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.

  • Nott, Josiah C. (Josiah Clark), 1804-1873.
Date:
1860
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.

    698/800 (page 642)
    on all monuments of the IVth Dynasty:(266) and its presence proves that writing must have been common enough in Egypt during ages antecedent. So again, here is A a roll of papyrus-jm\)<3r, a volume, tied with strings — meaning a “ Book.” ^ NJ Its presence upon the monuments, not merely of the Xllth, but of the YIth, and even of the same old IVth dynasty, establishes that the invention of paper, and the usage of written volumes, antedate the earliest hieroglyphics now extant. It would require an especial treatise to convey to readers any adequate idea of the copi- ousness of ancient Egyptian documents written on papyrus-]y&per existing and deciphered at the present day. There are some of the IVth (n. c. 3400) and succeeding dynasties down to the Xllth b. c. 2200) in legible preservation; but the great “age of the Papyri” belongs to the XVIIth and following dynasties; (267) that is, from the 17th century b.c. downwards. Independently of the thousands of copies of the “ Book of the Dead,” there are poems, account-books, contracts, decrees, chronological lists, histories, romances, scientific essays, — in short, it is really more difficult now to define what there is not, than to catalogue the enormous collections of Papyri, some written ages before Moses’s birth, existing in European cabinets. At foot we indicate where the curious inquirer may satisfy himself upon the accuracy of this statement. (268) And if he wishes to behold the transitions of Egyptian writing from the hieroglyphic into the hieratic, he need only open Lepsius’s Ecnkmaler.(269) We have no space to enlarge upon these facts here, which the writer’s Lecture-rooms have exhibited in most of the chief cities of the Union. All which premised, as facts at this day open to everybody’s verification, the reader comprehends that, if picture-'m'iimg, as well on the Nile as on the Iloang-ho, was the first stage towards phonetic orthography; nevertheless, according to monumental evidences, the Egyptians had already been inscribing their thoughts in perfect hieroglyphics, “ sacred sculptured characters,” a thousand years before the Chinese had perfected a system of idco- grapliics, to us represented by their primitive character Kou-wen. It is from Champollion’s Grammaire Egyptienne {270) that the reader must draw clear definitions of Nilotic classifications into the phonetic, figurative, and symbolical, elements of calligraphy: and Mr. Birch’s definition of Egypt’s pristine 16 monosyllabic articulations— a, b, f, g, h, i, 7c, m, n, p, r X l, s, t, sh, kh, u, — is the most accessible to the English reader. (271) For Chinese analogies and discrepancies, as said before, there is no satisfac- tory work but the Sinico-JEgyptiaca. Through their study the reader will glean how — starting both from the same springs, although chronologically and geographically distinct, viz., PICTURE-WRITING — the Egyptian rivulet, gushing forth naturally in one direction, formed the hieroglyphics ; whence, in due time, through Scmitish channels, streamed those mighty rivers that, from Chaldea, have watered Europe, Ilindostan, Northern Asia, Africa, America, and Aus- tralia, with the refreshing rills of Phoenicia's alphabet: and how the Chinese fountain, its waters taking an opposite direction, created the ideographics ; which, cramped within gutters artificially if ingeniously conceived, have enabled the Chinamen to attain a system, it is true, essentially phonetic, and which, originating in a Mongolian brain, suffices for all the necessities of Mongol articulations: notwithstanding that ABC are as alien to its complex construction as our English language is remote from the agglutinations of an Indian, or the “ gluckings ” of a Hottentot. The Chinese never have had an alphabet. It is impossible, without organic changes which human history does not sanction, that the Sinico-Mongol ever can possess that, to us the simplest, method of chronicling our thoughts. (266) Lepsius: Chronologic; i- P- 33;— Todtcnlmch; 1842; Prcf. p. 17; —Bunsbn: Eg's PL; i. p. 8. (267) IIincks: Trans, li. Irish Acad.; 1846. (268) Select Papyri; published by the British Museum;— Lepsius: Chronologic; i. pp. 39, 40; — Prisse, D* Roug/c, and CruMPOi.i.iON-FiGEAC’S papors, in the Revue Archidlogique;— and Brncn’a in Trans. R. Soc. Lit., and in the Archceologia; Ac. (269) Alth.; ii. bl. 98, 99. (270) A synoptical sketch is in Qutddojt: Chapters; 1843.