[For the discrepancy between this date and the conquest of Ochus, “at which the series of the Chronicle ostensibly ends,” vide “Egypt. Chron.,” p. xxiv.]
Let the reader now return to the scheme of the chronicle (sup. [p. 97]). The analysis of the whole sum, 36,525 years, gives 30,000 years (to the sun), + 3984 (to xiii gods), + 217 (to viii demigods), + 443 (to the Sothic cycle), + 1881 to kings from Menes to Nectanebo (the last native sovereign).
So far we have only 1881 years, corresponding to an historical period, + 443 of the cycle thrown up. It has been previously noted, however, that 2922 (two Sothic cycles) correspond to the antediluvian and patriarchal period (i. 37). The intricate part of the scrutiny will be found in the discrimination of the 2922 years (which, with 217 + 1881, make up the sequence of human time, A.M., to Nectanebo) from the figures 3984 years in the analysis above.
For the full and scientific discrimination, I must refer the reader to “Egyptian Chronicles,” i. 17; but for a simple demonstration, we may take the historical figures as above—viz. 2922 + 217 + 1881, added to the figures thrown in to complete the cycle (vide infra), viz. 341 + 483, all which figures = 5844, and deduct them from the whole cyclical number thus—
| 36,525 |
| 5,844 |
| 30,681 |
Now, reverting to the scheme of the Chronicle, we shall see the round number 30,000 years (being as it were an Egyptian month, in thousands of years instead of days) apportioned off to the sun-god. To obtain this round number, the fractional number 681 would have to be detached, and there being at hand the cyclical number 2922 years (two perfect Sothic cycles), any number in reason of fractional remainders might be added to it, since with the symmetrical nucleus, the agglomeration would always be recognisable by the initiated, i.e. by the priests. The 681 years were therefore added to 2922, and also the 341 fictitious years (“to make time from the beginning to run in the form of Sothic cycles”) were added, because there they would cause no confusion; “whereas if they had been added to the 217 years of the demigods, no one could any longer have distinguished the original fraction.”
We thus collect, therefore, those various figures into the sum which was the figure of difficulty—viz. 3984 (681 + 2922 + 341 + 40), the forty years included having merely reference to the point at which the current Sothic cycle was thrown up—being the years intervening between the flight of Nectanebo in B.C. 345, and the coronation of Ptolemy Lagi in B.C. 305.
Upon his own method, based upon Josephus, who follows in the main the Septuagint (“on a principle of compromise such as all readers, whatever may be their system, may agree in accepting provisionally, and as an approximation”), Mr Palmer (i. 22–29) brings the Scripture A.M. to B.C. 1, to a synchronism of “five years four months” and some days, with the Egyptian computation.
But the same key is made to unlock all the systems of Egyptian chronology, and in the course of his two volumes of close and learned investigation, Mr Palmer demonstrates that “Manetho, Eratosthenes, Ptolemy of Mendes, Diodorus, Josephus, Africanus, Eusebius, Anianus, Panodorus, and Syncellus, have, either of themselves or by following others, transferred dynasties, generations, and years of the gods and demigods of the Chronicle, and even fifteen generations of Ptolemies and Cæsars, as yet unborn at the date of the Chronicle, to kings after Menes.”
Let the above scheme of the Chronicle be compared, for instance, with the scheme of Diogenes Laertius (which Mr Palmer conjectures, upon intrinsic evidence, to have been transmitted through Aristotle).