CHAP. CHAP. VI. THE UNCERTAIN EPOCHAS OF HEATHEN CHRONOLOGY. I. An account of the defect of chronology in the eldest times. Of the solar year among the Egyptians; the original of the epacts; the antiquity of intercalation among them. Of the several canicular years; the difference between Scaliger and Petavius considered. The certain epochas of the Egyptian history no older than Nabonassar. II. Of the Grecian accounts. The fabulousness of the heroical age of Greece. III. Of the ancient Grecian kingdoms. The beginning of the Olympiads. IV. The uncertain origins of the Western nations. Of the Latin dynasties. The different palilia of Rome. The uncertain reckoning ab urbe condita. V. Of impostures as to ancient histories. Of Annius, VI. Inghiramius, and others. VII. Of the characters used by heathen priests. VIII. No sacred characters among the Jews. IX. The partiality and inconsistency of heathen histories with each other. From all which the want of credibility in them as to an account of ancient times is clearly demonstrated. THE next thing to evidence the uncertainty of the heathen chronology, is the want of certain parapegmata, or some fixed periods of time, according to which the account of times must be made. For if there be no certain epochas by which to reckon the succession of ages, the distance of intervals, and all intervening accidents, we must of necessity fluctuate in continual uncertainties, and have no sure foundation to bottom any account of ancient times upon. The great reason of this defect is the little care which those who lived in the eldest times had to preserve the memory of any ancient tradition among themselves, or to convey it to posterity in such a way as might be least liable to imposture. Of all kinds of learning, chronology was the most rude in eldest times; and yet that is well called by Scaliger, the life and soul of history, without which history is but a confused lump, a mere mola, an indi I. · I. BOOK gested piece of flesh, without life or form. The ancient accounts of the world were merely from year to year; and that with abundance of obscurity, uncertainty, and variety sometimes going by the course of the moon; and therein they were as mutable as the moon herself how to conform the year regularly to her motion; and it was yet greater difficulty to regulate it by the course of the sun, and to make the accounts of the sun and moon meet. There was so much perplexity and confusion about the ordering of a single year, and so long in most nations before they could bring it into any order, that we are not to expect any fixed periods by which to find out the succession of ages among them. Among the Egyptians, who are supposed most skilful in the account of the year, it was a long time before they found out any certain course of it. It is agreed by most, that when the Egyptian priests had found out the form of the year by the course of the sun, Diodor. l. i. (which is attributed by Diodorus to the Heliopolitan priests,) yet the year in common use was only of 360 days, which in any great period of years must needs cause a monstrous confusion, by reason that their months must of necessity by degrees change their place; so that in the great canicular year of 730 Thoyth, which was the beginning of the summer solstice in the entrance into that period, would be removed into the midst of winter; from whence arose Herod. Eu- that Egyptian fable in Herodotus, that in the time of terp. c. 142. their eldest kings the sun had twice changed his rising liger. de and setting; which was only caused by the variation Emend. Temp. 1. iii. of their months, and not by any alteration in the course of the sun which defect the Egyptian priests at last observing, saw a necessity of adding five days to the end of the year, which thence were called mayóμevai, which implies they were not anciently in use among c. 50. Vide Sca p. 195. VI. de Iside c. 12. edit. Oxon. Idol. 1. i. them, being afterwards added to make up the course CHAP. of the year which the Egyptians give an account of, as Plutarch tells us, under this fable. Mercury being Plutarch. once at dice with the moon, he got from her the 72d et Osiride, part of the year, which he after added to the 360 days o which were anciently the days of the year, which they called inayouevas, and therein celebrated the festivals of their gods. Thence the names of the several éɛayóμLevaι were taken from the gods. The first was called 'Oripis, it being celebrated in honour of him; the second, 'Apovñpis, by which Scaliger understands Anubis, but Vossius, more probably, the senior Orus; the third Voss. de to Typho; the fourth to Isis; the fifth to Nephtha, c. 28. the wife of Typho, and sister to Isis. This course of the year Scaliger thinks that the Egyptians represented by the serpent called Neri, being described in a round circle biting some part of his tail in his mouth; whereby, saith he, they would have it understood that the form. of the year was not perfect without that adjection of five days to the end of the year; for to this day, saith he, the Coptites and ancient Egyptians call the end of the year Neo. It seems that afterwards they understood likewise the necessity of intercalation of a day every fourth year, for the sake of the redundant quadrant each year above 365 days; which course of four years they called their canicular year, because they observed its defect in that time one whole day from the rising of the dog-star: and besides that they called it 'Hλakov eros, and "Eros beoũ, and lustrum Sothiacum, from Σs the dog-star: but Censorinus denies any Censorin. use of intercalation among the Egyptians in their civil c. 18. year, although their sacred and hieroglyphical years might admit of it. And upon this ground, I suppose, the controversy between those two learned persons, Scaliger and Petavius, concerning the antiquity of de die Nat. C. V. Petav. c. 2. BOOK intercalation among the Egyptians, may be reconciled. I. For on the one side it is apparent that the ordinary or de Doctr. civil year did want intercalation, by this testimony of Temp. 1. iii. Censorinus; Eorum annus civilis solos habet dies 365 sine ullo intercalari; itaque quadriennium apud eos uno circiter die minus est quam naturale quadriennium; and thence, saith he, it comes to pass, that in 1461 years, which was the great heliacal year, it returns to the same beginning; for then the dog-star ariseth again upon the first day of the month Thoyth, as it did at the beginning of this great canicular year; and that this kind of civil year did continue among them in the time of Censorinus (which was of the Dionysian account 238) appears by this, that he saith in the year wherein he wrote his book, the new moon of Thoyth was before the seventh day of the calends of July, whereas a hundred years before, it was before the twelfth of the calends of August; whence it is evident that the Julian year, whatever some learned men pretend to the contrary, was not in ordinary use Kircher among the Egyptians in that time; and that Sosigenes, Ed. Egypt. t. iii. class. When he corrected the Roman account, and brought in the form of the Julian year, did not take his pattern from the Egyptian year, but from the Grecians of Alexandria, who did make use of the quadrant added to the 365 years, which the Egyptians did not, as appears further by the golden circle in the monument of Diod. 1. i. Osimanduas, (which Diodorus speaks of out of Heca 7. c. 2. c. 49. tæus Milesius,) which was of 365 cubits compass, and divided into so many segments for every day, with the observations of the rising and setting of the several stars, and the effects portended by them. And the reason why this year continued in civil use among Geminus the Egyptians, is well assigned by Geminus, that the Egyptians, according to a superstitious observation de Sphæra, c. 6. VI. they had, would needs have their festivals run through CHAP. c. 50. xvii. p. 541. 1. i. c. 5. by Diodorus is affirmed of the Theban priests, who Diodor. 1. i. Idol. 1. i. Hermet. Med. c. 12. E |