ΤΟ

FREDERIC WILLIAM THE FOURTH

KING OF PRUSSIA

THE ENLIGHTENED FRIEND OF ANTIQUITY AND LOVER OF RESEARCH

THE FIRST GERMAN PRINCE

WHO

SENT A SCIENTIFIC COMMISSION TO EGYPT ÆTHIOPIA AND SINAI

FOR THE PURPOSE OF EXAMINING

THEIR MOST ANCIENT HISTORICAL MONUMENTS

THE SOVEREIGN

WHO

SECURED LEISURE AND INSPIRED COURAGE TO UNDERTAKE THIS WORK

HIS MOST GRACIOUS MASTER AND PATRON

THESE

FIRST FRUITS

OF HIS RESEARCHES IN ANCIENT HISTORY

ARE

WITH GRATITUDE AND RESPECT

Dedicated

BY

THE AUTHOR

PREFACE.

TWENTY years have now elapsed since I became convinced by Champollion's lectures and writings, as well as by my own examination of the Egyptian monuments at Rome, and particularly the obelisks, that the great discovery of the Hieroglyphical System would prove to be of the highest importance for the ancient history of Mankind. In analysing its bearing upon the course of historical research pursued in Germany and upon my own studies, three questions presented themselves. Is the Chronology of Egypt, as embodied in the Dynasties of Manetho, capable of restoration, wholly or in part, by means of the monuments and the names of its Kings? Will the Egyptian language enable us to establish the position of the Egyptians, as a nation, in primeval history, and especially their connexion with the tribes of the Aramaic and IndoGermanic stock? Lastly, may we hope, by persevering in a course of Egyptian research based, in the strictest sense of the word, on historical principles, to obtain for the History of Mankind a more sure and unfailing foundation than we at present possess ?

The scientific assumptions and views with which I set out in the solution of these three questions were, in the main, as follows.

The Roman researches of Niebuhr had proved to me the uncertainty of the chronological system of the

Greeks, beyond the Olympiads; and that even Eusebius's chronicle, as preserved in the Armenian translation, furnishes merely isolated, although important, data for the Assyrian and Babylonian chronology beyond the era of Nabonassar. Again, as regards the Jewish computation of time, the study of Scripture had long convinced me, that there is in the Old Testament no connected chronology prior to Solomon. All that now passes for a system of ancient chronology beyond that fixed point, is the melancholy legacy of the 17th and 18th centuries; a compound of intentional deceit and utter misconception of the principles of historical research. Egyptian history is the only one which possesses contemporary monuments of those primeval ages, and at the same time offers points of contact with the primitive tribes of Asia, especially the Jewish, from the latest up to the earliest times. It is here, if anywhere, that materials are to be gathered for the foundation of a chronology of the oldest history of nations. Thus much for the first question.

German philology, to any one who has cultivated it since Frederic Schlegel, must necessarily present the great truth, that a method has been found of restoring the genealogy of mankind, through the medium of language; not by means of forced, isolated etymologies, but by taking a large and comprehensive view of the organic and indestructible fabric of individual tongues, according to the family to which they belong. Viewing the question upon the principles established by those researches, I found a comparison of the Coptic language with such roots and forms of the Old Egyptian as were then discovered, sufficient to remove from my mind all doubt as to the Asiatic origin of the Egyptians, and their affinity with the Semitic or Aramaic stock. But I had, moreover, long arrived