270 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OP 



City fell into the hands of the Persian King Chosroes II. In 637 it was con- 

 quered by the Saracens, and again became a resort for pilgrims from various 

 parts of the old world. Then it was under the sway of the house of Seljuk ; 

 the Turcomans under Ortok having hereditary command of the city and neigh- 

 boring territory. At length Ortok was driven out by the Egyptians, who in 

 their turn yielded the possession of the holy city to the Crusaders under God- 

 frey of Bouillon. From the time of Godfrey down to the fall of Acre and the 

 cessation of the Crusades in 1291, a period of some 200 years, the City of the 

 Great King and all Palestine became the sanguinary arena in which the natives 

 of Great Britain, Frenchmen, Flemings, Belgians, Normans, Scandinavian 

 cruisers from the Baltic, Bavarians, Bohemians, Caiinthians, Piedmontese, 

 Styrians, Genoese, South Italians, &c, on the one hand, contended with Mus- 

 sulmen, Mamelukes and the Kharizmian horde from Mongolia on the other, 

 for the possession of the Holy Sepulchre. 



Two interesting questions here present themselves. Does this skull belong 

 to any of the races of men, which in successive waves have swept over and 

 occupied, for varying periods of time, the Holy City and surrounding country? 

 Is it possible to indicate the race of which the peculiar form of skull before us 

 is the cranial type ? Following the method of exclusion, the only philosophi- 

 cal method available in researches of this kind, where the positive criteria or 

 data for determining a diagnosis are wanting, I have already shown that we 

 can safely affirm that the skull in question is neither Jewish, Arabian, Egyp- 

 tian ancient or modern, nor Turkish. With equal safety we may say that it 

 is not Roman in its origin or affiliation. For Blumenbach figures the skull of 

 a Roman praatorian soldier (Tab. 32) given to him by the Cardinal Borgia. 

 The configuration of this skulls differs from the Jerusalem fragment. " Pro- 

 tuberantia occipitalis externa latissima et ingenter eminens " are the words 

 employed by Blumenbach in describing the hind head of the former. Both 

 Sandifort* and Martinf speak of the broad forehead of the Roman skull, and 

 Retzius,J in describing such a skull found in an ancient cemetry at York, also 

 alludes to the ' ' broad and well arched forehead, and the broad, rounded oc- 

 ciput and prominent occipital protuberance," features not found in the Jeru- 

 salem fragment. Finally Dr. Thurnam, in his description of the skull of Theo- 

 dorianus, found in a Roman sarcophagus at York, (the ancient Eburacum,) tells 

 us that ' ' the forehead, though low, is remarkable f >r breadth ; that the coronal 

 surface presents an oval outline, and is notable for its great transverse diame- 

 ter : and that the occipital bone is full and prominent, especially in its upper 

 half. None of these characters are exhibited by the fragment before us. 



Is this fragment a Persian head ? In the Persian skull figured in Tab. 35 

 of Blumenbach's Decades the occiput is truncated or perpendicularly flattened. 

 In this respect it resembles the Jerusalem fragment. But when we turn to 

 the Persian heads in the Academy's collection we find that they present a 

 rounded occiput. Here then a difficulty occurs at once, as to the normal 

 occipital form of the Persian head. Is there one form which is constant and 

 typical or not ? From a general survey of the configuration of the occiput in 

 the various races of men, I am constrained to answer this question in the 

 negative. Only by means of a very large number of native Persian crania can 

 we determine this point. The flatness of the occiput in Blumenbach's Persian 

 skull may or may not be an accidental and unusual feature. Whether it is 

 or not there are differences between the two skulls now under consideration 

 sufficient to assign them to different races. In the Jerusalem skull the whole 

 hind-head is so flattened that it extends but a short distance behind the 



Tab Cran. divsrsar. Nationum, p. 1. 



t Man and Monkeys, p 223. 



\ Kraniologisches in Muller's Archiv fiir Anat., Phys., &c. Jahr, 1849, p. 576. 



J Crania Britannica. 



[Sept. 



