Rev. Edward Hincks on the Egyptian Stele, or Tablet. 65 



inscription itself, but in the sculptures which accompany it. In the more ancient 

 tablets, the figures which occur are exclusively those of the deceased person and 

 his relatives ; figures of deities are never introduced. On the contrary, a tablet 

 of the eighteenth dynasty, or of any subsequent period, is seldom without the 

 representation of some deity or deities. I must, however, remark, by way of 

 caution, lest anyone should infer from this that the Egyptians of the earlier ages 

 did not represent their deities in a visible form, that in the inscriptions on these 

 ancient tablets small images of the deities are used, either to represent their 

 names, or as determinative signs after them. The difference between the two 

 classes of tablets is not to be attributed to any change in the religious notions of 

 the people ; it seems to have been merely a difference of taste or fashion ; the 

 more ancient Egyptians representing the deceased person as entertaining his 

 relatives at a feast, while those of after ages represented him as doing homage to 

 the deities. 



The dates of some tablets are conspicuously placed at the tops ; the royal 

 name and titles being inclosed in a cartouche, and the year of the king's reign, 

 and sometimes the month and day, being prefixed. It is from a comparison of 

 these dated tablets, the relative ages of which can admit of no question, that I 

 have derived the criteria of antiquity which I have mentioned. 



I say the relative ages, because there are gaps in Egyptian chronology, which 

 render it impossible for us to assign as yet the years, or even the centuries, before 

 our era, at which the earlier kings lived. We know that the eleven kings, who 

 appear as the predecessors of Rameses II. in the tablet of Abydos, with the inter- 

 vening kings and queens whose names are omitted, reigned together for about 

 300 years. These are included in the eighteenth dynasty of Manetho. We 

 know also that from the commencement of the reign of Sheshonk I., who com- 

 menced the twenty-second dynasty of Manetho, to the Persian conquest, is within 

 a trifle, in excess or in defect, of 450 years. But as to the interval between the 

 accession of Rameses II. and that of Sheshonk I., we have as yet, so far as I am 

 aware, no satisfactory evidence. We know both from Manetho, and from the 

 royal tombs at Thebes and other monuments, that a great number of kings 

 intervened ; but we have no certainty, that they did not belong to two or more 

 contemporaneous dynasties ; or that in the same dynasty two or more brothers did 

 not occupy the throne together. This interval, then, which is by some extended 



VOL. XIX. / 



