HE N

the year 1550 B.C. The Homeric poems contain accounts of the land of ?gyptus, of the fair-flowing Zeus-born river of the same name, of the very beautiful fields and cities of Egypt, of princes who fought from their chariots, and finally of "Egyptian Thebes, where in the palaces lie the greatest treasures; a city wit

nd one queen; the rest were Egyptians. After Moeris came Sesostris, Pheron, Proteus, Rhampsinitus, Cheops and Chephren, Mycerinus, Asychis, Anysis, Sabakon, and Sethos, so that from Menes to Sethos 341 kings had reigned over Egypt in as many generations. Herodotus remarks that the priests assured him that they had an accurate knowledge of what they said, for the years were always enumerated and put down. To convince him they carried him into the great temple at Thebes and showed him there 345 wooden colossi of the ch

rtion of the Egyptians. By their account 341 kings reigned from Menes to Sethos; and on this basis Herodotus reckoned the duration and commencement of the Egyptian kingdom. He took 33? years as the length of a generation, and thus Menes must have begun to reign 340 generations, or 11,340 years before the accession of Sethos. Further, Herodotus placed over 150 years b

s, Necho, Psammetichus II., Apries, and Amasis, make up 8,650 years, and since the Persians took Egypt in 525 B.C., the beginning of the reign of Menes still falls in the year 9175 B.C. This incredible fact is

ng was, what he was like, and what he accomplished in his reign." If we place the reign of Menes 479 generations before Cambyses, this computation, on the reckoning of Herodotus, would place the accession of Menes in the year 16492 B.C.; taking a shorter average length for the generations, we may bring it to the year 12500 B.C. But Diodorus shows from other accounts that this mode of computation is inadmissible. He tells us that the priests of Egypt numbered about 23,000[8] years from the reign of Helius or Heph?stus, who, according to other priests, was the first of the gods to reign,[9] till the entrance of Alexander into Asia (334 B.C.). If of this total we allow about 18,000 years to the gods, the

ascended the throne, as Herodotus says, or 479, as Diodorus, the average duration of each reign would be in the first case more than tw

Theban kings who followed these have been also preserved by Apollodorus; but we consider it superfluous to add them, for even the list of the first is of no use."[13] Thus the researches of the Alexandrine Greeks had brought together a list of ninety-one kings, ninety successors of Menes, out of the writings of the priests of Thebes. As early as the time of Eratosthenes the Egyptians assisted the researches of the Greeks. About the middle of the third century B.C., that is, in the time of the second and third Ptolemy, an Egyptian named Manetho (Ma-n-thoth = "loved by Thoth"), of Sebennytus, and apparently scribe to the temple at Thebes,[14] composed in Greek a work on the history of Egypt in three books. "Obviously possessed of Hellenic culture"-so we find it in Josephus-"Manetho wrote the history of his country in Greek, translating it, as he tells us, from the sacred writings; he undertook to interpret Egyptian history from the sacred writings."[15] This work of Manetho was lost at an early period; all that remains is the list of the dynasties, a third par

screpancies awaken the suspicion that the number and the succession of the kings was not agreed upon even by the priests themselves, the suspicion is increased by the fact that the lists do not tally in the various excerpts in which they have come down to us. What weight can be given to a list which, in the excerpt from Africanus, allows 953 years (or 802 at the least) to the rule of the Hyksos, and in the excerpt of Eusebius allows 103 years, and again 511 years in the excerpt of Josephus? Still greater discrepancies appear if we compare the list of Eratosthenes with the names and numbers handed down to us from Manetho's work. Both lists begin with Menes; both allow him a reign of sixty-two years; but Eratosthenes describes his thirty-eight kings as of Theban origin or race, while in Manetho the first Theban dynasty began to reign 2,240 years after Menes.[18] Nevertheless the names of the first three or four rul

prayer and incense to his predecessors in the kingdom. There are seventy-six shields with names, beginning with the shield of Menes. The last is the shield of Sethos, who in this way is represented as offering prayer to himself, among the rest. Down to Amenemha IV., the close of the twelfth dynasty (2179-2171 B.C.), there reigned, according to Manetho's list 104 kings, but the table of Sethos gives sixty-five shields for the interval from Menes to Amenemha IV. From this king to Sethos, the first prince of the nineteenth dynasty, Manetho's list gives 193 kings, excluding the shepherd kings, whereas the table of Sethos shows only ten shields for this interval.[21] Nothing in the way of explanation is to be obtained from the monuments of this kind belonging to the time of Ramses II. (1388-1322 B.C.) On the wall of the portico between the first and second court of the Ramesseum, the great temple built by Ramses II. at Thebes, on the left bank of the Nile, there is a picture in which the statues of thirteen predecessors in the kingdom are carried i

egins with the rule of the gods; then follow the names of the kings, with the length of their reigns in years, months, and days, down to the time of the Tuthmosis; and thus it includes the first seventeen dynasties of Manetho's list. It has been much damaged, and therefore we can only discover that about 240 names were given, of which, however, about 100 are entirely gone; and of the others the lesser half at least is hardly legible. As has been remarked, Manetho numbers at least 284

ind, to form an adequate check upon the papyrus of Turin, or the tables of kings or the list of Manetho-we must give up the hope of ascertaining the antiquity and course of Egyptian history on such data. One thing only comes out clear and irrefragable from the tables of Karnak, Abydus, and Sakkarah, no less than the Turin papyrus.

e might proceed further in this direction, and reduce Manetho's list by 2,000 or 3,000 years. According to the separate items in the excerpts preserved, Manetho's thirty dynasties include a series of 5,366 Egyptian years (from the year 5702 to the year 340 B.C.); nevertheless, Syncellus, in a passage of his Chronology, has observed that the whole period of history treated by Manetho in his three books covered 3,555 years.[24] This observation has been used to prove that Manetho himself arranged several dynasties contemporaneously; and thus, by taking the whole total of years given by Syncellus as a basis, the year 3892 B.C. has been fixed as the first year

names in the list of Manetho. By this assumption, it is true, we are compelled to set aside several of Manetho's dynasties, and even to throw away the greater part of the kings of the dynasties which are allowed to count in the series.[27] But even when we have overcome all the difficulties in the way of this system, we are still without the means to define

rous monuments than we have, and though the lists of the various dominant families began to be kept at a very early period, it was no longer possible at the time when the lists of the Turin papyrus were made out, to discover in what order the families came, or which ruled contemporaneously before the time of the alien kings. The mere arrangement of our materials in the order of succession cannot fail to give an entir

g-star, as seen from Lower Egypt, and the commencement of the inundation. Thus in a period of 1,461 years the year was again brought to its true beginning.[28] Since the fruitfulness and life of the Egyptian land depended on the inundation, and the inundation began with the rising of the Dog-star, the history of Egypt must also have begun with a similar rising. If after 1,461 Egyptian years the rising of the Dog-star again coincided with the beginning of the civic year, the priests would regard this restoration of the natural order as the completion of a great cycle of events. The Dog-star brought the inundation, and with it the fruits and life of Egypt. It was the awakener of life. It must therefore have brought life to the world also; time must have begun with the rising of Sirius. Porphyrius tells us that to the Egyptians the rising of the Dog-star was the beginning of the world.[29] Hence the periods of the world must proceed according to a number of periods fixed by the Dog-star. It seems that the priests comprised the whole duration of the world in twenty-five Sothis periods, i. e. in 36,525 Egyptian years. Regarded in this light, the Sothis periods of the priests of Egypt must lead to a cyclic treatment of their history, to which also the want of any definite era was forcing them, while the antiquity and number of the lists of kings offered abundant material for it. The history of Egypt must comprise a definite number of Sothis periods. It was known that in the fourteenth century B.C. such a period ended, and a new one commenced; the difficulty was to fill up two or three periods anterior to this. Before the Sothis period of the kings, the gods had ruled over Egypt, to whom, therefore, a number of Sothis cycles, naturally more extensive than those given to the rule of men, was allotted. Thus the priests of Thebes were able to tell Herodotus that, from the time wh

llow 511 years for the reign of the Hyksos, we arrive at the year 2000 B.C. as the end of the old monarchy. From this monarchy numerous monuments have come down to us belonging to the Amenemha, and Sesurtesen, the twelfth dynasty of Manetho; and again to the time preceding these princes belong the greatest monuments in Egypt, the pyramids of Memphis, which, according to Manetho's list, are the work of the fourth dynasty. These pyramids therefore may have been built about the year 2500 B.C. The plan and execution of these monuments presuppose a very long practice in the treatment and preparation of materials; the size, permanence, and solidity of the construction were impossible without great experience in the use of stone; and their massive form requires an acquaintance with the principles of architecture which can only be obtained in the course of centuries. And independently of the advanced state of architecture exhibited by these monuments at the first sight, their erection is a proof of a condition of social and civic life far removed from primitive tribal communities. So long as tribes few in number and isolated from each other possessed the valley of the Nile, under the rule of their tribal chiefs, such structures were imposs

ctures? The three waved lines indicating water were retained, but beside them was sketched a wine-jar or water-pot, and thus the desired end was attained. By adding the picture of a god to the square, a temple was distinguished from a house. By such means the objects of the visible world could be reproduced in pictures more or less abbreviated. Even the actions and conditions of men which do not come immediately under the eye could be represented in this abbreviated metaphorical manner. Giving could be represented by an outstretched arm with a loaf; opening, by a door; going, by a road planted with trees; travelling, by a walking bird; battle, by an arm equipped with shield and lance; binding and fastening, by a coiled rope; destruction, by a prostrate man. It was more difficult to represent conditions which do not show themselves to the eye, as, for instance, hunger and thirst. To express thirst the Egyptians chose the symbol of water and a calf running to it; hunger they represented by a hand conveyed to the mouth, and this was also the symbol of eating. But the most difficult task for this picture-writing was the description of objects t

uld only go to these picture-signs in order to borrow the symbols for sound. Hence the sound A was denoted by a symbol which signified an object of which the name began with A; for this in Egypt the symbol of an eagle (achem), or of a reed (ak), might be, and was selected. Thus in order to express words which could not be made plain by picture-signs and images of sense, the plan was adopted of adding to the picture-signs already in use for such words, one or more phonetic symbols, a complete or incomplete phonetic supplement. Hence arose a class of mixed pictures, made up of the picture of the object, with the addition of the sounds of the words of which the picture was intended to expre

f life. When this point of culture was reached, a considerable space of time was still needed in order to bring the picture-writing, even within the priestly class, to the form in which we see it on the pyramids. In those nations whose progress we can follow with greater accuracy, centuries must pass before the indefinite and floating notions entertained of the gods are fixed in rigid forms. Yet in Egypt this change had already taken place before the date of the oldest hieroglyphics: for even in these we find typical forms in use for the gods, with sharply drawn and abbreviated outlines. In the picture-writing itself there is a wide interval between the delineation of an incident, or object, and the representation of a definite feeling; and a yet wider interval before the expression of ideas, of definite speech, is attained. An adv

bserved and noted down by the Egyptians, that in the year of their reckoning, corresponding to the Julian year 1322 B.C., the beginning of the year had again fallen on the right day, that is, on the rising of Sirius, so that the first day of Thoth in the movable year coincided with the first day of Thoth in the solar year, which was the 20th of July, it follows that the fixing of the beginning of the year on July 20, and of the length of the year at 365 days, had taken place 1,460 years (p. 30) before the date 1322 B.C., i. e. in the year 2782 B.C. This conclusion is supported by another consideration. Our astronomers have calculated that it

e it is impossible to establish them satisfactorily. The arrangement of Egyptian chronology proposed by Lepsius has for the first time introduced a well-considered system into the whole. Hence, in spite of the objections already brought forward against the basis of this arrangement, and the

TNO

4, 230 ff. 477, 581. 1

Diod. 1, 10, 50;

. 2, 100,

m." p. 23; "De

5, Olympiad 180, i. e.

siris to Alexander. More than 10,000 years had passed, according to

od. 1,

Ibid.

Diod.

ll. p. 91,

yncell

, "Manetho

Apion." c

"Manetho,"

ses, "Zeitschrift d. d. M. Ges." 15,251; Brugsch's

o B?ckh's "Kanon

ollowing dates, is fr

ight shepherd kings; if these a

he Sprache," 1864, p. 81 ff. Deveria and Mariette, "R

Revue Archéolog.,"

ypte," pp. 20, 44, 72; De

] P

in the "Philo

e least agree with the accounts of Manetho; moreover, Gutschmid has shown from what items th

narchy, 922 years for the Hyksos, and 1,347 years for the old monarchy; but for these 1,347 years he substitutes the 1,076 years of Eratosthenes, in order to fix the historical accession of Menes. According to this, Menes began to reign in the year 3284 B.C. From this, Reinisch ("Zeitschrift der Deutschen morgenl. Gesell." 15, 251 ff.) has attempted to reconcile the sys

"Chronologie," s. 148 ff. Th. Martin "Mé

nter may not be celebrated in summer, because the star advances one day in every four years, while others which are celebrated in summer will in later times be celebrated in winter, as has already happened, and will happen again, if the year is to be composed of 360 days, and the five days usually added, from henceforth a day shall be kept as the festival of the Divi Euergetes, every f

erod.

," s. 36; Lepsius, "

o B?ckh's "Kanon

née vague," p. 57; cf. however H. Martin, "Mém.