of Tuthmosis and Menephthah there are two very doubtful points, marked as such in the text of this work. It was not without good grounds that thirtytwo regnal years were given to Horus, the last king of the 18th Dynasty, instead of thirty-seven marked in the Lists. But still it was a mistake, and the solution is more simple. In regard to his successor, Ramesses I., the preference had been given in the tables to the six years of Africanus over the nine of Josephus and Eusebius. But Lepsius has produced an authority which seems to prove that the original number in Africanus was also nine. Thus eight years must be added and this gives us, to a year, the very date required by the monument.

For by thus simply restoring the two dates of Manetho the conclusion is legitimately arrived at, that the astronomical date of 1574 was the first year of Tuthmōsis III., it being the year immediately succeeding the last of his father's reign.

There is perhaps a further reason for supposing this astronomical date to be the first year of Tuthmosis. It offers direct explanation of the 215 years of bondage,

6 The years (32) set against Acherres, the next royal name in Africanus, were given to him (Vol. II. p. 552.) upon the supposition that the date (37) now attached to Horus in the Lists had been absorbed by his predecessor (p. 535.), whose thirty-sixth year is recorded on the monuments; whereas, the number now placed against his name is only 31, and therefore evidently needs correction. The difficulty of fixing accurately the length of Horus' reign, of which no higher year than the seventh is found on the monuments, was not disguised. A mark of interrogation was expressly placed against his name (p. 530.). The author has now no hesitation in adopting the date of the Lists, which happens to be just five years more than the one assigned to him upon the supposition that 37 was a repetition of the preceding reign, that of Amenōphis III.

which, in the former volumes, was only arrived at approximately. This will be seen most clearly by means of the following specific list of the 18th and 19th Dynasties, calculated upon the basis of 1574 being the accession of Tuthmosis. The author will only premise that, in spite of the very learned and ingenious vindication of the opposite theory in the "Book of the Kings," he sees no reason to change his division of the two dynasties. He must still maintain the principle that Manetho always understands by the word dynasty a reigning family that an Egyptian dynasty, like all others, always begins with a new stock, the first sovereign of which was never the son or the son's son of his predecessor, indeed not even any descendant of the previous royal family in the male line. The doctrine of Manetho may therefore be stated thus: that a dynasty terminated when the issue of its chief became extinct in the male line. Let us look to the facts in question. Amōsis was indeed the chief of the 18th Dynasty because he was not the descendant of his predecessor although probably connected with him through his queen, who was "a royal daughter." His successors were all sons of their predecessors, but Horus left no male issue. Ramesses I., the chief of the next dynasty, was certainly connected by the female line with the Tuthmōsis Dynasty, for he was the son of a daughter of Amenōphis III. All this is in accordance with the general acceptation of a dynasty: can it be accidental?

Eighteenth Dynasty (220 Years, 9 Generations).

Nineteenth Dynasty (121 Years, 6 Generations).

1. Ramesses I. (descended from Amos III.

1412 to 1404

2. Sethos I., son

The annals of Tuthmosis III., the great conqueror of the dynasty, will consequently stand thus:

The great buildings at Karnak, Medinet Habu, and other places, were commenced at this period

1534

If the Exodus took place under Menephthah (fifth year, 1320), the Jews had then really entered the 215th year of their bondage; since the great buildings were begun by the conqueror of Mesopotamia, to whom Nineveh and Babylon paid tribute, according to the statistical tablet of Tuthmosis III., published by Birch.

II.

THE EXISTENCE OF POTTERY IN THE DEPOSIT OF THE NILE ABOUT ELEVEN THOUSAND YEARS BEFORE OUR ERA.

HISTORICAL Egyptologists have hitherto been unable to avail themselves of one of the most brilliant apperceptions and observations connected with the great French work on Egypt, and especially of the ingenious calculations of Girard (Mém. de l'Académie pour l'année 1817), which appeared to him to promise an infallible key to the history, not only of the soil, but also of the inhabitants, of Egypt. For, waiving some objections to the method pursued in ascertaining the depth and progressive accumulation of the deposit of mud on the banks of the Nile and over the land subject to inundation, there was no chronological basis whatever for ascertaining the secular increase, that is to say, the number of inches by which the soil is raised in a century. Such a basis can only be obtained by measuring the accumulation from the platform of a monument of certain date up to the surface, and calculating from it the average rate of increase in a century. The same causes acting constantly in the same manner, at the same spot, furnish an ample guarantee of the correctness of the calculation of such an accumulation. At the same spot is said advisedly: for it is obvious that the ratio of accumulation must be different in Upper Egypt and at Cairo, the heavier particles subsiding first; and the difference between Cairo and the end of the Delta must be no less considerable, if we take into account the numerous impediments there to the natural current. The secular increase of 5 English inches for a century, according to the French calculation, has not only no historical basis, but is obtained, moreover, from various observations made at distant parts of Egypt.

Mr. Horner has endeavoured to secure the requisite twofold basis. As his fixed historical point, he selected the colossal statue of Ramesses II. in the area of Memphis (Mem. p. 74.). He found the depth of the sediment at that spot, from the present surface to the basis of the statue, to be 9 feet 4 inches. Now, computing the middle of his reign (1391-1225, according to the preceding table, and, with the difference of one year, exhibited in the introduction to the "Bible-work"; or 1394 -1228, according to Lepsius) to be about 1360 B.C., and adding to this 1854, the date of Mr. Horner's excavation, we have 3214 or 3215 years for the accumulation of 9 feet 4 inches of sediment; and the mean rate of increase will be, within a small fraction, 3 inches per century.

The result of Mr. Horner's excavations, conducted in the most careful and methodical manner, is, that the deposit of mud under the statue of Ramesses is 30 feet of the total depth penetrated. Upon this head he

says:

"The two lowest feet (of 32) consisted of sand, below which it is possible there may be no true Nile sediment in this locality; and we have thus 30 feet of the latter. If that amount has been deposited at the mean rate of 3 inches in a century, it gives for the lowest part deposited an age of 10,285 years before the middle of the reign of Ramesses II., 11,646 B. C., and 13,500 years before 1854."

Mr. Horner proceeds to say:

"The deeper parts of this accumulation of 30 feet of sediment are probably more compact in structure, from the long-applied superincumbent pressure, and therefore their age is probably greater, on that account, than that arrived at by the application of the chronometric scale of 3 inches in a century, obtained by measuring the