THE PYRAMIDS. 249 
attaches to the opinion thereby suggested ; 
and that the obscurity in which this part of 
antient history has been involved, is principally 
owing to the cause assigned by Pauiv\ namely, 
to a train of theories founded upon the bewil- 
dering fables of the Greeks. 
To proceed, therefore, according to the pro- 
posed method of investigation: 
I. 
Who were the Inhalitants of this part of Egypt, in the 
remote period to luhlch these 7nonuments refer P 
The kingdom of Egypt, according to the best ^ge of the 
pyramids. 
authorities admitted in chronology", had lasted 
about seventeen hundred years at the conquest 
of Camhyses^. The first Princes spoken of in 
Sacred Scripture are those " of Pharaoh," men- 
tioned in the books of Hoses'^, near two thou- 
sand years before the Christian sera. The Jirst 
pyramid, according to Herodotus^, was built by 
Mceris, the last of a line of kings from Menes to 
(1) Philo^ioph. Diss. &c. vol.11, p. 43. Lond.lldb. 
(2) See the calculation of Constantine Manasses. 
(3) B. C. 525. 
(4) "The Princes also of Pharaoh." Genes, xii. 15, 
(5) Herodot. Euterpe, c, 101. 
