(335) Rhampsinitus, the miser: played at dice with Ceres in the lower world (121–123.).

"With him ended the good old time."

III. Builders of Pyramids.

(336) Cheops, reigned 50 years built the largest Pyramid a godless tyrant (124—126.).

(337) Chephren, reigned 56 years-built the second Pyramid (127, 128.).

(338) Mykerinus, the son of Cheops, an upright judge and merciful ruler-third Pyramid (129-135.).

(339) Asychis, a wise lawgiver-built the noble Propylæa of the Temple of Vulcan, and a brick Pyramid, also justly celebrated (136.). IV. Statements respecting the Dodecarchy and Psammetichus.

(340) Anysis, the blind man, from the city of Anysis. Being dethroned by

(341) Sabakon, he fled into the marshes, where he lay concealed during the 50 years' rule of the Ethiopians (137-140.). After him reigned

(342) Sethos, Priest of Vulcan. Expedition against Sennacherib (141.).

100

3

"Thus far reach the accounts of the Egyptians and the Priests. From the first King up to Sethos are 341 generations, and the same number of Kings and High Priests of the Temple of Vulcan: consequently (341 X years, that is, 11366) 11140 years. It must be remembered on the other hand that Osiris, Typhon, and Horus reigned before these Kings, but Osiris is the Bacchus of the Greeks, the son of Semele, and consequently 1600 years older than myself: Hercules, the son of Alcmene, about 900: Pan, the son of Penelope (consequently later than the Trojan war) — about 800 years (144-146.)."

III. THE CHRONOLOGY OF HERODOTUS, FROM THE ACCESSION OF PSAMMETICHUS DOWNWARDS.

I. The period of the Psammetici.

II. The period of the Persian dominion from the conquest of Cambyses, downwards.

It agrees most fully with the astronomical Canon of Ptolemy.

IV. PRELIMINARY CRITICISM OF HIS CHRONOLOGY.

LET us imagine Herodotus to have had before him such a table as the foregoing, and that—on the basis of his native Greek genealogies-he had endeavoured to extract from it, for himself, a critical system of chronology, as a substitute for the Egyptian reckoning— should its myriads of years have appeared to him incredible. The natural or necessary result of such an attempt would be as follows

I. The 341 Kings from Menes to Sethos, in 341 generations, are his own calculation. This number is obtained, as it is the design of our synopsis to show, by summing up the reigns enumerated by him, from that of Maris (the 331st successor of Menes) downwards.

II. The Trojan war was somewhat more than 800 years prior to Herodotus. Pan therefore, the son of Penelope, is placed a little after that event, somewhere about the year 800. The Trojan war would consequently fall about 833, a generation earlier. Hence, reckoning a

generation exactly at a third of a century, Herodotus's List of Kings from Proteus, the contemporary of Menelaus, upwards, supplies the following chronological table

And thus the expression which has been so much cavilled at, "Moris had not been dead 900 years when I visited Egypt "-admits of explanation, by a method first applied by Niebuhr to the Lydian chronology of Herodotus.92 According to this table, Herodotus would doubtless have placed Rhampsinitus, the successor of Proteus, in 766, for he belongs also to the "good old time." But the following synopsis clearly shows, that a particular tradition commenced with Cheops, and that Herodotus was aware that he had dovetailed together two different systems.

Rhampsinitus, the duration of his reign is uncertain,

Anysis survived the Ethiopian: and it may be a question whether or no Herodotus really allowed him in his table 33 separate additional years of reign. Certain it is, however, that no such sum can have

92 Niebuhr, Kleine Schriften und Philolog. Schriften, p. 196. seqq.

formed an element of the present computation. The Kings of the Pyramids begin with Cheops and end with Asychis. Then comes the Ethiopian epoch. But the first accurately fixed and historically authenticated chronological data of Herodotus commence with Psammetichus, who ascended the throne about 670 B. C.consequently about 220 years before the historian visited Egypt. But between this main pivot of his chronology, the beginning of the reign of Psammetichus and the last King of the above list, Anysis, we have only Sethus and the Dodecarchy-consequently not two generations-for Psammetichus, one of the Dodecarchs, reigned 54 years. With Herodotus, therefore, the two sections stand in no chronological connection. He found a gap, which he saw no means of filling up; he abstained, therefore, from any specific calculations; contented with merely giving the dates of individual reigns, in so far as he found them distinctly recorded.

Without venturing here to pass judgment upon his Chronology (as many have done, some precipitately rejecting, and others as precipitately commending it) until the result of a more careful analysis shall have supplied data for an impartial verdict the following facts may yet be laid down as established:

That the Chronology of Herodotus, in the proper sense of the word, begins with Psammetichus ; that for the previous period he possessed no expedient, by which the discrepancy between the Egyptian computation and his own series of Dynasties could be reconciled; that these two systems differ by about ten thousand years, and that neither consequently can be considered as either certain or possible.

B.

THE SCHOOL OF ARISTOTLE. THE ALEXANDRIANS AND THEIR CONTEMPORARIES.

I. ARISTOTLE, THEOPHRASTUS, DICEARCHUS.

EGYPT had evidently a great charm for the penetrating genius of Plato, as his Books on the Republic and Laws more especially evince. Chronological inquiries were out of his jurisdiction. Still they had not altogether escaped his attention. He seems to have believed in the 10,000 years of antiquity, claimed by the Egyptians for certain of their monuments; and assigns 8000 years to the city of Sais.93 But Aristotle, who in his lost work on the Olympic victors", may be presumed to have established the true landmarks of Grecian Chronology, has after a careful study no doubt of that of Egypt -recorded his opinion, that Sesostris, one of its primeval Kings, lived long before Minos. The epoch here assigned him falls much earlier than the year 1400 B. C., that being the age of the Cretan King according to the Greeks, viz. 200 years before the Trojan war.

To this school of Aristotle, and particularly to Theophrastus, belongs the credit of having followed up this method of comparative chronology. We have seen above that Theophrastus quotes "Egyptian Annals." Porphyry mentions his having described the Egyptians as the most learned people, and the deepest antiquarians in the world. He had also, if we may credit the state

93 Plato, Legg. ii. 567. (already mentioned in the first Section) comp. with Timæus, p. 23.

94 Diog. Laërt. v. 26. viii. 51.

95 Arist. Polit. vii. 9. : ὁ χωρισμὸς ὁ κατὰ γένος τοῦ πολιτικοῦ πλήθους ἐξ Αἰγύπτου· πολὺ γὰρ ὑπερτείνει τοῖς χρόνοις τὴν Μίνω βασιλείαν ἡ Σεσώστριος.