non, brother to Laomedon the father of Priam. According to this, Troy would be an Egyptian colony, and its line of kings a branch of the great Egyptian family, ascending to Tros the founder of Troy, and the father of Ilus the father of Tithonus and Laomedon; and it is not unworthy of remark that Ramses II., who answers, as already observed, to Homer's Memnon, appears occasionally designated as son of the god Atmou, Tmou, or Tethmou, who answers to Heron, the father of the same Ramses in Hermapion's translation of his obelisk, and we may suppose, represents the Greek Titho nus. Another curious circumstance in connexion with the subject is, that Pelops who brought the Egyptian year to Attica, is said to have been expelled from Phrygia with his father Tantalus, by Ilus the father of Tithonus. But, if the connexion between the Egyptians and Trojans was as close as above-mentioned, every difficulty is removed regarding the derivation of the Egyptiant year from Phrygia to Greece; while the alleged expulsion of the house of Pelops by the Trojans, may furnish a better reason than the rape of Helen, for the invasion and destruction of the Trojan kingdom by the Pelopidan dynasties of Greece. Let us now compare the lowest of our eras-that of the calendar of Homer-with the lower Trojan Epoch, which is principally founded on the congress of Eneas and Dido supposed in the Æneid. According to the Tyrian historian Menander, cited by Josephus (Anc. Frag. p. 186-8), Dido migrated and founded Carthage in the seventh year of her brother Pygmalion King of Tyre-being the 126th from the 12th of King Hiram, when the temple of Solomon was founded. The established era of the temple is B.C. 1012, and the 126th year from this is B.C. 887, which is the date of the Egyptian calendar of Homer. The record of Menander, it should be observed, is beautifully confirmed by sacred history. Ithobal reigns in Phoenicia from B.c. 939 to 907; and, Ahab King of Israel, who married Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal King of the Zidonians, (1st Kings, xvi. 31), reigned from B.c. 920 to 900. Again, Carthage was destroyed by the Romans A.U.C. 608, or B.C. 146, after it had stood 737 years, as we learn from Solinus. This refers The chronology of the Trojan line, which remounts to Dardanus, the grandfather of Tros, is computed at 296 years, ending with Priam's death, (viz. :-Dardanus 65 years, Enethonius 46, Tros 49, Ilus 40, Laomedon 44, Priam 52); and this period added to B.C. 1193, will point to B.c. 1489 for the era of the line-being that of the cycle of the fixed Egyptian year, which was renewed at the Augustan era, B.C. 29, as we learn from Syncellus, p. 312. And the year B.C. 1489, was likewise the epoch of the great XVIII. dynasty of Diospolitans, as will appear in the sequel. These are coincidences which are worthy of being investigated. It was the invariable habit of ancient colonies to adopt the antecedent chronology of the parent states. †The Egyptian canicular era of Menophres, which is likewise the Olympian era of Pelops as already mentioned, B.c. 1321, occurred in the reign of Ilus, whose accession belongs to the year B.c. 1329, according to the particulars mentioned in the preceding note. It is also of much importance to this question to note, that the date of the foundation of Troy, as stated by Eusebius (Chron. Num. 698), B.C. 1319, is almost identical with the Jast mentioned era of Pelops and Menophres, B.c. 1321; while the foundation of Troy, as stated by the ancient and accurate chronographer Thrasyllus, quoted by Clemens of Alexandria, ascends 25 years higher, or to B.c. 1344, i. e. 152 years before the destruction of that city (or 133 years preceding the date of the carrying off of Helen by Paris, which Homer refers to the twentieth year before the destruction of Troy). But the Trojan epoch of Thrasyllus is the actual date of the coincidence between the Attic and Egyptian years. It seems to follow from hence, that the Egyptian year, which Pelops brought from Phrygia to Greece, was first brought into Phrygia when Troy was founded; and hence that the Trojans were really a colony from Egypt, as the alleged consanguinity of the Egyptian and Trojan lines of kings would lead us to infer. It is worthy of remark, that the name Troio, or Troia, is clearly read in the Phonetic list of countries, west of the Tigris, invaded by the father of Ramses II-Homer's Tithonus-as appears from Mr Cullimore's Geographia Hieroglyphica, published in vol. ii. part 2 of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature. the foundation to B.C. 883, four years after the era of Menander, and one year after the Olympian era of Iphitus, which fixes the age of Lycurgus the contemporary of Homer, according to Timæus, and all the best and most ancient authorities, and is, moreover, the date to which the poet has been referred by Herodotus. Can we any longer question that the congress of Æneas and Dido is another result of the receding Egyptian year, which brought the events of the time of Memnon, Ulysses, and Eneas, to that of Polybus, Proteus, and Dido, and thus made the taking of Troy to coincide with the mournful rites of Osiris, Adonis, or Thammuz, (Ezek. viii. 14), on the seventeenth day of Athyr? We do not find the Memphite King Proteus, or Cetna of Homer, Herodotus, and Diodorus, mentioned by name in the dynasties of Manetho; but Thuoris the last King of the 19th dynasty of Diospolites or Thebans, is stated, as already mentioned, to be the same with Homer's Theban Polybus. The Epoch of Proteus is, according to the system preserved by Herodo tus, nine generations of three to a century, before the death of Sethon, and accession of Psammetichus B.C. 672; i. e. B.c. 972-939; while, according to the outline received by Diodorus from the priests of Thebes, Cetna, or Proteus, was the first king of the XXII. dynasty, called Bubastites by Manetho, and Tanites in the Old Egyptian Chronicle. The first king of this dynasty is Sesonchis, the Shishak of the bible, and his Epoch, B.C. 985-964, with which the mean dates of Herodotus sufficiently agree. We can, however, trace no likeness between Proteus and Sesonchis, and must, therefore, rather suppose the former to be one of the omitted kings of the twenty second dynasty, of which the names of three only out of nine (the first, second, and sixth,) are preserved by Manetho. Hieroglyphic discovery has augmented this number to five or six, but the dynasty is still incomplete. This dynasty ended B. c. 865-twenty years after the date resulting from the receding calendar of the Egyptians; so that Proteus is more likely to have been the last than the first king of the twenty-second dynasty; and this seems confirmed by the age of his contemporary Polybus, King of Thebes. For, if Polybus be the Thuoris of the nineteenth dynasty, as affirmed by Manetho, his death is fixed to the year B. c. 867, or 135 years (the period of the twentieth and last dynasty of Theban kings), before the Ethiopian conquest of Actisanes or Sabacon, which put an end to that line in its last prince, the Amasis of Diodorus and Anysis of Herodotus, B. c. 732. † All this is in strict agreement *This is evident, because, in the record of Diodorus, Proteus is immediately preceded by six generations, beginning with Mendes, the only name given-these ans.. wering to the six descents of the twenty-first dynasty, as stated in the old chronicle, of whom Smendes or Amendes is the first in Manetho's list of that dynasty. (Collata Anc. Frag. pp. 90, 122, 123, 143, 152.) According to Diodorus, Actisanes the Ethiopian conquers Amasis, the last of the line of Sesöōsis, or Sesostris, and consequently the last of the Diospolitan line of the twentieth dynasty-the next king in the order of the narrative being Mendes, the founder of the twenty-first dynasty, as shown in the preceding note. Again, Sabacon, the founder of the twenty-fifth, or Ethiopian dynasty, slays Bocchoris, the last of the line commencing with Mendes, and whose reign (scil. Bocchoris) constitutes the twentyfourth dynasty of Manetho. (Anc. Frag. pp. 126–7, 152–3.) But, according to Herodotus, it was Anysis, the eighth successor of Sesostris, who was conquered by Sabacon (Anc. Frag. p. 156): and, as Diodorus is the only writer who speaks of the first mentioned of these Ethiopian conquests (while Actisanes does not appear as the founder of a dynasty, but simply as an Ethiopian, reigning between the Egyptian kings Amasis and Mendes), it follows that Actisanes and Sabacon are the same Ethiopian, and Amasis and Anysis the same Egyptian king, as Marsham and Newton long ago insisted. It thus appears that the line of Sesöosis ending with Amasis or Anysis, the last of the twentieth Diospolitan dynasty, and the line of Mendes ending with Bocchoris of the twenty-fourth dynasty, both descended to the Ethiopian conquest by Actisanes or Sabacon; and hence that these lines were contemporary, in agreement with Homer's contemporary Theban king Polybus, and Memphite King Proteus; and in further with the history, and with the date of the receding Calendar of Homer; while the accession of his Memnon the Ramses Miamoun of Manetho's XVIIIth's dynasty, and the Ramses II. of the monuments, ascends to B.C., 1181-twelve years after the first astronomical Trojan era: but two years after the taking of Troy, if that era refers to the beginning of the war. And Memnon, let it be noted, led his Ethiopian auxiliaries to Troy in the reign of his father Tithonus, who may be represented by the Egyptian King Thonis of Homer and Herodotus. The monumental Ramses II., it should be repeated, is the founder of the Memnonia of Thebes and Abydos, which are ascribed by Strabo and Diodorus to Memnon, Ismendes, or Osy mandyas; so that no doubt remains on the identity of these personages: while the astronomical ceiling of the Memnonium of Thebes, refers the month Thoth to the sign Gemini, with which it corresponded in the erratic calendar, B.C., 1138, being the fortyfourth year of Ramises II., who reigned sixty-six according to Manetho, and of whose sixty-second year the British Museum contains a tablet. We cannot dismiss our subject without further alluding to Homer's battlescenes in connexion with the sculptures and temples of his Hecatompylos or hundred-gated city of Thebes, mentioned in the speech of Achilles in the ninth Iliad thus rendered by Pope; "Not all proud Thebes' unrivalled walls contain, The world's great empress on th' Egyptian plain, That sends her conquests o'er a thousand states, And pours her heroes through a hundred gates,Two hundred horsemen and two hundred cars Through each wide portal issuing to the wars," &c. The hundred gates, Diodorus explains to refer to the propyla or porches to the temples in Thebes, rather than to the gates of that cityan opinion which recent discovery demonstrates to be the truth, because no foundations of city walls are to be traced among the gigantic Theban ruins, as fully proved by the topography of Mr Wilkinson. In further confirmation of this, the intelligent traveller and antiquary Mr Bonomi, who has passed a great part of his life in Egypt, acquaints us that it is a very general impression among observant travellers, that the Theban temples were also fortresses, from whose massive walls and propyla the forces mentioned by Homer may have issued, and which were probably originally numerous, as they were certainly capacious enough to answer the description. Diodorus mentions four of these temples as remaining in his time, the most ancient of which was thirteen stadia in circuit, and fortyfive cubits high, with a wall twentyfour feet thick. This is evidently the great temple of Karnak, and the other three, the temples of Luxor, the Memnonium, and Medinet Abou. The military sculptures of Thebes having reference to foreign expedi. tions, we do not meet any representations of Egyptian fortresses to compare with the temples, unless Mr Burton's Excerpta Hieroglyphica, plate xxxvi, from Karnak, representing a military scene of the father of Ramses II.-the Tithonus of Homer-in which appears a fortress, resembling the propylon of an Egyptian temple, offers an exception. We, however, learn from Mr Bonomi, that a wall attached to the agreement with "the kings of the Egyptians," who are mentioned in 2d Kings vii. 6, as among the allies of Jehoram King of Israel, when Samaria was besieged by Benhadad King of Syria, about the year B. c. 891-which was equally the age of the greatest of the prophets, Elijah, and of the greatest of profane poets or prophets (Vates) Homer, and of the Egyptian kings, who were probably reigning when the poet visited Egypt. Thus does the contemporary evidence of sacred history confirm the contemporary evidence of Homer, while both fall in with the conquest of two distinct lines of princes by the Ethiopians, as affirmed by Herodotus and Diodorus. As proved by Mr Cullimore in the proceedings of the Royal Society of Literature for 1837-and confirmed by Mr Sharpe, who, in his Hieroglyphic Vocabulary, No. 173, reads the names of the stars of Gemini, at the commencement of the month Thoth, on the ceiling of the Memnonium. temple or palace of Ramises III. or Sesostris, at Medinet Abou, has semicircular battlements precisely similar to those of the fortresses in the military scenes; and, as we believe that all the sculptured fortifications are of the same kind, though referring to different countries invaded by the Pharaohs, they are probably derived, like the rest of the system of art, from the conventional Egyptian type. Again, it is in the temples in question that the principal military sculptures are found, and this fact seems immediately to connect the former with the purposes of war as well as of religion; and it is not a little remarkable, that it is the temple of Medinet Abou, having the above-mentioned fortified wall, which has also, between the propyla on the south side, the calendar of the annual festivals of the gods, on which the times of action of both the Iliad and Odyssey appear to be founded; while the same temple offers the magnificent campaigns of Ramses III., which may well have furnished the prototypes of some of Homer's descriptions." We shall conclude with a statement of the several dates to which Homer has been referred by ancient writers, attaching to each the days of the Julian year answering to the first and forty-ninth days of the erratic Egyptian year-being those of the two great Ethiopian or Theban festivals of the gods, according to the calendar of Medinet Abou; and which, as already shown, mark the interval of the main action of both Iliad and Odyssey.† By this it will be evident, that, admitting the Egyptian foundation of these poems, the calendar of Homer, whose age, as already mentioned, has been raised to the year B. c. 1109, and de pressed to B. c. 684, could only belong to about the middle of this interval, or the beginning of the ninth century B. C., to which the most judicious and authentic writers have referred him. For, it will appear that the higher dates would make the burial of Hector, with which the Iliad concludes, altogether irreconcilable with the conventional date of the taking of Troy, agreed to by the ancients-seventeen days before the solstice. This answered as above, to June 17th at the time of that event, B. c. 1193-1189; but the solstice had receded four Julian days at the latest age to which Homer has been assigned. It will be manifest, that every date before B. c. 1000 would bring Hector's burial beyond the capture of the city, while the dates from thence to B. c. 950, would not leave time for the subsequent events, which, as already suggested, probably imply a suspension of action during the twelve days of the second visit of the gods to Ethiopia (following the action of the poems, as in the case of the first festival), on their return from which we may suppose the fall of Troy would have been finally decreed. It will appear that the lower dates would, on the other hand, remove the beginning of the campaign of the Iliad, nearer to winter than is at all consistent with probability. Had Homer flourished in the seventh century B. C. his times of action would have been more advanced in the year. We thus obtain a criterion of the age to which the calendar on which the Iliad is founded, must necessarily belong― being that of Lycurgus and Iphitus, the contemporaries of Homer, at the beginning of the ninth century B. c. * Let us add, that the Batrachomyomachia, or War of the Frogs and Mice, attributed to Homer, has likewise its literal prototypes in the caricature papyri and sculptures of Egypt, in which fortresses appear attacked and defended by cats, rats, and monkeys, while jackasses are seen officiating as priests at the altars of the gods. In a word, every thing points to Egypt as the grand source of Homer's information; and we even find a contemporary example of exquisite satire against the divinities of heathenism, in the words of the prophet Elijah, 1 Kings, xxviii. 27. It affords us much satisfaction to acquaint our readers, both Egyptians and Greeks, that we have a prospect of shortly possessing a copy of the important calendar of Medinet Abou, which has hitherto been only alluded to by Egyptian travellers. This boon to literature we expect through the favour of the Rev. Mr Tattam, who, we are happy to announce, has departed on his literary mission to Egypt, spoken of in a note at page 109 of our July number. B. C. 1109 The ages to which Homer has been referred by ancient writers, with Eusebius, 1104? Crates, 907 Parian Marbles, 903 Juvenal, 887 884 884 Egyptian Calendar of Homer, May 25 July 12 May 21 July 8 May 13 June 30 May 11 June 28 May 6 June 23 May 5 June 22 May 1 June 18 April 26 June 13 after Trojan war, April 13 May 31 April 16 June 3 { 1000 yrs. before A. U. C. 830, April 11 May 29 950 yrs. before A.U.C. 783, April 10 May 28 160 years before foundation of Rome, April 8 May 26 302 years after Trojan war, April 7 May 25 1000 yrs. bef. A.U.C. 850, April 6 May 24 305 years after Trojan war, April 2 May 20 400 yrs. before Herodotus, April 1 May 19 Time of Iphitus and Lycur gus, 108 years before 1st Olympiad, April 1 May 19 90 years before 1st Olymp., Mar. 28 May 15 784 Others (Tatian, Euseb.) 400 years after Trojan war, Mar. 7 April 24 684 Theopompus, Eupho The destruction of Troy would precede Hector's burial and the close of the Iliad, had that poem been composed at this or any of the antecedent dates. †The gods would not have returned from their second Ethiopian voyage (which supposes a twelve days' suspension of action) when Troy was taken, had the Iliad been composed at this or the preceding date. This and the following date would suppose the plague caused by Apollo, or the Sun, with which the Iliad opens, to occur at a time of the year when the Sun was comparatively powerless, and would also refer the opening of the campaign to an improbable season. The plague would raise that poem to as early a date as its chronological elements will admit. It follows that the Homeric Calendar and compositions belong to an epoch between (†) and (†). This correction will, as intimated in a preceding note, depress the Trojan era, which the author of the life of Homer places 168 years before the poet's birth, from |