generosity, restore for ever back to Egypt its ancient fertility!

Pliny's reproach to the Egyptians, for their vain and foolish pride with regard to the inundations of the Nile, points out one of their most peculiar characteristics, and recalls to my mind a fine passage of Ezekiel, where God thus speaks to Pharaoh, one of their kings: Behold I am against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is my own, and I have made it for myself. God perceived an insupportable pride in the heart of this prince: a sense of security and confidence in the inundations of the Nile, independent entirely on the influences of heaven; as though the happy effects of this inundation had been owing to nothing but his own care and labour, or those of his predecessors: the river is mine, and I have made it.

Before I conclude this second part, which treats of the manners of the Egyptians, I think it incumbent on me to bespeak the attention of my readers to different passages scattered in the history of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, which confirm and illustrate part of what we meet with in profane authors upon this subject. They will there observe the perfect polity which reigned in Egypt, both in the court and the rest of the kingdom; the vigilance of the prince, who was informed of all transactions, had a regular council, a chosen number of ministers, armies ever well maintained and disciplined, both of horse, foot, and armed chariots; intendants in all the provinces; overseers or guardians of the public granaries; wise and exact dispensers of the corn lodged in them; a court composed of great officers of the crown, a captain of his guards, a chief cup-bearer, a master of his pantry; in a word, all things that compose a prince's

h Ezek. xxix. 3, 9.

household, and constitute a magnificent court. But above all these, the readers will admire the fear in which the threatenings of God were held, the inspector of all actions, and the judge of kings themselves and the horror the Egyptians had for adultery, which was acknowledged to be a crime of so heinous a nature, that it alone was capable of bringing destruction on a nation.

PART THE THIRD.

The HISTORY of the KINGS of Egypt.

No part of ancient history is more obscure or uncertain, than that of the first kings of Egypt. This proud nation, fondly conceited of its antiquity and nobility, thought it glorious to lose itself in an abyss of infinite ages, which seemed to carry its pretensions backward to eternity. According to its own historians, first gods, and afterwards demi-gods or heroes, governed it successively, through a series of more than twenty thousand years. But the absurdity of this vain and fabulous claim is easily discovered.

To gods and demi-gods, men succeeded as rulers or kings in Egypt, of whom Manetho has left us thirty dynasties or principalities. This Manetho was an Egyptian high priest, and keeper of the sacred archives of Egypt, and had been instructed in the Grecian learning: he wrote a history of Egypt, which he pretended to have extracted from the writings of Mercurius and other ancient memoirs, preserved in the archives of the Egyptian temples. He drew up this history under the reign, and at

i Gen. xii. 10-20.

k Diod. 1. i. p. 41.

the command of Ptolemy Philadelphus. If his thirty dynasties are allowed to be successive, they make up a series of time of more than five thousand three hundred years, to the reign of Alexander the Great; but this is a manifest forgery. Besides, we find in Eratosthenes,* who was invited to Alexandria by Ptolemy Euergetes, a catalogue of thirtyeight kings of Thebes, all different from those of Manetho. The clearing up of these difficulties has put the learned to a great deal of trouble and labour. The most effectual way to reconcile such contradictions, is to suppose, with almost all the modern writers upon this subject, that the kings of these different dynasties did not reign successively after one another, but many of them at the same time, and in different countries of Egypt. There were in Egypt four principal dynasties, that of Thebes, of Thin, of Memphis, and of Tanis. I shall not here give my readers a list of the kings who have reigned in Egypt, of most of whom we have only the names transmitted to us. I shall only take notice of what seems to me most proper, to give youth the necessary light into this part of history, for whose sake principally I engaged in this undertaking; and I shall confine myself chiefly to the memoirs left us by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, concerning the Egyptian kings, without even scrupulously preserving the exactness of succession, at least in the early part of the monarchy, which is very obscure; and without pretending to reconcile these two historians. Their design, especially that of Herodotus, was not to lay before us an exact series of the kings of Egypt, but only to point out those princes whose history appeared to them most important and instructive. I shall follow the same plan, and hope to be forgiven, for not having involved either myself or my readers, in a labyrinth of almost inextricable difficulties, from which the

* An historian of Cyrene.

most able can scarce disengage themselves, when they pretend to follow the series of history, and reduce it to fixed and certain dates. The curious may consult the learned pieces, in which this subject is treated in all its extent.

I am to premise, that Herodotus, upon the credit of the Egyptian priests whom he had consulted, gives us a great number of oracles and singular incidents, all which, though he relates them as so many facts, the judicious reader will easily discover to be what they really are; I mean, fictions.

The ancient history of Egypt comprehends 2158 years, and is naturally divided into three periods.

The first begins with the establishment of the Egyptian monarchy, by Menes or Misraim, the son of Cham, in the year of the world 1816; and ends with the destruction of that monarchy by Cambyses, king of Persia, in the year of the world 3479. This first period contains 1663 years.

The second period is intermixed with the Persian and Grecian history, and extends to the death of Alexander the Great, which happened in the year 3681, and consequently includes 202 years.

The third period is that in which a new monarchy was formed in Egypt by the Lagidæ, or Ptolemies, descendants from Lagus; to the death of Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt, in 3974; and this last comprehends 293 years.

I shall now treat only of the first period, reserving the two others for the æras to which they belong.

A. M.

1816. Ant. J. C. 2189.

MENES.

The KINGS of EGYPT.

Historians are unanimously agreed, that Menes was the first king of Egypt. It is pre

1 Or Ham.

* Sir John Marsham's Canon Chronic.; Father Pezron; the Dissertations of F. Tournemine, and Abbé Sevin, &c.

tended, and not without foundation, that he is the same with Misraïm, the son of Cham. Cham was the second son of Noah. When the family of the latter, after the extravagant attempt of building the tower of Babel, dispersed themselves into different countries, Cham retired to Africa; and it doubtless was he who afterwards was worshipped as a god, under the name of Jupiter Ammon. He had four children, m Chus, Misraïm, Phut, and Canaan. Chus settled in Ethiopia, Misraïm in Egypt, which generally is called in Scripture after his name, and by that of Cham his father; Phut took possession of that part of Africa, which lies Westward of Egypt; and Canaan, of the country which afterwards bore his name. The Canaanites are certainly the same people who are called almost always Phoenicians by the Greeks, of which foreign name no reason can be given, any more than of the oblivion of the

true one.

n I return to Misraïm. He is allowed to be the same with Menes, whom all historians declare to be the first king of Egypt, the institutor of the worship of the gods, and of the ceremonies of the sacrifices.

BUSIRIS, some ages after him, built the famous city of Thebes, and made it the seat of his empire. We have elsewhere taken notice of the wealth and magnificence of this city. This prince is not to be confounded with Busiris, so infamous for his cruelties.

OSYMANDYAS. • Diodorus gives a very particular description of many magnificent edifices,

m Or Cush, Gen. x. 6.

" Herod. 1. ii. p. 99. Diod. 1. i. p. 44, 45.

Diod. 1. i. p. 42.

*The footsteps of its old name (Mesraim) remain to this. day among the Arabians, who call it Mesre; by the testimony of Plutarch it was called Xμía, Chemia, by an easy corruption of Chomia, and this for Cham or Ham.