Edward King Kingsborough, viscount, an English archaeologist, born Nov. 16, 1795, died in Dublin, Feb. 27, 1837. He is distinguished for his great work entitled "Antiquities of Mexico, comprising Facsimiles of Ancient Mexican Paintings and Hieroglyphics, together with the Monuments of New Spain by M. Du-paix, with their respective Scales of Measurement, and accompanying Descriptions; the whole illustrated by many valuable inedited MSS." (9 vols, fol., London, 1830-'48). The eighth and ninth volumes were published after his death, which took place from a fever caught in a debtor's prison, where he had been temporarily confined for a resistance to an attempted imposition. The first seven volumes are estimated to have cost upward of $300,000. The work is chiefly valuable for its generally faithful reproduction, in facsimile, of such Mexican hieroglyphical or painted records and rituals as were known to exist in the libraries and private collections of Europe. These, however, are often carelessly arranged, and the pages so confused as to be utterly unintelligible except to advanced students in American archaeology.

Most of the original speculations of Lord Kings-borough are exceedingly loose and crude, and mainly directed to the establishment of the hypothesis of the Jewish origin of the American Indians, or at least of the semi-civilized nations of Mexico and Central America. The ninth volume, containing the relation of Don Alva Ixtlilxochitl, is imperfect, closing abruptly without finishing the relation. Since the publication of the work of Lord Kingsborough a large number of additional Mexican MSS. or paintings have come to light, including a considerable part of those collected by Boturini, and supposed to have been lost. It has also been found, by careful collation, that the facsimiles of the work are not always critically correct.