HIS HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 109 



tude of time implied by the geological relations of 

 human remains than other chronologies more fre- 

 quently appealed to. 



Nor is the case much altered when the research 

 is carried into Western Asia and Egypt. Egyptian 

 allusions, so far as they have been interpreted, would 

 carry us much beyond the ordinarily-received chron- 

 ology of six thousand years, but they do not point 

 to any intelligible beginning, nor trace any line 

 of descent, beyond a few dynastic successions, even 

 for their own nationaUty. Whether we accept the 

 estimate of the French savans, who ascribe to the 

 oldest Egyptian monuments an antiquity of from 

 eight to ten thousand years, or that of Chevalier 

 Bunsen, who doubles the amount, we are not in the 

 least degree assisted to any definite notion respecting 

 the chronology of the race who reared these monu- 

 ments, and who must have existed for centuries before 

 they had acquired the power to construct such gigantic 

 and enduring memorials. Great darkness, in like 

 manner, hangs over the contemporaneous nationalities 

 of Western Asia, whether Assyrians, Phoenicians, or 

 Hebrews ; and though the latter have left a circum- 

 stantially-narrated account which has deeply influenced 

 the beliefs of modern Europe, that account is of itself 

 so much a matter of interpretation and calculation, 

 that the widest discrepancies exist between the esti- 



