134 ANTIENT METAPHTSICS. Book II. 



The fecond thing that I required, in the preceding chapter, for a 

 country where language was to be invented, is that it ihould be a 

 country in which men could live in confiderable numbers, and ia 

 clofe intercourfe and communication, upon the natural produ(3;ions 

 of the earth, without even thofe arts which we call the neceflary arts 

 of life. Now, there is no country in the world more abundant In 

 thofe natural produdions than Egypt : For men there can fubfift, 

 not only upon the land, but upon the river; and not only upon the 

 fi{h that are taken in it, but upon vegetables which grow in it, and 

 in the marflies *. And Herodotus tells us, that in his time there 

 was a part of the nation who lived in the marfhes upon the vege- 

 tables there produced, without agriculture f. 



A third thing I have required, in the country where language was- 

 to be invented, is not only that men fhould be aflociated together, 

 but that they (hould live under a regular polity : And particularly 



that, 



The antient hiftory of Egypt is a matter, I think, of great curiofity, and a very im« 

 portant part of the hirtory of man. It is a fubjeft upon which, and upon the antient 

 hiftory of Greece, I have a great many flieets in M. S. Thefe I may feme time or 

 another publifli in a volume by itfelf. But it would not be proper to make it any part 

 of a work, fuch as the prefent, though it may not improperly be confidered as an ap- 

 pendix to it. In it I will (how that the Egyptian chronology, however extraordinary 

 it may appear, is fupported, as much as any chronology can be, by human monu- 

 ments : And I will endeavour to account how it comes Jo be fo different from the 

 chronology of our Sacred Books. 



• See Diodorus, lib. i. cap. 34. and 43. where he mentions two plants, the Zc/aj, 

 which grew in the river, and of which they made bread before they got the ufe of 

 corn ; — and \.hz ^groffis, which grew in their marfhes, upon which they fattened cattle 

 when Diodorus was in Egypt, but upon which they lived when in a wild flate : And 

 of this their antient food, Diodorus fays, the memory was preferved in theu: facrifices 

 in his lime. (di£t. cap. 43.). 



f Lib. 2. cap. 92. 



