The History of the Ancient Civilizations. Duncker Max

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 was only in the two or three centuries preceding and following the year 3285 B.C. that the rising of Sirius so exactly coincided with the summer solstice and the rise of the Nile; and therefore in this epoch only could the observation have been made that Sirius brought the inundation. Hence in this period only could the beginning of the year have been fixed at the rising of Sirius. But if the Egyptians could set aside an old calendar and introduce a new arrangement requiring attention and long-continued observations, somewhere about the year 2800 B.C., it is clear that the beginnings of higher culture in Egypt cannot be later than 3000 B.C.[33]

      Valuable as this result is, we are nevertheless carried back to hypotheses and combinations in order to fix the various epochs, and more especially before the reign of the Hyksos. And as an arrangement of history is impossible without chronology, divisions must be assumed here and there where 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 proved uncertainties and contradictions of tradition and the monuments, which the progress of inquiry into the older periods may indeed lessen but cannot remove, I follow the data given by Lepsius for the epochs of Egyptian history, and the duration of the reigns which come under our notice.

      FOOTNOTES:

      [3] "Il." 9, 381; "Od." 4, 230 ff. 477, 581. 14, 257, 264 ff. 17, 426.

      [4] Herod. 2, 2; Diod. 1, 10, 50; Plat. Tim. p. 23.

[5] Herod. 2, 100, 142, 143.

[6] Plato, "Tim." p. 23; "De Leg." p. 657.

[7] Diodorus, 1, 44, 45, Olympiad 180, i.e. between 60 and 56 B.C.

[8] Or, according to another version, more than 10,000 years from Osiris to Alexander. More than 10,000 years had passed, according to the Egyptians, since the creation of the first man.—Diod. 1, 23, 24.

[9] Diod. 1, 13, 14.

[10] Ibid. 1, 69.

[11] Diod. 1, 63.

[12] Syncell. p. 91, ed. Goar.

[13] Syncell. p. 12.

[14] Bœckh, "Manetho," p. 395.

[15] "C. Apion." c. 14, 26.

[16] Bœckh, "Manetho," p. 769 ff.

[17] Reinisch reckons 389 kings from Menes to Cambyses, "Zeitschrift d. d. M. Ges." 15,251; Brugsch's table gives 334 royal shields from Menes to Cambyses.

[18] According to Bœckh's "Kanon des Africanus."

[19] This, like the following dates, is from Lepsius, see below.

[20] Not including the thirty-eight shepherd kings; if these are added the number reaches 322.

[21] Dümichen and Lepsius, "Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache," 1864, p. 81 ff. Deveria and Mariette, "Revue Archéolog." 1865, p. 50 ff; 1866 (13), p. 73 ff.

[22] Mariette in "Revue Archéolog.," 1864 (10), p. 170.

[23] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," pp. 20, 44, 72; Devéria, loc. cit. p. 58 ff.

[24] P. 98.

[25] Gutschmid in the "Philologus," 10, 672.

[26] The number of 113 generations, which Syncellus gives as contemporaneous, does not in the least agree with the accounts of Manetho; moreover, Gutschmid has shown from what items the number 3,555 in Syncellus has arisen in "Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients," s. 9.

[27] On this rests the difference of the systems of Lepsius and Bunsen. Taking the total given by Syncellus from Manetho of 3,555 years before Nektanebös, Lepsius arrives at the years 3,892 B.C. Bunsen also considers the number 3,555 to be from Manetho, but without historical value. He insists on this number because he allows Manetho to reckon 1,286 years for the new monarchy, 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 systems of Bunsen and Lepsius. He retains the total of 3,555 years, and the year 3,892 B.C. for Menes; to the 1,076 years given by Eratosthenes for the old monarchy he adds four years for Skemiophris, thus making 1,080 years, fixes the middle monarchy—the Hyksos—at 1,088 years, or down to the era ἀπὸ Μενοφρέως at 1,490, and the new monarchy down to Nektanebos at 985 years.

[28] Bœckh, "Manetho," s. 411; Lepsius, "Chronologie," s. 148 ff. Th. Martin "Mém de l'Acad. d'Inscr," 1869 (8), 265 ff.

[29] Bœckh, "Manetho," s. 404. In the decree of Kanopus, belonging to the ninth year of the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, i.e. to the year 238 B.C., we find as follows (Lepsius, "Das Bilingue Decret von Kanopus"): "In order that the seasons of the year may continue to observe their time according to the present arrangement of the world, and that feasts which ought to be celebrated in winter 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