It is each other in reference to time. The speculations of the ablest men are sure to fail if their chronology is fatally wrong. I remember the time when men talked gravely and learnedly of reminiscences of primeval revelation respecting the Trinity and other Christian doctrines, as having been preserved, though in a very corrupt state, in the Hindu traditions about Trimurti. Some, on the other hand, perhaps suspected that the Christian doctrine might have been derived through some unknown channel from a Hindu source. now acknowledged by all scholars that the Hindu doctrine in question is extremely modern; the first traces of it are to be sought more than fourteen hundred years, not before, but after, the Christian era. The work upon India of P. Von Bohlen used to be considered a decisive authority respecting the influence of Indian upon Egyptian culture. No such influence can any longer be admitted. Many of you have probably read Mr. McLennan's articles on the Worship of Animals and Plants. In order to show that the ancient notions passed through what he calls the Totem stage, which he says must have been in pre-historic times, he appeals to the signs of the Zodiac. "The Zodiacal constellations figured on the porticos of Dendera and Esne in Egypt are," he says, "of great antiquity." The authority for this statement is a passage from Chambers' Encyclopaedia, to the effect that "Dupuis, in his Origine des Cultes, has, from a careful investi gation of the position of these signs, and calculating precession at the usual rate, arrived at a conclusion that the earliest of them date from 4000 B.C. M. Fourier, in his 'Recherches sur la Science,' makes the representation at Esne 1800 years older than M. Dupuis." Mr. McLellan is here more than half a century behind his age. Every tourist on the Nile in possession of Murray's Handbook, knows that both Dupuis and Fourier were ludicrously mistaken.' The Zodiacal representations in question, far from being of great antiquity, belong to the very latest period of Egyptian workmanship; they are not anterior to the Christian era or the Roman domination; they were borrowed from the Greeks, and were entirely unknown to the ancient Egyptians. It is not sufficient to be in possession of trustworthy witnesses; it is also necessary to know the limit within which alone their evidence is really available. I am obliged, therefore, to say something about Egyptian chronology, especially as the current opinions on the subject are very vague and inaccurate. I shall not, however, detain you by entering into any of the questions which are still at issue between learned men who have given their attention to them, but will simply explain to you the nature of the undisputed evidence 1 All Mr. McLennan's statements about the ancient nations are based on equally worthless authorities. He goes for his facts to Bryant and to Lempriere's Dictionary. upon which we assign relative dates to the various periods of Egyptian civilization, and which imperatively demand that a very early date indeed should be assigned to the origin of that civilization. ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. Egyptian Chronology depends upon Monuments I PROMISED to explain the kind of evidence which compels us to assign a very remote antiquity to Egyptian civilization-so remote indeed as to appear simply fabulous to men whose studies of ancient history have been confined to Greece and Rome, and who know very soon historical evidence fails at the distance of a few centuries from the Christian era. Such men are not unnaturally inclined to suspect us of uncritically attaching importance to exaggerated or even fictitious numbers handed down by untrustworthy authorities. Such a suspicion is entirely without foundation. There is not a single Egyptian monument known which in its bearings upon chronology is liable to the charge of numerical exaggeration. The monuments, as a rule, never speak except of contemporary events. There are a few instances in which a temple built by an ancient sovereign is said to have been repaired or rebuilt by another, but the interval between the two sovereigns is unfortunately never stated. Monuments mentioning the Year of a Reign. Although Mena is the first of the Egyptian kings, and is repeatedly named, dates are never reckoned from his or from any other era, but are given by the year of the reigning king. This is never so high as to justify a doubt. We can certainly conceive the case of a forged inscription on a tombstone, saying that John Smith died on the 9th September, 1876, or (were such the custom of the country) in the 39th year of Queen Victoria; but unless good reasons for rejecting such a statement are produced, the law of historical evidence compels us to admit it. Most of the documents upon which we rely for Egyptian chronology are of this simple nature, and no one who has seen the tombs or buildings from which they have been taken, can dream for an instant that these inscriptions are less trustworthy than those in an English churchyard. The manifest defect for chronological purposes of such inscriptions is, that the last monumental year which happens to be preserved to us of a king is not necessarily the last of his reign. An error of several D |