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discoveries may one day prove that throughout nearly the whole duration of this vast empire, there were even more collateral dynasties than the partisans of that system now contend for. But everything shows us that the work of elimination has been already performed on the lists of Manetho, in the state in which they have reached us. If, in fact, these lists contained the collateral dynasties, we should find in them, either before or after the XXIst, the dynasty of high priests who reigned at Thebes, while the XXIst occupied Tanis. In the same way we should have to count, either before or after the XXIIId, the seven or eight independent kings who were contemporary with it, and who, if Manetho had not rejected them, would have added as many successive royal families to the lists of the Egyptian priest, the dodecarchy for one, at least, between the XXVth and XXVIth dynasties, and, finally, the Theban kings, rivals of the Shepherds, would have taken rank before or after the XVIIth. There were, therefore, incontestably contemporaneous dynasties in Egypt; but Manetho has thrown them out, and admitted those only whom he regarded as legitimate, and his lists contain no others. If it were not so, it would not be thirty-one dynasties that we should have to reckon in the list of royal families previous to Alexander, but probably nearer sixty."

We submit that this reasoning is not conclusive. If the unsettled state of the monarchy, during its long existence, was such as to make necessary the cutting down of its royal annals one half,-from sixty to thirty-one dynasties, - what evidence is there that it did not require a further curtailment? That such is the fact, is agreed by the great body of Egyptologers, though they may differ as to how much and where it should be made.

Our conclusion, then, is very certain. We look in vain into the history and antiquities of Egypt for any evidence whatever of the existence of man earlier than the time of Noah. According to the Septuagint chronology, we may allow full thirty centuries between that time and the Christian era, a period amply sufficient to account for every known trace of man in the valley of the Nile.

CHAPTER III.

THE ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY (continued).

II. GREECE AND ROME.

Identity of Origin between the Greeks and Romans. - Practical Character of the Greek Mind. - Greek Literature comprehended all known Science. Date of the First Olympiad. Mythological Character of Times preceding. - The Trojan. War. - Its Value in History and Chronology. — No Claim to an Antiquity exceeding Eighteen Centuries before Christ. Date of the Foundation of Rome.

THE Greeks and Romans were so connected in their origin, as is indicated by their language, religion, and mythology, that a separate consideration of their respective antiquities is not required by my present object. Indeed, the mythologic or prehistoric traditions of the two peoples are so interwoven and so nearly identical, that a separate consideration of them would scarcely be possible. It will be necessary, therefore, to exhibit only the fuller and older traditions embodied in the Greek literature, to show all that has a bearing on our subject.

The evidence drawn from this source, in relation to the antiquity of our race, is of great importance, in some respects more important than that afforded us by the literature of any other ancient nation. For the Greeks were eminently practical. History and philosophy, as well as poetry, were cultivated by them, and their writings embody nearly all that was known in their times. A literature which has preserved in its poetry the most ancient traditions of the race, in its philosophical speculations the researches of the wisest men in antiquity as to the origin of things, and in its history all that the most learned men and travelers knew of other nations and people as well as their own, can scarcely fail to afford much valuable evidence in relation to the

inquiry before us. We have already seen that we are indebted to it for nearly all the information we have of Egyptian antiquities, and its testimony can not be less trustworthy concerning those of Greece and Rome.

Omitting, for the present, what is purely mythological, the highest date in Grecian history, which is accurately fixed, is the first Olympiad, usually called the Olympiad of Chorobus, B. C. 776. There was history before that time, but no accurate chronology. Many things are recorded, and many actual events described, but there was no era to which

to refer them, so that their true times can not be ascertained. Nor is this all. In Greece, as elsewhere, historic times emerge out of the dim ages of fable and legend, in which fact and fiction were indistinguishably blended. The period preceding the Olympic era can do little more than furnish a kind of background for the true historical picture of later times; and if it can not afford us accurate chronology, it may furnish some materials to aid in fixing its outlines and limits.

The most conspicuous event of which we have any account in that remote age, was the siege and destruction of Troy. It can hardly be called an historical event at all. A war in which the gods take sides, and enter into combat with each other and with men, whose heroes are demigods, and who fight in armor forged by divinities, can not be set down as sober fact. We are told that the beautiful Helen, the immediate occasion, of the war, was the daughter of Jupiter or Zeus. Achilles, the most illustrious chieftain of the Greeks, was the son ́of Thetis, an ocean nymph. Æneas, one of the Trojan heroes, was a son of Venus. The very occasion of the war originated in a dispute between the goddesses Juno, Venus, and Minerva, as to which was the most beautiful. And so on to the end of the chapter. Now, such a story belongs to

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