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the thirty-one dynasties, more nearly agreeing with the account of Eusebius. What is worthy of note in this connection is, that these two writers agree in putting the reigns of the gods, demigods, and manes before the socalled thirty-one dynasties, while other accounts, as that of the "Old Chronicle" and Castor, include them within the latter.

From Castor.

This was a heathen writer, who is believed to have flourished in the second century before Christ.* He also expressly mentions Manetho as his authority. According to him, the duration of the reigns of the gods was fifteen hundred and fifty years; then, of the demigods, heroes, and manes, twenty-one thousand years. Thus Egyptian prehistoric times, as measured by this writer, amount to but thirty-six hundred and fifty years, although the numbers he gives in the summing up do not agree with the details. The fragment of his work which has come down to us is, however, so corrupted that his statements are often self-contradictory. Like the preceding

chronologers, as Panodorus, Anianus, and Syncellus. The statements of Syncellus are not always definite, so that we can not determine whether he is giving his own language or that of another. There is scarcely room for doubt, however, that the numbers above given are, for the most part, correctly ascribed to Africanus.

* The chronological work of a Castor, supposed to be this author, is referred to by Apollodorus, who died about B. C. 140. - Smith's Dict. Gr. and Rom. Biog., art. Castor.

authors, he makes Hephaistus, or Vulcan, the first of the gods, and Menes the first of the mortal kings. He enumerates only seventeen dynasties."

What, now, is the practical value of this testimony in determining the problem before us? How far does it go to prove the existence of man on earth, at a period antecedent to the date assigned to his creation in the Scriptures?

That these accounts are not to be taken literally is evident upon the face of them. It would be an insult to the understanding of my readers to assure them that gods, i. e., superhuman beings, demigods (persons half divine and half human), and manes (which are the spirits or ghosts of the dead), did, in fact, reign over men on the earth at any time, or during any period. Yet, strange as it may seem, there have been writers of eminence who have actually made these accounts the basis of their chronology, and taken them into their systems as having some substantial value. How true is the remark, that no persons manifest so much credulity in the acceptance of extravagant and impossible theories, as those who profess themselves incredulous of the statements of the Bible!

The worthlessness of these stories, as an element of chronology, is also shown by the discrepancies

between them. The duration of the reign of the gods, &c., is variously stated to be all the way between thirty-six hundred and fifty and forty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-three years. There can be little doubt that these historians faithfully reported the accounts given them, either orally or in the sacred books. How evident it is, then, that those original authorities were utterly untrustworthy! either that the earlier Egyptian records were not understood in the times of Herodotus, Diodorus, and Manetho,* or that the work of Manetho himself has been so abridged and corrupted by epitomizers, through whose writings alone it appears to have been known after the times of Josephus, that it is now of little or no value for purposes of accurate chronology.

There is, however, a mode of estimating these long prehistoric periods which should be adverted to in this place. "We know," says Palmer (Egyp.

* Dr. Samuel Birch, of the British Museum, in his translation of the "Book of the Dead," says, "The new exegetical researches into the hieratic papyri have contributed to throw additional light on many obscure passages; but there are others, the meaning of which will probably long remain ambiguous—a circumstance not to be wondered at when it is remembered that the correct or ancient reading was so to the Egyptians themselves at a very early period of their theology.” — Additional Notes, P. 333.

Chron. vol. i. p. 30), "that under the Ptolemies and the Romans the idea existed that the vast periods of the Egyptians, of the Chronicle, and of Manetho in particular, had been swelled to their apparent bulk by counting, for the earlier spaces of time, months under the name of years." Herodotus and Plato, or Eudoxus, no less than later writers, had heard that the earliest Egyptian" years were months of thirty days: “ Εἰ δὲ καὶ ὅ φησιν Εύδοξος ἀληθὲς, ὅτι Αιγύπτιοι τὸν μῆνα ἐνιαυτὸν ἐκάλουν, οὐκ ἂν ἡ τῶν πολλῶν τούτων ἐνιαυτῶν ἀπαρίθμησις ἔχοι τι θαυμαστόν.”* (Proclus. in Tim. p. 31, 1. 50.) Diodorus Siculus adds more particularly that, according to some, the long reigns of the earlier gods, who had above 1200 years each, were composed of months of thirty days, not real years; and those of the later gods, who had over 300 years each, were composed of seasons,† of four months each, the native Egyptian year being divided into three seasons, of spring, summer, and winter, not four, like the Greek. On this ground, Eusebius reduced the whole period of the gods, demigods, and manes, to 2,206 years, which is an approximation to the space from the creation to the deluge, according to the Septuagint chronology.

* "And if Eudoxus reports correctly, that the Egyptians call a month a year, the reckoning of those many years would not contain anything wonderful." † ὥραι.

The "Old Chronicle" allots 34,201 years to the ante-human reigns, which, reduced upon the same principle, amounts to 2765 solar years. Thus interpreted, we obtain a clew to the actual duration of the mythological period of the ancient Egyptians, viz., that there had been a space of between two and three thousand years from the creation to the commencement of the Egyptian monarchy.

This, certainly, is a possible explanation of the matter. I know, indeed, that Bunsen mentions it with a sneer, and dismisses it as not entitled to a moment's thought. He regards it as a mere expedient of Christian chronographers to bring the chronology of Egypt into harmony with that of the Jewish Scriptures. Wilkinson likewise says that this ground is untenable. But the explanation was not first made by Christian writers. When Herodotus, Diodorus, and others spoke of it as an ancient method of reckoning time, they doubtless had evidence of the fact, which may now be lost; and they manifestly give it as a fact, and not as a mere opinion of their own.

Such a mode of reckoning time would, at first, be the most natural and easy. It is, in fact, that of almost all uncultivated nations to this day. The revolutions of the moon are more obvious and definite than those of the earth, the diurnal excepted,

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