Pliny really been alive to the value of historical truth, he might have derived some little light even from the books which he has quoted. The Roman Admiral, too, must undoubtedly have had many Greek retainers in his princely establishment, whom he might have commissioned to institute further researches. But it was here a matter of no real moment with him to ascertain the historical fact, or, when ascertained, to relate it. "The main question of all," he remarks, in his speculations concerning the Pyramids, "is how they contrived to raise such immense masses of stone to such an enormous height." This question Herodotus had already treated with great good sense, and upon the whole satisfactorily answered. Pliny, however, merely quotes two preposterous conjectures of later writers. The first was, that the Nile had been raised by dams of salt and nitre, which were afterwards washed away by the water. So absurd was the story, that even Diodorus had ridiculed it as fabulous. Pliny's critical remark on it that the Nile could hardly be raised high enough for such a purpose-is followed up by the other explanation, -emanating, doubtless, from some frivolous Greek sophist" that the dam was made of bricks, which the people were afterwards allowed to carry off for the purpose of building their houses." Pliny certainly does not cite these opinions because they seemed to him the most probable, but, on the contrary, because of their absurdity. What did it matter to his Emperor, and his lordly and luxurious readers, how the Pyramids were built, which—beyond, perhaps, a certain complacent recollection of the trouble of clambering to their summit were objects of no sort of interest? But the citation of some gross absurdity, and a bitter sneer at Greeks and men of science, as the inventors of such frivolities, would, it was hoped, possess a certain charm for their morbid and limited intellects. It was somewhat different in regard to practical matters. In

treating of the Obelisks, Pliny does not fail to collect accurate information as to the machines and contrivances employed in erecting and transporting them to Rome. But on the questions, who built them? when? for what purpose?-he barely touches, unless when they suggest some strange or laughable anecdote; just as, in speaking of the Labyrinth, he clings to the nonsensical story of some nameless Greeks, that it was a building dedicated to the Sun-God. Hence he further characterises that really practical and beneficial work of Maris, the lake of Fayoom, in dry, contemptuous terms, as "a vast ditch of which the Egyptians make as much parade as if it were one of the wonders of the world." The proud Roman was thinking of the Cloaca Maxima, the draining of the Alban lake, and the numerous aqueducts both above and below his native soil. Why should the Egyptians make so mighty a matter of their lake Moris, or the Greeks so diligently re-echo its praises? This summary mode of settling such questions, seasoned with the speculations of Greek Polyhistors and antiquaries, might still, it was hoped, find sympathising readers in Rome. A straining after marvellous facts and curious anecdotes, screwed up into the smallest possible compass of quaint sententious narrative, might pass for originality, and, perhaps, not stamp a man among his fellows as either a blockhead or a hypocrite, should he venture, himself a Cisalpine provincial, when describing the different species of stones, to dress up once more the old story of the lake of Maris for the benefit of the public of Rome.

This is a faithful picture of Roman research into the antiquities and chronology of Egypt. To the false relation in which, as Romans, they stood to the human race, and to truth-with them inseparable from lawit is to be attributed, that, in spite of all their efforts after utility, in which they confounded the utilitarian with the useful, and in spite of all their power and civi

lisation, they still remained, in the field of intellectual pursuits, useless to the world, and not only did nothing for research themselves, but never once as rulers exerted themselves to promote it. The evil fruits of this selfish obduracy, this narrow exclusiveness of Seven-hill existence, recoiled, as is the case with all wrong, on their own heads. They were lost from the moment when they first began to mistrust and to misunderstand the letter of their own institutions, civil and religious; and this was itself a necessary consequence of their intercourse with the Greeks. The scepticism, as well as superstition, of Rome is more contemptible than that of Greece, her immorality more flagrant and more pernicious.

Soon after the time of Diodorus, however, and in the days of Pliny himself, when the spirit of Greek historical research, whether as regards Egypt or the ancient world at large, had become extinct, new life was imparted to it by the inspiring sentiment of the unity of human nature, shed abroad by the Christian religion. In order to appreciate the influence of this new element upon the efforts of inquirers among Christian nations, our attention must first be directed to the tradition and chronology of the Bible, whence the materials for their labours are chiefly derived.

SECTION III.

EGYPTIAN TRADITION AMONG THE JEWS.

JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN RESEARCH INTO THE CHRONOLOGY OF EGYPT.

INTRODUCTION.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN REVELATION AND CHRONOLOGY.

IF the earliest extant remains of the tradition of the Jews relative to contemporaneous events, or of their researches into the history of the past, be dated from Moses and his times a conclusion amply borne out by a critical study of the Old Testament we shall find this second stream of Egyptian chronology beginning to flow simultaneously with our earliest distinct notices of systematic historical pursuit among the Egyptians themselves. It carries us through the whole Jewish history to the downfal of the empire, past many of the most important points of Egyptian chronology. But Jewish research does not end there; on the contrary, it is more especially active during the dominion of the Persians. Under the Ptolemies, it made rapid strides in Alexandria, not without evident traces of Egyptian influence, especially in every thing relating to that country. In Josephus it even outlives the downfal of the nation itself.

The apostle Paul is at once the originator and model of Christian research. In the East we discover the first epoch of strictly Christian Chronology. The extinction of Oriental research on its native soil long preceded that of Oriental empire. It revived again in the West with the 16th century, and advanced a century and a half

hand in hand with classical philology, down to the rise of Egyptology, which forms the last standard epoch in its progress.

It is true that, during the 2000 years which have elapsed since the canon of the Old Testament was closed, no new fact has been transmitted. There has been, however, no want of efforts to compare, to analyse, to arrange the tradition it supplies, and to reconcile it with itself, as well as with the parallel tradition of Egypt. The results of these efforts, in alternately promoting and obstructing the march of truth-reviving or obscuring the light of traditionare points of the utmost general importance in their bearings, not only on our immediate objects of inquiry, but on the still higher interests of universal history. There is probably no subject upon which during these 2000 years so much talent and learning have been expended by the most intellectual nations of the earth, Greeks and Byzantines, Romans, Germans, and their kindred races, as upon the solution of the several chronological questions connected with Egyptian and Jewish history. Such inquiries, like the Crusades and Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, have always one great and certain advantage, that of rescuing the mind by an honourable impulse from the narrow limits of the present, and from the fetters of national prejudice, and spurring it on to nobler objects of pursuit. Nor must we forget that to the progress of enlightened culture at every period of Christianity, and its effectual resistance to the opposing influence of barbarism, a far deeper and more comprehensive range of critical research is indispensable, than was required at any period of the ancient world. This necessity arises not only from the more advanced state of universal history, but more especially from the fact that the research of every Christian period must come to a previous understanding