4000 years ago, was 7 mitres, 80 cent, (or about 24 English feot)
higher than it is at the present day.” * * * “ It explains a fact that
had previously surprised me, v iz : that in all the valley of Nubia, the
level of the soil upon both shores, although it consists entirely of
alluvium deposited by the Nile, is much more elevated than at the
highest level of the river in the best year of modern inundation.”201
I have a distinct recollection of localities in Lower Nubia, — explored
with Mr, A. C. Harris during our shooting excursions as far
as Wadee Haifa (2d cataract), in 1839-40 — where the alluvium,
deposited by the Nile anciently, upon the rock, was at great distance
from, and at a higher level than, inundations at this day: but the
phenomenon merely excited surprise; nor, until Chev. Lepsius discovered
the inscriptions at Samneh, was an unaccountable circumstance,
now of great value in geology as well as chronology, either
important or explicable. Eighteen years later, it helps to mark
degrees of time on Nature’s calendar; and, Conjointly with the hieroglyphs
of Manetho’s XHth dynasty, cut at Samneh, to fix a date for
the ante-Noachian existence of civilized humanity upon earth.
Adjacent to these inscriptions stand the coetaneous fortifications
of Samneh, huilt with great military skill and on an immense scale,
by these Pharaohs of the XHth dynasty, as their frontier bulwark
of the south against the attacks of Nubian hordes. M. de Vogue, a
competent judge, has re-explored the localities ¡^confirming in every
respect the anterior discovery of Chev. Lepsius.
Geological investigation of Egypt, therefore, begins to furnish
abundant elbow-room for Plato’s long disregarded assertion, put
into the G-reek mouth of a native Egyptian priest too ! — “And the
annals even of our own city [Sais] have been preserved 8000 years
in our sacred writing. I will briefly describe the laws and most
illustrious actions of those States which have existed 9000 years.”2®
— “ And you will, by observing, discover, that what have been
painted and sculptured there [in Egypt] 10,000 years ago, — and I
say 10,000 years, not as a word, but a fact, — are neither more beau-
201 L e p s iu s , letter to Dr. S. G. Morton, “ Philæ, Sept. 15, 1844;” Proceedings of the
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Jan. 21, 1845: — See references to Lepsius’s
later works, in Types of Mankind, p. 692 ; and, for faithful copies of the inscriptions themselves,
the Prussian Denkmdler, Abth. iv., Bd, 2, Bl. 137, 139, 151.
202 “ Les fortifications antiques à Samneh (Nubie) ”—Bulletin Archéologique de VAthenoeum
Français, Paris, Sept., 1855 ; pp. 81-4, Pl. v. Mr. Osburn’s romantic inference, about the
connection between these works and Joseph’s seven years of famine, merely proves that
this learned, if volcanic, Copiologist is no geologist {Monumental History of Egypt, L o n d o n ,
8vo., 1854; ii. pp. 35, 132-9.
203 “ The Timæus,” P l a t o ’s works, Davis transi. (Bohn) London, 1849, vi., p. 327.
tiful, nor more ugly, than those turned out of hand at the present
day, but are worked ofi’according to the same art ”204
In his romance of Atlantis, Plato makes the Egyptian priest say
to Solon, that the Athenian commonwealth, had been created first by
Minerva, and “ one thousand years later she founded ours; and this
government established amongst us dates, according to our sacred
books, from eight thousand years.” Referring to Henri Martin205 for
annihilation of this Platonic myth as an historical document the passage
merely serves to display P lato’s conception of. the-world’s antiquity.
Farcy2"6 follows him up with a ruinous critique of “Atlantis
” as applicable to its ridiculous attribution to the population of
America. Humboldt,207 more good-natured, while treating Atlantis
as mythic, seems inclined to hope the story may be true. Still, in
no case, do Plato s theories help us to a sound chronology.
His 10,000 years for man in Egypt are but the half of the' “ 20 000 ”
now required,f - 2 3 centuries after Plato, by Bunsen, for the existence
of mankind upon our planet’s superficies ; and thus, as I have
long sustained,2« we have finally got beyond all biblical or any other
chronology. Indeed, the most rigorous curtailer of Egyptian annals,
my erudite friend Mr. Samuel Sharpe, states the case (except that
his date for Osirtesen seems too contracted) exactly as all hierologists
of the present day understand Egypt’s position in the world’s
history :
“ For how many years, or rather thousands of years, this globe had
already been the dwelling-place of man, and the arts of life had been
growing under his iuventive industry, is uncertain ; we can hope to
now very little of our race and its other discoveries before the in-
I vention of letters. But in the reign of Osirtesen the carved writing
I 7 “ ®ans of %ures of men> animals, plants, and other natural and
artificial objects, was far from new. We are left to imagine the
number of centuries [anterior to the Pyramids] that must have passed
204 Paws’” Burg°3 transi., op. cit., 1852, v. p . 60.
71*728** ^ k ^ Flatm’ PariS’ 1841’ “ Atlantide - ’— Type» of Mankind, pp. 594,
206 Antiquités Mexicaines, before cited, ii. pp. 41-55.
M “ Le recit de PIato11 offrlrait moins de difficulté chronologique, l’intervalle de 210 ans
anceY r Ur de S°l0n et 0elIe de Plat0n étant rempli Par trols générations de la descend-
S o ll P ’ “ ’ Par llne N a t i o n sans doute blamâble du texte, c’etait celui-ci et non
Solon 1 1 râ°™Îalt * Critias’ 16 grand-père de l’interlocuteur, ce qu’il avait appris, par
récit , °Phe de rAtlantide' * * * Platon. Po»r donner plus d’importance a sou
Solon ft,v™ Pu introduire tous ces faits dans un roman historique, et sa parenté avec
&e w l a P “ ^ de ^ fi0ti°n--” {Examm Criti*ue ’’ *)e^ore quoted, “ Considérations, ” .i. pp. 167-73.) * l l W * 7« Géographie,
206 0lia Æ9ptiaca, pp. 41-2; 61-8: and Types of Mankind, 683-9.