of lies!' Nobody was able, in those times, to gainsay so many books of learning, and many poor Christians were led astray."

The author then proceeds to explain the method by which so great an antiquity was deduced from the inscription. They found certain marks, from which they inferred that the vernal equinox, at the time the temple was erected, was between the signs Cancer and Leo, of the zodiac, and, as the equinoxes recede at the rate of about fifty seconds a year, or one degree in seventy-two years, a simple calculation showed that it must have been at the point supposed not less than 17,000 years ago. Hence the date of the temple, and hence, too, the demonstration that the Bible was false! But alas for pretensions so confident! When Champollion, having discovered the mode of deciphering the hieroglyphics, examined this famous zodiac, he read upon it the name and titles of Augustus Cæsar, showing that its origin was no more ancient than the Christian era. And this conclusion has been abundantly confirmed by others. Thus Letronne,* having recited some of the principal facts, particularly in relation to a zodiac found in a mummy-case, - precisely like that at Denderah, — on which was

* Recueil des Inscriptions, Grecques et Latines, de l'Egypt. Paris, 1842. Introd. p. 20.

traced a Greek inscription, giving the name of the deceased, and date of his death, which was the nineteenth year of Trajan, remarks, —

"Thus it was demonstrated that all the zodiacal representations which existed in Egypt are found only upon monuments of the Greek and Roman periods, and that none of those of Pharaonic times-temples, tombs, or mummies - offer the least trace of them; from which results the evident proof that the zodiac, so far from having originated in Egypt, as was generally believed, after the opinion of Dupuis, was a stranger in that country till after it had passed through the hands of the Greeks."

The same writer adds, in another work,* that, in his opinion, all the six Egyptian zodiacs which have been discovered were posterior to the reign of Tiberius, and were "executed in the space of less than one hundred years between 57 and 150 of

our era."

Similar results have been derived from an examination of four wooden tablets brought from Egypt by Rev. Henry Stobart in 1854.† These measured each four by two and a half inches, and were covered on both sides with quintuple columns of demotic characters, which proved to be a series of

* Sur l'Origine Grecque des zodiaques pretendus Egyptiennes. Paris, 1837.

† Dr. J. P. Thompson, in Bib. Sacra, vol. xiv. pp. 651-654.

observations upon the places of the five planets in the signs of the zodiac. The reading of these tablets by the eminent Egyptologists Brugsch and Lepsius affords a curious example of the different conclusions reached by the masters of Egyptian interpretation. In regard to four out of the five planets, the two are in entire disagreement, that of Mars alone being the same in both readings.

M. Brugsch submitted a careful translation of these tablets to some of the leading astronomers of Europe, and received a reply from M. Biot, of Paris, transmitting the calculations of Mr. Ellis, of the Greenwich Observatory, to the effect that "these are, without doubt, records of the places of the planets. Those which he has restored extend from the year 105 to the year 114 of our era. This last point corresponds with the close of the reign of Trajan in Egypt." Mr. Biot adds, "That these notations of planetary places were made after actual observations seems to me not at all probable. In fact, for this there must have been, in the time of Trajan, at Thebes or Memphis, a grand observatory, manned by accomplished observers, well appointed with instruments, and making constant note of the movements of the planets; all things of which there is no trace in Egypt at that epoch except at Alexandria, and there only to a limited extent.

I therefore incline to regard these tablets as having been the note-book (calepin) or the year-book of a Roman or Greek astrologer living in Egypt, who thus inscribed for his own use the places of the planets calculated in advance, according to the Greek astronomy, merely transforming the dates of the vague year into corresponding dates of the fixed year." *

Enough has now been said to show the fallacy of any conclusion respecting the antiquity of our race, drawn from the mythologic period of Egyptian chronolgy. We come next to consider,

.

II. THE HISTORIC TIMES OF EGYPT.

It is almost universally admitted that historic times in Egypt began with MENES, although, for myself, I cannot, as heretofore remarked, but regard him more as a mythological than an historical personage. But, conceding for the present the common view, that he was the founder of the Egyptian empire, the inquiry before us is, When did he live?

And here it is important to remark that Egyptian chronology has no dates. There was no common era, like that of the Greek olympiads, or of the founding of Rome, or our own Christian era, to

* Ibidem.

which events were referred, and the time of their occurrence noted. Sometimes the year of the reigning monarch is mentioned, but neither this, nor the date of the dynasty of which this was a part, was recorded. The only mode, then, in which the foundation of the empire may be even approximately ascertained, is by summing up the whole number of reigns, and the duration of each, as given us in the lists of Manetho. The importance of these lists, as lying at the very foundation of Egyptian chronology, requires some particular notice, both of them and their author.

Manetho was a high priest of the temple of Isis at Sebennytus, a town in Lower Egypt, in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, about B. C. 276. He wrote a history of Egypt, in three books, which he professed to have derived from sacred writings preserved in the temples, which had been handed down from ancient times. His original work is now lost, but portions of it were incorporated by Julius Africanus, in a work on chronology, written in the third century, and transmitted to us in another work on the same subject by George Syncellus,* a writer at Constantinople, of the ninth century. Another version of Manetho is found in the writings of Eusebius, the church historian, of which some fragments See Appendix, D.