Luckily, in the small temple of Khons, which formed an annex to the greater temple of Maut, at Karnac, there was found a _bas-relief_, partly perfect, which goes far toward giving light on the subject of Egyptian circumcision. The upper part of the sculpture was so defaced that the upper portions of four of the five figures were destroyed, but the lower portions were so perfect in every detail as to furnish a full history of the age of the candidates for the rite and the manner of its performance. It is further interesting from the fact that it establishes also the time during which the rite was so performed. M. Chabas and Dr. Ebers argue, from the founder of the temple having been Rameses II, that the sculpture refers to the circumcision of two of his children. The knife appears to be a stone implement, and the operator kneels in front of the child, who is standing, while a matron supports him in a kneeling posture, and she holds his hands from behind him.[2] In this _bas-relief_ we can see the great difference that existed between the two forms of the operation, that of the Hebrews being performed, as a rule, on the eighth day after birth, while in the _bas-relief_ they are ten or twelve years old. Although tradition and mythology veil past events in more or less obscurity, they do, in regard to circumcision, furnish considerable explanatory light on matters which would be otherwise hard to reconcile. Circumcision has been performed by the Chippeways, on the Upper Mississippi, and its modifications were performed among the Mexicans, Central Americans, and some South American tribes of Indians, as well as among many of the natives dwelling among the islands of the Pacific Archipelago. There is a tradition, mentioned by Donnelly in connection with the sunken continent of Atlantis, that Ouranos, one of the Atlantean kings, ordered his whole army to be circumcised that they might escape a fatal scourge then decimating the people to their westward.[3] This tradition tells us that the hygienic benefits of circumcision were recognized antediluvian facts, as it also points out the way by which circumcision traveled westward across to the Western World. As Donnelly has pointed out, many of the Americans possessed not only traditions, habits, and customs that must have come from the Old World, but the similarity of many words and their meaning that exists between some of the American languages and those of the indigenous inhabitants that have still their remains in spots on the southwestern shores of Europe--the ancient Armorica whose colony in Wales still retains its ancient words--leaves no room for doubt that at one time a landed highway existed between the two worlds. The Mandans, on the Upper Missouri, have many words of undoubted Armorican origin in their vocabulary,[4] just as the Chiapenec, of Central America, contains its principal words denotive of deity, family relations, and many conditions