58 



NATURE 



I May i8, 1893 



Nitocris to Amenemhat I. We pass to the Middle 

 Empire. 



Amenemhat I. built no pyramids, he added no em- 

 bellishments to Memphis ; but he took Heliopolis under 

 his care, and now we first hear of Thebes.^ 



Usertsen I. built no pyramids, he added no embellish- 

 ments to Memphis, but he also took Heliopolis under 

 his care, and added obelisks to the temples, one of which 

 remains to this day. Further, he restored the temple of 

 Osiris at Abydos, and added to the temple of Amen-Ra 

 at Thebes.- 



Surely it is very noteworthy that the first thing the 

 kings of the twelfth dynasty did was to look after the 

 only three temples in Egypt of which traces exist, which 

 I have shown to have been oriented to the solstice. 



It is right, however, to remark that there seems to have 

 been a mild recrudescence of pyramid building towards 

 the end of the twelfth dynasty, and immediately preceding 

 the Hyksos period, whether as a precursor of that period 

 or not. 



Usertsen's views about his last home have come down 

 to us in a writing by his scribe Mirri : ^ — 



" Mon maitre m'envoya en mission pour lui preparer 

 une grande demeure eternelle. Les couloirs et la chamhre 

 int^rieure ^talent en ma^onnerie et renouvelaient les mer- 

 veilles de construction des dieux. 11 y eut en elle des 

 colonnes, sculptees, belles comme le ciel, un bassin creusc 

 qui communiquait avec le Nil, des portes, des obelisques, 

 une fagade en pierre de Rouou." 



There was nothing pyramidal about this idea, but 

 150 years later we find Amenemhat III. returning both 

 to the gigantic irrigation works and the pyramid building 

 of the earlier dynasties. 



The scene of these labours was the Fayyum, where, 

 to crown the new work, two ornamental pyramids were 

 built, surmounted by statues, and finally the king himself 

 was buried in a pyramid near the Labyrinth. 



4. — The Work of the Eighteenth Dynasty. 



The blank in Egyptian history between the twelfth 

 and eighteenth dynasties is known to have been asso- 

 ciated with the intrusion of the so-called Hyksos. It is 

 supposed these made their way into Egypt from the 

 countries in and to the west of Mesopotamia. It is 

 known that they settled in the cities with east and west 

 walls. They were finally driven out by Aahmes, the 

 king of solstitial solar Thebes, who began the eighteenth 

 dynasty. 



In (a) I have shown what happened after the first great 

 break in Egyptian history — a resuscitation of the solstitial 

 worship at On, Abydos and Thebes. 



I have next to show that precisely the same thing hap- 

 pened after the Hyksos period (Dyn. 13 (?). Mariette, 

 2233 Brugsch; Dyn. 18, 1703 B.c , Manette) had dis- 

 turbed history for some 500 years. 



It is known from the papyrus Sellier (G.C. 257) that 

 Aahmes, the first king of the eighteenth dynasty, who re- 

 established the independence of Egypt, was in reality 

 fighting the priests of Soutekh in favour of the priests of 

 Amen Ra, the solstitial solar god, a modern repre- 

 sentative of Atmu of On. 



Amen-Ra was the successor of Menthu, the successor 

 of Atmu of On. So close was the new worship to the 

 oldest at On, that at the highest point of Theban power 

 the third priest of Amen took the same titles as the Grand 

 Priest of On, " who was the head of the first priesthood 

 in Egypt."'' The "Grand Priest of On," who was also 

 called the " Great Observer of Rfi and Atmu," had the 

 privilege of entering at all times into the Habenben or 

 Naos. The priest Padouamen, whose mummy was 

 found in 189 1, bore these among his other titles. 



1 Maspero, op. cit., p. 112. 

 ■* Maspero, op, cit. p, 113. 



NO. 1229, VOL. 48] 



2 Masper'>, op. cit. p. n 2. 



4 Virey, New Gizeh Catalogue, p. 263. 



The assumption of the title was not only to associate 

 the Theban priesthood with their northern confreres, but 

 surely to proclaim that the old On worship was completely 

 restored. 



5. — The Work of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. 

 There was another invasion from Syria, which founded 

 the twenty-second dynasty, and again the government is 

 carried on in cities with east and west walls (Sais, Tanis, 

 and Bubastis). The solstitial solar priests of Thebes 

 withdraw to Ethiopia. They return, however in 700 B.C., 

 drive out the Syrian invaders, and, under Shabaka and 

 Taharga, found a dynasty (the twenty-fifth) at Thebes, 

 and embellish the solstitial solar temples there. 



6. — Anthropological Evidence. 



It will be seen then that a general survey of Egyptian 

 history does suggest conflict between two races, and this 

 of course goes to strengthen the view that the temple 

 building phenomena suggest two different worships, 

 depending upon race distinctions. 



We have next to ask if there is any anthropological 

 evidence at our disposal. It so happens that Virchow 

 has directed his attention to this very point. ^ 



Premising that a strong race distinction is recognised 

 between peoples having brachycephalic or short, and 

 dolicocephalic or long, skulls, and that the African races 

 belong to the latter group, I may give the following ex- 

 tract from his paper : — 



" The craniological type in the Ancient Empire was 

 different from that in the middle and new. The skulls 

 from the Ancient Empire are brachycephalic, those from 

 the new and of the present day are either dolichocephalic 

 or mesaticephalic ; the difference is therefore at least as 

 great as that between the dolichocephalic skulls of the 

 Frankish graves and the predominantly brachycephalic 

 skulls of the present population of South Germany. 1 do 

 not deny that we have hitherto had at our disposal only 

 a very limited number of skulls from the Ancient Empire, 

 which have been certainly determined ; that therelbre 

 the question whether the brachycephalic skull-type 

 deduced from these was the general or at least the pre- 

 dominant one cannot yet be answered with certainty, but 

 I may appeal to the fact that the sculptors of the Ancient 

 Empire made the brachycephalic type the basis of their 

 works of art too." 



It will be seen, then, that the anthropological as well 

 as the historical evidence runs on all fours with the re- 

 sults to be obtained from such a study of the old astronomy 

 as the temples afford us. 



J. NORM.\N LOCKYER. 



NOTES. 



On Monday, May 29, the Duke of Connaught will open the 

 new engineering and electrical laboratories at University Col- 

 lege, London. 



A GENERAL meeting of the members of the Federated Insti- 

 tution of Mining Engineers will be held in the rooms of the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers, 25, Great George Street, West- 

 minster, on Thursday, June i, at 12 noon, and on Friday, 

 June 2, at 10 a.m. 



The Niederrheinische Gesellschaft fiir Natur- und Heilkunden 



at Bonn, proposes to celebrate its seventy-fifth anniversary on 



July 2. A scientific meeting will be held in the forenoon in the 



music hall of the University of Bonn, and at one o'clock the 



members will dine together at the hotel "Zum Goldenen 



Stern." In the afternoon there will be an excursion to Rungs- 



dorf. 



1 Prof. R. Virchow ; **Land und Leute im alten und neiien Aegypten.' 

 Verhandlinigen der Gesellschaft fiir Erdkunde zu Berlin, pp. 434-436, 

 Band xv. No. 9. 



