by the hand of ignorance, and unsoftened by the meliorating effects of courtesy, and the blandishments of civilized life. The climate may be favourable, the gifts of nature may be bountiful, but if the passions of men be not restrained by principle, and the power of the mighty regulated by wise institutions, the better feelings of the heart will often be violated, and the happiness of the human race will too frequently be sacrificed to pride and ambition. In corrupt and powerful states many are the proofs and memorials of perverse conduct, and degrading as well as afflicting appointments. It is the progress of wisdom, and the influence of humanity, which soften the severities of life, adorn society, and dignify man. BOOK II. CHAP. I. Of the sources from which this part of the history is drawn.... The ancient mode of calculating time.... Of Menes, Osymandias, Sesostris, and Pheron.... The siege of Troy.... Of Judea and Jerusalem.... Sebachus the Ethiopian in Egypt. . . . Sevechus and Sennacherib. Tirhakah. twelve Egyptian kings. ... The IN this part of our inquiries, the west IN ern have been preferred to the eastern historians. The Greeks not only had a long and intimate intercourse with Egypt, but they rose to eminence in knowledge, while the Persians and Arabians were sunk in ignorance. While Vol. I. I the Greeks wrote at a period comparatively early, the best eastern historians did not appear till the 15th till the 15th century; therefore, if the streams were not pure from which the Grecians drank, they must have been more turbid and impure in the fabulous and extended channels through which they were conveyed to the eastern nations. If the early history of Egypt be somewhat blended with Grecian fable, as it stands in the western historians, it appears to be still less accurate in the eastern records. Advancing further in our pursuits, we find the historians more nearly agreed, and, by their mutual aid, we are better enabled to discover the truth. Though the remote annals of Egypt be so dark and uncertain, yet we may illustrate them a little by monuments of antiquity and collateral records. But still they must be void of that certainty, lucid arrangement, and regular succes sion, which constitute the excellence of genuine history. Hence the principal point, in this part of the inquiry, is to give a general idea of the sentiments, manners, and improvements, of that distant period; but we shall not detain the reader in a field of antiquity, where few things valuable or unequivocal in their nature can possibly be collected. The Egyptians, like other ancient nations, have arrogated to themselves a very high degree of antiquity, and carried their pretensions into the most distant times of heathen mythology. But how, in rude and uncultivated times, could they have accurately preserved the accounts of such ancient princes, and the order of dynasties so far removed? Though it could be shewn that their knowledge of hieroglyphics was so ancient as to accomplish what they profess, yet the absurdity of the accounts themselves, and their inconsistency with more probable and better ascertained facts, do completely authorize us to reject, as fabulous, their extravagant claims to ancient glory. The knowledge of the solar year im plies a considerable acquaintance with astronomy; therefore, in the earliest stages of society it would be more easy and natural to calculate time by the changes of day and night, or by those of the moon, than by the revolutions of the earth in the ecliptic. Thus, an opinion has been formed, that the Egyptian year spoken of in the remote periods of their history extended only from day to day, or from one new moon to another. If this position be true, it will point out to us the nature of those calculations by which they laid claim to antiquity so incredible and high. If we may draw conclusions from the practice in Chaldea, we find that the earliest method of calculation there was by the revolution of days. In the time of Alexander the Great, there was a computation on record at Babylon, which run through 150,000 years. If this period be understood in the literal and common acceptation, the bare recital of the number is sufficient to shew its absurdi |