164 Rev. Epwarp Hincks on the Number, Names, and Powers 
27th plate, figures 1, 3, and 4. I differ from some other investigators, in not 
referring fig. 5 to the same age. It appears to me considerably later. 
The second age comprehends all monuments, except those named, with which 
I am acquainted, that are earlier than the reign of Amenemhe I. The order 
of the kings named in them is yet unsettled, and it will probably be found to be 
very different indeed from that which Chevalier Bunsen imagines that he has 
deduced from Eratosthenes. 
The third age, or ‘age of the Twelfth Dynasty,” includes the monuments 
of Amenemhe I. and his successors, to the end of the dynasty. I should make 
a separate class for the monuments of “the Middle Kingdom” of Chevalier 
Bunsen, if I knew of any such, or if I saw any reasonable grounds for supposing 
that this supposed interval between the twelfth and the eighteenth dynasties ever 
really existed. 
I call, then, the age of the Eighteenth Dynasty the fourth age, making it 
extend so as to include the reign of Rameses I. 
The fifth age, or “age of the Papyri,” has been already defined. 
The sixth is that of the successors of Rameses III., the hero of Medinet 
Abi, to the end of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. 
The seventh includes the later dynasties, native and Persian. 
The eighth extends from the Grecian conquest to the death of Ptolemy 
Evergetes II.; after which the style of hieroglyphical writing began to degene- 
rate much more rapidly than it had previously done. 
The ninth includes the reigns of the later Grecian, and the earlier Roman 
sovereigns. 
The tenth age is that of the later Roman emperors, including the sculptures 
at Dendera and Esne, where every principle of propriety that had been recog- 
nized in earlier times appears to have been abandoned. 
I now come to consider the several kinds of data which I have mentioned in 
succession. And first, as to transcriptions of Egyptian words expressed by pho- 
noglyphs, in characters of a known foreign language. These have been consi- 
dered very useful; and indeed they have been regarded as unexceptionable 
means of determining the powers of the phonoglyphs which the words contain. 
Objections, however, lie against them all. The languages in which the tran- 
scriptions are made are Greek and Hebrew. As to the former, it is plain that, 
