THE following therefore may be stated as the results of our previous inquiry, in part already demonstrated partly reserved as points for future investigation.

I. The Egyptians possessed writing and books at the earliest period of which we have any monuments. Styli and inkstands are found on those of the 4th Dynasty, the oldest in the world.

II. The earliest writings of the Egyptians were contained in their Sacred Books.

III. In these Sacred Books - one of which we possess were contained elements of the history of the Old Empire.

IV. The whole strictly historical tradition of the Egyptians hinged upon Lists of Kings, arranged according to the succession of reigning families.

V. Ballads in praise of their Kings were likewise in circulation, in the purely Historical, as well as in the Mythological period (lays of Osiris and Sesostris).

These five propositions are proved by the concurrent testimony of the monuments, and of Greek tradition.

VI. Egyptian history subdivides itself into three comprehensive periods—the Old Empire of Menes—the Middle Empire, during which Egypt was tributary to the Hyksos who reigned in Memphis and the New Empire, from the 18th Dynasty, which expelled the Hyksos, downwards. This threefold division is established by the monuments — even by those of the 18th Dynasty alone also by the authority of Manetho.

VII. From an early period of the New Empire contemporary with the Exodus - have been preserved two monumental Tablets, and one written List containing copious registers of Kings belonging to the two previous empires- viz. the Tablet of Tuthmosis, the Tablet of Ramesses, and the Turin Papyrus.

VIII. The Tablet of Tuthmosis gives 30 Kings of the Middle and 31 of the Old Empire. The Tablet of Ramesses the 18th Dynasty and 39 Kings of the Old Empire. The Royal Papyrus must have registered above 250 Kings-the Rings of 139 are more or less preserved.

IX. The series of Kings are partly a succession of actually reigning Pharaohs, partly royal genealogies of collaterals, who never mounted the throne - and who are distinguished as such.

X. The previous inquiry shows gaps and chasms in the above series of Kings.

XI. The succession in the Royal Papyrus is by Dynasties, beginning with those of the Gods, between whom and Menes intervenes an indeterminable number of mythological, or, if historical, merely local sovereigns.

XII. Co-regencies nowhere appear in the Papyrus-if there were such (and the monuments prove there were) it must be assumed that in that document the individual Kings of such conjoint reigns were registered in a successive order.

XIII. Manetho, who under the first Ptolemies opened up to the Greeks the treasures of Egyptian antiquity, civil and religious, is a purely historical personage, concerning whom the notices transmitted by Greek and Latin writers are noway contradictory. None of the later native historians can be compared with him.

XIV. His historical work comprised a period of 3555 years, from Menes to Alexander, and was of a nature altogether different from our Lists of Kings, although it is highly probable that, according to Egyptian custom, it contained such Lists from the 1st to the 30th Dynasty. XV. It is doubtful whether the passages preserved by Josephus are quotations from the original work, probably they are taken from an epitome or extracts of the same; but it is certain that his Lists of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties come from such extracts.

XVI. Manetho's original authorities were not limited to the old Royal Lists and Sacred Books. He must also have had access to treatises on earlier periods of history in the form of annals, where popular legends and unauthenticated traditions found a place by the side of more strictly historical matters. Legends of this nature are introduced in his account of the Exodus, but he distinguished them from authentic history.

XVII. The sums of the reigns, in the individual Dynasties, make up considerably more than 3555 years. Consequently they were not all consecutive, but must some of them have been contemporary.

XVIII. It is besides very doubtful whether he meant the sum total of years for any one Dynasty to represent its actual duration, or only the aggregate of the separate sums for each reign contained in that Dynasty—whether the whole number of its Kings was consecutive, or comprised likewise co-regents.

XIX. However this may have been, Manetho must also have possessed and given in his lost work a Chronological Canon or Key.

XX. It can hardly be doubted that the critics of the Alexandrian Museum knew and availed themselves of his Canon.

It has been obviously beyond the scope of our previous inquiry to offer more than a preliminary or conditional proof of the greater number of chronological data above recapitulated. Their complete demonstration must be sought first of all in the comparison of Egyptian and Greek tradition, and in the history of Egyptian Chronology during the Christian ages. To this task the three following Sections will be devoted. The more conclusive details of evidence can only be supplied by a comparative criticism of all the traditions with each other and the monuments. This will be undertaken for the Old Empire in the second-for the Middle and the New, in the third, Book.

In the mean time we trust that the results of our previous train of illustration will justify us in asserting that Egyptian historical research, even apart from the still extant contemporary monuments of the individual reigns, extending back to the fifth century after Menes, stands on a far surer basis than it has hitherto been customary to assume, even in regard to much later epochs. In spite of the fearful ravages of time and of man, and although systematic excavation and connected scientific research have barely yet commenced, we possess even now chronological records of a date anterior to any period from which MSS. are preserved, or in which indeed the art of writing can be shown to have existed in any other quarter. Further, we have contemporary monuments with the names of Kings, whose antiquity exceeds that of those written records, almost as much as they do that of the beginning of our chronology, namely about 1500 years. Lastly, we have every reason to suppose that a genuine historical tradition formed the groundwork of these chronological writings. We already see the chaos of Egyptian antiquity divided into three large masses. The only question that remains is, whether we can succeed in finding a key to a further purely chronological division of each of these masses, by means of the Lists of Kings and monuments? and whether we can extend the limits within which the individual Kings of the Egyptian monuments and the principal points in the primeval history of nations can be developed.

SECTION II.

THE RESEARCHES OF THE GREEKS INTO EGYPTIAN
CHRONOLOGY,

INTRODUCTION.

AND

THE IONIAN

THE MORE ANCIENT TRADITION THAT OF HOMER
THE LATER THON (THONIS) AND PROTEUS.

SETTLERS IN EGYPT.

Ir the legends concerning Cecrops the Egyptian, and Ægyptus the son of Belus (father of Ninus), and brother of Danaus, be ancient, and allude to events really connected with the land of Egypt-still they are anterior to all chronology, and belong to the fabulous infancy of Hellas. We shall endeavour to show in the Fifth Book the probability of the former assumption being well founded, although neither Cecrops biformis, nor Ægyptus the son of Belus, were Egyptians. Those legends only present us with the back-ground of Greek tradition concerning Egypt. That tradition first distinctly appears in the text of Homer. The Poet of the Odyssey, in the fourth book, introduces Menelaus giving a description of his voyage with Helen to the Heaven-sprung river Egyptus-of the divinations of the Sea-God Proteus, the Everchanging — and of the healing plants, which Polydamna gave to Helen. This Polydamna he calls the wife of Thon. Later writers, doubtless for their amusement, converted him into a King Thonis, of whom history knows as little as does the divine Homer. Diodorus and Strabo prove that Thonis was the ancient name of a commercial city near the mouth of the Nile, not far from Canopus. It was probably the same afterwards called Heracleum, and