i 5 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



As is well known, the first of the Egyptian kings of whom 

 mention is made upon the monuments of the Nile Valley is Mena, 

 or Menes. Manetho had given a statement, according to which 

 Mena must have lived nearly six thousand years before the Chris- 

 tian era ; this was looked upon for a long time as utterly inad- 

 missible, since it was so clearly at variance with the chronology 

 of our own sacred books ; but, as time went on, large fragments 

 of the original work of Manetho were more carefully studied and 

 distinguished from corrupt transcriptions, the lists of kings at 

 Karnak, Sacquarak, and the two temples at Abydos were brought 

 to light, and the lists of court architects were discovered. Among 

 all these monuments the scholar who visits Egypt is most im- 

 pressed by the sculptured tablets giving the lists of kings. Each 

 shows the monarch of the period doing homage to the long line of 

 his ancestors. Each of these sculptured monarchs has near him a 

 tablet bearing his name. That great care was always taken to 

 keep these imposing records correct is certain ; the loyalty of sub- 

 jects, the devotion of priests, and the family pride of kings were 

 all combined in this, and how effective this care was is seen in 

 the fact that kings now known to be usurpers are carefully 

 omitted. The lists of court architects, extending over the pe- 

 riod from Seti to Darius, throw a flood of light over the other 

 records. 



Comparing, then, all these sources, and applying an average 

 from the lengths of the long series of well-known reigns to the 

 reigns preceding, the most careful and cautious scholars have 

 satisfied themselves that the original fragments of Manetho rep- 

 resent the work of a man honest and well informed, and, after 

 making all allowances for discrepancies and the overlapping of 

 reigns, it has become clear that the period known as the reign of 

 Mena must be fixed at about five thousand years B. c. In this the 

 three great Egyptologists of our time concur ; Mariette, the emi- 

 nent French authority, puts the date at 5004 B. c, and with this 

 the foremost English authority, Sayce, agrees ; Brugsch, the lead- 

 ing German authority, puts it at about 4500 B. c. We have it, then, 

 as the result of a century of work by the most acute and trained 

 Egyptologists, and with the inscriptions upon the temples and 

 papyri before them, both of which are now read with as much 

 facility as many mediaeval manuscripts, that the reign of Mena 

 must be placed close upon seven thousand years ago. 



But the significance of this conclusion can not be fully under- 

 stood until we bring into connection with it some other facts re- 

 vealed by the Egyptian monuments. 



The first of these is that which struck Sir Walter Raleigh — 

 that, even in the time of the first dynasties in the Nile Valley, a 

 high civilization had already been developed. Take, first, man 



