As regards archaeology, the earliest known inscriptions point to still earlier events and buildings, indicating a long sequence in previous history.
As to all that pertains to the history of civilization, no man of fair and open mind can go into the museums of Cairo or the Louvre or the British Museum and look at the monuments of those earlier dynasties without seeing in them the results of a development in art, science, laws, customs, and language, which must have required a vast period before the time of Mena. And this conclusion is forced upon us all the more invincibly when we consider the slow growth of ideas in the earlier stages of civilization as compared with the later—a slowness of growth which has kept the natives of many parts of the world in that earliest civilization to this hour. To this we must add the fact that Egyptian civilization was especially immobile: its development into castes is but one among many evidences that it was the very opposite of a civilization developed rapidly.
As to the length of the period before the time of Mena, there is, of course, nothing exact. Manetho gives lists of great personages before that first dynasty, and these extend over twenty-four thousand years. Bunsen, one of the most learned of Christian scholars, declares that not less than ten thousand years were necessary for the development of civilization up to the point where we find it in Mena's time. No one can claim precision for either of these statements, but they are valuable as showing the impression of vast antiquity made upon the most competent judges by the careful study of those remains: no unbiased judge can doubt that an immensely long period of years must have been required for the development of civilization up to the state in which we there find it.
The investigations in the bed of the Nile confirm these views. That some unwarranted conclusions have at times been announced is true; but the fact remains that again and again rude pottery and other evidences of early stages of civilization have been found in borings at places so distant from each other, and at depths so great, that for such a range of concurring facts, considered in connection with the rate of earthy deposit by the Nile, there is no adequate explanation save the existence of man in that valley thousands on thousands of years before the longest time admitted by our sacred chronologists.
Nor have these investigations been of a careless character. Between the years 1851 and 1854, Mr. Horner, an extremely cautious English geologist, sank ninety-six shafts in four rows at intervals of eight English miles, at right angles to the Nile, in the neighbourhood of Memphis. In these pottery was brought up from various depths, and beneath the statue of Rameses II at Memphis from a depth of thirty-nine feet. At the rate of the Nile deposit a careful estimate has declared this to indicate a period of over eleven thousand years. So eminent a German authority, in geography as Peschel characterizes objections to such deductions as groundless. However this may be, the general results of these investigations, taken in connection with the other results of research, are convincing.
And, finally, as if to make assurance doubly sure, a series of archaeologists of the highest standing, French, German, English, and American, have within the past twenty years discovered relics of a savage period, of vastly earlier date than the time of Mena, prevailing throughout Egypt. These relics have been discovered in various parts of the country, from Cairo to Luxor, in great numbers. They are the same sort of prehistoric implements which prove to us the early existence of man in so many other parts of the world at a geological period so remote that the figures given by our sacred chronologists are but trivial. The last and most convincing of these discoveries, that of flint implements in the drift, far down below the tombs of early kings at Thebes, and upon high terraces far above the present bed of the Nile, will be referred to later.
But it is not in Egypt alone that proofs are found of the utter inadequacy of the entire chronological system derived from our sacred books. These results of research in Egypt are strikingly confirmed by research in Assyria and Babylonia. Prof. Sayce exhibits various proofs of this. To use his own words regarding one of these proofs: "On the shelves of the British Museum you may see huge sun-dried bricks, on which are stamped the names and titles of kings who erected or repaired the temples where they have been found.... They must... have reigned before the time when, according to the margins of our Bibles, the Flood of Noah was covering the earth and reducing such bricks as these to their primeval slime."
This conclusion was soon placed beyond a doubt. The lists of king's and collateral inscriptions recovered from the temples of the great valley between the Tigris and Euphrates, and the records of astronomical observations in that region, showed that there, too, a powerful civilization had grown up at a period far earlier than could be made consistent with our sacred chronology. The science of Assyriology was thus combined with Egyptology to furnish one more convincing proof that, precious as are the moral and religious truths in our sacred books and the historical indications which they give us, these truths and indications are necessarily inclosed in a setting of myth and legend.(184)
(184) As to Manetho, see, for a very full account of his relations to
other chronologists, Palmer, Egyptian Chronicles, vol. i, chap. ii.
For a more recent and readable account, see Brugsch, Egypt under the
Pharaohs, English edition, London, 1879, chap. iv. For lists of kings at
Abydos and elsewhere, also the lists of architects, see Brugsch, Palmer,
Mariette, and others; also illustrations in Lepsius. For proofs that the
dynasties given were consecutive and not contemporeaneous, as was
once so fondly argued by those who tried to save Archbishop Usher's
chronology, see Mariette; also Sayce's Herodotus, appendix, p. 316.
For the various race types given on early monuments, see the coloured
engravings in Lepsius, Denkmaler; also Prisse d'Avennes, and the
frontpiece in the English edition of Brugsch; see also statement
regarding the same subject in Tylor, Anthropology, chap. i. For
the fulness of development of Egyptian civilization in the earliest
dynasties, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881, chap. xiii; also Brugsch
and other works cited. For the perfection of Egyptian engineering,
I rely not merely upon my own observation, but on what is far more
important, the testimony of my friend the Hon. J. G. Batterson, probably
the largest and most experienced worker in granite in the United States,
who acknowledges, from personal observation, that the early Egyptian
work is, in boldness and perfection, far beyond anything known since,
and a source of perpetual wonder to him. As to the perfection of
Egyptian architecture, see very striking statements in Fergusson,
History of Architecture, book i, chap. i. As to the pyramids, showing a
very high grade of culture already reached under the earliest dynasties,
see Lubke, Gesch. der Arch., book i. For Sayce's views, see his
Herodotus, appendix, p. 348. As to sculpture, see for representations
photographs published by the Boulak Museum, and such works as the
Description de l'Egypte, Lepsius's Denkmaler, and Prisse d'Avennes; see
also a most small work, easy of access, Maspero, Archeology, translated
by Miss A. B. Edwards, New York and London, 1887, chaps. i and ii. See
especially in Prisse, vol. ii, the statue of Chafre the Scribe, and the
group of "Tea" and his wife. As to the artistic value of the Sphinx,
see Maspero, as above, pp. 202, 203. See also similar ideas in Lubke's
History of Sculpture, vol. i, p. 24. As to astronomical knowledge
evidenced by the Great Pyramid, see Tylor, as above, p. 21; also
Lockyer, On Some Points in the Early History of Astronomy, in Nature
for 1891, and especially in the issues of June 4th and July 2d; also his
Dawn of Astronomy, passim. For a recent and conservative statement as to
the date of Mena, see Flinders Petrie, History of Egypt, London, 1894,
chap. ii. For delineations of vases, etc., showing Grecian proportion
and beauty of form under the fourth and fifth dynasties, see Prisse,
vol. ii, Art Industriel. As to the philological question, and the
development of language in Egypt, with the hieroglyphic sytem of
writing, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881, chap. xii; also Lenormanr;
also Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, Abbott's translation, 1877.
As to the medical papyrus of Berlin, see Brugsch, vol. i, p. 58, but
especially the Papyrus Ebers. As to the corruption of later copies of
Manetho and fidelity of originals as attested by the monuments, see
Brugsch, chap. iv. On the accuracy of the present Egyptian chronology as
regards long periods, see ibid, vol. i, p. 32. As to the pottery found
deep in the Nile and the value of Horner's discovery, see Peschel, Races
of Man, New York, 1876, pp. 42-44. For succinct statement, see also
Laing, Problems of the Future, p. 94. For confirmatory proofs from
Assyriology, see Sayce, Lectures on the Religion of the Babylonians
(Hibbert Lectures for 1887), London, 1887, introductory chapter, and
especially pp. 21-25. See also Laing, Human Origins, chap. ii, for an
excellent summary. For an account of flint implements recently found
in gravel terraces fifteen hundred feet above the present level of the
Nile, and showing evidences of an age vastly greater even than those dug
out of the gravel at Thebes, see article by Flinders Petrie in London
Times of April 18th, 1895.