357 
poetry to prose. They were in number eight, who reigned 217 
years. 
Then follow fifteen generations of the Ivvnic cycle, of which 
1 can make nothing; and afterwards fourteen or fifteen 
dynasties, making together (the particulars of one being lost) 
the thirty dynasties in 1,697 years. I cannot find any agree- 
ment between this and the history of Manetho, except in this, 
that the latter also begins (according to the Greeks) with 
Hephaestus, to whom he assigns only 724 years, followed by 
Helius, who reigns 86 years ! 
It is not worth while to spend more time on these legends. 
Let us see if we arrive at solid ground at the era of Menes. 
In the new tablet of Abydos, discovered about ten years 
since in one of the compartments of the temple of Seti I. at 
Harabat-el-Madformeh, there appears an enumeration of a 
successive order of sixty-five kings, until the last Pharaoh of 
the XHth Dynasty of Manetho. 
How many years would these kings represent? Brugsch 
calculates three in a century— ag. x 100= 2,166 years; but the 
sixty-nine kings of the Egyptian chronicle reigned only about 
twenty-four years and a half each on the average of that docu- 
ment. This would materially alter the figures to 1,690 years, 
which seems more likely, as there is no ( historical ) foundation 
at all for the estimate of Brugsch, and it is much higher than 
would be justified by comparison with the more clearly known 
length of the reigns in the third book of Manetho. 
Now, according to the tablet of Abydos, the XVIIIth 
Dynasty follows immediately on the close of the XHth Dynasty ; 
and this view of the subject is sustained by thejudicious remark 
of Mariette Bey, that the proper names of the personages of 
the XHth are equally found on the monuments of the" com- 
mencement of the XVIIIth Dynasty; and still more, that in the 
two epochs the character of the coffins, of the ornaments, and 
of the style, is quite identical . 
Notwithstanding this, Brugsch interposes 500 years as a 
probable interval * between the two, whilst fully showing that 
the testimony of the monuments is as I have said. 
I dismiss these probabilities, for which no monumental proof 
(as it appears) can be shown, and look next for the era of the 
* At some future era the historian may, in like manner, consider 500 years 
as a probable interval between the termination of the power of the East- 
India Company and the assumption by Her Majesty the Queen of the title 
of Empress of India, a “ Sepoy ” Dynasty occupying most part of the period. 
o n •> 
<w D (V 
