54 
unreasonably doubted this portion of the Hebrew chronology, 
as if it were uncertain how this period of 430 years was to be 
understood. Those who cast a doubt upon this point refuse to 
Moses, an inspired writer — in the account of his mother, and 
father and grandfather — that authority which would be given 
to the testimony of a profane author on the same occasion.”* 
30. Accepting, then, the date of 1580 B.C. for the time of 
the Exode, and counting back 430 years, we obtain the time of 
the call of Abraham as B.C. 2010. According to the Hebrew 
chronology, the call of Abraham bisects the whole interval 
between the Deluge and the Exode ; and thus by counting back 
another 430 years we arrive at B.C. 2430 as the Biblical date 
for the Noachian Flood. And I think we have some incidental 
secular testimony in confirmation of the same. In the Chinese 
“ Annals ’’ it is stated that a conjunction of the planets Mars, 
Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury in the constellation termed 
“Shi,” was assumed by the Emperor Chuen-hio as a very 
important epoch in the history of the world; and it has been 
discovered by the astronomer De Mailla that such a conjunction 
did take place on February 9th, B.C. 244-i-. f I do not lay any 
undue stress upon this synchronism, but think it possible that 
it may have a bearing upon the harmony between the chrono- 
logies of Israel and Egypt in a way which I propose now to 
endeavour to prove. 
31. Although there is no positive evidence on any Egyptian 
monument (as there is of the Biblical record of the Temptation) 
that the Egyptians knew the story of the Deluge, it is more 
than probable that they had some tradition concerning it. In 
that remarkable work known as “ The Book of the Dead,” 
which has been so skilfully translated by my learned friend 
Dr. Birch, of the British Museum, in the fifth volume of 
Bunsen’s work on Egypt, we find frequent mention of the 
name of Noah, variously written as A7t, Nuh, and Noa, who 
was worshipped in Egypt as “the (jod of water,” and who has 
been identified by Dr. Birch with the deified man who was 
entitled “ the father of the gods,” and “ the giver of mystic 
life to all beneath him.” According to Plutarch, the Egyptian 
tradition represents Noah under the last-named title ; when 
Typhon, a personification of the ocean, enticed him into the 
ark, which, being closed, was forced out to sea through the 
Tanaitic mouth of the Nile; which things, says Plutarch, f 
* Clinton, Fasti Hcllenici, vol. i. p. 299, Appendix, 
t See Chambers' Astronomy, Oxford Clar. Press Edit., p. 42. 
X Plutarch, Dc Isulc ct Osiride , § 13. Plato also, in his Tima’us , § ."», 
