English, geologist, sank ninety-six shafts in four rows at intervals of eight English miles, at right angles to the Nile, in the neighborhood of Memphis. From these pottery was brought up from various depths, and beneath the statue of Rameses II at Memphis at a depth of thirty-nine feet. At the rate of the Nile deposit a careful estimate has declared this to indicate a period of over eleven thousand years. As eminent a German authority in geography as Peschel characterizes objections to such deductions as groundless. However this may be, the general results of these investigations, taken in connection with the other results of research, are most convincing.
And, finally, as if to make assurance doubly sure, a series of archæologists of the highest standing, French, German, English, and American, have within the past twenty years discovered relics of a savage period, of vastly earlier date than the time of Mena, prevailing throughout Egypt. These relics have been discovered in various parts of the country, from Cairo to Luxor, in great numbers. They are the same sort of prehistoric implements which prove to us the early existence of man in so many other parts of the world at a geological period so remote that the figures given by our sacred chronologists are but trivial. The last and most convincing of these discoveries, that of flint implements in the drift, far down below the tombs of early kings at Thebes, will be referred to later. What such discoveries prove, we shall consider in the next chapter.[1]
- ↑ As to Manetho, see for a very full account of his relations to other chronologists, Palmer, "Egyptian Chronicles," vol. i, chap. ii. For a more recent and readable account, see Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs, English edition, London, 1879, chap. iv. For lists of kings at Abydos and elsewhere, also the lists of architects, see Brugsch, Palmer, Mariette, and others; also illustrations in Lepsius. For the various race types given on early monuments, see the colored engravings in Lepsius, Denkmäler; also Prisse d'Avennes, and the frontispiece in the English edition of Brugsch; see also statement regarding the same subject in Tylor, Anthropology, chap. i. For the fullness of development in Egyptian civilization in the earliest dynasties, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881, chap, xiii; also Brugsch and other works cited. For the perfection of Egyptian engineering, I rely not merely upon my own observation, but on what is far more important, the testimony of my friend the Hon. J. G. Batterson, probably the largest and most experienced worker in granite in the United States, who acknowledges, from personal observation, that the early Egyptian work is, in boldness and perfection, far beyond anything known since, and a source of perpetual wonder to him. As to the perfection of Egyptian architecture, see very striking statements in Fergusson, History of Architecture, Book I, chap. i. As to the pyramids, showing a very high grade of culture already reached under the earliest dynasties, see Lübke, "Ges. der Arch.," Book I. As to sculpture, see for representations photographs published by the Boulak Museum, and such works as the Description de l'Égypte, Lepsius's Denkmäler, and Prisse d'Avennes; see also as a most valuable small work, easy of access, Maspero, Archæology, translated by Miss A. B. Edwards, New York and London, 1887, chaps, i and ii. See especially in Prisse, vol. ii, the statue of Chafré the Scribe, and the group of "Tea" and his wife. As to the artistic value of the Sphinx, see Maspero, as above, pp. 202, 203. See also similar ideas in Lübke's History of Sculpture, vol. i, p. 24. As to astronomical knowledge evidenced by the Great Pyramid, see Tylor, as above, p. 21. For delineations of vases, etc., showing Grecian proportion and beauty of form under the fourth and fifth dynasties, see Prisse, vol. ii, Art Industriel. As to the philological question, and the development of language in Egypt, with the hieroglyphic system of writing, see Rawlinson's Egypt, London, 1881, chap, xiii; also Le Normant; also Max Düncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, Abbot's translation, 1877. As to the medical papyrus of Berlin, see Brugsch, vol. i, p. 58, but especially the Papyrus Ebers. As to the corruption of later copies of Manetho and fidelity of originals as attested by the monuments, see Brugsch, chap. iv. As to the accuracy of the present Egyptian chronology as regards long periods, see ibid., vol. i, chap, xxxii. As to the pottery found deep in the Nile and the value of Horner's discovery, see Peschel, Races of Man, New York, 1876, pp. 42–44. For succinct statement, see also Laing, Problems of the Future, p. 94.
