On the Catalogue of Egyptian Kings. 379 



thirty- seventh sovereign, who ought to have nineteen years 

 instead of the five that have been hitherto assigned to him. This 

 last error was occasioned by an ignorant correction of a mistake 

 which is found in both the MSS., and which therefore probably 

 arose from the carelessness of Syncellus himself. The thirty- 

 seventh king and his predecessor are stated to have begun to 

 reign in the same year of the world, and to have reigned the 

 same number of years (five). Now from what goes before it is 

 plain that both these numbers belong to the thirty-sixth king ; 

 and from the year of the world in which the thirty-eighth and last 

 king began to reign, it is clear that the thirty-seventh reigned 

 nineteen years. The mistake in the MSS. is one which might 

 easily be made by a thoughtless writer ; for the Catalogue is 

 given in detached portions a few reigns at a time separated 

 by a great quantity of other matter, and the name of the thirty- 

 sixth king ends one of these portions, while that of the thirty- 

 seventh begins another ; so that, not having both before his eyes 

 at the same moment, a person 'so careless as Syncellus might, 

 without being conscious of it, attach the same reign and date to 

 the two names, by transcribing twice over the same line of num- 

 bers in the Catalogue which he was copying ; the whole of which 

 Catalogue, in all likelihood, he had previously drawn up in a 

 tabular form, with the years of the world annexed according to 

 his own chronology, that it might be ready, as any portion of it 

 was wanted, for immediate transference to his pages. Such 

 seems to be the natural account of the matter ; but, as usual, it 

 does not occur to Groar, who takes the opportunity, which the 

 confusion affords him, of foisting in his supplementary king 

 between the two last mentioned, giving each of these five years, 

 as in the MS., by which means he obtains room for him ; while 

 on the other hand he alters the year of the world attached to the 

 thirty-seventh king, so as to make it suit his hypothesis. 



The following is a view of the last eight reigns, as they ap- 

 pear to have stood in the original document, compared with the 

 erroneous list of Groar. The years of the world are omitted, as 



