skulls in BLUMENBACH's possession have exactly the same shape; which is very general in living Turks, and is always visible in good portraits of them. This peculiarity of form has been observed by several au • CUVIER, loc. cit. SOEMMERRING mentions that the head of a Guanche mummy at Cassel has the Negro characters; but enters into no further detail. De Corp, humani Fabrie. t. 1, p. 71. + No. ii. |