Types of mankind or, Ethnological researches : based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history, illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz; W. Usher; and H. S. Patterson / by J. C. Nott, and Geo. R. Gliddon.

  • Josiah C. Nott
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Types of mankind or, Ethnological researches : based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history, illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz; W. Usher; and H. S. Patterson / by J. C. Nott, and Geo. R. Gliddon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    lished Mr. Gliddon's lecture-rooms when Egyptian Ethnology was the topic of his address. When the authors projected the present work, at Mohile, in the spring of 1852, they acquainted Chevalier Lepsius, among other Eu- ropean colleagues, with their respective desiderata, archaeological or ethnographical. Answering one of Gliddon's letters, the Chevalier complaisantly remarks: — Berlin, 1 Novembre, 1852. . . . Pour les individus vous ne pouvez vous fier que sur les empreinles que vous avez; et si vous en desirez je vous en enverrai encore d'avantage. . . . Les empreintes des bas- reliefs et les platres des anciennes statues sont, a ce qu'il me parait, les seuls mat^riaux utiles pour (itudier l'ancien caractere des Egyptiens; et meme pour ceux-la il faut admettre qu'on pourrait se tromper sur plusieur traits qui paraissent etre surs, parceque le canon [that is, the canon of proportion accorded by Old Egyptian art to the human figure.— G. P. G.] recu pouvait s'^carter en quelques points de la ve'rite', comme dans la position haute de l'oreille. We have to record our joint obligations for the receipt, in August of the present year, of the second collection of stamps promised in the above letter; and it is from careful comparison of the duplicate originals with their tracings, that the models for our lithographic plates were designed. We feel confident, therefore, that our litho- graphs are facsimiles—submitting them to Chevalier Lepsius for com- parison with the original bas-reliefs, while taking the liberty to urge upon his scientific attention, no less than upon that of possessors of such remains generally, the benefit they would confer upon ethno- logical studies, were they to publish similar fac-similes, where the lithographer, copying the original monument under their own critical eyes, would attain precision from which the Atlantic debars art in this country. Abstraction made of the divergence from nature in the high posi- tion of the ear, to which the above epistolary favor alludes, as a subject set at rest by Morton; 300 and repeating our previous notice of false delineation of the eye in Egyptian profiles: there remains no doubt that the facial outlines, and, where naked, the cranial conforma- tion, in these most antique of all known sculptures, are rigorously faithful. Without hesitation, these heads may be accepted by eth- nography as perfect representations of the type of Egyptians under the Old Empire. Assuming such to be facts—and, beyond accidents of some trivial slip of a pencil, none can dispute them but the unlettered in these sciences — we may now claim as positive that the originals of our fac-simile heads date back, as a minimum, from 3000 to 3500 years before Christ, or to generations deceased above 5000 years ago; at