14 EDOUARD NAVILLE. 



out of the earth in streams, or took away the mud in which 

 the face was buried, we felt anxiously with the hand how 

 far the features were preserved. There is the forehead, the 

 eyes, the origin of the nose, but here a fracture. . . I had 

 one instant of despair, but no, it is only a slight wound ; here 

 are the nostrils, the mouth, the beard ! The head is perfect ! 

 It was nearly dark ; we let the water cover it again entirely, 

 and the next morning we raised triumphantly our treasure, 

 which now stands in the British Museum. 



A few days afterwards two illustrious visitors, Dr. Schlie- 

 mann and Dr. Yirchow, came to see the excavations. Dr. 

 Virchow had careful measurements taken of this head, which 

 he published shortly afterwards in his paper on the royal 

 mummies. His conclusion is that the Hyksos monuments 

 must be considered as representing Turanians, without being 

 able to determine with which branch of this very large stock 

 they must be connected. It was the same as the conclusion 

 put forward in this country by Prof. Flower, who sees in the 

 monuments of San a Mongoloid type. Turanians or Mongols, 

 such is the racial origin attributed to the Hyksos by high 

 authorities ; but that does not mean that the population itself 

 was Turanian. The worship of Set Baal, the influence of the 

 Hyksos invasion over the customs of Egypt, and especially 

 over the language, points clearly to a Semitic element which 

 was prevailing among the conquerors, though their kings, 

 at least those who left us their portraits, were evidently not 

 Semites. I believe, generally speaking, that too much im- 

 portance has been given to the question of race ; too often 

 sharp distinctions have been drawn between nations, or in the 

 midst of one people, distinctions which were perhaps true 

 originally, but which afterwards, if they were not quite oblit- 

 erated, were only to be traced in political or social life. 

 Kaces have become mixed and have amalgamated much earlier 

 than we think. I said that I believed the Hyksos to be 

 Mesopotamians. The researches of Assyriologists all agree 

 that from a very early epoch the population of Babylonia con- 

 sisted of several strata of populations having each a different 

 origin. It was then what it is now; and I believe that 

 the conquest of Egypt by the Hyksos is not unlike what 

 would happen at the present day if the population of Meso- 

 potamia overran the valley^ of the Nile ; you would have 

 masses, in great majority of 'Semitic race, speaking a Semitic 

 language, having a Semitic religion, and being under the 

 command of Turks, who are not Semites but Turanians. 



I revert to the two Hyksos heads. The first, which was 

 broken in the middle, is in the Boulak Museum ; it is of exactly 



