coffins, funereal images, coffers and small statues in wood, funereal manuscripts, &c." "To the admiration which the view of these precious monuments excites, is added the feeling of gratitude to the distinguished scholar who has rendered them intelligible; he who by his laborious researches, has opened to posterity annals forgotten for twenty centuries, has deserved well of the literary world, and the name of Champollion will hereafter be inseparable from that of the nation of which he has become the interpreter." The present is a most auspicious period for forming such collections. Egypt is now accessible to civilized nations without the slightest danger; and the agents of different European powers have had free permission not only to search for smaller and more portable antiquities, but have even been allowed to cut off and remove essential parts of different buildings. This permission savours in some degree of barbarism, for it shows that the value and beauty of these magnificent ruins is not appreciated by the person whose property they now are. It was to such want of proper feeling that we have to ascribe the mutilation of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin, and a similar dilapidation has been committed by a Frenchman upon the most perfect remain of Egyptian architecture, the temple of Denderah. It is indeed to be confessed, that the almost complete ruin of the Parthenon by the Greeks themselves, in the late defence of the Acropolis, if it be no palliation for the tasteless plundering of the Briton, may at least diminish our regret at his acts; and the unsettled and precarious state of Egypt, may sooner or later close that country to the civilized traveller, and by converting its temples into fortresses, expose them to the risks of war. Still we cannot bring ourselves to approve of the mutilation of these venerable buildings; but it is otherwise with the removal of fragments already separated, or of separate monuments. We only regret that our own country has taken no pains to secure a portion of the rich and interesting spoil. It would be impossible at the present day to obtain any very valuable relics of Greek or Roman art. The governments of Italy know too well the value of the statues and other articles, which although becoming more and more rare are still occasionally found, to permit their being removed from the country. Greece has been again and again ransacked by Romans, Turks, Venetians, and modern travellers, but Egypt is yet an almost virgin soil for the cultivation of the antiquarian. A part of its remaining riches might be secured at small expense, were the government to appoint a commercial agent in Egypt, and allow him a moderate annual sum to prosecute the search for antiquities. That a person possessing a public character, and supported by the influence of the government, could do much, we do not doubt, having before us several precious articles, the fruit of private and unaided curiosity. We are however forgetting the main object of this paper, which is to inquire into the history of Egypt, and exhibit it such as it now appears, by the aid of the researches recently made in hieroglyphic writing, compared with the records and traditions that have descended to us. What the principal authorities for the history of this interesting country are, has been stated in another place:* we shall here proceed to show in a connected form, the facts we have deduced from them, and from the papers of Champollion. Menes, or Menas, was, by the concurrent testimony of Manetho, Herodotus, and Diodorus, the first king of Egypt. We have ventured to conjecture that he might have been Misraim, the son of Ham, or even Ham himself. Egypt is still, by the Arabs who now inhabit it, called the land of Mesr, and hence there can be but little or no doubt, had we not the positive evidence of scripture, that it became his apanage. We have however been led since, to search more narrowly into this subject, and inquire, whether among the descendants of Ham, actually named in the book of Genesis, there might not be one identical in appellation with this king. We believe that we have been so fortunate as to discover the name, varied so slightly as to leave no doubt of this identity. Among the sons of Misraim we find Anamim, or after removing the plural termination Anam. Those who are conversant in etymology, must see at once, that the Greeks, in euphonising this barbaric name, could not have approached more closely to it, than is done by the word Menes, or Menas. † This decendant of Ham bore the same relation to their common progenitor, as Nimrod the son of Cush, the first who assumed regal power, among that portion of the human race whose history becomes the more immediate object of the sacred volume. The successor of Menes was Thoth, or Athothes, to whom is ascribed the invention of writing, and many other useful arts. We have in the fragments of Manetho a full list of two dynasties seated at This, at the head of the first of which we find these two names. These two dynasties include fifteen kings, and may therefore have continued about 400 years; the duration assigned to their collective reigns, in Eusebius' version of Manetho, is 554 years, but this is probably too long, as it is a sum that far exceeds what would be the result of a similar series of generations of the usual length. From the time of Menes to that of Mæris, Herodotus leaves us entirely in the dark. He states merely that the priests enumerated between them 330 kings. Diodo * American Quarterly Review, No. IV., p. 520. † Thus Neith, the Egyptian Minerva, hore in Greece the name of Athena. rus counts an interval of 1400 years between Menes and Busiris, eight kings of the name of Busiris, and makes the eighth successor of the last of these, by name Uchoreus, the founder of Memphis. From Uchoreus to Moris he reckons twelve generations. Manetho, on the other hand, reckons between Menes and the time at which, as we shall presently see, we may consider his history as becoming authentic, sixteen dynasties, which include nearly three thousand years. The truth is, that all the time anterior to the Seventeenth Dynasty of Manetho, may be considered as the fabulous period of Egyptian history, for which no authentic materials whatever existed in the time of any of the historians we have quoted. The statues exhibited to Herodotus must have been the fabrications of some intermediate age. In the time of a king called by Manetho, Timaos, but who does not appear among the names in his list of dynasties, à race of strangers entered from the east into Egypt.* They overran it with the greatest ease, and having seized upon the persons of the princes of the country, destroyed the cities, reduced the inhabitants to slavery, and overthrew the temples of the gods. The destruction committed by these barbarians was most extensive, for not confined to Lower Egypt, they penetrated even to Thebes, where the marks of their violence are even at the present day to be traced. They appear at the time of their inroad to have been a collection of hordes without a regular head; but once in possession of Egypt, they chose themselves a king, who fixed his residence at Memphis. And here their dynasty was established for his reign and that of five successors. In the mean time the native race appear to have risen in the remote parts of the country, and speedily to have recovered Thebes, in which a line of warlike princes reigned cotemporaneously with the Shepherd kings at Memphis, and was engaged in constant war against them. We now see how it happens that the early ages of Egyptian history are so vague and uncertain; for the whole country, without exception, had become the prey of a horde of barbarians, who waged war not only with the people, but with the monuments of art, and the shrines of religion. Still however the tradition of so vast a number of kings and dynasties may not have been an absolute fable. The falschood probably consists in their affiliation, and placing them in continuous succession. The early history of all countries shows us every petty town and small district governed by its own king, sometimes independent, sometimes the confederate or feudatory of his neighbours. Such was the state of Palestine in the time of Joshua; such that of Greece during the heroic ages. That See extract from Manetho in Josephus. the people of Egypt could have possessed no general government, nor even well-ordered confederation, is evident from the ease with which it was overrun. It is more than probable then, that each successive swarm, as it departed from the parent hive of This to form new settlements on the banks of the main stream of the Nile, or to occupy the islands successively formed at its mouth by the alluvion of the river, remained under the separate government of its leader. No very powerful kingdom could have existed among them, or the traces of the works of its kings, must, if similar in character to those of the Pharaohs, have in part survived the ravages of the Shepherds, as the works of Moeris and Sesostris have the violence of Cambyses. So far from this, but one edifice, and that of small dimensions, has been found, which can be referred to a date prior to the invasion of the Shepherds. It is carefully adapted as a constituent part to an after construction of the kings of the 18th dynasty, and bears the name of Mandouei. A statue of the same king is in the collection at Turin, and another in the British Museum. We are not surprised that Champollion should have been extremely anxious to identify this prince with the Osymandyas of Diodorus, and in this anxiety, that he should have been insensible to the parts of the evidence which opposed this view of the subject. We have already stated our objections to this hypothesis, on the ground that Diodorus expressly attributes the plundering of this celebrated tomb to Cambyses; it could not then have existed at the time of the invasion of the Shepherds. The authority of Herodotus, too, is express, that no king before Sesostris, carried his arms beyond the frontiers of Egypt. The conquest of Egypt by the Shepherds dates in the year 2082, B. C.* Their dynasty continued to rule at Memphis 260 years, and the names of the six kings were Salatis, Bæon, Apachnas, Apophis, Janias, and Asseth. The last of the six who reigned at Thebes cotemporaneously with these kings, was Amosis, who drove Asseth from Lower Egypt, and shut the Shepherds up in Aouaris. Hence they departed by virtue of a capitulation entered into with his son, to whom was left the glory of completely re-establishing the independence of Egypt. Various monuments, but all of small size, bear the dates of the reigns of these six Theban kings.† But restrained in their territory, and engaged in perpetual warfare, they are far from exhibiting the magnificence reached by the succeeding dynasty. Innumerable inscriptions celebrate the glory of AMENOPHTEPH, the successor of the last of this 17th Dynasty, as equal to a god, * By an error in copying our authority in a former paper, it is called 2182, P. C. Am. Quar No. 4. † Bulletin Universel, Juin 1827. p. 475 and 476. for having delivered his country from the yoke of its oppressors. Although the son of Amosis, he is made the chief of a new Dynasty, the 18th of Manetho. The other monarchs of this dynasty are: 2. THOUTMOSIS I., of whom there is a colossal statue in the museum at Turin. 3. THOUTMOSIS II., Amon-mai, whose name appears on the most ancient parts of the palace of Karnac. 4. His daughter AMENSI, who governed Egypt for the space of twenty-one years, and erected the greatest of the obelisks of Karnac. This vast monolith is erected in her name to the god Ammon, and the memory of her father. THOUTMOSIS IH., surnamed Meri, the Maris of the Greeks. The remaining monuments of his reign are the pilasters and granite halls of Karnac, several temples in Nubia, the great Sphinx of the pyramids, and the colossal obelisk now in front of the Church of St. John Lateran, at Rome. 6. His successor was AMENOPH I., who was succeeded by 7. THOUTMOSIS IV. This king finished the temples of the Wady-Alfa and Amada, in Nubia, which Amenoph had begun. 8. AMENOPHIS II., whose vocal statue, of colossal size, attracted the notice of the Greeks and Romans, and still stands towering over the ruins of Thebes. The most ancient parts of the palace of Luxor, the temple of Cnouphis at Elephantine, the Memnonium, and a palace at Sohled, in Nubia, are monuments of the splendour and piety of this monarch. 9. The Greek colonnade of the palace at Luxor, was the work of Horus. 10. An inscription in the museum at Turin, commemorates Queen ACHENCHERES, or TMAU-MOT. 11. RAMSES I. built the hypostyle hall at Karnac, and excavated a sepulchre for himself at Beban-el-Moulouk. 12 and 13. Two brothers, MANDOUEI and OUSIREI. They have left monuments of their existence, the last in the grand obelisk now in the Piazza del Popolo, at Rome, the first in the beautiful palace at Kourna, and the splendid tomb discovered by Belzoni. 14. Their successor caused the two great obelisks at Luxor to be erected. His name was RAMSES II. 15. RAMSES III. Of this king, dedicatory inscriptions are found in the second court of the Palace of Karnac, and his tomb still exists at Thebes. 16. RAMSES IV., surnamed Mei-Amoun, built the great palace of Medinet-Abou, and a temple near the southern gate of Karuac. The magnificent sarcophagus which formerly enclosed. the body of this king, has been removed from the catacombs of |