57 
kings, who “ reigned during a space of 2,300 years and 70 days,” 
making three of the kings of the sixth Dynasty reign on an 
average over sixty years each ; while in the seventh Dynasty he 
mentions seventy Memphite kings, who altogether reigned "only 
“ seventy days ” ! 
35. There are no less than three authentic testimonies which 
are completely subversive of what I cannot refrain from calling 
a wild and impossible theory. The newly-discovered Tablet of 
Abydos, which happily has that portion perfect that is wanting 
in the old Tablet of Abydos, which has so long adorned the walls 
of the British Museum. For the first eleven dynasties, the 
new tablet gives a list of fifty-eight kings in place of Manetho's 
192 ; and inasmuch as other Egyptian monuments confirm the 
testimony of the tablet, we have in that “ Sermon in Stones ” a 
far earlier as well as a far more accurate witness to the chronology 
of Egypt, The tablet was erected by Pharaoh Seti, the head of 
the nineteenth Dynasty, in the fifteenth century B.C., whereas 
Manetho lived in the third century B.C., and therefore twelve 
centuries later. 
36. If theTablet of Abydos is subversive of Manetho, in respect 
to the number of kings before the time of the twelfth Dynasty, 
the Turin papyrus is no less so in regard to the duration of their 
reigns. For it states that from the time of Menes, the proto- 
monarch of Egypt, and the same as Mizraim, the grandson of 
Noah, according to Syncellus, there were only 355 years in place 
of “ the 2,300 years and 70 days ” specified by Manetho; for 
the Tablet of Sakkarah discovered by Mariette, like the tablet 
already mentioned, shows that in the order of succession the sixth 
Dynasty is immediately followed by the twelfth. All the Tablets 
in Egypt containing lists of the Pharaohs, may be compared to 
the series of English sovereigns, such as they are represented 
in the painted w'indows of the House of Lords or the figures on 
the walls of the Crystal Palace. It would be a strange perver- 
sion of lost history and chronology if any one were to assert that 
during the Caroline era several centuries had been omitted from 
the domain of history. Yet some of our Egyptologers have no 
hesitation in asserting that the rule of the Shepherds, whose 
names are omitted from the Tablet of Abydos, lasted some 
thousands of years in place of about a century, the authentic 
duration of that Dynasty, which Bunsen computes at 920 years. 
Lepsius reduces the period to 500 years,* while De Rouge elon- 
* I would suggest the following considerations as a possible solution of 
this difficult question ; viz., the duration of the Shepherd Dynasty in 
Egypt, which Lepsius estimates at 500 years, upon the grounds I conclude 
