778 EEPORT — 1889. 



9. Exhihition of the Model of the Head and Shovlders of a young Oranrj 

 Titan, with the Brain exposed in situ. 5^ Professor D. J. Cunningham, 

 M.B. 



FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13. 



The following Papers and Report were read : — 



1. Hypothesis of a JEuropean Origin of Harly Egyptian Art. 

 By the Rev. J. Wilson, M.A. 



Egyptian art had reached a high degree of perfection at the beginning of the 

 First Empire. In Egypt, as elsewhere, art was not full-grown at birth. 



Centuries, perhaps millenniums, of previous progress were necessary ere statues 

 such as that of the cross-legged Scribe in the Bulak Museum could have been 

 executed. Where was art thus gradually matured in the centuries before Menes ? 

 Not necessarily in Egypt, since in early times the nation was composite. Can 

 archaeology point to any palaeolithic race endowed with the promise of high artistic 

 skill ? Only one, viz., the so-called Cro-Magnon race of South-western France. 

 MM. Zabovowski and Broca were quoted as to the importance of the traces of in- 

 cipient art in the hands of this race. 



Their drawings on plates of ivory, bone, &c., of the mammoth, as well as the 

 reindeer and antelope, are sufficient proofs of the vast antiquity of that race, which 

 lived in the transition age between the period of the mammoth and of the rein- 

 deer. 



What connection can be shown to have existed between this race and early 

 Egypt? 



Ethnologists, such as Virchow, Sayce, Maspero, agree that a leading element 

 in the old Egyptian Empire was a white race, and some recent Egyptologists refer 

 this white element to the jNIeditevranean race which belonged to the stock called 

 by French archaeologists the Cro-Magnon race. Comparison between the Mediter- 

 ranean or Cro-Magnon race and the Egyptians of the First Empire as to physical 

 characteristics. 



Extension of the later representatives of the Cro-Magnon race southwards 

 to the Mediterranean islands, the Canaries, and North Africa, owing to geological 

 and climatic changes. The transit to Africa would be easy at a period when 

 North-western Africa was stiU. joined with Spain. This southward migration — at 

 least as to its later waves — coincided with the incoming of a new race, the 

 dolmen-builders, who passing, at least immediately, from Northern Europe, became 

 mixed with the Cro-Magnon race in France and Spain, and passed mto North 

 Africa, where they were represented by the white Thahennu of the Egyptian 

 sculptures and by the modern Kabyles of Algeria. The old artistic talent of the 

 Cro-Magnon race nowhere reappeared (except in Egypt), because the cultivation 

 of art requires certain favouring conditions which were found in perfection in 

 Egypt. As to whether the European invasion of North Africa took place at a 

 period considerably earlier than the dawn of the First Empire [evidences adduced]. 

 What evidence is there that this invading European race overran Egypt ? Besides 

 the traces of a common race-type between them and the earliest Egyptians, we 

 have the fact of invasions of Egypt by branches of the Mediterranean race within 

 the historic period and facts indicating that in prehistoric times this race had 

 traversed the Nile Valley, Further, the political state of Egypt before Menes, as 

 indicated by tradition, agrees with our hypothesis of a warlike northern race 

 ruling a subject population. 



Next inquire how far the earliest Egyptian architecture agrees in type with 

 that of the prehistoric European invaders. Can the former be conceived as 

 identical with the latter, though at a higher stage of development ? 



Character of the North African megalithic structures compared with that of 

 the earliest Egyptian buildings. 



