12 Some conjectures on the progress of [Jan. 



mixed race of Canaanites, and Bedouins (v. Bunsen) ; but, be they 

 who they may, the description of the dominancy of Egypt by theory, 

 will account for these graves in the Nimroud mound, first asserting the 

 fact of her colonization there ; and of the re-appearance of new Assy- 

 rian palaces, above these graves which surmounted the old ones, when 

 the dispossessed race returned in victory to their ancient site of 

 power.* 



I have spoken as merely of conjectures in this paper ; but as leading 

 myself on to my own peculiar position, have, on the evidence of fact, 

 moved the ancient Egyptian out of the " impress of his locality" into an 

 ascertained residence towards the East, on the testimony of an archaio- 

 logist, and with the concurrence of an historiographer, who certainly 

 wrote and thought as independently of each other, as distance and 

 unconsciousness could make them do ; meanwhile Mr. Layard affords 

 strange matter for further conjecture in the inscription given below, 

 "on a slab at Nimroud," he says, "forming a part of a wall in the 

 south-west palace, but brought from the most ancient edifice, I found 

 one line of writing in which the characters were thus formed. It 

 occurred beneath the usual inscription, and was but slightly cut." 



* Historic theories of the character above expressed, would a few years ago have 

 been justly repudiated; but the progress of discovery begins to enable us to venture 

 at an explanation of many mysteries ; and no sooner does one astounding fact in the 

 voiceless records of the past reach us from the East than in the West appears another, 

 as strange and unexpected to corroborate the inference which the first directly points 

 towards. I allude to the Egyptian character of the most ancient remains found in the 

 tombs still extant, about the often nameless sites, of lost Etruscan cities, or rather, 

 Etrurian, Umbrian, and Pelasgian ; Dennis' Cities and Cemetries of Etruria. (Lond. 

 1848.) I may indeed go further still, as Mr. Dennis finds (Vol. II. pp. 39, 202), 

 Etrusco-Ninevean traces, binding the East and West, as it were together. I cite 

 for readier reference the passages in his excellent and intensely interesting work, 

 which note the presence of an Egyptian element, in the early civilization of Italy. 

 Etrusco-Egyptian, Vol. II. pp. 8, 296, 107, 114, 124. Pelasgo-Egyptian, pp. 48, 

 59, 62, 65, 72. Umbro-Egyptian or Siculo-Egyptian, p. 320, and for a combina- 

 tion of these archaic types, Vol. II. ch. 51, (Chinsi) and ch. 56, (Cortona) 

 passim. On the latter site occur (p. 442), " many purely Egyptian idols," and a 

 relic as indisputably pointing to an African origin, as the porcelain jars of the 

 Egyptian tombs do to China, — the head in bronze " of a negro." Here then, 

 again, we have ancient Egypt, carried out of her supposed boundaries in the most 

 practical of proofs. — H. T. 



