Hybrid Hate by Tudor Parfitt

Author:Tudor Parfitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Waitz also referenced the famous American poet, journalist, and travel writer Bayard Taylor, mentioned earlier in the chapter, who had traveled in Egypt and written a vivid account of his journey. Taylor, whose expert views both as traveler and poet were valuable, was even more certain than others that the faces of contemporary Jews and negroes were reflected in the images along the Nile Valley. Taylor, according to Waitz, “still more decidedly points out upon the old Egyptian monuments the distinguishable form of Negroes, Persians and Jews.” Many, Waitz pointed out, had argued that the Jews were the clinching proof of the importance of climate in changing color on the one hand and also of the “permanence of type” on the other. And indeed, he asserted that the Jews’ unmistakable “national physiognomy” was everywhere to be found “depicted upon the ancient monuments of Egypt.” However, Waitz pointed out, this was hardly surprising, as “in every region of the world” their “domestic economy and degree of civilization” had always been a function of the state of oppression in which they lived, and which forced them “to a closer connexion between themselves.” In such a case, “no wonder if their cranial type as well as their character remained unchanged” (Waitz.1863 pp.223–224).

However, even accepting the special circumstances surrounding Jews, the unchanging look of the Jewish people took some explaining. For Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Hamilton Smith (1776–1859), the soldier, spy, illustrator, and naturalist, it was an open question:

It is difficult to decide whether their own obstinacy of character, or the unceasing injustice of mankind, have been other than agents, mutually acting upon each other, to produce that permanent manifestation in their forms and opinions which separates them from human society, as it were, by a lasting miracle; still the persecuted Jew bears on his front the tokens of mental power, in his make the attributes of physical strength. (Smith.1848 p.878)

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