has been epochmaking, is inclined, on the other hand, to attach much weight to the history of the native priest. “Unfortunately,” he says, “much confusion has been caused by scholars not being content to accept Manetho as being substantially correct in the main, though with many small corruptions and errors. Nearly every historian has made large and arbitrary assumptions and changes, with a view to reducing the length of time stated. But recent discoveries seem to prove that we must accept the lists of kings as having been correct, however they may have suffered in detail. . . . Every accurate test that we can apply shows the general trustworthiness of Manetho apart from minor corruptions.”
Breasted, supported by other leading Egyptologists, accepts what is known as the “Berlin system of Egyptian chronology”. The following tables illustrate how greatly he differs from Petrie:—
| Breasted. | Petrie. | ||
| Mena’s Conquest … | … | 3400 B.C. | 5550 B.C. |
| Twelfth Dynasty … | … | 2000 B.C. | 3400 B.C. |
| Eighteenth Dynasty … | … | 1580 B.C. | 1580 B.C. |
The Hyksos invasion took place, according to Manetho, at the beginning of the Fifteenth Dynasty, and he calculated that the Asiatic rulers were in Egypt for 511 years. Breasted’s minimum is 100 years. King and Hall, like Newberry and Garstang, allow the Hyksos a little more than 200 years, while Hawes, the Cretan explorer, whose dating comes very close to that of Dr. Evans, says that “there is a growing conviction that Cretan evidence, especially in the eastern part of the island, favours the minimum (Berlin) system of Egyptian chronology”. Breasted, It will be seen, allows 420 years for the period between the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties, while Petrie gives 1820—a difference of 1400 years.
