isolated traditions, commenced them with a particular deluge of
its own, because some remembrance of the general deluge common to
all the nations, was preserved among each of the tribes; and, when
it was afterwards attempted to reduce these various traditions to
a common chronology, different events were imagined to have been
recorded, from the circumstance that dates, in reality uncertain, or
perhaps altogether false, although considered as authentic in the
countries where they originated, were not found to agree with each
other. Thus, in the same manner that the Hellenes had a deluge of
Deucalion, because they regarded him as the founder of their nation,
the Autochtones of Attica had one of Ogyges, because it was with him
that their history commenced. The Pelasgi of Arcadia had that which,
according to later authors, compelled Dardanus to retire towards
the Hellespont.[123] The island of Samothracia, one of those in
which a succession of priests had been more anciently established,
together with a regular worship and connected traditions, had also
a deluge, which passed for the most ancient of all[124], and which
was attributed to the bursting of the Bosphorus and the Hellespont.
Some idea of a similar event was preserved in Asia Minor[125], and in
Syria[126], and to this the Greeks would afterwards naturally attach
the name of Deucalion[127].
But none of these traditions assign a very remote antiquity to
this cataclysm; and there is none of them that does not admit of
explanation, in so far as its date and other circumstances are
concerned, from the variations to which narratives, that are not
fixed by writing, must be continually liable.
_The very remote Antiquity attributed to certain Nations is not
supported by History._
Those who would attribute to the continents and the establishment
of nations, a very remote antiquity, are therefore obliged to have
recourse to the Indians, Chaldeans, and Egyptians, three nations,
in fact, which appear to have been the most anciently civilized of
the Caucasian Race, and having a remarkable similarity, not only in
their temperament, and in the climate and nature of the countries
which they occupied, but also in their political and religious
constitution, but whose testimony this almost identical constitution
ought to render equally suspected[128].
These three nations agreed in having each a hereditary caste, to
which the care of religion, laws, and science, was exclusively
consigned. In all of them, this caste had its allegorical language
and secret doctrines; and in all it reserved to itself the privilege
of reading and explaining the sacred books, the whole doctrines of
which had been revealed by the gods themselves.
We can easily conceive what history would necessarily come to in such
hands; but, without having recourse to any great efforts of reason,
we may learn it from the fact itself, by examining what it has come
to in the only one of these three nations which still exists,
namely, the Indians.
The truth is, that history does not exist at all among them. In the
midst of that infinity of books on mystical theology and abstract
metaphysics which the Brahmins possess, and many of which have been
made known to us by the ingenious perseverance of the English, we
find no connected account of the origin of their nation, or of the
vicissitudes of their society. They even pretend that their religion
prohibits them from recording the events of the present time, their
age of misfortune[129].
According to the Vedas, the first revealed works, on which are
founded the whole religious opinions of the Hindoos, the literature
of this people, like that of the Greeks, had its origin at two
great epochs; the Ramaian and the Mahabarat,--a thousand times
more monstrous in their wonders than the Iliad and Odyssey, but
in which we also perceive some traces of a metaphysical doctrine
of that description generally termed sublime. The other poems,
which, together with the two mentioned, compose the great body of
the Pouranas, are nothing else than metrical legends or romances,
written at different periods, and by different authors, and not
less extravagant in their fictions than the great poems. It has been
imagined that, in some of these writings, events and names of men
bearing some resemblance to those spoken of by the Greeks and Latins,
might be discovered; and it is chiefly from these resemblances of
names that Mr Wilfort has attempted to extract from the Pouranas
a kind of concordance with our ancient chronology of the west; a
concordance which, in every line, betrays the hypothetical nature of
its basis, and which, moreover, can only be admitted by absolutely
rejecting the dates given in the Pouranas themselves[130].
The list of kings which the Indian pundits or doctors pretend to have
compiled according to these Pouranas, are nothing but mere catalogues
without any details, or adorned with absurd ones, like those of the
Chaldeans and Egyptians, and like those which Trithemus and Saxo
Grammaticus have made up for the northern nations[131]. These lists
are far from corresponding; none of them supposes a history, or
registers, or records; the very basis on which they rest may have
been purely imagined by the poets from whose works they have been
extracted. One of the pundits who furnished Mr Wilfort with them,
acknowledged that he had arbitrarily filled up the spaces between
the celebrated kings with imaginary names[132], and avowed that his
predecessors had done the same. If this be true of the lists obtained
by the English at the present day, how should it not be so of those
given by Abou-Fazel, as extracts from the annals of Cachmere[133],
and which, besides, full of fables as they are, do not extend farther
back than 4300 years, of which more than 1200 are occupied with names
of princes whose reigns, in as far as regards their duration, remain
undetermined.
Even the era, accordingly, from which the Indians count their years
at the present day, which commences fifty-seven years before Christ,
and which bears the name of a prince called _Vicramaditjia_, or
_Bickermadjit_, bears it only by a sort of convention; for we find,
according to the synchronisms attributed to Vicramaditjia, that there
may have been at least three, and perhaps so many as eight or nine,
princes of this name, who have all similar legends, and who have all
waged war with a prince named _Saliwahanna_; and, further, we cannot
well make out whether this period, the fifty-seventh year before the
Christian era, is that of the birth, reign, or death of the hero
whose name it bears.[134]
Lastly, the most authentic books of the Indians, contradict, by
intrinsic and very obvious characters, the antiquity attributed to
them by the pundits. Their _vedas_, or sacred books, alleged by
them to have been revealed by Brama himself from the beginning of
the world, and arranged by _Viasa_ (a name which signifies nothing
else than collector), at the commencement of the present age, if we
judge of them by the calendar which is found annexed, and to which
they refer, as well as by the position of the colures indicated by
this calendar, may extend to 3200 years, or about the epoch of
Moses.[135] Nay, perhaps those who give credit to the assertion of
Megasthenes[136], that in his time the Indians were not acquainted
with the art of writing, who reflect that none of the ancients
has made mention of their superb temples, those immense pagodas,
the remarkable monuments of the religion of the Brahmins, and who
are aware that the epochs of their astronomical tables have been
calculated backwards, and ill calculated, and that their treatises of
astronomy are modern and antedated, will be inclined still farther to
reduce the pretended antiquity of the Vedas.
Yet even in the midst of all the Brahminical fictions, circumstances
occur, whose agreement with the result of the historical monuments of
more western countries cannot but astonish us. Thus, their mythology
consecrates the successive devastations which the surface of the
globe has already undergone, or is yet destined to undergo; and it
is only to a period somewhat less than 5000 years, that they refer
the last catastrophe.[137] One of these revolutions, which is in
reality placed much farther from us, is described in terms nearly
corresponding with those of Moses[138]. Mr Wilfort even assures us,
that, in another event of the same mythology, a conspicuous place is
held by a personage who resembles Deucalion, in his origin, name, and
adventures, and even in the name and adventures of his father[139].
It is a circumstance equally worthy of remark, that, in the lists
of their kings, imperfect and unauthentic as they are, they date the
commencement of their first human sovereigns (those of the race of
the sun and moon), at an epoch which is nearly the same as that from
which Ctesias, in his singularly constructed list, commences the
reign of his Assyrian kings[140].
This deplorable state of historical knowledge was necessarily
the result of the system of a people, among whom the exclusive
privilege of writing, of preserving, and of explaining the books,
was given to the hereditary priests of a religion monstrous in
its ritual, and cruel in its maxims. Some legend made up for the
purpose of establishing a place of pilgrimage, inventions adapted
to impress more deeply a respect for their caste, must have
interested these priests more than any historical truths. Of the
sciences, they might have cultivated astronomy, which would give
them credit as astrologers; mechanics, which would assist them in
raising their monuments, those signs of their power, and objects of
the superstitious veneration of the people; geometry, the basis of
astronomy, as well as of mechanics, and an important auxiliary to
agriculture in those vast plains of alluvial formation, which could
only be rendered healthy and fertile by the aid of numerous canals.
They might have encouraged the mechanical or chemical arts, which
supported their commerce, and contributed to their luxury, and the
magnificence of their temples. But history, which informs men of
their mutual relations, would be regarded by them with dread.
What we see in India, we might therefore expect to find in general,
wherever sacerdotal races, constituted like those of the Brahmins,
and established in similar countries, assumed the same empire over
the mass of the people. The same causes produce the same effects;
and, in fact, we have only to glance over the fragments of Egyptian
and Chaldean traditions which have been preserved, to be convinced
that there is no more historical authenticity in them than in those
of the Indians.
In order to judge of the nature of the chronicles which the Egyptian
priests pretended to possess, it is only necessary to review the
extracts which have been given by themselves at different periods,
and to different individuals.
Those of _Sais_, for example, informed Solon, about 550 years before
Christ, that, as Egypt was not subject to deluges, they had preserved
not only their own annals, but those of other nations also; that the
cities of Athens and Sais had been built by Minerva, the former 9000
years before, the latter only 8000; and to these dates they added
the well known fables respecting the Atlantes, and the resistance
which the ancient Athenians opposed to their conquests, together with
the whole romantic description of the Atlantis[141], a description
in which we find events and genealogies similar to those of all
mythological romances.
A century later, about 450 years before Christ, the priests of
Memphis gave entirely different accounts to Herodotus[142]. Menes,
the first king of Egypt, according to them, had built Memphis, and
inclosed the Nile within dikes, as if it were possible that the first
king of a country could perform operations of this kind. Between
this prince and Mœris, who, according to them, reigned 900 years
before the period at which this account was given (1350 years before
Christ), they had a succession of three hundred and thirty other
kings.
After these kings came Sesostris, who extended his conquests as far
as Colchis[143]; and altogether, there were, to the time of Sethos,
three hundred and forty-one kings, and three hundred and forty-one
chief priests, in three hundred and forty-one generations, during a
space of 11,340 years. And, in this interval, as if to insure the
authenticity of their chronology, these priests asserted that the
sun had risen twice where he sets, without any change having taken
place in the climate or productions of the country, and without any
of the gods having at that time, or before, made their appearance and
reigned in Egypt.
To this fable, which, despite of all the pretended explanations that
have been given of it, evinces so gross an ignorance of astronomy,
they added, regarding Sesostris, Phero, Helenius, and Rhampsinitus,
the kings who built the pyramids, and an Ethiopian conqueror named
_Sabacos_, a set of tales equally absurd.
The priests of Thebes did better: they shewed Herodotus, and they
had before shewn to Hecatæus, three hundred and forty-five colossal
figures of wood, which represented three hundred and forty-five high
priests, who had succeeded to each other from father to son, all
men, all born the one of the other, but who had been preceded by
gods[144]. Other Egyptians told him that they had exact registers,
not only of the reign of men, but also of that of gods. They reckoned
17,000 years from Hercules to Amases, and 15,000 from Bacchus. Pan
had even been prior to Hercules[145]. These people evidently took for
history some allegories relating to pantheistic metaphysics, which
formed, unknown to them, the basis of their mythology.
It is only from the time of Sethos that Herodotus commences the
part of his history which is somewhat rational; and it is worthy of
remark, that this part begins with an event which agrees with the
Hebrew annals, the destruction of the army of the King of Assyria,
_Sennacherib_[146]; and this agreement continues under Necho[147],
and under Hophra or Apries.
Two centuries after Herodotus (about 260 years before Christ)
Ptolemy Philadelphus, a prince of a foreign race, wished to become
acquainted with the history of the country which events had called
him to govern. A priest, called Manetho, was employed to write it
for him. It was not from registers or archives that he pretended to
compile this work, but from the sacred books of Agathodæmon, the son
of the second Hermes, and the father of Tat, who had copied it upon
pillars erected before the flood by Tot or the first Hermes, in the
Seriadic land[148]. And this second Hermes, this Agathodæmon, this
Tat, are personages of whom nothing had ever been said before, any
more than of the Seriadic land, or of its pillars. The deluge itself
was an event entirely unknown to the Egyptians of preceding times,
and concerning which Manetho says nothing in what remains of his
dynasties. The product resembles its source; not only is the whole
full of absurdities, but they are absurdities peculiar to the work,
and utterly irreconcilable with those which the priests of older
times had related to Solon and Herodotus.
It is Vulcan who commences the series of divine kings. He reigns
9000 years; the gods and demi-gods reign 1985 years. The names, and
successions, and dates of Manetho are utterly unlike any thing that
was published before or after him; and from the discrepancy of the
extracts given by Josephus, Julius Africanus, and Eusebius, we may
infer that his narratives were as obscure and confused in themselves,
as they were discordant with those of other authors. Even the
duration of the respective reigns of his human kings is not settled.
According to Julius Africanus, it extended to 5101; according to
Eusebius, to 4723; and according to Syncellus, to 3555 years. It
might be thought that the differences in the names and cyphers arose
from the inaccuracy of copyists; but Josephus quotes a passage at
length, the details of which are manifestly in contradiction with the
extracts of his successors.
A chronicle, named the _ancient_[149], and which some consider
anterior, others posterior, to Manetho, gives still different
calculations. The total duration of its kings is 36,525 years, of
which the sun reigned 30,000, the other gods 3984, and the demi-gods
217; there remaining for those of the human race only 2339 years.
There are thus also but 113 generations, in place of the 340 of
Herodotus.
A learned man of an order different from that of Manetho, the
astronomer Eratosthenes, discovered and published, in the reign
of Ptolemy Euergetes, about 240 years before Christ, a particular
list of thirty-eight kings of Thebes, commencing with Menes, and
continuing for a space of 1024 years; of which we have an extract
that Syncellus has copied from Apollodorus[150]. Scarcely any of the
names found in this list correspond with those of the others.
Diodorus went to Egypt in the reign of Ptolemy Auletes, about sixty
years before Christ, consequently two centuries after Manetho, and
four after Herodotus. He also collected from the narratives of the
priests a history of the country, and his account is again quite
different from those of his predecessors[151]. It is no longer
Menes who built Memphis, but Uchoræus; and long before his time
Busiris the second had built Thebes. The eighth ancestor of Uchoræus,
Osymandyas, possessed himself of Bactria, and crushed rebellions in
it. Long after him, Sesoosis made still more extensive conquests,
having proceeded as far as the Ganges, and returned by Scythia and
the Tanais. Unfortunately these names of kings are unknown to all the
preceding historians, and none of the nations which they conquered
have preserved the slightest traces of them. As to the gods and
heroes, their reign, according to Diodorus, extended through a space
of 18,000 years, while that of the human sovereigns was 15,000. Four
hundred and seventy of the kings were Egyptians, and four Ethiopians,
without reckoning the Persians and Macedonians. The fables, besides,
with which the whole is intermingled, do not yield in childishness to
those of Herodotus.
In the eighteenth year of the Christian era, Germanicus, the nephew
of Tiberius, led by the desire of becoming acquainted with the
antiquities of this celebrated land, went over to Egypt, at the
risk of incurring the displeasure of a prince so suspicious as his
uncle, and proceeded up the Nile as far as Thebes. It was no more
Sesostris or Osymandyas, of whom the priests spoke to him as a
conqueror, but Rhamses, who, at the head of 700,000 men, had invaded
Libya, Ethiopia, Media, Persia, Bactria, Scythia, Asia-Minor, and
Syria[152].
Lastly, in the celebrated article of Pliny upon the obelisks[153],
we find names of kings which are not to be seen elsewhere; Sothies,
Mnevis, Zmarreus, Eraphius, Mestires, a Semenpserteus, contemporary
of Pythagoras, &c. A Ramises, who might be thought the same as
Rhamses, is there made to live at the time of the siege of Troy.
I am not sure whether it has been attempted to reconcile these
discordant lists by the supposition that the kings have borne several
names. For my own part, when I consider not only the discrepancy of
these various accounts, but, above all, the mixture of authentic
facts, attested by vast monuments, and of puerile extravagancies,
it appears to me much more natural to conclude, that the Egyptian
priests possessed no real history whatever; that, inferior still to
those of India, they had not even suitable and connected fables;
that they preserved only lists more or less defective of their kings,
and some remembrances of the more distinguished among them, of those
especially who had taken care to have their names inscribed upon the
temples and other great edifices which adorned their country; but
that these remembrances were confused, that they rested merely upon
the traditional explanation which was given to the representations
painted or sculptured upon the monuments; explanations founded
solely upon hieroglyphical inscriptions, conceived, like that which
has been handed down to us[154], in very general terms, and which,
passing from mouth to mouth, were altered, as to their details, at
the pleasure of those who communicated them to strangers; and that it
is consequently impossible to rest any proposition relative to the
antiquity of the presently existing continents, upon the shreds of
these traditions, so incomplete even in their own times, and become
utterly unintelligible under the pen of those who have been the means
of transmitting them to us.
Should this assertion require other proofs, they would be found
in the list of the sacred works of Hermes, which were carried
by the Egyptian priests in their solemn processions. Clement of
Alexandria[155] names them all to the number of forty-two, and there
is not even found among them, as is the case with the Brahmins, one
epic poem, or one book, which has the pretension to be a narrative,
or to fix in any way a single great action or a single event.
The interesting researches of M. Champollion the younger, and
his astonishing discoveries regarding the language of the
hieroglyphics[156], far from overturning these conjectures, on the
contrary, confirm them. This ingenious antiquary has read, in a
series of hieroglyphic paintings in the temple of Abydos[157], the
prenomens of a certain number of kings placed in regular succession
one after another; and a part of these prenomens (the last ten)
recurring on various other monuments, accompanied with proper names,
he has concluded that they are those of kings who bore those proper
names, and this has afforded him nearly the same kings, and in
the same order, as those of which Manetho composes his eighteenth
dynasty, that which expelled the shepherds. The concordance, however,
is not complete: in the painting of Abydos, six of the names that
appear in Manetho’s list are wanting; there are some, again, which
bear no resemblance; and, lastly, there unfortunately occurs a
blank before the most remarkable of all, the Rhamses, who appears
the same as the king represented on many of the finest monuments,
with the attributes of a great conqueror. It would be, according
to M. Champollion, in the list of Manetho, the Sethos, the chief
of the nineteenth dynasty, who, in fact, is indicated as powerful
in ships and in cavalry, and as having carried his arms into
Cyprus, Media and Persia. M. Champollion thinks, with Marsham and
many others, that it is this Rhamses, or this Sethos, who is the
Sesostris, or the Sesoosis of the Greeks; and this opinion possesses
some probability, in this respect, that the representations of the
victories of Rhamses, probably carried over the wandering tribes in
the vicinity of Egypt, or at the most into Syria, have given rise
to those fabulous ideas of vast conquests attributed, by some other
confusion, to a Sesostris. But, in Manetho, it is in the twelfth
dynasty, and not in the eighteenth, that a prince bearing the name
of Sesostris is inscribed, who is noted as having conquered Asia
and Thrace[158]. Marsham also asserts, that this twelfth dynasty
and the eighteenth make but one[159]. Manetho could not himself,
therefore, have understood the lists which he copied. Lastly, if
we admit in their full degree, both the historical truth of this
bas-relief of Abydos, and its accordance, whether with the part of
Manetho’s lists that seems to correspond to it, or with the other
hieroglyphic inscriptions, this consequence would result, that the
pretended eighteenth dynasty, the first regarding which the ancient
chronologists begin to manifest some agreement, is also the first
which has left traces of its existence upon monuments. Manetho may
have consulted this document and others of a like nature; but it
is not the less obvious, that a mere list, a series of names or of
portraits, as he has throughout, is far from being a history.