yy ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF 



To judge of the nature of the clironicles which the Egyptian priests 

 pretended to possess, it is sufficient to review the extracts which they 

 have given themselves at different times and to different persons. 



Those of Sais, for instance, told Solon about 550 years before 

 Christ, that Egypt, not being subject to deluges, they had preserved 

 not only their own annals, but those of other people ; that the city of 

 Athens and that of Sais were both built by Minerva, the former 9000 

 years before, the other only 8000 ; and to those dates he added the 

 well-known fable concerning the Atlantes, and respecting the resistance 

 which the ancient Athenians opposed to their conquests, as well as all 

 the I'omantic accounts of the Atlantis * ; in which are to be found facts 

 and genealogies similar to those of all mythological romances. 



A century later, about 450 before Christ, the priests of Memphis 

 give a different account to Herodotus f. Menes, the first king of 

 Egypt, as they said, had built Memphis, and confined the Nile with 

 banks, as if such operations could have been done by the first king of 

 any country. Since then they had 330 other kings, down to Moeris, 

 who reigned, as they asserted, 900 years before the epoch in w^hich 

 this statement was made (1350 before Christ) . 



After these kings came Sesostris, who carried his conquests even to 

 Colchis J ; and in all, there were to Sethos 341 kings and 341 high 

 priests,in 341 generations, during 11,340 years ; and in this space, as if 

 to corroborate their genealogy, these priests asserted that the sun had 

 risen twice where he sets, without effecting any change in their cli- 

 mate or the productions of the country ; and previously to them no 

 deity had appeared or reigned in Egypt. 



To this improbability, (which, in spite of all the explanations which 

 have been given, proves so gross an ignorance of astronomy), they add 

 concerning Sesostris, Phero, Helenus, and Rhampsinitus, the kings 

 who built the pyramids, and an Ethiopian conqueror, named Sabacos, 

 tales equally preposterous. 



The Theban priests did better ; they pointed out to Herodotus, and 

 had previously shown to Hecateus, 345 wooden colossal figures, 

 representing 345 high priests, who had succeeded father to son, all 

 men, all born one from the other, but who had been preceded by gods §. 



* See Plato's Timaeus and Critias. 



f Euterpe, chap. xcix. et seq. 



X Herodotus thought that he had detected similarities of figure and colour between 

 the Colchians ; but it is infinitely more probable that the black Colchians, of whom 

 he speaks, were an Indian colony attracted by the commerce anciently established 

 between India and Europe by the Oxus, the Caspian, and the Phasis. See Ritter, 

 Vestibule, chap. i. 



§ Euterpe, chap, cxliii. 



