125 
Monpay, Novemser 137Tu, 1854. 
LIEUT.-COL. LARCOM, F.R.S., Vicze-Presipent, 
in the Chair. 
Tue Secretary read a paper by the Rev. Edward Hincks, 
D. D., on the Chronology of the Twenty-sixth Egyptian Dy- 
nasty, and of the commencement of the Twenty-seventh :— 
The paper is first occupied with the period between the 
last year of Amasis and the first of Darius. Previous to the 
author’s paper on the Egyptian Stéle (read on the 28th of 
June, 1841), all modern writers on the subject estimated 
this interval at three or four years. In that paper he showed 
that it must have contained six years; in this estimate he has 
been followed by Lepsius and Bunsen; he now contends that 
the true interval was seven years. ‘The arguments by which 
he was led to make it six were two: the first was the inscrip- 
tion on the Cosseir Road, in which (as he interpreted it) a 
person named is stated to have held office for six years of 
Cambyses, thirty-six of Darius, and twelve of Xerxes. It is 
not likely, however, that Cambyses would have appointed a 
person to office in a remote district till some time after his 
conquest of Egypt; and before this the son of Amasis reigned 
six months, so that another year should probably be added. 
The other argument used in 1841 was the testimony of Afri- 
canus, whose text, unquestionably corrupt as it stands, could 
be made to express a consistent meaning by the single change 
of < to 0; the uncial forms of which in MSS., shortly after the 
age of Africanus, are easily confounded. The meaning would 
be, according to this reading, ‘ Cambyses reigned over his 
own kingdom of Persia nine years, and over Egypt six.” The 
propriety of the entire reign in Persia being stated, as well as 
the portion of it during which he ruled Egypt, appears from 
the fact, recently discovered by Lepsius, that the years of Cam- 
VOL. VI. M. 
