122 PRINCIPAL EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OP THE 



might receive from different quarters foreign elements of 

 mental cultivation and the knowledge of other countries, 

 I will next notice other nations dwelling near the Me- 

 diterranean, who enjoyed an early and high degree of 

 civilisation the Egyptians, the Pho3nicians with their north 

 and west African colonies, and the Etruscans. Immigration 

 and commercial intercourse were powerful agents : the more 

 our historical horizon has been extended in the most recent 

 times, as by the discovery of monuments and inscriptions, 

 and by philosophical investigations into languages, the 

 greater we find to have been the influence which, in the 

 earliest times, the Greeks experienced even from the 

 Euphrates, from Lycia, and through the Phrygians allied to 

 the Thracian tribes. 



Concerning the valley of the Nile, which plays so large a 

 part in history, Ifollow the latest investigations of Lepsius, ( 158 ) 

 and the results of his important expedition which throws light 

 on the whole of antiquity, in saying that " there exist well- 

 assured cartouches of kings belonging to the commence- 

 ment of the fourth dynasty of Manetho, which includes the 

 builders of the great pyramids of Gizeh (Chephren or Schafra, 

 Cheops-Chufu, and Menkera or Menctees). This dynasty 

 commenced thirty-four centuries before our Christian era, 

 and twenty-three centuries before the Doric immigration of 

 the Heraclides into the Peloponnesus. ( 159 ) The great 

 stone pyramids of Daschur, a little to the south of Gizeh 

 and Sakara, are considered by Lepsius to have been the 

 work of the tliird dynasty : there are sculptural inscriptions 

 on the blocks of which they are composed, but as yet no 

 kings' names have been discovered. The latest dynasty of 

 the " old kingdom/' which terminated at the invasion of the 



