ANTIQUITY OF WRITING. 



Syncellus tells us *, about (en years aftr Berosus had written his 

 Chaldean History. Manetho allo w> the Eg) ptian gods to have been 

 mortal men ; but his history was very much corrupted by the 

 Greek?, and hath been calk-d in question by several writers, from 

 the account which he himself gave of it. 



The objections to Marietho's Chronology are well founded ; for 

 his number of three thousand five hundred and fifty years, belongs 

 wholly to the successors of Menes, though he is more modest than 

 many other writers of the Egyptian history. Kusebius, in his Ca- 

 non +, omits the first six'een dynasties of Manetho, and begins 

 their chronology with the seventeenth. After Cambyses had car. 

 ried away the Egyptian records, the Egyptian priests, to supply 

 their loss, and to keep up their pretensions to antiquity, began to 

 write new records, wherein they not only unavoidably made great 

 mistakes, but added much of their own invention, especially as to 

 distant times. Josephus, Plutarch, Porphyry, and Flusehius, 

 speak well of Manetho. The curious fragments transcribed from 

 him by Josephus, before his copies had been corrupted, seem to 

 confirm the good opinion of these authors. 



PHENICIANS. 



WK shall next consider the claim of the Phenicians to the inven. 

 tion of letters as we have the strongest proofs of the early civiliza- 

 tion of this people. Sanconiatho of Berytus, the most ancient, as 

 also the most celebrated Phenician historian, compiled the Phenician 

 history with great exactness, from the monuments and memoirs 

 which he received from Jerobalus, priest of the god Jaco, and from 

 their registers, which, Josephus says J, were carefully preserved in 

 the inner parts of the temples; and in them were written the most 

 memorable events, with regard to themselves and others. 



Philo of Byblus, a famous grammarian, who lived in the reigns 

 of Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Trajan, and Adrian, translated 

 Sanconiatho's history, out of the Phtnician into the Greek tongue; 

 and reduced it into eight books, but the original and the version 

 are lost. Eusebius who hath preserved several fragments of this 

 history, gives the following account of it from Porphyry, who was 



* Chronograph, p. 18. 

 + Chron. C.rrc. p. 89. 

 | See Joscphus against Appion, book i. 



