20 Some conjectures on the progress of [Jan. 



" Oh ! Egypt, Egypt ! fables only will remain extant of you, alto- 

 gether incredible to later generations, — and nought will have fixed 

 being, but the words hewn in the stone." So spoke prophetically, as 

 quoted by Chevalier Bunsen from one of the Hermetic Books, Hermes 

 to Asclepius ; and, after the above review of the national character of 

 another co-temporary people from their own written record of their 

 habits and opinions, it is to the hewn stone, and the pictured wall that 

 we must go back for an understanding of what were the warlike pecu- 

 liarities of its congeners of the Nile valley, for the purpose of setting 

 them in juxta-position with those we have just considered. It is not 

 however necessary to encumber this paper with references to the 

 evidence on record as to the eminent military character of the Egyp- 

 tians. Their enterprise as soldiers, their discipline, and their prowess 

 are sufficiently illustrated from their movements in works now happily 

 diffused as a portion of the literature of the day. Their tactical 

 arrangement of troops, and their superiority in the use of the war- 

 chariot, are the two salient points in which, as warriors, they assimilate, 

 almost to identity of custom, to the brahminical conquerors of India ; 

 who again differ from the Egyptians in two military usages, not less 

 marked by the use of the horse as mounted equestrians, and the kind 

 treatment of their adversaries in war, — the practical habit in the one 

 case pointing to them, as a nation frequenting o.pen plains, and still 

 imbued with nomad instincts, and the moral restraint in the other, 

 suggesting the existence of a scale of mental civilization infinitely 

 superior to that of any other nation of antiquity : one might imagine 

 that the generous forbearance of their military laws in the case of a 

 flying or a vanquished foe, or even of an adversary taken at disadvan- 

 tage, shadowed the germ of the Buddhistic doctrine of gentleness and 

 mercy. The Egyptians, despite "the striking and even surprising 

 analogy in social regulations, divisions and subdivisions of hereditary 

 castes, the distribution of offices, the privileges and restrictions of 

 different orders in the community," (Prichard's Phys. Hist, of Man, 

 Vol. II. p. 193,) subsisting between themselves and the Hindus, 

 exhibit sanguinary proofs of their having obliterated the attribute of 

 mercy from their military code. In the well known paintings of 

 Madeenet Haboo, the great Remses (Wilkinson's Egypt and Thebes, 

 p. 61, et seq.J, appears triumphant over nations whose mutilated remains 



