218 Biographical Sketch of Dr Prickard. 



guided in his research. " Various attempts," says Dr Pri- 

 chard {Critical Exam., p. 88), " have been made to reconcile 

 the chronology of Manetho with that of Moses. Perizonius 

 allows the Egyptian annalist to be correct through the latter 

 half of the chronicle ; but not knowing what to do with the 

 first fifteen dynasties, he boldly erases them at once, and de- 

 clares them to be a forgery of the author. He has been fol- 

 lowed by several later authors, particularly by Dr Hales. 

 This way of proceeding is more like cutting the Gordian 

 knot than untying it. We have no right to act in so sum- 

 mary a manner. If we cannot reconcile the antiquity as- 

 sumed by the annals of one nation with the dates assigned 

 for the origin of empires and of the world in the records of 

 the others, we have no other course to pursue than to ac- 

 knowledge the contradiction between them. We may have 

 good reasons for placing confidence in one record rather than 

 another ; but we have no right to cut off from the archives 

 of Egypt all that extends too far, as if we were shortening 

 the limbs of Procrustes, and then pretend that we have re- 

 conciled them with the computation of the Hebrew Scrip- 

 tures. 



" But though we ought to abstain from new modelling the 

 Egyptian antiquities after the pattern of the Hebrew,no objec- 

 tion can be made to our comparing all the documents we pos- 

 sess that relate to the chronology of Egypt, and endeavouring 

 to find some method of reconciling them with themselves. We 

 are only bound, while proceeding in this attempt, to exclude 

 all prejudice in favour of those particular methods that lead 

 to conclusions which we are, from other considerations, in- 

 clined to adopt."" 



These are undoubtedly the sentiments of genuine historical 

 criticism. 



The view taken by Dr Prichard, founded on the internal 

 evidences of the documents themselves, as to the relative cha- 

 racters of the lists of Manetho and Eratosthenes, is in its 

 leading features, and especially as relates to the earlier period 

 of the Egyptian chronology, fully borne out and confirmed by 

 later experience. 



The conclusion deduced from a comparison of the lists that 



