56 
building of the Tower of Babel, according to the current 
chronology of that land. 
33. It is a significant fact that there is no authentic chro- 
nology, whether it be Chinese, Indian, Assyrian, Babylonian, or 
Egyptian, that can trace back to an earlier date than that which 
we may compute from the Hebrew, as the Scriptural date of the 
Flood. It is true that many nations claim a higher antiquity for 
their beginning than the date already mentioned ; but upon 
examination they all fail in the matter of authenticity. And 
Champollion went so far as to say that he had “demonstrated 
that no Egyptian monument was really older than the year 
B.C. 2200.”* Later researches have discovered monuments 
about one century earlier than that date ; the oldest one known 
is unquestionably a tablet now in the Ashinolean Museum at 
Oxford, from the tomb of a priest named Shera, of the second 
of Manetho’s dynasties; and which mav be approximately dated 
B.C. 2300.+ 
34. The mention of Manetho’s name will naturally lead us to 
consider how far his chronology is to be received as an authentic 
witness to what the Egyptians believed to be true. Notwith- 
standing the high estimation in which Manetho was held by the 
late Baron Bunsen, who considers him far more trustworthy 
than all the sacred writers put together, going so far as 
to say : “ Truth have I sought at thy hand ; truth have I 
found by thy aid ; ” J it may be proved without difficulty, 
from both the monuments and the papyri, as well as from 
his fellow-historian Eratosthenes, that in all that relates to 
the early chronology of Egypt, Manetho is perfectly unreli- 
able; and until we come down to the time of the eighteenth 
Dynasty, either from the imperfect way by which the few 
fragments of history which bear his name, have been preserved, 
or from some other cause, there is no dependence upon him 
whatever. And, in order to show this, it may be sufficient to 
mention that in his first book, which contains all that we have 
of history of the first eleven dynasties, he gives a list of 192 
"• Ancient Egypt : its Monuments and History , p. 56. 
+ Some consider that the Pyramid of Degrees, of which there is a relic 
in tire Berlin Museum, is older than the Oxford Tablet, assigning its age 
to the time of Ata, the fourth king of the first Dynasty ; but there is no 
record or king’s name to tell us in whose time this pyramid was built ; 
whereas the Oxford Tablet contains the name of King Senta, the thirteenth 
name on the list of kings in the Tablet of Abydos, which answers to the 
fifth king of Manetho’s second Dynasty. 
X Egypt's Place in Universal History, ii. 392. 
