since been broken through, lies perfectly dry; this lake he considers to be Moris. I must confess that the whole, after his personal information, impressed me with the idea that it was a most fortunate discovery, and one that would save us many fruitless researches; and the examination of the region has quite solved every doubt of mine as to the accuracy of this judgment; I consider it an immoveable fact."

We must confess, however, that we think the subject requires further investigation. It does not appear to us that the lake can be considered to have been thoroughly indentified till the remains of the two pyramids, (which Herodotus tells us were erected in the middle of the lake, fifty fathoms above the water, each surmounted by a colossal stone figure in a sitting attitude) have been discovered. Two monuments have indeed been discovered, which M. Linant is inclined to identify with the above-mentioned pyramids; but Lepsius seems to have proved first, that they are not of very high antiquity, and secondly that they are in a position which could not originally have fallen within the limits of the lake.

In the immediate vicinity of lake Mæris is one of the greatest wonders of antiquity, the labyrinth. Herodotus describes it as a huge building consisting of twelve courts enclosed with walls, with doors opposite each other, six facing the north, and six the south. The same exterior wall enclosed them all. It contained three thousand rooms, fifteen hundred on the ground floor, and fifteen hundred underground. He was permitted to inspect all the upper rooms personally, but the priest refused him admittance to the subterraneous rooms, alleging that they contained the sacred remains of strange bedfellows !-crocodiles and kings. Herodotus expresses the utmost astonishment at the whole building. The temple of Artemis at Ephesus, and of Hera at Samos, though magnificent in their way and superior to any other buildings that Greece could boast of, were as nothing to this labyrinth; nay even the pyramids themselves could not be compared to it. He speaks of halls, corridors, passages, winding ways through the courts, chambers with stone roofs, walls covered with sculptured figures, and colonnades of white stone. The priests informed their visitor that this stupendons structure was erected by the twelve kings who reigned over the twelve divisions of Egypt about two hundred years before. Professor Eadie (Early Oriental History) is mistaken in saying that Dr. Lepsius has proved this information to be incorrect, and Mr. Wheeler who follows the Professor without having verified the citation in Lepsius' letters, has fallen into the same error. We make no apology for extract*Letters from Egypt, p. 87.

L

ing the learned Doctor's most interesting verification of this magnificent structure.

"I came near to the spot (he says) with a certain fear that we should have to seek to confirm the account of the ancients by the geographical position of the place, that every form of its architectural disposition would be wiped away, and that a shapeless heap of ruins would frighten us from every attempt at investigation; instead of this, there were immediately found, on a cursory view of the districts, a number of confused spaces, as well super as subterranean, and the principel mass of the building, which occupied more than a stadium, (Strabo,) was distinctly to be seen. Where the French expedition had fruitlessly sought for chambers, we find literally hundreds by and over each other, little, often very small, by larger and great, supported by diminutive pillars, with thresholds and niches, with remains of pillars, and single wall slabs, connected together by corridors, so that the descriptions of Herodotus and Strabo are quite confirmed in this respect; at the same time, the idea never coincided in by myself, of Serpentine, cave-like windings, instead of square rooms, is definitely contradicted.

"The disposition of the whole is, that their mighty clumps of buildings, of the breadths of 300 feet, surround a square 600 feet in length and 500 in width; the fourth side is bounded by the pyramid lying behind which is 300 feet square, and therefore does not quite come up to the side wings of the great buildings. A rather modern canal, which may be pumped up, at least at this season of the year, is diagonally drawn through the ruins, cutting right through the most perfectly preserved of the labyrinthic rooms, and a part of the square in the centre, which was once divided into courts. Travellers have not wished to wet their feet, and so remained on this side, where the continuation of the wings of the buildings is certainly much concealed by the rubbish mounds; but even from this, the eastern bank, the chambers on the opposite side, and particularly at the southern point, where the walls rise almost 10 feet above the rubbish, and 20 above the level of the ruins, are very easy to be seen, and when viewed from the heights of the pyramid, the regular plan of the whole lies before one like a map. Erbkam has been employed since our arrival in surveying the place, and inserting in the plan every room and wall, however small; the ruins on the other side are, therefore, much more difficult in the execution of the plan; here it is easier, as there are fewer chambers, but therefore more difficult to be understood with respect to the original structure. The labyrinth of chambers runs along here to the south. The Aula lay between this and the northerly pyramid opposite, but almost all traces of them have disappeared. the dimensions of the place alone allow us to suspect that it was divided into two parts by a wall to which the twelve Aulæ, no longer to be distinguished with certainty, adjoined on both sides so that their entrances were turned in opposite directions, and had close before them the inunmerable chambers of the labyrinth. Who was, however, the Maros, Mendes, or Imandes

who, according to the reports of the Greeks, erected the labyrinth, or rather the pyramid belonging to it, as his monument? In the royal lists of Manetho, we find the builder of the labyrinth towards the end of the twelfth dynasty, the last of the old empire shortly before the irruption of the Hyksos. The fragments of the mighty pillars and architectures, that we dug out in the great square of the Aulæ, give us the cartouches of the sixth king of the twelfth dynasty, Amenemha III., thus is this important question answered in its historical portion. We have also made escavations on the north side of the pyramid; because we may expect to discover the entrance there; that is, however, not yet done. We have obtained an entry into a chamber covered with piles of rubbish that lay before the pyramid, and here we have also found the name of Amenemha several times. The builder and possesser of the pyramid is therefore determined. But the account of Herodotus, that the construction of the labyrinth was commenced 200 years before his time by the Dodecarchs, is not yet confuted. In the ruins of the great masses of chambers surrounding the great square; we have discovered no inscriptions. Later excavations may very probably certify to us that this whole building, and also the arrangements of the twelve courts, really fall in the twenty-sixth dynasty of Manetho, so that the original temple of Amenemha was only included in this mighty erection."

It should be added that the statement of the priests is, on a priori considerations, most likely to be correct. The Dodecarchs were six or seven hundred years posterior to Amenemha: what then could have been the object of Herodotus' informants in assigning so much lower an antiquity to the structure, unless the case was as they represented it?

Exception has been taken to the terms in which Herodotus describes the personal appearance of the natives of Egypt. Speaking of the origin of the Colchians, he endeavours to shew that they were of Egyptian descent because, says he, "they are black-skinned and wooly-headed." It has been supposed from these words that Herodotus believed the Egyptians to be of Negro origin. But the meaning of these epithets is capable of considerable modification; and we are confident that our historian meant no more than "swarthy and curly-headed," for he acknowledges that this identity of colour and hair is but a slender reason for inferring the identity of the two nations as to race, there being "many other nations," as he says, "possessing similar characteristics." It is clear from this that he meant to describe the ordinary Oriental complexion and hair. He could not have meant Negroes. If he had seen any,-which is doubtfulhe could have seen but very few: it is impossible, therefore, that he could have spoken of their characteristics as representing the usual oriental type.

But he does seem to lay himself open to animadversion in his

remarks on the origin of the Egyptians. His idea is that the Egyptians, as a people, were coeval with the creation of man, and that the upper part of the country constituted their original habitation. The lower parts, consisting of the delta and the adjacent territory, he supposes not to have been formed, but to have come into existence subsequently through the deposit of the Nile's sediment, thus affording an increased space for the growing population of the upper regions. This theory, which would refer the origin of the Egyptians to the Ethiopian and Negro races, is entirely at variance alike with the conclusions of the most eminent ethnographers and the phenomena exhibited by the monumental remains of north and south Egypt respectively.

The remains discovered in the north can claim, it is now confidently asserted, a much higher antiquity than those of the south; while ethnographic investigations have established beyond a doubt the Caucasian, and therefore Asiatic, origin of the Egyptians. Cuvier and Blumenbach affirm that all the skulls of mummies which they had an opportunity of examining presented the Caucasian type. Dr. Morton, an eminent American physiologist, has made an examination of one hundred Egyptian

crania.

"It shows," he says, "that more than eight-tenths of the crania pertain to the unmixed Caucasian race; that the Pelasgic form is as one to one and two-thirds, and the Semitic form one to eight, compared to the Egyptian: that one-twentieth of the whole is composed of heads in which there is a trace of Negro and other exotic lineage; that the Negroid conformation exists in eight instances, thus constituting about one-twentieth part of the whole; and finally, that the series contains only a single unmixed Negro." This is the table :

The unscientific reader will be inclined to smile at the item mentioned in the last column; but there is no doubt that science has so thoroughly investigated the phenomena presented by the human skull under every known condition that we are enabled to detect natural idiotcy with unerring certainty. We are afraid however that this evidence comes too late if, for the want of it, the Egyptian judges were ever put to a non-plus in a suit de lunatico inquirendo in the case of these two idiots.

It may, however, fairly be urged in behalf of Herodotus that he was totally unacquainted with the fact that all mankind are sprung from a single pair, and that they were distributed over the earth from one common locality situated in the central parts of Asia. With his facts, and nothing more, to guide him, he gave as good an account as could be given of the origin of the Egyptians. If the Delta came into existence after the creation of man, as he supposed it did, nothing was more natural than to conclude that the nearest inhabitants gradually occupied it as it became habitable. To suppose that new land was continually forming in the neighbourhood of the ancient inhabitants of Upper Egypt and that they neglected to take advantage of the boon, while distant settlers from the plains of Asia came in and occupied it, was, under Herodotus' view, utterly incredible. But the historian's error on this subject does not in the least vitiate his general conclusions as to the character of the Egyptians. He did not know that the Ethiopians belonged to a different race, and he, therefore, felt no hesitation in considering them the ancestors of the Egyptians. But he did know that the Egyptians were Caucasians, that is, he recognised in them precisely the same type as that which he found in all the oriental countries which he visited. It should also be added that, when an opportunity of examining the skulls of the Persians and Egyptians, who fell in the battle of Pelusium, was presented to him, the only difference between the skulls which struck this keen and minute observer was that those of the Persians were exceedingly soft, and would yield to the slight impression even of a pebble, while those of the Egyptians were so hard that the blow of a large stone would scarcely break them. This difference was explained to him as arising from the fact that the Egyptians expose their heads to the action of the sun from childhood, without even the protection of their hair to screen them, whereas the Persians cover their heads with a turban. Would a writer who investigated whatever fell under his notice in this observant manner and took pains to record it for the information of others, have overlooked the important difference which exists between the Caucasian and Negro types, if it had ever been presented to his view?