THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 101 



country, went to Egypt, at the risk of displeasing a prince as suspi- 

 cious as his uncle. He ascended the Nile as far as Thebes. It was 

 not of Sesostris or Osmandyas of whom the priests told him as of a 

 conqueror, but of Rhameses, who with an army of 700,000 men had 

 invaded Libya, Ethiopia, Medea, Persia, Bactria, Scythia, Asia Minor, 

 and Syria *. 



Finally, in the famous article of Pliny on the Obelisks f , we find 

 names of kings, mentioned nowhere else ; Sothies, Mnevis,'Zmarreus, 

 Erapbius, Mestires, or Semenpserteus, cotemporary of Pythagoras, &c. 

 A Ramises, who may be the same as Rhameses, is there made cotem- 

 porary with the siege of Troy. 



I am aware that it is attempted to reconcile these lists, by supposing 

 that the kings have had other names. To me, considering not only 

 the contradiction of these different accounts, but particularly the mix- 

 ture of facts attested by vast monuments and childish extravagancies, 

 it seems much more natural to conclude that the Egyptian priests had 

 no history; that inferior even to the Indians, they had not congruous 

 and connected fables ; that they only kept lists, more or less defective, 

 of their kings, and some recollection of the chief amongst them, of 

 those in particular who had taken care to inscribe their names on their 

 temples and other large monuments which adorned the country ; but 

 these recollections were confused, and were only founded on the tradi- 

 ditional explanations which they gave to the representations painted 

 or engraved on their monuments ; explanations founded only on the 

 hieroglyphics, conceived like those which have been transmitted to us 

 in any general terms J, and which, passing from mouth to mouth, were 

 altered as to details according to the fancy of those who communicated 

 them to strangers ; and consequently it is impossible to rest any pro- 

 position relative to the antiquity of the present continents on the frag- 

 ments of these traditions, so incomplete even iu their own times, and 

 rendered utterly unintelligible by the pens of those who have handed 

 them dovim to us. 



If this assertion needed farther proof, it might be found in the list 

 of the sacred work of Hermes, which the Egyptian priests carried in 



* Tacit. Annal. lib. 2, chap. Ix. 



N.B. According to tlie interpretation of Ammianus, lib. xvii. chap. vi. by the 

 hieroglyphics of the obelisk of Thebes now at Rome in the place of St. John Lateran, 

 it appears that a Rhamestes was styled in the eastern manner, " lord of the habita- 

 ble world," and that the inscription given to Germanicus was only a commentary on 

 this. 



f Pliny, lib, xxxvi. c. 8, 9, 10, 11. 



1 That of Rhamestes in Ammian. loc. cit. 



