THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 99 



Other Eg5'ptians told him that they had correct registers, not only 

 of the reign c>f men, but of that of the gods. They reckoned 17,000 

 years from Hercules to Amasis, and 15,000 from Bacchus. Pan was 

 even earlier than Hercules *. 



These people evidently mistook for history some allegory relative to 

 pantheistic metaphysics, which formed, although they knew it not, the 

 basis of their mythology. 



It is only from Sethos that Herodotus begins a history at all credi- 

 ble ; and it is important to note that this history begins with a fact 

 agreeing with the Hebrew annals, namely, the destruction of the army 

 of Sennacherib, king of Assyria f ; and this agreement continues under 

 Necho l and under Hophra or Apries. 



Two centuries after Herodotus (about 260 years before Christ) 

 Ptolemy Philadelphus, a prince of a foreign race, was desirous of know- 

 ing the history of a country which circumstances had (tailed him to 

 govern. A priest called Manetho undertook to write it for him. It 

 was not from records or archives that he pretended to have drawn his 

 information, but from the sacred book of Agathodsemon, son of the se- 

 cond Hermes, and father of Tat, who had copied it upon pillars or 

 columns, erected before the deluge by Tat, or the first Hermes in the 

 Seriadic land § ; and this second Hermes, this Agathodaemon, this 

 Tat, are personages of whom no one had ever before spoken, nor even 

 of this Seriadic land, nor of these columns. This deluge is itself a fact 

 entirely unknown to the Egyptians of early times, and of which Mane- 

 tho points out nothing in what remains to us of his dynasties. 



The production resembles the source ; not only is the whole filled 

 with absurdities, but they are peculiar absurdities, and such as it is 

 impossible to reconcile with those which the more ancient priests had 

 related to Solon and Herodotus. 



Vulcan is the first of the divine kings. He reigns 9000 years ; the 

 gods and demi-gods reign 1985 years. Neither the names, nor the 

 successions, nor the dates of Manetho, coincide with what was pub- 

 lished before or after him ; and his accounts must have been as obscure 

 and confused in themselves as they were with the statements of other 

 authors, if we may credit the extracts of Josephus, Julius Africanus, 

 and Eusebius. They do not even agree about the total of years of his 



* Ibid, cxliv. 

 ■f Euterpe, cxli. 



X Ibid, clix, and in tlie 4tb. book of Kings, chap, xix., or in the 2nd of Paral. 

 chap, xxxii. 



§ Svncell, p. 40. 



M 2 



