The delineations of the Negro which are supposed to be of the most ancient date have not yet been identified with the epoch to which they belong. Such are those in a tomb at Thebes of the age of Amontuonch, an “unplaced king,” who is supposed to date prior to the sixteenth dynasty, and consequently more than two thousand years before Christ.[113] There is, however, a difference of opinion on this point; but we can refer with confidence and certainty to the celebrated “Procession” of the age of Thotmes the Fourth, at Thebes, in which Negroes are represented as tribute-bearers to that monarch at a period which dates about seventeen hundred years before our era.[114] Sir G. Wilkinson describes a painting in a catacomb at Thebes of the age of Amunoph the Third, in which that personage, seated on his throne, receives the homage and tribute of various nations. Among these are represented several “black chiefs of Cush, or Ethiopia,” whose presents consist of rings of gold, bags of precious stones, “a camelopard, panthers, skins, and long-horned cattle, whose heads are strangely ornamented with the hands and heads of Negroes.”[115] The author justly adds, that the latter effigies were probably artificial; for the people of Cush would scarcely have decapitated their own people to adorn their offerings to a foreign prince: yet at the same time these melancholy symbols were obviously designed to express the most abject self-abasement and vassalage. Other Negro delineations which can be identified with the age to which they belong, are found on the monuments of Horus, Rameses the Second, Rameses the Third, &c. in various places in Egypt and Nubia; and the first of these kings, (who dates with the nineteenth dynasty,) is represented standing on a platform which is supported by prostrate Negroes.[116] For the purpose of illustration, we select a single picture from the temple (hemispeos) of Beyt-el-Wàlee, in Nubia, in which Rameses the Second is represented in the act of making war upon the Negroes; who, overcome with defeat, are flying in consternation before him. From the multitude of fugitives in this scene, (which has been vividly copied by Champollion[117] and Rosellini, and which I have compared in both,) I annex a fac-simile group of nine heads, which, while they preserve the national features in a remarkable degree, present also considerable diversity of expression. [Illustration] The hair on some other figures of this group is dressed in short and separate tufts, or inverted cones, precisely like those now worn by the Negroes of Madagascar, as figured in Botteller’s voyage.