"Manetho registered these primeval reigns of the Egyptian Kings. It is also stated in his writings that the five planets bore quite different names among the Egyptians. Saturn, they called the Enlightening; Jupiter, the Shining; Mars, the Fiery; Venus, the Loveliest; Mercury, the Sparkling.

"In later times, Sostris, of the descendants of Ham, was the first who reigned over Egypt (in the Chronicle, Sesostris). This conqueror brought 15,000 young Scythians to settle in Persia, where they still reside: the Persians call them Parthyâi; and they preserve their Scythian dialect to this day.

"Hermes Trismegistus lived under Sesostris. Pharaoh, who is likewise called Maracho (in the Chronicle, Nachor-Necho ?), succeeded him on the throne, and from him sprung the kings who afterward successively reigned over Egypt."

With such an example before us of the rapid degradation of history into fiction, how can we wonder at those fables of our own middle ages, where Eneas and Ascanius appear as the ancestors of the Franks? In Germany also, history relapsed into fiction, during the same dark period. The realities of human existence were banished into the background, and historical fact denoted everything except itself. Here, however, from the ruins of history, a genial tradition arose, and was matured into the great national epos of the German races; and, even on the crumbling remains of the primeval Cimmerian world, a fair edifice of poetry, beaming with life, and love, and energy, was constructed. But lastly, there lay here in the bosom of dreamy time the germ of a New World; and, with the downfal of Byzantium, a light burst forth over the departed glories of Greece and Rome, by the rays of which the darkest pages of the past were destined ere long to be again brilliantly illumined.

C.

THE RESEARCHES OF WESTERN AND MODERN EUROPE INTO EGYPTIAN HISTORY.

I. THE RESEARCHES OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGERS-JOSEPH SCALIGER, MARSHAM, PERIZONIUS, HEYNE, HEEREN, ZOEGA.

GOETHE has characterised chronology as one of the most difficult sciences, requiring a combination of distinct branches of knowledge, and the application of an extensive variety of mental faculties. The history of the revival of chronology in the 15th and 16th centuries is a striking proof of the correctness of this remark. Already, during a century and a half, historical research and general science, inspired, first, by the genius of poetry and art, and the universal longing of mankind after the past golden age of genuine virtue-afterwards by the zeal of the noblest intellects, in the pursuit of the noblest objects-had done much to rescue the more valuable remains of the ancient world from the havoc of the middle ages-when, towards the close of the 16th century, Joseph Scaliger commenced his great undertaking, the restoration of ancient chronology. In order to estimate aright the difficulty of the undertaking, and the grandeur of its success, we must first have clearly before us the circumstances under which it was commenced.

Down to that period, the scholars of Western Europe had contented themselves with St. Jerome's translation of the practical portion of the labours of Eusebius, namely, the Canon of Synchronisms. The key to that canon the collection of original records, with the compiler's commentary on their contents-he had left untranslated. Manetho's Lists were unknown, and even that of Eratosthenes slumbered with the work of Syncellus in the obscurity of the Paris Royal Library.

Scaliger in searching for the first, discovered the second also, and published both in a critical form, after the Parisian MS. Manetho's Lists he gave after the tradition of Africanus. He calls them "a glorious and inestimable record," although he possessed no common standard by reference to which they could with any certainty be applied to his chronology, inasmuch as they reached back beyond the Flood, and even beyond his own first year of the World. This he assumed to be the year 3950, in conformity with the Hebrew text. As a common basis for the computation and comparison of epochs, he invented the progressive Julian period of 7980 years, the first year of which is 4713 B. C. But so thoroughly convinced was he that the primeval annals of Egypt extended far beyond the date thus assigned to the creation, that he required and introduced before the commencement of that epoch another, the last 971 years of which he claimed for the first four Dynasties of Manetho. Petavius, his learned theological and chronological antagonist, in his great work, published in 1627, consequently twenty-two years after the appearance of that of Scaliger, fell upon a shorter method. "That the Egyptian Dynasties are fabulous," he asserts, "and that the earliest in the list are fabrications, is self-evident; we have therefore so stated it in a few words." If this statement is meant for a proof, it still remains due, for he has advanced nothing but positive assertions in his comments on the Egyptian records.

After the death of Scaliger, in the year 1652, Syncellus was at length edited by Goar. The complete Lists of Manetho in Eusebius were at the same time brought to light, and could now therefore be collated with the critical Lists of the two most celebrated Alexandrian chronologers, Eratosthenes and Apollodorus. What Scaliger had been unable to undertake, would perhaps have been accomplished by his successors,

had not the natural course of historical philosophy been in most countries of Europe impeded; and in France more especially, the cradle of historical criticism, almost totally obstructed by a series of wars and civil dissensions. Philosophical science, indeed, found a refuge in Holland and England; but the previous spirit of genial research and ardent zeal for original investigation had now given place to the mechanism of servile commentary, and an uncritical parade of scholastic learning. The consequence was that the precious gems, which lay concealed in the rubbish of Syncellus, remained unnoticed; while on the other hand, the synchronistic system of that author and of Eusebius, with their whole train of wilful or unconscious falsehood and confusion, passed for well-established canons of chronology. Even those wholly valueless impostures, the so-called Old Chronicle, with the Pseudo-Manetho of the Dog-Star, and the later Lists of Kings, which first came to light in Syncellus, met with consideration-at least for the time being-whenever they seemed to square with some favourite chronological theory, some theological or philological whim. Even before the year 1670, in which the great war of Egyptian chronology broke out, the pioneers and out-skirmishers had done much to complicate the difficulties of the campaign. Unable to extract, sift, and set apart from the promiscuous materials at their disposal the practical and tangible elements for future inquiry and illustration, they arbitrarily mixed up the whole in one confused and undistinguishable mass.

In the year above mentioned, Marsham brought out his Canon Chronicus. This work contained a chronology of eighteen centuries after the Flood, with a new plan of synchronistic arrangement. It was compiled with especial reference to Egypt, and submitted her Lists of Kings to a detailed examination. Much as he and his contemporary Spencer attributed to the influence of

Egyptian institutions upon Moses and the Law, he was but little inclined to meddle with the Dynasties. Although he admits that Petavius had brought forward no arguments either against them, or the views of Scaliger, he still flattered himself that he had found an easy and convenient method of dispensing with them, which appeared to him a most desirable object. His whole procedure betrays the spirit of a new period; pure truth is no longer the prize to be contended for, but the establishment of a convenient system. He begins by assuming that the Pseudo-Manetho of the Dog-Star is the historian of the Ptolemies, and admits the authenticity of the old chronicle. But then, as if such unwarranted authorities were still too good for him, he fastens on the very worst he could find, viz. the forgery of Syncellus, to which attention has above been directed! "How convenient is it," he remarks, "to disembarrass ourselves at once of the first 15 Dynasties of Manetho, and instead of them to have only 443 years with 15 kings! There remain besides 10 kings; and these make up the first of the 10 Dynasties with which Syncellus supplies us. This first Dynasty suits my purpose exactly-where Syncellus obtained it I do not inquire; for that he must be responsible." As to the other Dynasties, he does not certainly deny that they are a palpable corruption of the Lists of Africanus, as well as of those of Eusebius. 183 In closing his critical review with "how can we be sufficiently astonished at the indiscretion of this man!" he alludes to Syncellus, but describes his own proceeding with the nicest exactitude.

So much for Marsham's critical basis of primeval Egyptian history. In the historical period itself he has found a lever altogether worthy of such a fulcrum to assist in overturning the system of Scaliger.

183 pp. 6, 7. in the Leipzig edition.

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