to Humboldt, I think our Egyptian researches will enable us to form a somewhat better conclusion as to certain points under discussion, on one side or the other, than has hitherto been possible.

There is nothing improbable in itself in reminiscences and records of great events in Egypt 9000 years B. C., if we consider them as even isolated recollections of a time not strictly chronological. For, as we have seen, the origines of the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt go back to the ninth millennium, or at all events there were distinct unions and a common government. There were therefore reminiscences also of great natural and historical events which affected Egypt. That here alluded to must be one of them. It is true that Egypt is not considered exactly as having been subjugated by the Atlantic conqueror, but it is said that Africa (Libya), "as far as Egypt," belonged to his kingdom. Asia is clearly the seat of this advanced empire, and the conflict extended, either by sea, or by way of Spain and Gaul, as far as Etruria.

There never was but one such conqueror, as we established when examining critically the early Hebrew times: Nimrod the Kushite, or Kossian, whose date cannot be later than the beginning of the sixth or the end of the seventh millennium B.C. It would be more natural to identify him with the conquest alluded to by the priests of Sais: for, if he was an Ethiopian, he must have passed through Egypt on his way to Asia and Europe. Now if (as we decidedly think is the original meaning of the Biblical account) he came from the land of the Kossians he was a Turanian; but the Iberians are Turanians, and may have come to Egypt from Spain across the Cyrenaica. Atlantis

recalls Atlas, consequently may point to Northern Africa. That the first conqueror in history was a Scythian is reported by Justin, on the authority of Pompeius Trogus, who had access to Asiatic sources.

This is what may be said in regard to the historical foundation of the Egyptian story about that conquest. As to the island of Atlantis, which is stated to have disappeared, I look upon it as a pure fiction, the origin of which was the notion of a violent separation between the two continents at Gibraltar, which was taken for granted as an event of early times. This ancient story may very well have grown, at Sais, sooner or later, into the above fabulous form.

Now if the priests of Sais did say anything about a primeval Athens, and made Kekrops contemporary with it, they either imposed upon Solon or Plato, or them both. But the whole, or the greater part, of this story bears upon it so palpably the Platonic stamp, as foreshadowing the position of Athens in the Persian war, and as the model of an aristocratical reforming constitution to be reestablished, that we need only read his Kritias to be satisfied on that head. What is there but lightly touched upon is here embellished almost like a Cyropædia, and is obviously treated as a philosophical myth.

My views, therefore, stand between those of Böckh and of Henri Martin, the acute commentator on the Timæus, and come nearest to those of Humboldt in his "History of the Discovery of America."

But the main interest for universal history is this, that if the whole be not a Platonic fiction, the Egyptians themselves made the origines of Asia antecedent to their own, and therefore to those of the Ionians and Pelasgi on the shores of the Mediterranean in Asia Minor.

Eight millenniums before Solon are exactly 8550

B. C.

Now if the Egyptians migrated to the valley of the Nile before the Flood, the very latest date of these historical origines will be the beginning of the tenth millennium, or the end of the eleventh (towards 10,000 B. C.).

On this supposition their historical reminiscences might well extend back to the middle of the ninth millennium, for we require a period for their naturalisation in the valley of the Nile before a really Egyptian consciousness could be formed. All the preceding period belongs to the time of the Gods, which was succeeded, without any intervening heroic age, by the regular establishment of cities and nomes.

No traditions of earlier states of mankind in Asia or Europe could possibly have existed, had they considered themselves a primitive race and not possessed reminiscences of an immigration. In early times, indeed, the Uinnins, or Ionians, may have been, in the monumental language, all the non-Phoenician races of the islands and seaboards of the non-African Mediter

ranean.

It is remarkable that in the lyrical fragment preserved in the lately discovered work of Hippolytus 130, Egypt is not included in the sketch of the countries which lay claim to have produced the first men. Among the claimants the first are Boeotians, with the Idæan Kuretæ, the Phrygian Korybantes, the Arcadian Pelasgi, those of Eleusis, the Lemnian Kabiri, and the Giants of Pellas; all that is said about Egypt is the old story of the Nile at the inundation moistening and fertilising the mud so that "living bodies" came out of it. This alludes to the vermin, frogs and such like animals, which are more particularly mentioned by Diodorus (and also in Exodus). In the same passage it is also stated that the Assyrians had a tradition about a primeval man, Oannes 131, an eater of fish. This is the Fish-man of the Babylonians or Chaldeans, of whom we have read in Berosus; who also are said, upon very questionable authority, to have had a primitive man called Adam,

130 Philosophumena, lib. v. p. 96. seq.

131 In Duncker and Schneidewin's critical edition, now completed, the unmeaning word Iannes is changed into Oannes.

who has been already mentioned in the Chaldee kosmogony.

Assuming, therefore, what we know about the course of history from other sources, this view of the above passage in Plato harmonizes with all the rest. It is no part of our object to establish by it the ancient history of the world, or even to make use of it for the purpose of interpreting history. But, on the other hand, it frequently helps us to discover the real meaning of Biblical and other traditions, when attempts are made to show that they are either pure inventions or have no meaning at all.

As the letter of the above story is fabulous, so is the germ of it, in the main, in perfect harmony with the facts and records of the earliest history.

The mention of the Flood is not less remarkable. There can be no question as to the reminiscence of an historical flood in the Greek legends about Deukalion and Ogyges. The Egyptian priests did not profess that their own sacred books contained any record of an historical flood of this kind. They were aware that many, perhaps innumerable, devastations and catastrophes had been occasioned by fire as well as water, and they had no doubt that many other such would occur, by which, as had happened frequently before, land, man, and their history would be swept away, to be succeeded by a new creation.

This is the result at which we arrived from our own examination and interpretation of the so-called dynasties of Gods. Here, however, we find a corroboration in Egyptian tradition itself. The Egyptians knew nothing about a flood in the northern part of Central Asia. The Greeks, however, as well as the inhabitants of Asia Minor in Phrygia and Lycia, had such a tradition.

Grecian mythology, therefore, really does not say anything absurd or at variance with the Egyptian, in making Ægyptus the son of Belus, the oldest God of

Babylon; and Europa the daughter of Agenor or Phoenix, i. e. the patriarch of Kanaan (Phœnicia) or Edom. 132

In the present state of science these traditions have become intelligible, though they cannot be made the basis of historical criticism. This rests preeminently upon the ground of the infallible linguistic science. But it is matter of congratulation to find that the echo of the child-like traditions of all the ancient peoples harmonizes with the scientific analysis of the Origines of the human race, and with the fragments of the sacred traditions of the race of Abraham which have been preserved to us in the Bible.

F.

GENERAL RESULT OF THE COMPARATIVE

PHILOSOPHICAL

ANALYSIS OF THE ORIGINES OF LANGUAGE AND MYTHOLOGY, RESPECTING EGYPT IN PARTICULAR.

AFTER having thus analyzed all the traditions of the ancient world about the origines, in so far as they have any pretension to be connected with Egypt, the historical position of the Egyptian origines is now defined on all sides. The direct results of the previous researches have been summed up at the end of each Section. But it is only now that we may call upon our readers to draw for themselves the general conclusions which seem necessarily to flow from the leading facts we have laid before them, in the course of our historical examination, as to chronology, as to language, as to religion, and as to the universal history of mankind.

In the first place, as regards the general chronological result, which includes the approximative analysis of the

132 See Schol. to Timæus, p. 92. ed. Platon. Lond. vol. ix.; and the well-known passages in Apollodorus, with Heyne's notes.