Chap, III. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 255 



muft have been fix millions and a half; — a prodigious number for 

 fo fmall a country as the land of Canaan *. 



The next nation, concerning the population of which I am to in- 

 quire in this period, is the Egyptian nation. Of its population I 

 have faid enough, I think, to fatisfy the reader, that it overflowed 

 with people, and therefore fent colonies to many different countries. 

 I will only add here, that even after the Egyptians were fubdued, 

 firft by the Perfians, and then by the Macedonians, they ftill con- 

 tinued to increafe in numbers ; for under Amafis, the lall kincr, (dVQ 

 one, of the Egyptian race, they had no more than 20,000 cities; but 

 under Ptolemy Philadelphus they had 25,000, which lliows their 

 conftitution and polity to have been fuch, that even under the do- 

 minion of foreign kings, they flill continued to increafe. And the 

 great increafe of people, before that period, was one of the reafons 

 which made Ofiris and Sefoftris, and other Egyptian kings, under- 

 take expeditions into the moft remote countries, fuch as India with 

 armies amounting to millions of men, which Strabo faw eno-raved 

 upon obelifks in the burial place of the Egyptian kings near to 

 Thebes. 



The next moft antient hiftory that has come down to us, (1 fpeak 



£>f profrane hifiory), is the hiftory of the Aflyrian empire, which 



Diodorus Siculus has given us from Ctefias the Cnydian. The au- 



thprhy of this Ctefias, I know, is called in queftion by fome au- 



" thors, particularly by Plutarch. But Henry Stephen, In a dilTerta- 



tion 



* Who would defire to know more of the numbers of the people of Ifracl, mav 

 KCiRl. what is laid in a book, entitled, " Diflertation on the Numbers of Mankind in An- 

 '< tient and Modern Times," p. 51. and following.— The book is printed at Edinburgh 

 in 1753, but without the author being named. It contains a great collctlion 0/ fa^i 

 upon the lubiia of the populjtion of counti !-?, and h, I think, very well worth the 

 leadi::?. 



