It has also been seen that there was nothing to be found of a primitive Ethiopian civilisation, or even of an ancient Ethiopian national culture, of which the new school of learning pretends to know so much; in fact, that we have every reason to deny its existence. Those accounts of the ancients which do not rest on totally erroneous information, only refer to the civilisation and arts of Egypt, which had fled to Ethiopia during the time of the supremacy of the Hyksos. The return of Egyptian might from Ethiopia, on the founding of the New Empire of the Egyptians, and its advance even into the depths of Asia, was transferred to the Asiatic traditions, and afterwards to the Greek, from the country of Ethiopia to the nation of Ethiopians; for no rumour of an older Egyptian empire, and its former peaceful prince had penetrated to the northern nations. I have transmitted a report to the Academy on the result of our Ethiopian journey, and I have given in it a sketch of Ethiopian history since the first conquest of the country by Sesurtesen III., in the twelfth dynasty of Manetho, till the prince of the Meroitic kingdom in the first centuries of our era, and then through the middle ages to the Bisharîba of the present day, whose sheikhs we saw, in chains, pass by the ruins of their former metropolis, and the pyramids of their ancient kings. LETTER XXIX. THEBES, QURNA. _January 8, 1845._ We have lately received the cheering intelligence that our colossal Ram and the other Ethiopian monuments have arrived safely at Alexandria. From here, too, we shall bring some important monuments; amongst them a beautiful sarcophagus, of fine white limestone, and partially covered with painted inscriptions, belonging to the Old Empire, the earliest era of the growing power of Thebes.[93]