The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended / To which is Prefix'd, A Short Chronicle from the First Memory of Things in Europe, to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great

by Isaac Newton

1046. The Syrians of Zobah and Damascus are conquered by David. Nyctimus, the son of Lycaon, reigns in Arcadia. Deucalion still alive.

1045. Many of the Phœnicians and Syrians fleeing from Zidon and from David, come under the conduct of Cadmus, Cilix, Phœnix, Membliarius, Nycteus, Thasus, Atymnus, and other Captains, into Asia minor, Crete, Greece, and Libya; and introduce Letters, Music, Poetry, the Octaeteris, Metals and their Fabrication, and other Arts, Sciences and Customs of the Phœnicians. At this time Cranaus the successor of Cecrops Reigned in Attica, and in his Reign and the beginning of the Reign of Nyctimus, the Greeks place the flood of Deucalion. This flood was succeeded by four Ages or Generations of men, in the first of which Chiron the son of Saturn and Philyra was born, and the last of which according to Hesiod ended with the Trojan War; and so places the Destruction of Troy four Generations or about 140 years later than that flood, and the coming of Cadmus, reckoning with the ancients three Generations to an hundred years. With these Phœnicians came a sort of men skilled in the Religious Mysteries, Arts, and Sciences of Phœnicia, and settled in several places under the names of Curetes, Corybantes, Telchines, and Idæi Dactyli.

1043. Hellen, the son of Deucalion, and father of Æolus, Xuthus, and Dorus, flourishes.

1035. Erectheus Reigns in Attica. Æthlius, the grandson of Deucalion and father of Endymion, builds Elis. The Idæi Dactyli find out Iron in mount Ida in Crete, and work it into armour and iron tools, and thereby give a beginning to the trades of smiths and armourers in Europe; and by singing and dancing in their armour, and keeping time by striking upon one another's armour with their swords, they bring in Music and Poetry; and at the same time they nurse up the Cretan Jupiter in a cave of the same mountain, dancing about him in their armour.

1034. Ammon Reigns in Egypt. He conquered Libya, and reduced that people from a wandering savage life to a civil one, and taught them to lay up the fruits of the earth; and from him Libya and the desert above it were anciently called Ammonia. He was the first that built long and tall ships with sails, and had a fleet of such ships on the Red Sea, and another on the Mediterranean at Irasa in Libya. 'Till then they used small and round vessels of burden, invented on the Red Sea, and kept within sight of the shore. For enabling them to cross the seas without seeing the shore, the Egyptians began in his days to observe the Stars: and from this beginning Astronomy and Sailing had their rise. Hitherto the Lunisolar year had been in use: but this year being of an uncertain length, and so, unfit for Astronomy, in his days and in the days of his sons and grandsons, by observing the Heliacal Risings and Setting of the Stars, they found the length of the Solar year, and made it consist of five days more than the twelve calendar months of the old Lunisolar year. Creusa the daughter of Erechtheus marries Xuthus the son of Hellen. Erechtheus having first celebrated the Panathenæa joins horses to a chariot. Ægina, the daughter of Asopus, and mother of Æacus, born.

1030. Ceres a woman of Sicily, in seeking her daughter who was stolen, comes into Attica, and there teaches the Greeks to sow corn; for which Benefaction she was Deified after death. She first taught the Art to Triptolemus the young son of Celeus King of Eleusis.

1028. Oenotrus the youngest son of Lycaon, the Janus of the Latines, led the first Colony of Greeks into Italy, and there taught them to build houses. Perseus born.

1020. Arcas, the son of Callisto and grandson of Lycaon, and Eumelus the first King of Achaia, receive bread-corn from Triptolemus.

1019. Solomon Reigns, and marries the daughter of Ammon, and by means of this affinity is supplied with horses from Egypt; and his merchants also bring horses from thence for all the Kings of the Hittites and Syrians: for horses came originally from Libya; and thence Neptune was called Equestris. Tantalus King of Phrygia steals Ganimede the son of Tros King of Troas.

1017. Solomon by the assistance of the Tyrians and Aradians, who had mariners among them acquainted with the Red Sea, sets out a fleet upon that sea. Those assistants build new cities in the Persian Gulph, called Tyre and Aradus.