14 Some conjectures on the progress of [Jan. 



These inscriptions afford at any rate monumental evidence of the 

 contact of an Egyptianised race, resident far beyond the confines of 

 the mother-country with foreign nations, whose habitat lay, in one case 

 certainly, eastward. We had already proof that the produce of the 

 extremest Orient found its way to Egypt ; that of China, namely, in 

 the shape of articles of porcelain, of such inferior quality as to argue 

 that the manufacture was in its infancy when they were made, this 

 constituting another proof of their high antiquity : it had been conjec- 

 tured that these small vessels found in the tombs at Thebes contained 

 some precious ingredient, and that they had reached Egypt in course 

 of commerce through India.* "We have now to note what may have 

 been the epoch of this early commerce by reference to a newly-estab- 

 lished chronology ; what may have been the direction of this inter- 

 course geographically, and finally, what were the people who, as Sir 

 Gardner Wilkinson says, "at a very remote period" occupied India in 

 connection with the ancient inhabitants of the Nile valley. 



It is necessary, however, that I should, before speculating further 

 upon this connection, which may have been collision in the first instance, 

 set distinctly before my reader, from the ancient literature and poetry 

 of the Hindus, their character, first, as aggressors, and as warriors 

 quite as bold and skilful as the Egyptians themselves ; and then as 

 occupants of a conquered country which they had incompletely mastered 

 out of the hands of its ancient inhabitants :f I will, recapitulating what 

 was said in the treatise above alluded to, assign dates, or an approxima- 

 tion to them to both these epochs, with such remarks on the com- 

 parative character of Egyptian and Indian conquest as may suggest 

 themselves. By the side of this chronology, I will then place the new 

 Egyptian time-reckoning of Chevalier Bunsen with some of his remarks 



* Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, Vol. III. cb. IX. 



t A certain school of even modern archaiologers has assumed with such certi- 

 tude the pre-eminent antiquity of all things Indian, and has asserted this theory so 

 dogmatically, that it is not inexpedient to notice here, what one of the latest of 

 them, the learned Eusebe Salverte, and his editors, have ventured on in terming 

 " l'Hindoustan, le berceau dela civilization diimonde." (Des Sciences Orientales, 

 Eus. Salverte, 2nd Ed. Paris, 1843, p. 406.) The vague and unauthoritative cha- 

 racter of this learned writer's deductions touching ancient India may perliaps be 

 separately noticed in the Society's Journal hereafter, with reference to other points 

 of history.— H. T. 



