150 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. Virchow,—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 Hgypt, 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 por traits, —were evidently not 
Semites. I believe, generally speaking, that too much im- 
portance has been eiven 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. 
Races 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 
