deavour to accomplish the same mighty object. The excavated temple of Guerfeh Hassan, for instance, reminds every traveller of the cave of Elephanta. The resemblance, indeed, is singularly striking; as are, in fact, all the leading principles of Egyptian architecture to that of the Hindoos. They differ only, it has been observed, in those details of the decorative parts, which trifling points of difference in their religious creeds seem to have suggested to each; but many even of the rites and emblems are precisely the same, especially those of the temples dedicated to Iswara, the Indian Bacchus. In truth, in most respects they are so much alike that the same workman might almost be supposed to have superintended the execution of them in both countries. In India and in Egypt the hardest granite mountains have been cut down into the most striking, if not the most beautiful, fronts of temples adorned with sculpturo. In both countries large masses of rock have been excavated into hollow chambers, whose sides are decorated with columns and statues of men and animals carved out of the same stone; and in each are found solid blocks of many hundred tons weight, separated from the adjoining mountain and lifted up into the air. By whom and by what means these wonderful efforts have been accomplished is a mystery sunk too deep in the abyss of time ever to be revealed. To Greece neither country is indebted for any part of its architecture, while she has evidently taken many hints from them. Except at Alexandria and Antinoë, no edifice strictly Grecian appears in Egypt. But we need only compare the monolithic temples of Nubia with those of Mahabulipoor, the excavations of Guerfeh Hassan with those of Elephanta, and the grottoes of Hadjur Silsili, as described by Pococke, with the caverns of Ellora, to be convinced that these sacred monuments of ancient days derived their origin from the same source.*

A resemblance of a corresponding nature has been discovered in the religious usages of the Chinese, compared with those of the Egyptians, particularly in what is called the feast of lamps,-a festival annually observed by the latter people, and graphically described by Herodotus in his

* See Legh's Journey in Egypt and Nubia, and Quarterly Review, vol. xvi. p. 18

second book. This coincidence in a ceremony so little likely to suggest itself to the minds of men who had no intercourse with one another, led M. de Guignes to conclude that the first inhabitants of China must have been a colony from Egypt. But it is easy to account for all such facts upon a much more obvious as well as a more rational hypothesis. No one can have failed to remark, that among the most ancient nations there is a great similarity in point of tradition, habits, opinions, knowledge, and history. The Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Hindoos, and the descendants of Abraham held many things in common respecting the creation of the world, the great deluge, the dispersion of the human race, and the first institution of laws and religious worship. Hence we may conclude that the general agreement in these particulars, which we contemplate among the more primitive tribes of mankind, ought to be ascribed to the instruction which they had received while as yet they were but one family, or to the traditionary tenets which had spread with the diverging lines of their generations, though derived originally from the same pri

meval source.

But by far the most striking point of resemblance between the inhabitants of Egypt and of India is the institution of castes, that singular arrangement which places an insuperable barrier between different orders of men in the same country, and renders their respective honours, toils, and degradation strictly hereditary and permanent. Before the invention of letters, indeed, mankind may be said to have been perpetually in their infancy; whence arose the expedient, founded in a view of the public good, of compelling sons to cultivate the arts which had originated in their family, and to follow the professions whereby their fathers had acquired distinction. In allusion to the four classes into which the natives are divided, the Hindoos maintain that, of their god, Nara-Yana, the mouth became a priest, the arm was made a soldier, the thigh was transformed into a husbandman, and from his feet sprang the servile multitude. The narrative of Herodotus bears evidence to the same institution at an early period among the Egyptians. He indeed divides the fourth caste into several subordinate sections,-tradesmen, shepherds, interpreters, and pilots, and thereby presents the appearance of a still more minute

distinction than prevails in the East; but his statement, when compared with that of Diodorus Siculus at a later epoch, removes every shadow of doubt in regard to the identity of the principle from which this political arrangement must have originally proceeded. The last-named historian reduces the orders to three,-priests, including men of rank; the military; and artisans. It is obvious, however, that as husbandmen and labourers are omitted, we must comprehend in the third grade all the classes who practise those arts which are necessary to the subsistence, the comfort, and the ornament of human life.

We may also mention, as in some degree connected with the division of labour now described, that medical science, even before the days of Herodotus, must have been very carefully studied, if we may draw such a conclusion from the fact that, at the period when he wrote, one physician was confined to one disease. There are, he adds, a great many who practise this art; some attend to disorders of the eyes, others to those of the head; some take care of the teeth, others are conversant with all diseases of the intestines; while many attend to the cure of maladies which are less conspicuous.* The historian could not have mentioned a circumstance more characteristic of a people advanced to a high degree of civilization. Of the Babylonians, among whom he also travelled, he relates that they have no professors of medicine, but that they carry their sick into some public square, with the view of getting advice from any one who may happen to have been afflicted with the same illness. The passengers in general, says he, interrogate the sufferer in regard to the nature of his malady, in order that, if any one of them has been attacked with a similar disease himself, or seen its operation on a third person, he may communicate the process by which his own recovery was effected, or by which, in any other instance, he has known the distemper to be removed. No one may pass by a diseased individual in silence, or without inquiry into the symptoms of his complaint.†

But, to return to the main subject now before us, we may take leave to express our conviction that, in proportion as the antiquities of Egypt shall be brought into a clearer

* Herodotus, Euterpe, chap. 84.

† Ib. Clio, chap. 197.

light, the evidence will become more satisfactory in favour of an early intercourse between Hindoostan and the upper regions of the Nile. It is already ascertained that the arts, as practised in the Thebaid, and even in the neighbourhood of Memphis, must have descended from Ethiopia,-the style of sculpture in the latter being in several respects superior to any specimen of that kind of workmanship hitherto discovered in Egypt. The temples, too, on the banks of the river above the cataracts bear a closer resemblance to those of India than the corresponding edifices in the lower parts of the country, while they exhibit the undoubted marks of a more remote antiquity. The same conclusion is further supported by the celebrity which the Ethiopians had acquired in the earliest age that tradition or poetry has revealed to us. The annals of the Egyptian priests were full of them. The nations of Asia, in like manner, on the Tigris and Euphrates, mingled Ethiopian legends with the songs which commemorated the exploits of their own heroes. At a time, too, when the Greeks scarcely knew Italy or Sicily by name, the virtues, the civilization, and the mythology of the Ethiopians supplied to their poets a subject of lofty description. Homer, both in the Iliad and Odyssey, relates that Jupiter, at a certain season of the year, departed from his chosen seat on Olympus to visit this remote and accomplished people. For twelve days the god was absent in their pious and hospitable region. It is probable that some annual procession of the priests of Ammon up the Nile, to the primitive scene of their worship, was the groundwork of this legend adopted into the popular creed of the older Greeks. Diodorus himself expresses a similar opinion, when he states that the Ethiopians were said to be the inventors of pomps, sacrifices, solemn assemblies, and other honours paid to the gods; that is, that they were the religious parents of the Egyptians, to whom the countrymen of Homer and Hesiod looked up as to their instructers in sacred things as well as in the principles of civil polity. It has therefore been thought probable that ancient Meröe was the original seat of the religion, the political institutions, the arts, and the letters, which afterward shed so bright a lustre on the kingdom of the Pharaohs.*

* Heeren's Ideas on the Politics and Commerce of Ancient Nations.

There is nothing more remarkable in the history of Egypt than that the same people who distinguished themselves by an early progress in civilization, and who erected works which have survived the conquests of Persia, the triumphs of Roman art, and all the architectural labours of Christianity, should have degraded their fine genius by the worship of four-footed beasts, and even of disgusting reptiles. The world does not present a more humbling contrast between the natural powers of intellect and the debasing effect of superstition. Among the Jews, on the other hand, a people much less elevated by science and mechanical knowledge,- —we find a sublime system of theology, and a ritual which, if not strictly entitled to the appellation of a reasonable service, was yet comparatively pure in its ordinances, and still further refined by a lofty and spiritual import. It has been said of the Hebrews, that they were men in religion, and children in every thing else. This observation may be reversed in the case of the Egyptians; for, while in the greater number of those pursuits which give dignity to the human mind, and perpetuate the glories of civilized life, they made a progress which set all rivalry at defiance, in their notions and adoration of the invisible Powers who preside over the destinies of man, they manifested the imbecility, the ignorance, and the credulity of childhood.

In reviewing the annals of the great nations of antiquity, it is interesting to observe that nearly all the knowledge we possess of their manners and institutions may be attributed to a circumstance so very trivial as the choice which they made of their materials for building. As the rise of Egyptian power and wisdom preceded a long time the era of letters, the history of the more ancient kings, like that of the Babylonians and Assyrians, must have been lost, had the architectural monuments of the former people not been constructed of more imperishable substances than were to be found in the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia. In connexion with these reflections, we are naturally led to remark, that the recent discoveries in hieroglyphics justify the hope that the darkness which has so long hung over the annals and chronology of Egypt will be at length so far dispelled as to enable the historian to ascertain at least the order of events and the succession of monarchs.

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