412 TRANS. ST. I. GUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



paralleling them with their own already known gods and god- 

 desses. 



Add to this what history reports concerning the multitude of 

 astronomical inscriptions preserved in Egypt, and their antiquity. 

 Diodorus of Sicily (i. 8i, 83) narrates that Egyptians have, times 

 immemorial since, preserved innumerable astronomical observa- 

 tions (r«c Tzepc kxdazojv dazfiibi, civayfjacdi;, ic izaiv d.7iiarwv ra> 

 Ttk/jdec (fU/AzTOuai). Simplicius (p. 27) testifies that the same 

 preserved astronomical observations 2,oco }ears old. In Cicero's 

 Divinatio we read the following: Principio Assyrii — trajectio- 

 nes viotiisqiic stellarum observarunt, quibus notatis^ quid cuique 

 signijicaretur memori<^ frodiderunt. — £andetn artcm .^gyp- 

 tii longinquitate temporum isi^vMEnABiLiBuspcencscsczth'scon- 

 secuti putaiitur. The same is confirmed by Aristotle (De Coelo, 

 ii. 12). Indeed a great many of such Egyptian monuments have 

 been published already in the " Description de I'Egypte," Rosel- 

 lini's "Monumenti del' Egitto e della Nubia," Burton's "Excerpta 

 hieroglyphica," Champollion's " Monuments de I'Egypte," Lep- 

 sius's "yEgyptische Denkmaeler," and the like. Besides, nearly 

 all Egyptian museums in Europe and America preserve similar 

 antiquities, going back from Constantine to Menes. And all these 

 numberless very old relics of Egyptian wisdom would remain 

 inexplicable forever, or at least doubtful, had Providence not 

 preserved a papyrus-scroll on which the elements of Egyptian 

 astronomy are clearly and reliably recorded. 



Finally, it is universally known that the history of Egypt, from 

 the fathers of the Church down to this day, has been a very chaos. 

 Since 1839 more than 30 Egyptian chronologies have emerged, 

 none of which refers the beginning of the kingdom of the Phara- 

 ohs to the same year ; e.g. they refer Menes to -6467 (Henne), 

 5C67 (Champollion), 5773 (Lesueur), 5702 (Boeckh), 5652 (He- 

 kekyan Bey), 5613 (Unger), 5303 (Henry), 4915 (Lenormant), 

 4890 (Baruchi), 5455 (Brugsch), 4400 (Pickering), 4175 (Louth), 

 3895 (Hincks), 3892 (Lepsius), 3623 (Bunsen), 3187 (Mayer), 

 2785 (C. Gumbach), 2781 (Uhlemann), 2717 (Poole), 2700 (Glid- 

 don), 2400 (Prichard), 23S7 (Knoetel), 2350 (Wilkinson), 2224 

 (Palmer), 2182 (Hofmann), and soon. See Wuttke's Gesch. der 

 Schrift, Leipz. 1872, p. 488. This confusion, however, is much 

 more enormous indeed ; because from Menes to the Lagides there 



