Iii4 COSMOS. 



an early and distinguished degree of civilization, viz., the 

 Egyptians, the Phoenicians, with their north and west African 

 colonies, and the Etrurians. Immigration and commercial 

 intercourse have here exercised the most powerful influence. 

 The more our historical horizon has been extended in modern 

 times by the discovery of monuments and inscriptions, as well 

 as by philosophical investigation of languages, the more varied 

 does the influence appear which the Greeks in the earliest 

 ages experienced from Lycia and the district surrounding the 

 Euphrates, and from the Phrygians allied to Thracian races. 

 In the Valley of the Nile, which plays so conspicuous a part 

 in the history of mankind, " there are well-authenticated car- 

 touches of the kings as far back as the beginning of the fourth 

 dynasty of Manetho, in which are included the builders of the 

 Pyramids of Giseh (Chephren or Schafra, Cheops-Chufu, and 

 Menkera or Mencheres)." I here avail myself of the account 

 of the most recent investigations of Lepsius,* whose expedi- 

 tion has resulted in throwing much important light on the 

 whole of antiquity. " The dynasty of Manetho began more 

 than thirty-four centuries before our Christian era, and twenty- 

 three centuries before the Doric immigration of the Heraclids 

 into the Peloponnesus. t The great stone pyramids of Daschur, 

 somewhat to the south of Giseh and Sakara, are considered by 

 Lepsius to be the work of the third dynasty. Sculptural in- 

 scriptions have been discovered on the blocks of which they 

 are composed, but as yet no names of kings. The last dynasty 

 of the ancient kingdom, which terminated at the invasion of 

 the Hyksos, and probably 1200 years before Homer, was the 

 twelfth of Manetho, and the one to which belonged Ame- 

 nemha III., the prince who caused the original labyrinth to 

 be constructed, and who formed Lake Mceris artificially by 

 means of excavations and large dikes of earth running north 

 and west. After the expulsion of the Hyksos, the new king- 

 dom began under the eighteenth dynasty (1600 years B.C.). 

 Rameses Miamoun the Great (Rameses II.) was the second 

 ruler of the nineteenth dynasty. The sculptured delineations 

 which perpetuate his victories were explained to Germanicus 



All that relates to Egyptian chronology and history, and which is 

 distinguished in the text by marks of quotation, is based on manuscript 

 communications which I received from my friend Professor Lepsius, 

 in March, 1846. 



t I place the Doric immigration into the Peloponnesus 328 years 

 before the first Olympiad, agreeing in this respect with Otfried Milller 

 (Doricr, abth. ii., s. 436). 



