The monuments afford abundant proof that among the Egyptians, from the highest to the lowest castes, it was not unusual to wear the hair long. The marginal drawing represents a rustic, (one of six on the monument,) who is engaged in a wrestling match. And it is hardly to be supposed that the profusion of hair with which his head is covered, can be any other than the natural growth.[11] A man thus occupied would find a difficulty in keeping a wig on his head. So also with another from a tomb at Thebes, wherein a carpenter of pleasing but rather effeminate physiognomy, is engaged in the labours of his art.[12] Another example, that subjoined (No. 1,) is derived from a funereal procession at Thebes,[13] but granting, what is quite possible, that the woman in this instance, wears only a head-dress, the contrary can be insisted on in reference to another painting, of a group of five women engaged in athletic exercises, in the midst of which, one of them holds and partially sustains the other by her long, straight hair; showing that the latter could be no other than the natural growth. (No. 2.) It is also interesting to remark, that this picture dates back into “the night of time,”—that remote period antecedent to the eighteenth dynasty, of which this is one of the many remains yet preserved in the celebrated tomb of Novotpth, at Beni-Hassan.[14] [Illustration: No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 ] Again, among the funereal processions at Thebes are several boat scenes, from one of which I derive the above drawing, representing an Egyptian woman in the act of lamentation, while her hair falls in long and graceful ringlets below her shoulders. (No. 3.) Another effigy, (No. 4,) that of an Egyptian lady from a painting in the Theban catacombs,[15] has the hair dressed in the same manner in which it is worn by the modern Nubian girls, as represented in one of the beautiful sketches by Mr. Wathen in his work on Egyptian architecture. These instances have been selected out of hundreds of a similar character which every where meet the eye on the Nilotic monuments, and which present a most satisfactory accordance with the evidence derived from the catacombs. Hamilton, in his Ægyptiaca, when describing the paintings at Elytheias, says that “the labourers are dressed in a kind of skull-cap, and have very little if any hair on their heads; while that of the others who superintend them spreads out at the sides, as with the Nubians and Berabera above the cataracts,”—and yet among these very labourers the hair of some is represented so long, that it projects beneath the cap and falls upon the shoulders.[16] If I may judge from the heads that have come under my notice, I should infer that the women, as a general rule at least, allowed their hair to grow; but that the practice was much less frequent among the men.