and Inhabitants of the Gold Coast. 81' 



I will now shew that the Ashantees seem to have preserved 

 the superstitions, manners, and arts, which the Egyptian co- 

 lonists and visitors introduced amongst them, much more tena- 

 ciously than the Abyssinians. 



The vitrified beads which they dig up frequently with sepul- 

 chral gold, and which (having lost the art of making them,) 

 they insist to be natural productions * ; the rude outline of the 

 Ibis, so frequent, and the only figure of an animal to be seen 

 in their buildings; their curious pottery, and the marked 

 Egyptian character of most of the ornaments of their florid 

 architecture, would show an intercourse with Egypt, even if 

 their existing superstitions and customs did not confirm it. 



In Ashantee, as in Egypt, the women generally sit in the 

 markets, and the men always weave ; they are constant to their 

 ancient music ; the two sexes bewail the death of a friend or 

 relative, parading the streets in troops : false accusers are pu- 

 nished as the accused would have been if convicted : the king 

 has the actions of his ancestors and eminent men recounted to 

 him by the elders on his rising in the morning, as the scribes 

 read them to the Egyptian monarch for imitation out of the 

 sacred records : they do not eat with strangers ; besides many 

 other coincidences auxiliary to the opinion of their former con- 

 nexion with Egypt, though not so conclusive as the identity 

 of superstitions and customs strikingly original and extraor- 

 dinary, not common to the infancy of mankind, but more pe- 

 culiar to the two nations, which I proceed to subuit 



Herodotus says, the Egyptians eat in the streets, but for the 

 other needs of nature they seclude themselves in their houses. 

 It is common in Ashantee to eat in the streets, but the passage 

 accounts for one of the most surprising of their superiorities, 

 namely, the Cloacee, in the retired parts of the houses of the 

 higher class, even in the upper stories, and to the construction, 

 and cleanliness of which, they pay so much attention. 



• These beads, however, may as probably be Phoenician, from so many 

 of their descendants being found at once on the Mediterranean, and South 

 of the Niger. 



Vol. X, G . 



