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of the Royal Library at Alexandria, and at whose command he furnished a new catalogue of the Egyptian kings. His first business was, to point out the defects of Manetho's work, which had originated after it so early a demand for one of greater accuracy. But, even in this work, though generally esteemed a vast improvement on the former, yet from the great difficulty of preserving accuracy in computing or transcribing the old Egyptian numeral hieroglyphics, errors, to a greater or lesser extent were unavoidable.

4. A fourth source of information in these premises, is some extracts from Manetho in Josephus, relating to the Pastor kings, who, in the reign of Timæus, invaded Egypt, and held it in subjection for five hundred and eleven years. Josephus, however, seems to commit a capital error by including these Pastors in, or as forming part of the Egyptian dynasties; for, they "were not Egyptian; they were foreign invaders, who over-ran Egypt, and reduced a great part of the country into subjection."

5. Following this, is the work of Sextus Julius Africanus of the third century, a Christian, who wrote bis "Chronographia" about one hundred and fifty years after Josephus. This work extends from the creation to the consulate of Gratus and Seleucus, to A. D. two hundred and twenty one, and includes the dynasties of Manetho; rejecting, however, all that he "offered of the reigns of gods, demi-gods, and heroes, to be fables, fiction, or false theology, and thereupon superfluous." In this light, the work of Africanus may be viewed as a valuable accession to the history of the times of which it treats, his aim being to reduce

the whole to what he considered "the true chronology of the world."

6. The Chronicon of Eusebius Pamphilius, Bishop of Cæsarea, about a century after, followed that of Africanus. His work commences with the birth of Abraham, and terminates with the 20th year of Constantine the Great. The design of it is, by exhibiting the events of sacred and profane history as cotemporary, to harmonize the one with the other. But in synchronizing these events, he is thought to have taken unwarrantable liberties both with Manetho and Africanus, in the arrangement of his Egyptian dynasties, which greatly diminishes the accuracy, and consequently, the value of his work.

7. The next source of authority respecting the antiquities of Egypt, is, "the chronographia of Syncellus, written A. D. 800; which may be considered as a compilation from all the preceeding, with such departures from, and corrections of each, as his judgment dictated. But this also should be used with great caution; "for, Syncellus had certainly formed no right judgment of the Egyptian history; as appears evidently from his declaring that he knew no use of, nor occasion for, Eratosthene's catalogue of the Theban kings."

8. The last work to which we will refer the reader in this department, is, "the Canon Chronicus of Sir John Marsham." He considered Egypt as being divided into four concurrent kingdoms in the most early ages; viz, -Thebes-This- Memphis - and Tanis, or Lower Egypt. He formed a canon or table,

to give the reader in one view, the cotemporary kings of each kingdom. And, in the execution of his work in proper chapters, he endeavors to justify the position of the kings, according to the succession assigned to them in the successive columns of his canon." And when we reflect, that he has succeeded in reducing the difference in the chronology of events as narrated in sacred and profane history, ending with the passage of the Israelites over the Red Sea, to the narrow point of some six or seven years, it cannot but strengthen our conviction of the concurrence of the events of profane, with those of the sacred records.

II. Our remarks on the CHINESE records and their antiquities, we shall reserve for a subsequent page.

III. The authorities upon which we are dependant for information respecting the antiquities of the ancient ASSYRIAN empire, are, chiefly, those of Herodotus, Ctesias, Zenophon, Aristotle, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, &c. The value of these authorities, however, may be inferred from the fact, that while Sir Isaac Newton and Sir John Marsham on the one hand, contend "that there were no such kings of Assyria, as all the ancient writers have recorded to have reigned there, from Ninus to Sardanapalus, and to have governed a great part of Asia for above one thousand three hundred years;" the learned Shuckford on the other, labors to reconcile the conflicting and often contradictory statements with which the writings of the above named ancient authors abound, with the actual existence of said Assyrian kings, from the coincidence of their history with that of the sacred records. For further informa

tion on this interresting subject, together with the preceding, the reader is referred to his connections of sacred and profane history.

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With these facts before us, it is easy to discover into what a chaos of perplexity, remote profane history is involved. But, this circumstance we think may be satisfactorily accounted for, from the very structure peculiar thereto. Take, for example, that of the ancient Egyptian dynasty. First, in order, follows an account of their gods; then of their demi-gods and heroes, and finally, of their kings. To their heroes, at a very early period of their history, they appended the names of their sidereal and elementary deities, the philosophical opinions concerning whom, in their subsequent mythological accounts, were transferred to the life and actions of the heroes themselves. This circumstance soon induced a departure from the once unadorned style of imparting religious instruction to the common people, and a substitution in its place of an ambitious desire to cater to the appetites of the fastidious. Hence, the vagaries of a fanciful mythology and philosophy, soon obscured the unsophisticated facts of primitive profane history. And, as we advance from the period of the second Thyoth or Hermes, to the times when Grecian philosophy became ascendant, the disposition to pander to the appetite of human intellectuality, both in perverting, as above, the plainest historical facts, and in originating

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1. Shuck. Con. vol. I., p. 43, 44.

2. See on this subject, Euseb. Præp. Evang. lib. I., c. 10..

systems of physiological science in the place of what had been previously received as decisive on the ground of oral patriarchal tradition, obtained the ascendency.

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In regard to the original invention of Letters, while some ascribe it to Adam, and others to Abel; Pliny,' as founded without doubt upon the notion that the world was eternal, in one place hints that letters were eternal; but his general opinion was, that they were of Assyrian origin. 2 And, while Philo Biblius, Diodorus, Plutarch, Cicero, Tertullian, Plato, &c., all ascribe them to Thyoth or Taautus of Egypt; yet "considering that mankind was not planted first in Egypt, after the flood, but emigrated thither from Assyria; and that a very few years after the dispersion, astronomical calculations (which argue the use of letters) were made in Babylon, the latter conclusion would seem the most rational. And then, with whom originate more probably than with NOAH, the father and founder of the New world, if indeed they were not, as Shuckford thinks, of ante-diluvian origin. That they were used in Assyria before the time of Abraham, and in Egypt before the time of

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4. Sympos. 1. ix., c. 3:

6. Lib. de corona militis, c. 8; et de Testim. Animæ ; c. 5.

7. "By the books of Taautus, Shuckford supposes are meant pillars, or lumps of earth with inseriptions on them, books not. being invented in these early days."

8. Shuck. Con. vol. i., p. 142.

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