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II. ON THE CATALOGUE OF EGYPTIAN KINGS, WHICH 

 IS USUALLY KNOWN BY THE NAME OF THE 

 LATERCULUM OF ERATOSTHENES. 



{Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol.. n. p. 366. Read January 9, 1843.] 



THIS Catalogue, which the distinguished mathematician and 

 philosopher whose name it bears drew up by command of 

 Ptolemy Euergetes, contains a long series of kings who reigned 

 at Thebes in Upper Egypt, and has been preserved to us in 

 the Chronographia of Greorgius Syncellus, a Greek monk of the 

 eighth century. It is a document which has been made much 

 use of by chronologers ; by some of whom (as by Sir John Mar- 

 sham for example, who calls it " venerandissimum antiquitatis 

 monumentum"), it has been reckoned of the very highest autho- 

 rity ; but it is extremely corrupt in the latter part, owing to the 

 carelessness with which it was transcribed either by Syncellus 

 himself or his immediate copyists. The writers on Egyptian 

 antiquities have in consequence been much perplexed in settling 

 the chronology of the reigns in which the errors exist, and the 

 attempts that have been made to remove the confusion have 

 only served to increase it. It was the object of the author to 

 restore the document to its original state, and he showed that 

 this might be effected, with complete certainty, by a proper at- 

 tention to the manuscripts of Syncellus. Of these only two are 



