DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14563#0206
antiquities.
171
the creation of Adam, according to the commonly received
chronology of the Bible.
Sir Gardner Wilkinson makes Menes more modern by
more than a thousand years (2320 b. c.), and regards any
attempt to fix the precise era of his accession as " fruitless
and unsatisfactory." Mr. Reginald Stuart Poole, an English
scholar of much promise in this department, gives to Menes
the more modest era of 2717 n. c, which, however, is still
anterior to the Hebrew chronology of the Hood. According
to this writer, the Egyptian empire began four thousand jive
hundred and seventy years ago. Menes 'built the city of
Memphis nearly opposite the site of modern Cairo, and
turned the course of the Nile some twenty miles above the
city in order to secure it against inundation. He is sup-
posed to have been a Theban, and either to have founded or
enlarged the city of Thebes. This jdaces the foundation of
that city nearly three thousand years before Christ. The
date of the great pyramid, according to the best authorities,
is 2352 b. c. Menes is said to have been killed by a hip-
popotamus.
With reference to the successors of Menes for about a
thousand years, there has been much confusion in Egyptian
chronology. The long lists of kings given by Manetho,
and supplemented from tablets and papyrus records, have
seemed to require by the common average of reigns, a much
longer period from Menes to Moses than the chronology of
the Hebrew Scriptures allows between the flood and the
Exodus. But Mr. Poole, in his Horce Egypliaca, attempts
to solve this difficulty by showing from data hitherto over-
looked but seemingly conclusive, that these lists include con-
temporaneous dynasties,—in one instance not less than four
lines of kings over different provinces of Egypt at the same
time. "We have long been familiar with the invasion of the
Hyksos — kings of Bashan or Canaanites, a mixture of
171
the creation of Adam, according to the commonly received
chronology of the Bible.
Sir Gardner Wilkinson makes Menes more modern by
more than a thousand years (2320 b. c.), and regards any
attempt to fix the precise era of his accession as " fruitless
and unsatisfactory." Mr. Reginald Stuart Poole, an English
scholar of much promise in this department, gives to Menes
the more modest era of 2717 n. c, which, however, is still
anterior to the Hebrew chronology of the Hood. According
to this writer, the Egyptian empire began four thousand jive
hundred and seventy years ago. Menes 'built the city of
Memphis nearly opposite the site of modern Cairo, and
turned the course of the Nile some twenty miles above the
city in order to secure it against inundation. He is sup-
posed to have been a Theban, and either to have founded or
enlarged the city of Thebes. This jdaces the foundation of
that city nearly three thousand years before Christ. The
date of the great pyramid, according to the best authorities,
is 2352 b. c. Menes is said to have been killed by a hip-
popotamus.
With reference to the successors of Menes for about a
thousand years, there has been much confusion in Egyptian
chronology. The long lists of kings given by Manetho,
and supplemented from tablets and papyrus records, have
seemed to require by the common average of reigns, a much
longer period from Menes to Moses than the chronology of
the Hebrew Scriptures allows between the flood and the
Exodus. But Mr. Poole, in his Horce Egypliaca, attempts
to solve this difficulty by showing from data hitherto over-
looked but seemingly conclusive, that these lists include con-
temporaneous dynasties,—in one instance not less than four
lines of kings over different provinces of Egypt at the same
time. "We have long been familiar with the invasion of the
Hyksos — kings of Bashan or Canaanites, a mixture of