negro; and when he recollected, that Herodotus had long ago afferted his belief," that the Colchi were a colony of Egyptians, becaufe, like them, they had black skins and frizzled hair;" M. Volney. immediately concluded, that the ancient Egyptians were real negroes, of the fame fpecies with all the natives of Africa. He has added to this fuggeftion many very ingenious and interesting reflections. He lays it down as a general rule, that the features of a nation are a kind of monument capable, in many cafes, of elucidating and ascertaining the testimony of hiftory concerning the origin of nations. "How is our astonishment excited, when we behold the prefent barbarism and ignorance of the COPTS, defcended from the ancient Egyptians, men of fuch profound genius and fuch exalted science; and when we reflect, that to the race of negroes, at present our flaves, the objects of fuch extreme contempt to Europeans as to render it a problem among them whether the understanding of negroes be capable of the fame culture with that of WHITE MEN, yet that to this race we owe our arts, our sciences, and even the very use of speech."* Z 2 I fhall * See M. Volney's Travels in Egypt, vol. i. p. 83. I fhall hereafter endeavour to profit by these judicious remarks of M. Volney; and, when my history shall have at length commenced, I fhall apply this rule of difcrimination to fome. of the most venerated statues of India. It is not a little remarkable, that, according to Herodotus, there were two Ethiopias; one in Africa, the other in Afia: and, if the Delta of Egypt, was peopled by the Thebaic Ethiopians, it is, at least, poffible, that the peninfula of Egypt might have for its first inhabitants the Ethiopians of Afia. In addition to M. Volney's remarks on this subject, I must alfo be permitted to obferve, that the ancients really did, in fabricating their statues of men and objects, attend to the complexion, properties, or country to which they belonged. Mr. Addifon, in his travels, elegantly remarks, that he never faw any ftatue of SLEEP that was not of black marble; alluding, doubt less, to the night, which is appropriated to Пеер. fleep. All the ftatues of the NILE, and in particular that fine one at prefent to be feen in the garden of the Vatican at Rome, are black marble, emblematical of the colour of the Ethiopians, amidst whofe lofty mountains that river has its fource. "Ufque coloratis amnis devexus ab INDIS." This This quotation from Virgil, concerning the Nile, is highly deferving of notice, because it affords additional evidence of what was afferted in the early pages of the Geographical Differtation, that the name of INDIA was extended by the ancients to Ethiopia; and that, in fact, from their ignorance of the geography of the higher Afia, India and Ethiopia were fometimes confidered as the fame country. The reader will recollect, that one of the idols, in the pagoda of Jaggernaut, is described by Captain Hamilton as A HUGE BLACK STONE, OF A PYRAMIDAL FORM; and the SOMMONACODOM, being the representative of the Egyptian god and prophet ВоODH among the Siamese, is of the fame fable complexion. In the defcription from the Ayeen Akbery, inferted in a preceding page, of an immenfe temple erected to the fun by an ancient rajah, the reader has been made acquainted, that in the front of the gate . there ftood a pillar of black stone, of an octagonal form, fifty cubits high: he will hereafter be informed, from Tavernier, that, in the pagoda of Benares, that traveller likewife obferved a confpicuous idol of black stone; and that the ftatue of Creefhna, in his celebrated temple of MATHURA, is of black marble. It is very remarkable, that one of the principal : ceremonies incumbent upon the priests of these ftone deities, according to Tavernier, is to anoint them daily with odoriferous oils, a circumstance which immediately brings to our remembrance the fimilar practice of Jacob, who, after the famous vifion of the celestial ladder, recorded in Scripture, took the fone which he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a PILLAR, and poured oil upon the top of it. It is added, that be called the name of that place BETH-EL; that is, the house of God, as the pa. triarch himself explains the word; for this ftone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be called GOD'S HOUSE. Gen. xxviii. 18. This paffage evinces, of how great antiquity is the custom of confidering stones in a facred light, as well as the anointing them with confecrated oil, From this conduct of Jacob and this Hebrew appellative, the learned Bochart, with great ingenuity and reason, infifts that the name and veneration of the facred ftones, called BATYLI, so celebrated in all pagan antiquity, were derived.* Thefe Bætyli were stones of a round form; they were fuppofed to be animated, by means of magical incantations, with a portion of the Deity; they were consulted, on occafions of great and preffing emergency, as * Vide Bocharti Sacra Geograph. lib.i. p. 38. a kind a kind of divine oracles, and were fufpended, either round the neck, or on some other part of the body, of the enraptured devotee. Of these confecrated ftones, fome were dedicated to Jupiter and others to the SUN; but they were confidered as in a more particular manner facred to SATURN, who is fabled to have swallowed one of these ftones in the place of Jupiter, when he was feized with the fanguinary furor of devouring his children. The fable proceeds to affirm, that the god having found his mistake, and vomited it up again, this ftone was preferved near the temple of Delphi, where care was taken to anoint it daily with oil, and to cover it with wool, that had grown on the days of the SATURNALIAN festival.* The above relation affords a very remarkable proof (and it is very far from being the only one of the kind which these volumes. will exhibit) how closely the pagan world imitated, and how bafely they perverted, the religious rites of the ancient and venerable patriarchs. Thus, the fetting up of a stone, by this holy perfon, in grateful memory of the celestial Z 4 See Stephanus on the word Thaumafius, and alfo Paufanias, who more amply relates the ftory. The meaning of this curious fable seems to be, that Saturn, or Time, (as the word Chronos, elegantly called by Horace Tempus edax rerum, fignifies,) devours whatever he produces. His offspring are the revolving years. |