r's art
makes to differ in men and women, but which probably was brown with a
tinge of red, dark compared with that of the Syrian, black compared with
that of the Greek. Thick lips are frequently seen, but they are supposed
to indicate intermarriage with Ethiopians. From the negro the Egyptians
were far removed, nor can they be connected with any other known race.
If we turn to language, a surer guide perhaps than physiology, we are
again completely baffled. The Coptic has been identified through many
etymologies with the old Egyptian; and of the Coptic, though it became a
dead language in the twelfth century, much literature remains. It is an
uncultivated and formal tongue, with monosyllabic roots and rude
inflexions totally different from the neighboring languages of Syria and
Arabia, totally opposite to the copious and polished Sanscrit. The last
fact at once severs Egypt from India, and destroys every presumption of
affinity that may arise from the presence in both countries of caste, of
animal worship, and of a religion derivable from a primitive adoration
of the powers of nature. The hypothesis of an Ethiopian origin sprang
from the notion, natural but untrue, that population would follow the
course of the descending river. And no tradition among the Egyptians
themselves told of a parent stock or of another land.

"Respecting the mighty works of Egypt, little mystery remains. The great
Pyramids had been rifled by the Caliphs, if not by earlier hands, and no
inscriptions have been found. But no doubt exists that they were the
sepulchres of the Kings of Memphis. The Queens and the "princes of
Noph" reposed in smaller pyramids beside the Kings. These mountains of
wasted masonry belong to the earliest ages of the Pharaonic monarchy,
before the time of the Sesostrian conquests, and therefore they bespeak
the toil and suffering, not of captives, but of native slaves. Before
them couches the Sphinx, hewn from the rock, to spare, as a Greek
inscription says, each spot of cultivable land. His riddle--for it is _a
male_--is read. He represents, perhaps portrays, the reigning King, and
the thick lips may indicate Ethiopian blood. The lion's body represents
the monarch's might--the human head his wisdom. The rock, from which the
figure is cut, broke the view of the Pyramids, and to convert it into
the Sphinx was a stroke of Egyptian genius. Pyramids were, in the
Pharaonic times, peculiar to Memphis. The countless tombs of Theb