on second-hand authority in every case, what uncertainty may attend conclusions seemingly the most positive on grounds seemingly the most satisfactory. Manetho, for instance, only lives in the Chronographia of Syncellus, in the Armenian version of the Chronicon of Eusebius, in the work of Josephus Contra Apion., and in the still less important Excerpta of St. Theophilus to Autolycus.

Extracts from Eratosthenes and Apollodorus are to be found in Syncellus only; while matters comparatively unimportant to our subject, that is, distinct from the chronology and history of the country, are to be found in Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Pliny, Strabo, Chæremon, and Lysimachus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Berosus, Alexander Polyhistor, and Julius Africanus: one half even of these surviving only at second-hand. Syncellus, then, is clearly the mainstay of the student; and his report of Manetho, Eratosthenes, and Apollodorus, is what we have almost exclusively to rely upon; his testimony being open to all the exception, on the score of human infirmity, which a prudent judge will take to evidence of such a nature. He gives Manetho's lists in an imperfect form, at a distance of a thousand years after Manetho's death, from manuscripts which, during that protracted period, had undergone the fate of all manuscripts under transcription, and had become replete with errors, the greater part made unconsciously, but some doubtless purposely manufactured ones, in the shape of attempted emendations. When we see the accidents which have befallen the copies of the Holy Scriptures for a thousand years before the invention of printing, works which an enlightened piety and a sectarian zeal alike conspired to preserve from erroneous transcription, we must not expect works of less value and sacredness to be free from blemish. The very nature of Manetho's work, too, chronological and dealing much in ciphers, is one peculiarly obnoxious to important variations, from the slightest causes. As numerals, moreover, are represented in Greek by the letters of the alphabet, the mere substitution of one letter for another closely resembling it, might alter the value of a sum a thousand times. These considerations are named, not to disparage Syncellus, nor to prepossess the mind against Bunsen, but to suggest that preparatory caution, which, in handling a subject mainly chronological, a correct view of our present duty demands at our hands. Any conclusions based upon an authority so insufficient, and which really resolves itself into the testimony of a single person, would carry little conviction with them, were they not supposed to be substantiated by collateral and very important evidence, in the shape of existing monuments. These latter we shall briefly describe, so that the student may have all the evidence before him on which Bunsen founds his verdict; the documentary being that already mentioned, and

Monumental Evidence.

7

the monumental consisting of the Tablet of Karnak, the Tablet of Abydos, and the Papyrus Roll in the Royal Museum of Turin.

In an apartment of the palace-temple of KARNAK was discovered by Burton, a learned English traveller, a sculpture on the walls, representing four rows of Kings, with Tuthmosis III. at the end of each two rows, offering sacrifice. There are sixtyone figures in all; and Lepsius, of Berlin, by the aid of the Turin Papyrus, seems to have ascertained that the two Kings in the third and fourth rows, immediately in front of Tuthmosis, are Amenemes I. and Osortesen I., two Monarchs of the Twelfth Dynasty of Manetho, that is, the last entire Dynasty of the Old Empire. Tuthmosis III. is himself the fifth Ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty; and from the groups and inscriptions on this remarkable sculpture,-some of the figures being unaccompanied by the usual throne marks, and others being distributed in a very promiscuous order,-the conclusion has been gathered, that a genealogical, and not a dynastic, succession of Princes is recorded here. The monument itself, however, is of prime value, as corrective of the historical dates and notices given by the ancient epitomists of the chronology of Egypt.

Another English traveller, Mr. Banks, has been fortunate enough to bring to light the TABLET OF ABYDOS, or Rameses, carved with the name and effigy of that Monarch, (Sesostris, the third King of the Nineteenth Dynasty,) and his predecessors. It is deposited in the British Museum. The slab exhibits two horizontal rows of Kings, seated beneath their royal cartouches, to the number of twenty-six in each row. The stone has been much mutilated, and the right side of it shows thirteen-that is, one-half the names in the upper row-utterly obliterated, and eight in the lower. Nevertheless, such is either the cleverness of modern hypothetists in guessing, or, as Bunsen would phrase it, such the unquestionable certainty of modern research, that Lepsius has succeeded in ascertaining the names of the missing figures. This he has done by the help of the Turin Papyrus, shortly to be described. The grand fact, however, discovered by this sagacious Egyptologer is, that the Twelfth Dynasty precedes the Eighteenth without any interval; an extraordinary circumstance, if true, and provocative, to a high degree, of further investigation.

In the Library of THE ROYAL MUSEUM AT TURIN is deposited the sole remaining memorial we shall name, of use in checking and corroborating the accounts of the historians of Egypt. Its presence in Europe is one of the many fruits of the French invasion of Egypt; as is the invaluable Rosetta Stone, the talisman without whose aid all the literature of Ancient Egypt would have remained sealed up to us in an impenetrable tomb. The document which we are now describing is a fragmentary Papyrus Roll in the hieratic character of the time of the Rames

sides, or the Kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty. It is six feet long, fourteen inches in height, is arranged in twelve columns, and has the names of from twenty-six to thirty Kings in each column. In the fragmentary portions of this scroll, vestiges of about two hundred names were found to exist; and it has been conjectured that it originally contained as many as two hundred and fifty,-an embarrassing plenitude of crowned heads, but for the reasonable supposition that co-regencies, or something equivalent to such an arrangement, are registered in this monument, as appears to be the case elsewhere. In this very scanty enumeration of authorities,-namely, that of one author of the Church representing three Pagan chronographers who had flourished a thousand years before him,-together with the three precious but imperfect monumental records just described, is comprised the whole library of really efficient and valuable Egyptian literature; all from which the student may argue, all from which the castle-builder may construct, all from which the antiquarian and chronologist may safely infer. Pyramids, tombs, and palaces will, of course, furnish incidental names and nations, to fill up chasms or confirm facts already surmised; individual features and singular details may be painted in, by the help which these casual tracings supply; but the documents and writers above named exhaust the series of the original classical and consecutive records of the dynastic history of Ancient Egypt. Where these fail us, the light is darkness. "How great, then, must be that darkness!"

But, notwithstanding this dearth of materials to furnish a complete history of the ancient times of the mysterious land of the veiled Isis, there has been no lack of enterprise to turn the scanty supply to the most liberal account. In the résumé which follows will be found a fair account of the results of modern Egyptian research, the most advanced opinions and most elaborately compacted details being ascribable to the sagacity and untiring industry of our author. The course of Egyptology, or the study of the antiquities of Egypt, has issued, in the hands of the intelligent modern students of the matter, in the adoption of the theory of three different successive Dynastic periods in the history of the nation, called severally the "Old Empire," the "Middle Empire," and the "New Empire." Of these, the duration

Of the First, according to Eratosthenes, was
Of the Second, reasoning from Apollodorus's List of
Kings

And the Third, according to Manetho

Or, in all...

Years. 1,076

900 1,300

That Manetho and Eratosthenes really describe the same personages and reigns under the first twelve Dynasties, although

Comparison of Lists of Dynasties.

9

the number of names and the sum of their combined reigns do not correspond, is generally believed, from the fact that, at sundry intervals in their respective lists, the names do correspond in every particular, allowance being made for the following qualification; namely, that Eratosthenes pursued the Greek historical method of mentioning only the actually reigning Sovereign, while Manetho pursued the Egyptian one of naming co-regents, even females in some cases; and that thus the sum of Eratosthenes must be considered the correct one, while that of Manetho has received, from the aggregation of the co-regencies, an untrue addition of nearly three hundred years. If these assumptions are taken for granted, a resemblance, amounting almost to identity, will appear in their lists. Manetho, it must be understood, represents the whole period from Menes to Alexander, under the designation of Thirty Dynasties, as covering a period of 3,555 years, of which the earlier portion, embracing twelve of the Dynasties, corresponds here and there, but in the same order of succession, with the names of thirtyeight Kings preserved by Eratosthenes.

To make this more clearly understood, we present the names which correspond in each list, and indicate the exact place in succession of the Kings on both sides.

It has been reasonably supposed, from the correspondence presented at different points in these lists, with the exception of a slight dislocation, that both the chronologers were dealing with the same historical period and personages, although the list of Manetho professes in its Twelve Dynasties to embrace fifty-four Sovereigns, while that of Eratosthenes confines itself to thirtyeight. The correspondence extends to considerably more than one third of the names of Eratosthenes.

While, however, we admit that the industry and ingenuity with which our author labours to reconcile Manetho and Eratosthenes are very great, we quite agree in the judgment pronounced on this effort by Mr. Kenrick; namely, that "we cannot feel such confidence in its soundness as to make it the basis of a history."

It has been assumed, that the Turin Papyrus was constructed on the same extended plan as the lists of Manetho. For although some deduction must be made from its two hundred and fifty original names, on the score of heroes and demi-gods belonging to the ante-historical or mythical period, there will nevertheless remain more names of mortal Sovereigns for the Old Empire, dating from Menes to the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty, than will comport either with other documentary evidence, or with that of the monuments. It is therefore conIcluded, that a method similar to Manetho's prevails in this Papyrus, and that it is to be reconciled, by a discriminating criticism, with the more scanty, but at the same time more credible, catalogue of Eratosthenes. But we must not leave entirely out of our account that very obvious and constantly intrusive cause of disturbance of calculations, the laches of transcribers, which are found to affect reports of numbers in manuscripts even more than the ordinary text; of which lâches a notable instance occurs in the Seventh Dynasty of Manetho, to which an unknown but large number of Kings is ascribed, while the duration of their joint reigns is given as seventy days. This must be a mere mistake, which it is now impossible to account for, or to rectify.

Whatever may be the cause of this and other similar absurdities, it is quite certain that we have no manuscripts of Manetho, or Eratosthenes either, at first hand, not even their works in an independent shape, but only scanty and imperfect reports at second hand in the summaries of epitomists. These, from their conflicting views and objects in epitomizing, observed different phases of the subject-matter before them, and, consequently,selected different materials for extract; while ignorant copyists, in all ages, have made still greater havoc of the materials in question.

Eratosthenes' list of thirty-eight so-called Theban Kings of Egypt, as given in Manetho, concludes with the third Sovereign in the Thirteenth Dynasty of Manetho's own computation. It has been often asked, Why did this learned chronologer terminate his list here, two thousand years before his own times, according to the systems adopted by our author? But the question has never been answered. Historical data we have none, and speculation is not only vain, but mischievous.

In passing from this, the earliest portion of Egyptian history, we remind the reader, that Manetho gives 1,300 years to the Dynasties, from the Second to the Eleventh, inclusive; to which