236 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

tion of an Ethiopian civilization anterior to that of Egypt Hoskins and Cailliaud, who attributed a great antiquity to the ruins, were misled by the fact, discovered by Lepsius, that the Ethiopian monarchs adopted as their own, and placed upon their tombs the nomens of the earlier Pharaohs. It is now established beyond a doubt, that, so far from being the oldest, these are the latest remains of Egyptian art ; their inferiority displays its decadence, and not the rude, original type, whence it sprang. Starting from Memphis, where not only the oldest Egyptian, but the oldest human records yet discovered, are found, the era of civilization becomes later, as you ascend the Nile. In Nubia, there are traces of Thothmes and Amunoph III., or about fifteen centuries before the Christian era; at Napata, the ancient capital of Ethiopia, we cannot get beyond King Tirhaka, eight centuries later ; while at Meroe, there is no evidence which can fix the date of the pyramids earlier than the first, or at furthest, the second century before Christ.

Egypt, therefore, was not civilized from Ethiopia, but Ethiopia from Egypt.

The sculptures at Meroe also establish the important fact that the ancient Ethiopians, though of a darker complexion than the Egyptians (as they are in fact represented, in Egyptian sculpture), were, like them, an offshoot of the great Caucasian race.* Whether they were originally emigrants from * In the Letters of Lepsiiis. which were not published until after my return from Africa, I find the following passage, the truth of which is supported by all the evidence we possess: 'The Ethioj)ian name comprehended much that was dissimilar, among the ancients. The ancient population of the whole Nile Valley as far as Khartoum, and perhaps, also, along the Blue River, as well as the tribes of the Desert to