118 OBSERVATIONS ON EGYPTIAN ETHNOGRAPHY, 
the brain. This operation, which appears to have been almost uniformly practised at 
Thebes, was comparatively unusual at Memphis; for of the twenty-six heads from the 
latter necropolis, five only are perforated; while of the fifty-five Theban crania, all are 
perforated but two; and in a third the ethmoid is so little broken that the brain could not 
have been removed through the orifice. I moreover detect three instances of complete 
perforation of the nose, in which the brain had been extracted through the foramen mag- 
num, by cutting the neck half across behind; the bandages being folded over the incision. 
The absence of the ethmoidal perforation in the oldest heads from Memphis, and in many 
others of a later date from the same necropolis, leads me to suppose that the brain may 
have been primitively removed through the foramen magnum; and that its extraction 
through the nose, as already suggested, may have been a subsequent refinement of the 
embalming art. Again, the different provinces of Egypt may have had peculiar and 
conventional details in this as in other usages; for all the heads from Ombos and Maab- 
deh have the ethmoidal opening; all those from Abydos and Debdd are without it; while 
of the four from Phil, one is perforated and three are not. 
Denon long ago pointed outa peculiarity of the Egyptian profile, as seen in the re- 
markable distance between the nostrils and the teeth. This feature, with a small 
receding chin, is of frequent occurrence both in the mummies and on the monuments. 
Position of the Ear.—Every one who has paid the least attention to Egyptian art, has 
observed the elevated position which is given to the ear; and I have examined my entire 
series of heads, in order to ascertain whether this peculiarity has any existence in na- 
ture, but I can find nothing in them to confirm it, The bony meatus presents no devia- 
tion from the usual relative arrangement of parts; but the cartilaginous structure being 
desiccated, and consequently contracted, may not afford satisfactory evidence. Clot Bey 
and other authors have remarked an elevation of the ear in some modern Copts; and 
the traveller Raw, quoted by Virey, notices the same feature in the Hindoos, and it is 
said also to exist in degree in the Jews. There may, therefore, be some foundation 
for this peculiarity of Egyptian sculpture and painting; but I feel confident that in na- 
ture it is nothing more than an upward elongation of the auricular cartilages, without 
any modification of the bony meatus, It has also occurred to me that the appearance in 
question may be sometimes owing to the remarkable vertical length of the upper jaw in 
some heads (those represented Plate IV., Fig. 2, and Plate V., Fig. 2, for example,) in 
which it is manifest that the ear would possess a remarkable elevation in respect to the 
maxillary bones, without being any nearer to the top of the head than usual. ‘These 
hints may possibly afford some clew to a satisfactory explanation of an almost invariable 
rule of Egyptian art. 
Dr. Prichard (Researches Vol. II., p. 251,) has given an abstract of some observations 
made by M. De La Malle, on the mummies contained in the Museum of Turin. “In 
the skulls of these [six] mummies, as well as in many others brought from the same 
country, although the facial angle was not different from that of European heads, the 
meatus auditorius, instead of being situated in the same plane with the basis of the nose, 
was found by M. De Malle to be exactly on a level with the centre of the eye”! Unless 
M. De Malle is an anatomist, and accustomed to comparisons of this kind, I can imagine 
