1850.] Brdhminical Conquerors of India. 21 



attest "in heaps" the ghastly massacre which had ensued on victory; 

 in other places, scribes appear reckoning the number of such trophies. 

 I cannot, with Sir G. Wilkinson, (Manners and Customs, Vol. I. p. 

 392,) look upon this custom as consonant with a mode of warfare not 

 barbarous, nor with this evidence of the value attaching to the token 

 of actual slaughter, conceive that "the representations of persons 

 slaughtered by the Egyptians who have overtaken them, are intended 

 to allude to what happened in the heat of action, and not to any wanton 

 cruelty on the part of the victors." Sir G. Wilkinson's argument 

 as to Egyptian mercy, deduced from the single incident at Madeenet 

 Haboo, where the crew of an enemy's vessel are saved from the sinking 

 craft, might be turned, on his own admission that the soldiers received 

 a reward after the amount of slain was ascertained (Vol. I. p. 393), 

 clearly against him, the foe being saved from the water to die more 

 profitably for their captors, ashore. In any case, the Egyptians who 

 represent themselves as ruthlessly slaughtering a flying enemy, are 

 infinitely barbarous as compared with, perhaps, a kindred race, who, as 

 above quoted, forbade the slaying not only of " one who turned his 

 back," but of "one who was terrified," or who even had his sight 

 obstructed by his disordered locks. 



Now there arises a somewhat curious consideration out of this fact, 

 based in a measure on the new views of Chevalier Bunsen, and partly 

 on the evidence of monumental remains, — that this blood-thirsty 

 method of conducting warfare was unknown to the Egyptians, until after 

 they had undergone the foreign domination of the Hyksos, or Shepherd 

 kings. I am unable to trace the existence of carved or pictured 

 evidences of Egyptian cruelty in war during the 1076 years (Bunsen' s 

 B. III. p. 122) of the duration of the old dynasties from Manes, 3643 

 years before Christ, to the end of the reign of Amuntimaos.* In the 



* Chevalier Bunsen gives from a very handsome tomb belonging to Nevotp, as 

 his name is read, a high officer under Sesortosis II. one of the 13th or last of the 

 ancient dynasty of kings, a singular instance of the mode in which conquered 

 nations were anciently treated in civilized Egypt. " Here and in the neighbouring 

 tombs," says our author, " one sees represented nearly all the occupations of 

 ordinary life, hunting, fishing, dancing, play, the game (the morra of the Italians) 

 played with the fingers : men blow glass, exactly as the Egyptians of the latter 

 kingdom (or latter dynasties), and as we do." (Vol. II. VI. 2, Sesostris the 



