Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/384

 808 NOETH-EAST AFEICA. forest, armed only with clubs and sharpened flints, at a time when astronomical observations, arithmetic, geometry, architecture, all the arts and nearly all the industries of the present day, as well as the games which now delight our child- hood, or afford relaxation from the serious work of life, were already known to their Egyptian contemporaries. The origin of our sciences, and many moral pre- cepts still taught by the " wisdom of nations," are foimd recorded on the papyri and on the bas-reliefs of the monuments of Upper Egypt ; whilst many a dogma on which existing religions are based, may be traced in its original form to the documents discovered in the tombs of Thebes and Abydos. To Egypt we owe the art of writing, afterwards modified by the Phoenicians, by whom it was communicated to all the peoples of the Mediterranean basin. The very groove of our thoughts had its origin on the banks of the Nile. Mankind is undoubtedly ignorant of its first epochs, nor can anyone assert positively that civilisation first arose in Egypt. Nevertheless, we are unable to trace it further back than the written records of this land, whose pyramids mark for us the limit of past times. Egyptian Chronology. The Egyptians had no chronology properly so-called, their only division of time consisting of the length of reign of their successive sovereigns. But the uncertain dates obtained from the succession of the reigns partially indicated on the buildings, and those handed down by Manetho, a priest under Ptolemy Phila- delphus, can be checked by a few fixed dates, such as those of astronomical pheno- mena. Biot, when examining the hieroglyphics translated by Emmanuel de Roug^, was thus enabled to determine three dates in the history of Egypt com- prised between the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries of the Ancient era. In the series of events the Egyptian annals accordingly yield us at least one established date, seven centuries anterior to the Chaldean era of Nabonassar, which another astronomical coincidence has enabled us to place in the year 746. Chabas has also found in a " medical " papyrus in the library of Leipzig the cartouche of Menkeri or Mycerinus, followed by a reference to the solar ascension of Sothis or Sirius, as having taken place in the ninth year of his reign. If the interpretation of the text be correct, calculation would fix the date between the year 3,007 and 3,010 of the ancient era, or a thousand years after the epoch attributed to the reign of Menkera in Mariette's chronological table. In any case, it is to be hoped that future discoveries will enable us with certainty to trace back the course of ages, and to determine positive dates for the origins of history, with which may be connected the fluctuating chronology of the most remote events of which the human race has preserved the memory. The same necessity which has caused the metrical system to be adopted for the measurement of terrestrial spaces, and which is now endeavouring to establish a common meridian, renders it equally indispensable that a common era should be sought, so as to establish a concordance for the events of various nations. Sooner or later, when the savants shall endeavour to get rid of the absurd chronoios;ical system which at present prevails in Christian Europe,