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.

    733/800 (page 677)
    The contemporaneousness of Egyptian dynasties (415) we have always repudiated, (41G) but, until the appearance of Lepsius’s “ Book of Kings,” when our assent may possibly be yielded (if monuments to us now unknown establish it), in respect to the 1st and lid, Vlth and VIIth (VUIth), Xth and Xlth, XHIth and XlVtli, and XVth and XVIth, Manethonian dynasties, we should commit the same fallacy, so frequently blamed in othei’s, if we spoke dogmatically on that point without the new documents of the Pnissian Mission. There is no more foundation, however, for Mr. Sharpe’s dynastic arrangement than were we to make Canute's invasion of England coeval with William the Conqueror in the reign of James I., under the synthronic sway of George III and the Prince Regent. It is a favorite hypothesis of his own ; in which not an Egj'ptologist coincides. But for the expo- sure of a radical eiTor in Mr. Sharpe’s system—root of all his deviations from liierological practice—our knife must be applied to one of its many vital spots. In his immensely- valuable folio plates, (417) through inadvertency, he had read I nfr, (418) the “lute,” thiorbe, in lieu of | it, (419) the “ blade of an oar,” 9 as the sculpture stands. Through misapprehension of the groups (in line 9 compared with line 2, of the same inscription), Mr. Sharpe then deemed that this malcopied sign “ nfr ” was the homophone of b, (420) the “ human leg ;” and, in consequence, he always reads “nfr as if it wei'e the latter articulation — “That the aiTOW-shaped character is rightly sounded B or V is proved by its admitting that sound in the above four names, as also in No. 160 and No. 165.” (421) The extraordinary meta- morphoses of well-known royal names which this misconception, founded upon a mistake, has occasioned, are too evident to the hiei'ologist to require comment. Unfortunately, through such concatenation of fallacies, Mr. Sharpe (422) transmutes the prenomcn of Queen AMENSeT,(423) and the nomen of this queen’s husband AMENEMMA, (424) and the oval of MENKERA,(425) into a fabulously bisexual “ Mychera-Amun Neitchori”— rolls up the IVth, Vlth, and XVIIIth dynasties into one—and thus makes the 3d pyramid of Geezeh (b. c. 3300) contemporary with the majestic obelisk (b. c. 1600) in the temple of Karnac ! It is as if one were to call Edward the Confessor the same personage as “ Vic- toria and Albert ;” and then to insist that the former’s tomb in Westminster Abbey must be coeval with the equestrian statue of Wellington at Hyde Park corner!(426) Mr. Sharpe’s restricted system of Egyptian chronology, for times anterior to Thothmosis III. (placed by him in the 14th century b. c.), may now be considered as “ non-avenu.” But, while compelled to shatter its superstructures down to his XVIIIth dynasty, let no one impute to us lack of respect for the profound author of the “ Histoi’y of Egypt” — a work that (from page 30 to 592) ever has our warmest admiration. Contenders for the longest (415) Sharpe: Chronology; pp. 14,15. (416) Guddon: Chapters; p. 57;— Otia; pp. 39, 45. (417) Siiarpe: Inscriptions in British Museum ; pi. cxvi., line 9, and line 2. (418) Bunsen: Kg. PL, i. p. 587, No. 31; — Champoluon: Diclionnairc; p. 293, No. 33S — “NOFRE.” (419) Bunsen: No. 30; — Champoluon: p. 378, No. 459 — “ TOUW.” (420) Bunsen: p. 558, B, 1; — Champoluon: p. 100, No. 60 — “B.” (421) Chronology; p. 4. (422) Op. cit.; p. 6, Nos. 60, 61, 60; and plate ii., figs. 60, 61, 62. (423) Roselijni: Cartouche. No. 103. (424) Ibid.; Cartouche No. 103/. (425) Bunsen : yKgyplcns Stelle; iii., pi. i. — Men-le-n-ra. (426) It is a year ago since this was written, and so reluctant do I feel to contradict a respected fellow- laborer, that I should have suppressed these comments hut for a “ rifacimento ” of the same doctrinos reported in the London Athenaeum, Nov. 19, 1S53. “ The third aim of the paper was to show that the 3d and 4th pyra- mids were both made by Queen Nitocris, who governed Egypt during the minority of Thotmosis the T1 Id. Tbo name of King Mycera has been found in both of these pyramids; Mycera is the first name of Queen Nitocris [1], and it was probably the name used in Memphis for Thothmosis the Illd.-’ &c.—(Syro-Kgyptian Soc., Nov. S.)