116 OBSERVATIONS ON EGYPTIAN ETHNOGRAPHY, 
Another example, that subjoined (No. 1,) is derived from a funereal procession at 
Thebes;* but granting, what is quite possible, that the woman in this instance, wears 
only a head-dress, the contrary can be insisted on in reference to another painting, of a 
group of five women engaged in athletic exercises, in the midst of which, one of them 
holds and partially sustains the other by her long, straight hair; showing that the latter 
could be no other than the natural growth. (No. 2.) It is also interesting to remark, that 
this picture dates back into “the night of time,”—that remote period antecedent to the 
eighteenth dynasty, of which this is one of the many remains yet preserved in the cele- 
brated tomb of Novotpth, at Beni Hassan.t+ 
No. l. No. 2. No. 3. No. 4. 
& 
Again, among the funereal processions at Thebes are several boat scenes, from one 
of which I derive the above drawing, representing an Egyptian woman in the act of 
lamentation, while her hair falls in long and graceful ringlets below her shoulders, (No. 3.) 
Another effigy, (No. 4,) that of an Egyptian lady from a painting in the Theban 
catacombs,} has the hair dressed in the same manner in which it is worn by the modern 
Nubian girls, ds represented in one of the beautiful sketches by Mr. Wathen in his work 
on Egyptian architecture. 
These instances have been selected out of hundreds of a similar character which 
every where meet the eye on the Nilotic monuments, and which present a most satis- 
factory accordance with the evidence derived from the catacombs. 
Hamilton, in his Aigyptiaca, when describing the paintings at Elytheias, says that 
“the labourers are dressed in a kind of skull-cap, and have very little if any hair on their 
heads; while that of the others who superintend them spreads out at the sides, as with 
the Nubians and Berabera above the cataracts,”—and yet among these very labourers 
the hair of some is represented so long, that it projects beneath the cap and falls upon the 
shoulders.§ If I may judge from the heads that have come under my notice, I should 
infer that the women, as a general rule at least, allowed their hair to grow; but that the 
practice was much less frequent among the men. 
In the heads of every Caucasian type in the series now before us, the hair is perfectly 
distinct from the woolly texture of the Negro, the frizzled curls of the Mulatto, or the 
lank, straight locks of the Mongolian. 
Of the eight Negroid heads, four are more or less furnished with hair, one is closely 
* Rosellini, M. C., Plate 128, Fig. 2. t Idem, Plate 101, Fig. 2. t Rosellini, M. C. Plate 127. 
} Description de L’Egypte, Antiq. T. I. pl. 68. fig. 114.—Hamiiron, Agyptiaca, p. 55. 
