sehr Wate tan: Pare 2 ef ¥ “ : £ Ls = A- w= = Bn “ Pater eet at 4 3: te Ly ak an =e see ee eh) ‘or! pe SP 5Sie: et et ey she Pad Pres ’ 6 ten Vn => rr er Pd | negeseets Oy 7) eo ee @o0- Stat? Gabe ne ite * hae ne (Fh — Pere hy = tise tert Least ser) vs. eee = er a * Goa tice 1ST we Wes eal Ea sereses = Sa ievessie *. a @ dF o> rc) 9. %. hah pak perks pe e hin 7 ert toh wg agie ay: Gee “ > Be Ro Bae = SS a 5crt bP 2 ek ST 72 PP eBecs Baaierge —~— ener. Pe se re a ee times: f Tt oI ¥ eth gigs yea: ae Sh thet Sh Pend i — aS Se hed nf Pore etre . 3 a a ae sa5a% Car i> = Per et ere Teee> TRIN sy aide Corre aad on bap PER a:Gctie zhi af *-~@ erie a a ena: a5 th Me = eee gm e w ree i « "Er eras | S% ; : a tate a8 we a a LP hy ete a. a 2 2-82 85 joerg 9+@- = Pox 285 EF . ‘ B 6 was 4 = ae oe sate: f os oa) a-h=4 Patou > Zs, ™ gia igausice: oT TESS Ot ht ml bed =€°4-e¢-6- & F it 5 4° xe 16 $= Bat Rote ‘ae Me uu“ erne 4 ‘-% q sags 1355 727: * . * i] td ae RJ . sa e}¢ ‘Sy = aa? Ba bed Pee tear ante ae: = 2 ew ret ey = fe keace $4 ~ cr a Bete : * pe b eats +) « * asi 7.2.2 ‘eae aeitee ik $iH fatettiilietiiay ts fe aos wreaege = tye ae Sie a oe 12 * the be - aa ? ] 1 Ot iak aan a rw ead ; ied Ux JOURNAL OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL, EDITED BY THE SECRETARIES. VOL. XIX. Nos. 1. to vir.—1850. LLLP DP PDPLDLOPLOLYPPDOOowwmw rw “ It will flourish, if naturalists, chemists, antiquaries, philologers, and men of science, in different parts of Asia will commit their observations to writing, and send them to the Asiatic Society at Calcutta. It will languish if such communications shall be long inter- mitted ; and it will die away if the ly cease.’—Sir Wm, Jones. PRINTED BY J. THOMAS, BAPTIST MISSION PRESS. 185]. ee eee hye gene A , ag ‘ ray ¥ 7 ; it? « Bee yack ce A OR eyo ‘it re es , FA CIR SSR EEN hia Et $f u fata yak: ‘ pa hes rey ‘ f VALE. ra CON TENTS. Aborigines of the North East Frontier. By B. H. Hodgson, Esq., ove South. By B. H. Hodgson, Esq., eoce seve eeee oeee © Analysis of the Béngali Poem Raj Mala, or Chronicles of Tripura. By the PS MIC LOI. a sfsle bs; Slo Rid e-aele ochera a ote albich eels al eiette. dc 'szuieeinia dma isin Answers to Mr. Piddington’s Queries about Winds, Storms, &c. in Tibet. Page ee aire uA DELL aici claicila alate Weielicislleslae « cllulel dla-Seswiv's'e Mawel e lerwle'e se Ball Coal of the Burdwan Mines, A Third Notice on the. By H. Pidding- MUMMY E15 Tel vibeaiboiwiinta) Sica wlalel ole! aial's w'iphel w elatal'nle fale Wid cilsistielG’ ale nie) n\alnoliiela’s' sie Bird-devouring habits of a species of Spider, Note on the. By Captain EERILY 0 Join! acl n)ui\ar@ 5a! » ojtictaichs o aldldiiasiie oa-walp evcielale sie wisv'nlh aiajnle leis (alpiale Brahminical Conquerors of India, some conjectures on the progress of the. PER OREENS, , WSS, «9.0 » ia mn) 0.aiainiale nin @10n o oeliniclate wletealaiewelsieidevee e's Calderite, an undescribed Silicio-Iron and Manganese Rock, On. By H. Piddington, Eisq., .. 0. cecccccesccccccccccssscccscececesesesscces Dust Storms of India, On the. By P. Baddeley, Esq., .....seeeeccccee Encrustation of Steam Boilers and Pipes in India, On the. By Dr. G. Aer RSG oh aa Zae i aius ous Sino ah ellalaheleneteaalelele Bolo. aiwllarSimdtciel Orsiale 6 ©, Slsl'd eterna General Vibration, or Descent and Upheaval, which seems, at a recent Geo- logical period, to have occurred all over the Northern Hemisphere, On Pre ae ey Georee, Bist, BOD ii o's pon eiscsieiasla'e ects ddaud daubonaine'e Ghassanite Kings, On the. By Dr. A. Sprenger, ....cccccccccccccecs Haughtonite, Examination of the New Mineral. By Henry Piddington, Esq., Inscription Engraved on a brick found in a village in the Juanpur district, mote onan... By Captain My Kittoess =:ala! sista atta Siddons, Capt. G. Translation of the Vichitra Natak, .......eeseecesees Sprenger, Dr. A. Notice of a copy of the Original Text of Tabary, ...... ——-On the Ghassanite Kings, .......ccescccccescveccccces Strachey, Lieut. R. Notice of a Trip to the Niti Pass,.... se .sceessevece —_————-_ Notice of Scientific Enquiries in Kumaon, ........0- Torrens, H. Esq. Some Conjectures on the progress of the Brahminical con- querors of India, @eoeeoeeveesc@eeseoeoseeesceve ee ee 82 028 8280208 88 8€HE SF FEF C8 OS Note on a specimen of Iron from the Dhunakar Hills, .. Page 139 217 65 309 461 On the Shou or Tibetan Stag, .....ssseccscceeee 466-578 454 533 136 75 143 145 242 349 452 475 474 521 108 469 a7 Voysey, Dr. Extracts from his private Journal, .....seeecceseessees 190-269 LIST OF PLATES. Plate I. Takin, of the Eastern Himalaya, .. ..ccsecesccecscrcecees Page ha Prantiview-of the skull of Gitte; {asc eile dees vaiddv ce scite wade ss iiosioe view of the skull Of ditto, ccc. sc ce00 ds aw wists a ee Se ee oc IV. Sculls of the Talpa leucura, T. microura, and T. europea, ...... V. Chart to the Nineteenth Memoir on the Law of Storms, ........ Poe foe Sketch ef the Spiti Valley) ic so/ocice ce ts. ace viele ee oe se! sie PERU GIS OL LG MOUs) vahaye a) <’o pis din) sin-a'u 10's cp juilo a .u/er wiaajeiael cin. 6.0, s'e/,e\0 MRI LO CAAGED)5. (iui in @ 60a wish 000 elena a oinie'sine(eSie.e/meinis' ab en es sa ee 65 67 JOURNAL OF THE motATIO SOCTETY. naval JANUARY, 1850. SNAPP LD LVF LODO LOLI IYLVIOLIVIPIF PALAIS DO Some conjectures on the progress of the Bradhminical Conquerors of India. By Henry Torrens, B. 4., V. P. and late Secy. As. Soc. of Bengal. In the grave pages of a scientific journal, so often honoured by the successes of positive antiquarian discovery, it may seem at first sight, somewhat idle to obtrude conjectural speculation, or something nigh akin to it. Where, however, he who dares to conjecture, does not £0 the length of insistance upon the verity of his suggestions; but is willing to incur the discredit of failure in his position, for the chance of having been able to open a new road to enquiry, the boldness of the attempt may perhaps justify its publication, however faint the hope of any ultimate solid advantage. But in truth it will be I think, found, that the progress of discovery up to this time in that anomalous field of Indian antiquity in which neither legible monument, nor written record lend their assistance to the student, has hitherto depended a good deal upon happy suppo- sition, directing the course of subsequent enquiry, leading to a definite consequence: as in the Indo-arian researches, we see the suggestion and first discovery with Prinsep, the imvestigation with Lassen, the result deduced by Wilson. I think, and have for some years thought, that we stand on the margin of a still broader field of historic know- ledge, such as shall carry us from studying the mere despotic successions of princes, to an accurate acquaintance with the progress of peoples, and an approximation in due course to the solution of that great mystery, the dispersion and subdivision of the races of mankind. The No. XXXVII.—New Series. B . 2 Some conjectures on the progress of (JAN. differences and yet the co-existant affinities of those races constitute one of the strangest, and most interesting subjects of human study. Identity exists among them, in the radical formation of language, with a total variance of custom; while in another case, custom and appa- rent habits are identical, with a difference of the very system of speech, irreconcileable as yet by any current theories in philology. The most striking of these instances, is perhaps, that of the ancient Egyptians, and the modern Hindoos, whose affinity of customs is indisputable, even to the institution of castes, and segregation; whose distinctive dress is precisely similar ;—whose symbolic representations of deities in many instances correspond wonderfully ; and who indeed to any one that looks observingly on the memorials of the extinct nation, while resid- ing among the extant one, present in their modes and habits of life, of labour,—the shape of tools, boats, and utensils, and a hundred minutize of fact speaking to the eye, but tedious and trifling to detail, the appear- ance of one people. But if between two races that reckon the periods of their substantive existence, not by centuries but by milliads, there still abide in the one that lives,after the contingent influences of so many revo- lutions, so striking a resemblance to that one which nationally exists no more how much greater must not that similarity have been in times when both flourished, powerful and independent, at a period long anterior to the records of written history, in contemporaneous greatness? Now if on the one hand, the Egyptian hath left us (save in the papyri the examination of which is in its infancy) no historical record of himself beyond what lie in temples and in tombs, with their remains of art, their pictures, and their half-read hieroglyphics,—so on the other does the Hindoo, with an extant literature, vouchsafe us little or nothing of the definitely historical, amid much acute philosophy, much gorgeous poetry, mystical and imaginative theology, and legislation of a singular wisdom, fitted only for a highly civilized people. But, on either hand, meagre though to the historical interest of the lists of Egyptian kings, and all apocryphal the romance of Hindoo heroie poetry, we have fortunately preserved with each the representation of a people, whom chronology helps us in setting juxta-posed in the zenith of their power at corresponding periods. If then after a lapse, say, of two thousand years, the one race still be similar to that other which exists no more, while its records of things done anterior to that time, prove usages and 1850.] Brahminicai Conquerors of India. 3 habits, almost identical with those that constituted the painted records of the extinct people,—we may with justice speculate upon an earlier time that saw the common origin of both. It was in making some cursory enquiry into the early military history of nations, that I gradually accustomed my mind to admit the possible truth of a speculation, which I had inclined towards some years previ- ously, regarding the eastern tributaries (recognizable as such by the animals and offerings they bring) represented m the Egyptian kings’ tombs of the eighteenth dynasty.* The early mythic fable of the Indian expedition of the Egyptian Bacchus; the history of Ramat with its Bacchic character which so struck Bishop Heber, when first he saw it represented in action,{—the visible affinities of custom, the similarity of religious types, the painted caves rivalling the graphic picture-records of Egypt,—all stimulate a dweller in India, at all inter- ested in searching for the material of history, to approximate to some idea of the point of annexation, at which the Egyptian and the Indian element in it give evidence of union. But it has been exceedingly difficult to devise up to this time the direction, in which that possibility of union is to be looked for. The opinion that ‘‘there is no other people of the ancient world whose form and fashion bear so strongly _the impress of locality as the Egyptian ; or who is bound to his country by so many ties, or who so identified it with himself,’’§—was all which had distributed itself very largely: its learned and sagacious pro- pounder maintained as late as the year 1826|| that the dominant Egyptian castes, were descended from an aboriginal African people, with a curious disregard of the internal evidence of their institution as pointing toa different origin: and the idea of a maritime intercourse with India, founded on the known facts as to the external commerce * Wilkinson’s Manners and Customs, Vol. I. in loc. + An old Egyptian word. ‘‘ Pyramid is according to him (Ignazio di Rossi) Ps- RAM, ‘the high.’ The root ram for high, similar with the Semitic, is assured ; rama for high seems also to have warrant. The pronounciation of the article is as with the pi-rémis of Herodotus for pe-rdmi, the man.’’ Bunsen’s /igypt’s Place. Book II. Sec. VI. (a note is appended to this in the original with a cloud of philo~ logical authorities),—H. T. t+ Heber’s Journal zn loc. § Heeren’s Researches, Vol. V. ch. 1. || Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place. B. I. Sect. III, B. VII. 4 Some conjectures on the progress of [Jan. of Egypt, and her ancient ports, as Philoteras (Wilkinson’s M. and C. ch. III.) might, in this sense account for the Hindu analogies; nay, the passage* in George Syncellus upon the 40th king in his list, Amenophthis (“who is the Vocal Stone. The Aithiopians came from the Indus, and settled in Egypt ;”) would go with many who adopted Heeren’s view as proof positive, in the absence of a thoroughly critical examination of the records, historical, traditional, and chronological, of the ancient kingdoms of Egypt. It so happened that in 1846, a position was put forth in a treatise on military history, published anonymously and obscurely enough by me in Calcutta, maintaining the Egyptians, to have been the original instructors and civilizers of Europe. This idea combated the view taken of them as respects the peculiar “impress of their locality,’ and was entertained after mature reflection upon consideration that their monuments show them to have been great and mighty conquerors, that they also bore testimony to their progress in art and science, and that art goes forth with arms, the study of which is one of the first historical characteristics with an energetic and enterprising people. After quoting Saxe’st+ well-known comment on discipline, it was observed —“‘the nations of antiquity who derived their military system directly from Egypt, imbibed this great principle together with the rules of practice which their leaders, or their founders carried away from the land, which was truly the focus of all western civilization. These * ‘¢T have represented the Egyptians as an aboriginal people of Africa, and as descended from the same race as the present inhabitants of Nubia. This race insensibly spread itself by colonies along the valley of the Nile into Lower Egypt. I have confined this assertion, however, to the superior castes of priests and warriors ; since it appears, according to the relations of the Egyptians themselves, that it was a sacerdotal caste, emigrated from Meroé, which, by the aid of its reli- gion and superior intelligence, founded a dominion over the Nomad tribes, the pri- mitive inhabitants of Egypt. Such is also the opinion of Rosellini, although he does not mention Meroé, but only cites the generic name of Ethiopia. I shall show, a little further on, that Champollion also held the same opinion, which is still further strengthened by the statements of other travellers quoted in my work.”” Heeren’s Res. Vol. V. Appendix XI. Sec. I. + The statements of this Byzantine chronologer, with those of his predecessors Theophilus, Panodorus, and Anianus, are critically examined by Bunsen in his ‘«Egypt’s Place.” B. I. Sec. II. D. E, F. G.—H., T. 1850.) Bréhminical Conquerors of India. 5 nations were the Phcenicians; and through them the Carthaginians ; the Hebrews; the Greeks generally; the Etruscans and through them the Romans. As to other nations more ancient than these, who may indirectly have either participated with the Egyptians in their know- ledge of the science of war, or have gained experience of it by subse- quent collision with them, we shall have hereafter a few brief words to say, more however in the way of speculation than enquiry.” To this position was added, another elicited in the course of an investigation, into the history of the use of the horse, an animal of eastern origin as now acknowledged by all naturalists; the antiquity of the use of this creature in Arabia was established,* chronologically, by the dates (2337 and 2136 B. C.) given on astronomical calculation to the book of Job; and Aistorically, at a period perhaps anterior to any extant conventional base for calculation, by reference to the Hyma- rite rock inscriptions, found in the old seats of the tribe of Aws in Hadramaut by Lieut. Welsted (A. D. 1843), and translated by the Rev. C. Forster.t Now as Wilkinson, ‘‘ the trustworthy and accurate,” as Chevalier Bunsen calls him, gave for the era of the first Egyptian king, no more than 2320 B. C., the question of comparative civilization at the period in Egypt and Arabia struck me as worth attention. On the one hand was an astronomical date assignable to the era of a people (of Uz), who had already a literature, and a knowledge, however patriarchal, of the arts;—and beside it, an historical record of un- known antiquity, descriptive of the private life and military habits of a race, greatly advanced in the luxuries of the one, and the experi- ence of the other. On the contrary it was set, on the authority of Josephus,t a date for the existence of the oldest known founder of Egyptian civilization, posterior to that of Job. Without skill, or opportunity im this country, to examine further, I could only judge inferentially from the facts before me, and, in showing the futility of Col. Hamilton Smith’s position that the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, brought the horse to the Egyptians, who bestowed the knowledge of him on the Arabians, I observed as follows :— * Reveries, B. VII. t Forster’s Geography of Arabia, Vol. IT. The argument is appended, or written, without amendment of the dates.—H., T. t Wilkinson, M. L. C. Vol. I. ch. II. 6 Some conjectures on the progress of [ JAN. ‘If such communications existed between the two nations, how comes it that the camel, the national type-animal of Arabia, should never have found his way, into the painted records of the Egyptians, that careful and observant people? It is a most singular fact, that the camel never has yet been found pourtrayed upon any of the paint- ings‘or sculptures, extant in the Nile valley.* The native habitat of the horse was in high latitudes, thousands of miles distant from the spot in which he most appears to have been cultured: the indigenous site of the camel was in the sandy wastes of the children of Ishmael, immediately adjoming the land of Egypt. Yet are its inhabitants sup- posed to have transmitted the equine animal to the masters of the camel, and with all their curiosity, science and observation to have asked for, or admitted of, no return in kind? We can only conclude that the horse was brought by the original colonists of the Nile valley, a race so singularly coincident in customs and practices with the Hindus, from Central Asia, at a period beyond our power to calculate upon any date now in our possession; that another tribe or race must, about the same time, have carried the same animal into Arabia, where the nature of the country suggested, as in the case of Egypt, the manner of his use, and the purposes to which he should be applied. The one people, amid wide and open plains, and scanty pastures, rode, as became a nomad race; the other, in a low, narrow, deep, and plenteous land, pampered their steeds in stables, and yoked them to a car, a vehicle so light that two powerful horses could easily drag them- selves and it, through the fat loan of the muddy country in which a mounted man would sink to his horse’s locks at every stride.” It was not till about two years or more after the above was written that I received, in the German, the three first books of Chevalier Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place in the World’s History ; and it may be judged with what satisfaction I read the peroration of his first book, in which he italicises the one great result of his unparalleled research, coincident with my own humble inference. “‘On a comparative view, we can have no hesitation in saying, that: the investigation into mythology, ag far as it has gone, determines upon a fact not less important as respects the world’s history, as certainly * Gibbon (Misc. Works) quotes Diodorus Siculus 6. III. c. 44 to prove that the camel was extant in his day as a wild animal in Arabia.—H. T. 1850. ] Bréhnunical Conquerors of India. 7 and to the same intent, as did the dissection of (Coptic) philology. The knowledge of God lke the knowledge of language among the Egyptians has its roots in ancient Asia, in the ancient Armeno-Cauca- sian territory. That this land, defined more nearly, is one of primi- tive Aram, and connected with the primitive kingdom in Babel,—and that the hieroglyphics of Egypt are actually nought else in the image of the world’s history, than a still extant peculiarity of the old-time of Aramite-Armenian mankind (according with the same law whereby Iceland exhibits the still extant heathen Norway of the 8th century) —is an historical fact which we will here but assert, proposing to lay the proof of it before our readers in the fourth and fifth book. “If we turn from this point to its opposite, the historical period of Egypt, our investigation into the Kgyptic origines, will already have made it clear, that the kingdom of Menes itself, rests upon a venerable substructure of several centuries of the Nile valley, rich with the spirit of intellect. Conformably with it must Menes have constituted the kingdom of Egypt, in that he brought together, and united the separate elements of life of Kgypt’s provinces. Thus do these origins establish true, the assertion made at the opening of this book, that Menes created the historical knowledge of the Egyptians, as did Karlmagne that of the German peoples.’’* Here then we have research supporting inference with such command- ing weight of authority, as to encourage the resumption of ideas still more daring, than those even which suggested an eastern origin to the inhabitants of ancient Egypt, from a stock allied to the Hindu. I have not the fourth and fifth books of Chev. Bunsen’s work, indeed I know not if they be published, in spite of enquiry made; but, I do not think it inexpedient to set forth once again, and, on authority corroborative of the Egyptian tomb-records, that the ancient’ Egyptians, an eastern people who brought into the Nile-valley the germ of civilization,— * JT have seen, and indeed possess,a translation of the first Vol. of Chev. Bunsen’s Egypt by Charles Cottrell, Esq. M. A. (London 1848); but it is in a style of periphrasis, and not without omissions: I have therefore ventured on the humble verity of as literal a rendering as I could master. Should Mr. Cottrell have translated from a later edition than that of my copy (Hamburgh, 1845, octavo), which has suffered alteration, (and from the variations I should suppose so) part of my remarks do not apply.—H. T. 8 Some conjectures on the progress of (JAN. there perfected it, and then carried back their arms and arts as con- querors, both before and after their temporary subjection by the Hysos, into the countries immediately civilized and peopled, through which they had, as nomads, passed on their way to the Nile. It is remarkable that up to the time of the Ptolemies, the character of every monument, and of every vestige of the ancient Egyptian people retains its Egyptian type, that ‘impress of locality’ which so much struck Heeren; and as this type has from the earliest, been unmixed by analogy with that of any other nation, save the Hindu, the neces- sary conclusion is that the Egyptians in their migration towards the Nile traversed virgin lands, as yet unsettled and uninhabited. Accord- ing to the great law which seems to regulate the progress of people from land to land, that progression is impulsive, the foremost tribe being forced forward by that which directly infringes upon it. This may happen in three ways;—by the strong hand, driving a race of previous settlers from their homes to the masterful advantage of the ageressor, who has perhaps himself been forced upon them ;—or by the two supposed cases of incompatibility of co-existence in races whose capacities for accepting civilization materially differ ; viz. either when the foremost race being of peaceful habits, industrious and quiescent, becomes dissatified with the neighbourhood of a people, which, though not unfriendly, is inapt to mix or to deal with its denizens on equal terms ;—or where the converse occurs, the foremost nation being slothful, inert, uninventive, and capable of only a semi- savage independence, refusing and ultimately withdrawing from the offence of the civilization superincumbent over it, in the institutions of the nation that has immediately followed it up.* It is probable then that the shepherds, i. e. the Nomad races, had been “an abomi- nation unto the Egyptians’ from times anterior to their settlement in the Nile-valley,—at a period how remote the newly-established chrono- * The disappearance of the pure Celtic races, in our isles before Saxon influences is a melancholy extant example of this latter phenomenon in the history of mane kind: in process of centuries, the pure Celt recedes, while the Saxon or Teuton advances, and the mixed race formed intermediately remains stationary. The recession and gradual extinction of aboriginal American, Australian, and some South-African races before a mixed Saxo-Teutonic,—and as respects the Spaniard, a mixed Goto-Semitic race, offer analogous examples with variation of circum- stances according to relative grades of civilization.—H. T. 1850. | Bréhminical Conquerors of India. 9 logy of Chev. Bunsen shall, before I go much further, testify : but in the mean time I must go back to the vestiges which remain to us of one of those great races after their settlement as a civilized people, in order te trace the character of Egyptian influence over them. I may here premise, that when writing on this subject in 1846, I alluded to the researches of Signor Botta (commenced in 1843) at Khorsabad, pointing out their immense importance, and stating that *“we may look to receive from this quarter information of the most interesting and instructive character, as soon as the exploration of these ruins shall have been undertaken on an extensive scale. It may readily be conceived, that at such atime as this, vague speculation upon the character of the former tenants of these ancient realms, “ would not only be valueless but even impertinent ;’’ and Layard’s Nineveh that now (1849) is before me, speaks confirmation, welcome and eloquent, of the justice of the opimion. This able man and delightful writer, who has driven by sheer sense, skill, and enterprise a new adit into the dark hill of history, has furnished us in one of his discoveries, with evidence of the adoption of Egyptian habits, and of the existence of an Egyptianised race in works of art (ivory carved figures with hieroglyphics and symbols of Egyptian sovereignty found at Nimroud) having in form and style of art a purely Egyptian character, though certain pecu- liarities would seem to mark the work of a foreign, perhaps an Assyrian artist ;* the like were found at Kyomjik, another of the mighty mounds * It is most interesting to compare in Mr. Dennis’ Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (2 Vols. 8vo. London, 1848), an archeological discovery of precisely simi- lar character, simultaneously published with the Ninevehan one, as regards Egyptian imitative art, occurring in a very ancient Etruscan sepulchre at Vulci. This tomb, called by the discoverers Grotto d’ Iside (Cit. and Cem. Vol. Ist. p. 419) is the burial place of two ladies of rank, ‘‘ whose effigies are stillin existence, though nearly three thousand years may have elapsed since their decease.’’ Of the articles, vases, unguent-pots, and alabastra, in the tomb, ‘‘all have a strong Egyptian or oriental character; but with the exception of those evidently imported from the banks of the Nile, they are Etruscan imitations of Egyptian art, with the native stamp more or less strongly marked.’’ Of a particular vase, Mr. Dennis further observes—‘‘ So Egyptian-like are the chariots, and the procession of females, painted on this vase that the general observer would take it for an importation : yet the learned have pronounced it Egyptian only in character, and native in execution, though of most archaic style, and early date.’’ A necropolis of the Cc 10 Some conjectures on the progress of [ Jan. of ruins. But at Nimroud, a still stranger revelation was at hand. At a certain level in the mound, many tombs were found (Nineveh, vol. II. ch. XI.) containing the remains of the dead with vases, plates, mirrors, spoons, beads, and ornaments, “identical with similar remains found in the tombs of Egypt.’ Some of these tombs were built of baked bricks carefully joined, but without mortar; others were formed by large earthen sarcophagi covered with an entire alabaster slab. ‘“ Having carefully collected the contents of the tombs,” says Mr. Layard,