6 Rev. Epwarp Hincxs on the Age of the Highteenth Dynasty of Manetho. 
all the dynasties, mentioned by Manetho as following it, really reigned in suc- 
cession for the periods which he states. 
What I then mentioned as a possible supposition, I now announce as a 
positive fact. Since I wrote the paper on the Stéle, I applied myself to 
collect the evidence respecting the time at which the eighteenth dynasty flou- 
rished, which might be found in the recorded dates of facts, that were of such 
a nature, that they could only have occurred at particular seasons of the solar 
year. I have been able to obtain three such dates; and they all concur in 
depressing the era of the accession of this dynasty about 365 years below that 
assigned by the continental writers ; because the three facts stated must all have 
occurred about three months earlier than they would have done if this era had 
been correctly assigned. 
The first of these facts is the commencement of the expedition of Rameses 
the Great against the Scythians, which is said to have been in his fifth year, the 
eleventh month, and ninth day of the month. In the year 1522 B.C., which is about 
the time that the continental writers suppose that Rameses reigned, the ninth 
day of the eleventh month would coincide with the 13th July of the proleptic 
Julian year, some days after the summer solstice. It is extremely improbable 
that the king would have deferred till so late a season his setting out on a distant 
expedition to a northern region. ‘The time of the vernal equinox, or some time 
shortly after it, would probably be that at which he commenced his expedition ; 
and in order that the assigned date of the wandering year should coincide with 
this, the expedition must have taken place in the former part of the twelfth 
century before Christ. In 1200 B.C. this date would coincide with the 23rd 
April, about twenty days after the equinox; and in 1120 B. C. it would coin- 
cide with the equinox itself. 
The second fact is of a similar nature. In the annals of the reign of 
Thothmos III., a fragment of which, formerly at Karnac, is now in the Museum 
at Paris, this king is said to have made his first campaign in the third quater- 
nion of months in his twenty-ninth year (i.e. reckoning from the death of his 
father ; the first year from the death of his sister). According to the French 
hypothesis, this must have occurred in the beginning of the seventeenth century 
before Christ, when this quaternion would have extended from the latter end of 
June to the latter end of October. It is very improbable that the campaign 
