(183) For Lightfoot, see his Prolegomena relating to the age of the
world at the birth of Christ; see also in the edition of his works,
London, 1822, vol. 4, pp. 64, 112. For Scaliger, see in the De
Emendatione Temporum, 1583; also Mark Pattison, Essays, Oxford, 1889,
vol. i, pp. 162 et seq. For Raleigh's misgivings, see his History of the
World, London, 1614, p. 227, book ii of part i, section 7 of chapter
i; also Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 293. For Usher, see
his Annales Vet. et Nov. Test., London, 1650. For Pearson, see his
Exposition of the Creed, sixth edition, London, 1692, pp. 59 et seq.
For Marsham, see his Chronicus Canon Aegypticus, Ebraicus, Graecus,
et Disquisitiones, London, 1672. For La Peyrere, see especially
Quatrefarges, in Revue de Deux Mondes for 1861; also other chapters in
this work. For Jackson, Hales, and others, see Wallace's True Age of
the World. For Wilkinson, see various editions of his work on Egypt. For
Vignolles, see Leblois, vol. iii, p. 617. As to the declaration in favor
of the recent origin of man, sanctioned by Popes Gregory XIII and Urban
VIII, see Strachius, cited in Wallace, p. 97. For the general agreement
of Church authorities, as stated, see L'Art de Verifier les Dates, as
above. As to difficulties of scriptural chronology, see Ewald, History
of Israel, English translation, London, 1883, pp. 204 et seq.
II. THE NEW CHRONOLOGY.
But all investigators were not so docile as Wilkinson, and there soon came a new train of scientific thought which rapidly undermined all this theological chronology. Not to speak of other noted men, we have early in the present century Young, Champollion, and Rosellini, beginning a new epoch in the study of the Egyptian monuments. Nothing could be more cautious than their procedure, but the evidence was soon overwhelming in favour of a vastly longer existence of man in the Nile Valley than could be made to agree with even the longest duration then allowed by theologians. For, in spite of all the suppleness of men like Wilkinson, it became evident that, whatever system of scriptural chronology was adopted, Egypt was the seat of a flourishing civilization at a period before the "Flood of Noah," and that no such flood had ever interrupted it. This was bad, but worse remained behind: it was soon clear that the civilization of Egypt began earlier than the time assigned for the creation of man, even according to the most liberal of the sacred chronologists.
As time went on, this became more and more evident. The long duration assigned to human civilization in the fragments of Manetho, the Egyptian scribe at Thebes in the third century B.C., was discovered to be more accordant with truth than the chronologies of the great theologians; and, as the present century has gone on, scientific results have been reached absolutely fatal to the chronological view based by the universal Church upon Scripture for nearly two thousand years.
As is well known, the first of the Egyptian kings of whom mention is made upon the monuments of the Nile Valley is Mena, or Menes. Manetho had given a statement, according to which Mena must have lived nearly six thousand years before the Christian era. This was looked upon for a long time as utterly inadmissible, as it was so clearly at variance with the chronology of our own sacred books; but, as time went on, large fragments of the original work of Manetho were more carefully studied and distinguished from corrupt transcriptions, the lists of kings at Karnak, Sacquarah, and the two temples at Abydos were brought to light, and the lists of court architects were discovered. Among all these monuments the scholar who visits Egypt is most impressed by the sculptured tablets giving the lists of kings. Each shows the monarch of the period doing homage to the long line of his ancestors. Each of these sculptured monarchs has near him a tablet bearing his name. That great care was always taken to keep these imposing records correct is certain; the loyalty of subjects, the devotion of priests, and the family pride of kings were all combined in this; and how effective this care was, is seen in the fact that kings now known to be usurpers are carefully omitted. The lists of court architects, extending over the period from Seti to Darius, throw a flood of light over the other records.
Comparing, then, all these sources, and applying an average from the lengths of the long series of well-known reigns to the reigns preceding, the most careful and cautious scholars have satisfied themselves that the original fragments of Manetho represent the work of a man honest and well informed, and, after making all allowances for discrepancies and the overlapping of reigns, it has become clear that the period known as the reign of Mena must be fixed at more than three thousand years B.C. In this the great Egyptologists of our time concur. Mariette, the eminent French authority, puts the date at 5004 B.C.; Brugsch, the leading German authority, puts it at about 4500 B.C.; and Meyer, the latest and most cautious of the historians of antiquity, declares 3180 B.C. the latest possible date that can be assigned it. With these dates the foremost English authorities, Sayce and Flinders Petrie, substantially agree. This view is also confirmed on astronomical grounds by Mr. Lockyer, the Astronomer Royal. We have it, then, as the result of a century of work by the most acute and trained Egyptologists, and with the inscriptions upon the temples and papyri before them, both of which are now read with as much facility as many medieval manuscripts, that the reign of Mena must be placed more than five thousand years ago.
But the significance of this conclusion can not be fully understood until we bring into connection with it some other facts revealed by the Egyptian monuments.
The first of these is that which struck Sir Walter Raleigh, that, even in the time of the first dynasties in the Nile Valley, a high civilization had already been developed. Take, first, man himself: we find sculptured upon the early monuments types of the various races—Egyptians, Israelites, negroes, and Libyans—as clearly distinguishable in these paintings and sculptures of from four to six thousand years ago as the same types are at the present day. No one can look at these sculptures upon the Egyptian monuments, or even the drawings of them, as given by Lepsius or Prisse d' Avennes, without being convinced that they indicate, even at that remote period, a difference of races so marked that long previous ages must have been required to produce it.
The social condition of Egypt revealed in these early monuments of art forces us to the same conclusion. Those earliest monuments show that a very complex society had even then been developed. We not only have a separation between the priestly and military orders, but agriculturists, manufacturers, and traders, with a whole series of subdivisions in each of these classes. The early tombs show us sculptured and painted representations of a daily life which even then had been developed into a vast wealth and variety of grades, forms, and usages.