Chap. V. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 



H3 



he does juftlce to the reader, in giving his authorities for what he 

 relates '% 



But leaving America, of whofe antient hiilory we know nothing, 

 I come to fpeak of nations whofe hiflory we know, and can there- 

 fore compare their antient ftate with tlieir later ; the defign of this 

 chapter being to Ihow that the bodies of men, in the Natural State 

 or in the early ages of fociety, were much bigger and ftronger than 

 in later times. 



I will begin with the mofh antient nation in the world, fo far as 

 we know, I mean the Egyptian. That there were men, in antient 

 times, of that nation, of very great fize, is attefted by Paufanias -\\ 

 who faw the bones of them ; (for, at the time he WTote, they were, I 

 fuppofe, no bigger than we) ; and we have the teftimony to the 

 fame purpofe, of two modern travellers, Monf. Mailler, the French 

 conful at Grand Cairo before mentioned, and Dr Pococke : And 

 what they fay is the more to be attended to, as it fhows that 

 even in the antient age^ of Egypt, there was that decline of ftature 

 going on, which, I fay, was always going on, in every nation, 

 from the time it became a nation. The Kings of Thebes, as is well 

 known, were the antient kings of Egypt, w^ho reigned before 

 the Pyramids or the city of Memphis were built, and the moft an- 

 tient of them, I believe, before the ground, upon which the Pyra- 

 mids and Memphis ftood, was created. In the burial-place of 

 thefe Theban Kings, Dr Pococke faw a tomb of one of them cut 



out 



* Calmet, author of the French Diaionary above quoted, under the word 

 Geants, relates that there are traditions preferved in Peru, BraCl, and Mexico, of 

 a race of Giants once exifling in thofe countries. 



t Lib. i. Cap. 35. He fays the bodies he faw in Egypt were as big as thofe of 

 the northern nations, who, we know, were at that time very much bigger than the 

 Greeks and Romans. 



