PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 475 



nians, in the ancient Zend, in the district surrounding the 

 sources of the Oxus and the Jaxartes.* History, as far as it is 

 based on human testimony, knows of no primitive race, no one 

 primitive seat of civilisation, and no primitive physical natural 

 science, whose glory has been dimmed by the destructive bar- 

 barism of later ages. The historical enquirer must penetrate 

 through many superimposed misty strata of symbolical myths, 

 before he can reach that solid foundation, where the earliest 

 germ of human culture has been developed in accordance 

 with natural laws. In the dimness of antiquity, which consti- 

 tutes as it were the extreme horizon of true historical know* 

 ledge, we see many luminous points, or centres of civilisation, 

 simultaneously blending their rays. Among these we may 

 reckon Egypt, at least five thousand years before our era,f 



sen, Ind. Alterthumskunde, bd. i. s. 528. Compare Kodiger, in the 

 Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, b. iii. s. 4, on Chaldeans 

 and Kurds, the latter of whom Strabo terms Kyrti. 



* Bordj, the watershed of the Ormuzd, nearly where the chain of the 

 Thian-schan (or celestial mountains), at its western termination, abuts in 

 veins against the Bolor (Belur-tagh), or rather intersects it, under the 

 name of the Asferah chain, north of the highland of Pamer (Upa-Me'ra 

 or country above Meru). Compare Burnouf, Gommentaire sur le Yafna, 

 t. i. p. 23&, and Addit., p. clxxxv. with Humboldt, Asie centrale, t. i. 

 p. 163, t. ii. pp. 16, 377-390. 



t The principal chronological data for Egypt are as follows : "Menes, 

 3900 B.C. at least, and probably tolerably correct; 3430, commence- 

 ment of the fourth dynasty, which included the pyramid builders, 

 Chephren-Schafra, Cheops-Chum, and Mykerinos or Menkera; 2200, 

 invasion of the Hyksos under the twelfth dynasty, to which belongs 

 Amenemha III., the builder of the original Labyrinth. A thousand 

 years, at least, and probably still more, must be conjectured for the 

 gradual growth of a civilisation which had been completed, and had 

 in part begun to degenerate, at least 3430 years B.C." (Lepsius, in 

 several letters to myself, dated March, 1846, and therefore after his 

 return from his memorable expedition.) Compare also Bunsen's Con- 

 ^derations on the Commencement of Universal History, which, strictly 

 defined, is only a history of recent times, in his ingenious and learned 

 work, JEgyptens Stelle in derWeltgescliichte, 1845, erstes Buch, s. 11-13. 

 The historical existence and regular chronology of the Chinese go back 

 to 2400, and even to 2700 before our era, far beyond Ju to Hoang-ty. 

 Many literary monuments of the thirteenth century B.C. are extant, and 

 in the twelfth century B.C. Thscheu-li records the measurement of the 

 length of the solstitial shadow taken with such exactness by Tscheu- 

 kung, in the town of Lo-yang, south of the Yellow River, that Laplace 

 found that it accorded perfectly with the theory of the alteration of 



