4 Rey. Epwarp Hincxs on the Age of the Highteenth Dynasty of Manetho. 
same manner as a numismatist would deal with the false conclusions which 
another numismatist should pretend to obtain from a newly discovered medal. 
This is the course which I have pursued in the papers which the Academy 
has done me the honour to publish. In that on the Years and Cycles of the an- 
cient Egyptians, I pointed out the fallacy of the arguments derived from the 
hieroglyphical notation of the months, by which M. Biot had sought to fix the in- 
troduction of the wandering year of 365 days at an epoch more than 3000 years 
anterior to our era; and I showed, from that very notation, that it could not 
possibly have been introduced at any other time than the early part of the 
eighteenth century before Christ. I selected the precise year, 1767, from distinct 
considerations, which, though not equally forcible, appear to me to carry with them 
a very high degree of probability. 
In my paper on the Stéle, my main object was to direct the student or pur- 
chaser of Egyptian antiquities to that class of monuments, which would be most 
likely to afford historical information; and to point out criteria, by which the 
relative antiquity of those which were not dated might be determined. But I 
was enabled to introduce into the paper some corrections of certain prevailing 
opinions, the tendency of which was to assign an extravagant antiquity to kings, 
or successions of kings. 
I shewed, in the first place, that no reliance was to be placed on the collection 
of figures of kings, found in a chamber at Karnac, which had been assumed to 
be a genealogical tablet, similar to that of Abydos; and which, having been con- 
nected with this, through the Osortasens and Amenemhés, carried up the line of 
Pharaohs to a very remote epoch from the accession of the eighteenth dynasty. 
I proved from contemporary monuments that the Osortasen succession, as it 
really existed, was different from that said to be indicated by the figures in the 
chamber at Karnac; and, of course, that the latter could be of no authority. 
The so called “‘ Tablet of Karnac” is, in fact, a mere collection of figures of 
kings, who had reigned, or were supposed to have reigned, in the various parts 
of Egypt, and perhaps in Ethiopia, placed together without any regard to order 
of succession. 
I pointed out also the true period at which these kings reigned, to whom the 
most remote antiquity had been assigned by MM. L’Hote and Letronne, on 
the ground of inscriptions bearing their names being found at Karnac, on the 
_—e 
