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Show 4 !).~ 1'11E MONOGENl TS AND it is evident that if each end of a luni-solar ycle of 25 years bacl coincid d with a death of Api , the monum nLs would have already told us something about it. On the contrary, th y prove to us that our Api.ses were subj ct to the common law at the will of destiny, without caring for tho moon or its position in the sky relative to tho sun. Tho period of Apis seems to me definitively buried." Thus, day by day, as Egyptology advances, we discover that many of tho scientific, tb ological, aud philosophical notions, in most works of modern scholar~ (as yet unaware that hieroglyphics a1·e translated) attributed to the simple and p:ractical dcniz ns of the Nile, arc tho posterior creations of Grroco-Judaico-Roman intcll eta at Alexandria -more than a millennium after the whole economy of the Egyptian mind ha<l reached its maximum of development. Definite cyclic chronology-they ba<l none! Their long papyric registries of reigns (Turin papy1·us, for instance), their unnumbered pctroglyphs recording dates, arc marked with tho civil year (of 365 days), month, aud day, of each monarch's reign; but without reference to any historical era, or to any astronomical cycle. "Sothic periods,"-" Apia-periods," and all other periods, arc but the formulas through which Ptolemaic Alexandrians tried, after Manctho (n. c. 260)-what we arc still attempting, 2000 years later-to systematize for Grecian readers the chronolo,qy of a primitive, unsop11isticatcd, people who, content with the annual registry of events by the reigns of their kings-as here we might date in a given year of such a President, or in England they do in such a year of Victoria-were satisfied with this world as they found it created, never troubling their brains about Lho date of its creatioJJ. Religious dogmas-they had many; but the Funereal Ritual,2n or Boolc of the Dead, now that we know its fanciful and almost childish contents, is more interesting to tho Free-mason 278 than to any other reader,-exccpt as phases of the human mind, and also for its inestimable value to the philologist. Thoro is naught in it about cosmogony; nor, have we any genuine Eo-yptian tradition of their origin earlier than what little was learned by Herodotus in tho 5th century n. o.-viz: that Egyptians reported themselves to be autoclttltones.m Diodorus's and all other notions on the subject arc merely echoes of the foreign Alexandria-school. 217 ~1moson, Sa'i an Sinsin, aive Liber metempsychoa18 veterum Egyptiorum a duabus papyris junenbtu hieraticis, Dorolini, 4to, 1851 ; pp. 1-2. . m. Lf:PSIUS, :'odtenbuch du .!Egypler, Leipzig, 4to, 1842: -In speaking of ncquaintanoo wtth. U~e doctrmes of tho Ritnal, I would especially thank Mr. Dirch for his generosity in furmshmg mo, long o.go, with an autograph synopsis of each chapter and with translations of its more interesting columns. 270 IbnoD. TTIE POLYGENISTS. 105 Philosophy-the very word is Greek f'lJ!IJ It 1n ight, th •rcfore, be ·wise for future writers, if they do not choose to avail themselves of the correct information accessible only in worh ()[the living Champollionit;ts, when writing about tho world's history, to give Egypt no place in it; lc!:!t, by relying too mncll on tho absurd anachronisms of Alexandrine Greeks, they should expose the ignoran •c of two parties. Meanwhile, Egyptian chronology is being rcbnilt stone by stone, inscription by inscription, epoch by epoch. Already tho stnlCtnre, in tho hands of Lepsius, rears its head with MENES at 3983 years bclore our vulgar ra; and if a skeptic should dcAiro to behold the constructive prOCC!:!i:l in its perfection, I would refer him to M arictt 's rc ·tomtion ol' the XXIId, or Bubastite dynasty :!5 1-B. c. 10th and Oth ccnturi s-for the nee plus ultm of archroo]o,.i cal science in our time. Having now laid before tho reader a sufficient epitome of facts and recent aothorilios to support those presented in our former work, I am free to state that, in common with my contemporaries, I recognize no chronology whatever anterior to the Old Empire, or the pymmidal peri d of Egypt; neither can I find solid grounds for annual eompntation anywhere prior to about 2850 y ars backwards from this year-the LXXXth of the Indcponclcnco of these United States; nor, for centennary, in the oldest civilized country,-thc lower valley of the Nile-for times anterior to the XVIIth dynasty, assumed at about the 1Gth-18th centur·ies B. c. Under tltis view, to which arcltroologists with otbcr scicntifLC men are fast approachino-, we have "ample room and vct·ge enough," for carrying In1man antiquity upon earth to any extent that geology and uatun~l history combine to permit. Tl1o former science, at present, restricts tho possibility to tho alluvials and the diluvial dr·ift; the latter, p rhaps, warrants our taking a little more "elbow room." Either boundary will suffice for tho continuati n of our inq uirics into tumular remains of primordial humanity, and their relations to the ascending series of man's precursors, tho fossil and humatile simire. 2so • • Pythttgorns wns tho first mo.n who invented tbttt word" <t>IAm:otf>m:, pllitosopl~er; Dt~N·nf:Y, Phalaris, Dyoo's cd., London, 8vo, 1880; I, p. 271. 281 lJtltletin ArcMologique (supra, note 274)- "timgc i.l. po.rt," Nov. 1855; pp. 5-14, nntl Tab/ea~ g~ntalogiqtle. (A recent obliging Iotter from Pnris informs mo thttt "M. M~riottc a fait parn.'ltro uno clissertation sur Jo. m~re d'.Apis, dnns lnquollo il <!tnblit quo los Bgyptiens avnient But' la mbro d'Apis des id6o~ fort nnttlogucs fl. collcs que los Catholiquos ont sur Ia Viergo Mario, et ou il rotrouvo notnmment lc dogmc do l'immncn16e conception." This I have not yet received. When I do, it will bo interesting to compare it with tho masterly Sermon prdcM dans te Temple de l'Oratoire, le 12 Novembre, 1854 (Paris), on "Un Dogmo Nouveau conoerntlnt Ia Vi01·go MMio," by ATHANABE CoQut:aEL.J |