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does that authorize him (Rodier) to take that number, and by it ascend into antiquity, and verify a date fifteen thousand years before? Even if the number were legitimate or true, it could not be available for such a use. Such an application of it is unscientific and absurd. The absurdity may be well illustrated by a reference to the Julian period. The Julian period is formed by multiplying together the numbers of the solar cycle, lunar cycle, and cycle of indiction, i. e., 28 × 19 × 15. The product of these numbers is 7980. This period began B. C. 4713; i. e., the commencements of these three cycles coincide that year, as is found by reckoning backward from any point of time when the cycles were in use in the Roman empire. Now, supposing any one should attempt to maintain from this that the Roman state was in being, and the particular civil matters connected with the cycle of indiction were in vogue, B. C. 4713, his argument would be parallel to that of our French savant in the premises before us. I ask, in all soberness, is any language of denunciation too severe properly to characterize such a work? If there is in the whole compass of scientific literature a more inconclusive argument, a more irrational or uncritical process, than that of our author in his astronomical verification, as he terms it, of the date B. C. 14,611, it has not come under my notice.

Others of Rodier's dates, of a high antiquity, are open to the same criticism that I have bestowed on the few above mentioned.

D. Page 68.

MANETHO.

THE following is the account of Manetho, as given by Syncellus :

"It remains, therefore, to make certain extracts concerning the dynasties of the Egyptians from the writings of Manetho the Sebennyte, the high priest of the idolatrous temples of Egypt in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus. These, according to his own account, he copied from the inscriptions which were engraved in the sacred dialect and hieroglyphic characters upon the columns set up in the Seriadic land by Thoth, the first Hermes; and, after the deluge, translated from the sacred dialect, into the Greek tongue, in hieroglyphic characters; and committed to writing in books, and deposited by Agathodæmon, the son of the second Hermes, the father of Tât, in the penetralia of the temples of Egypt. He has addressed and explained them to Philadelphus, the second king Ptolemy, in the book entitled Sothis, as follows:

66 6

The Epistle of Manetho, the Sebennyte, to Ptolemy Philadelphus. To the great and august king Ptolemy Philadelphus, Manétho, the high priest and scribe of the sacred adyta, being by birth a Sebennyte, and citizen of Heliopolis, to his sovereign, Ptolemy, greeting:

"It is right for us, most mighty king, to pay due attention to all things which it is your pleasure we should take into consideration. In answer, therefore, to your inquiries concerning the things that shall take place in the world, I shall, according to your commands, lay before you what I have gathered from the sacred books written by Hermes Trismegistus, our forefather. Farewell, my prince and sovereign.'"*

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Syncellus then, after the letter, thus proceeds:

"He says these things respecting the interpretation of the books of the second Hermes; he afterwards gives a narrative concerning the five Egyptian nations, called with them gods, demigods, manes, and mortals, of whom Eusebius, alluding to them in his chronological writings, thus speaks: The Egyptians have strung together many trifling legends respecting gods and demigods, and with them manes (rezvòr), and other mortal kings. For the most ancient among them reckoned by lunar years of thirty days each, but those who came after called the horas (gous), periods of three months, years.”

It should be remarked that this letter to Ptolemy Philadelphus (with the work spoken of by Syncellus, Bißhos iñs

Σώθεως)

Zors) is pronounced by many* a forgery executed by some Jewish or Christian writer subsequent to the Christian era. This opinion, however, or charge of forgery, I can not think to be well sustained.

* Kenrick (Anc. Eg., vol. ii. p. 72) says the Book of Sothis "is proved to be spurious by the epithet Zeẞuotós, which the introductory epistle gives to Ptolemy, the translation of Augustus, and never found among the titles of the Ptolemies." And the writer of the article Manetho, in Smith's Dictionary, is equally positive that the letter and Book of Sothis are forgeries; and he mentions the occurrence of the epithet Sebastos as the principal reason for regarding them as the work of a pseudo Manetho. Though the epithet may not have been used as an official title given to, or assumed by, the Ptolemies, may it not have been applied occasionally to those sovereigns, e. g., Philadelphus? I have not yet seen satisfactory evidence that the letter above quoted and the Book of Sothis, spoken of by Syncellus, were not from the pen of the true Manetho, the great Egyptian historian.

E. Page 69.

MANETHO'S LISTS,

AS GIVEN BY AFRICANUS AND EUSEBIUS.

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THE version of Africanus is reported to us by Syncellus (Chron. pp. 18, 19) under this heading: Africanus respecting the Mythological Chronology of the Egyptians and Chaldeans." We regard the passage, therefore, as a quotation from Africanus, though Rawlinson (Herod. vol. ii. p. 69) thinks it is from Manetho. The point, however, is not important.

"Manetho, the Sebennyte, priest of the impure sacred rites in Egypt, who lived after Berosus, in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, like Berosus weaving lies, wrote to this same Ptolemy respecting the six* dynasties (that is, of the seven gods who never existed), who, he says, reigned through a period of 11,985 years. The first of these, the god Hephaistos, reigned 9000 years. But these 9000 years some of our historians (regarding them as so many lunar months, and dividing the whole number of days in them by 365, the number of days in a solar year) reduce to 727 years, thinking they have made a wonderful correction, whereas they have rather confounded truth with error in a manner that is ridiculous."

*So in the original, though there is reason to think that the language as written was sixteen, viz., seven gods and nine demigods. The passage, as it stands, does not make sense, and is evidently corrupted.

"THE FIRST DYNASTY.

1. Hephaistos (Vulcan) reigned over the Solar Years. Lunar Years.

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That is, the gods reigned 11985 years = 969 solar years.

2

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The year of the gods is lunar = 1 month; and the year of the demigods is trimestre, and called gos, four of which make one solar year.

In this table the names with the numbering, and the duration of the reigns in solar years, are as found in Syncellus; in the second column, or that of lunar years (months), only the 9000 of the first god-king are given by Syncellus,

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