set up

20, 21.

(2.)

(1.)

idols there but if it be meant of pillars, I can- CHAP. not but approve of Junius's interpretation, which I conceive bids fairest to be the genuine sense of the place, viz. that these stones here were the twelve stones pitched by Joshua, in Gilgal, after the Israel-Josh.iv. 19, ites passed over Jordan; and these stones are said to be by Gilgal, Judges iii. 19. So that, notwithstanding this handsome conjecture, we are as far to seek for the pillars of Mercury as ever we were: and may be so to the world's end. Secondly, the standing of these pillars during the flood, which must be supposed certainly to have some singular virtue in them to resist such a torrent of waters, which overthrew the strongest built houses, and most compacted cities. The plain impossibilities are, first, that Manetho should transcribe his Dynasties from the beginning of the history of Egypt, to almost the time of Alexander, out of sacred inscriptions of Thoyth, who lived in the beginning of the very first dynasty, according to his own computation. Sure this Thoyth was an excellent prophet, to write an history for above 50,000 years to come, as Manetho reckons it. Secondly, it is as well still, that this history, after the flood, should be translated into hieroglyphic characters. What kind of translation is that? We had thought hieroglyphics had been representations of things, and not of sounds and letters, or words. How could this history have at first been written in any tongue, when it was in hieroglyphics? Do hieroglyphics speak in several languages; and are they capable of changing their tongues? But, thirdly, it is as good still, that the second Mercury, or Agathodemon, did translate this history so soon after the flood into Greek. Was the Greek tongue so much in request so soon after the flood, that the Egyptian history, for the sake of the Greeks, must be translated

(2.)

(3.)

1.

Herod. l. ii.

c. 49.

c. 67.

BOOK into their language? Nay, is it not evident from Herodotus and Diodorus, that the Grecians were not permitted so much as any commerce with the EgypDiod. 1. i. tians till the time of Psammetichus; which fell out in ed. Wess. the 26th dynasty of Manetho, and about a century after the beginning of the Olympiads? We see, then, how credible an author Manetho is, and what truth there is like to be in the account of ancient times given by the Egyptian historians, when the chief of them so lamentably and ominously stumbles in his very entrance into it.

And yet as fabulous as this account is, which Manetho gives of his taking his history from these pillars before the flood, I cannot but think that Josephus, an author otherwise of good credit, took his famous story of Seth's pillars, concerning astronomical observations before the flood, from this story of Manetho; and therefore I cannot but look upon them with as jealous an eye as on the other; although I know how fond the world hath been upon that most ancient monument, as is pretended, of learning in the world. Du Bartas hath wrote a whole poem on these pillars; and the truth is, they are fitter subjects for poets than any else, as will appear on these considerations. First, how strangely improbable is it that the posterity of Seth, who, as is pretended, did foreknow a destruction of the world to be by a flood, should busy themselves to write astronomical observations on pillars, for the benefit of those who should live after it? Could they think their pillars should have some peculiar exemption above stronger structures, from the violence of the rough and furious waters? If they believed the flood absolutely universal, for whom did they intend their observations? if not, to what end did they make them, when the persons surviving might communicate their

II.

inventions to them? But, secondly, if either one or CHAP. both these pillars remained, whence comes it to pass that neither the Chaldæans, nor any of the oldest pretenders to astronomy, should neither mention them, nor make any use of them? Nay, thirdly, whence came the study of astronomy to be so lamentably defective in those ancient times, if they had such certain observations of the heavenly bodies, gathered by so much experience of the persons who lived before the flood? Fourthly, How comes Josephus himself to neglect this remarkable testimony of the truth of Scripture-history, in his books against Apion, if he had thought it were such as might be relied on? Fifthly, How comes Josephus so carelessly not to set down the place in Syria where these pillars stood, that inquisitive persons might have satisfied themselves with the sight of the pillar at least, and what kind of characters those observations were preserved in? But now, if we compare this of Josephus with Manetho's story, we shall find them so exactly resemble each other, that we may judge all those pillars to have been taken out of the same quarry. Two things make it yet more probable. First, The name of the place wherein they stood, which Eustathius, in Hexaemeron, takes out of Josephus, and calls Eripead; the very same place with that in Manetho. The other is the common use of the name of Seth among the Egyptians, as not only appears by Plutarch de Iside et Osiride, but by this very place of Manetho; where it follows, è Bíßay Σwlews, a book of his bearing the title, which Vettius Valens Antiochenus Vettius Val. tells us is not called Σs, but Σ0. Now, therefore, not. Gr. Josephus, who frequently useth the testimony of hea- P- 438. then writers, and frequently of this Manetho, endeavoured to bring this fabulous relation of Manetho as

apud Scal.

I.

BOOK near the truth as he could; therefore instead of Thoyth he puts Seth; and instead of the fabulous history of Egypt, the inventions of the Patriarchs; and Syria instead of Seriadica; a country too large to find these pillars in.

CHAP. III.

OF THE CHALDEAN HISTORY.

I. The contest of antiquity among heathen nations, and the ways of deciding it. II. Of the Chaldæan astrology, and the foundation of judicial astrology. III. Of the Zabii, their founder, who they were; no other than the old Chaldees. IV. Of Berosus and his history. V. An account of the fabulous dynasties of Berosus and Manetho; VI. From the translation of the Scripture-history into Greek, in the time of Ptolemy. VII. Of that translation, and the time of it. VIII. Of Demetrius Phalereus. Scaliger's arguments answered. IX. Manetho writ after the Septuagint, proved against Kircher; his arguments answered. Of Rabbinical and Arabic authors, and their little credit in matter of history. X. The time of Berosus inquired into; his writing contemporary with Philadelphus.

CHAP.

III.

I.

THE next whom our inquiry leads us to, are the Chaldæans, a nation of great and undoubted antiquity, being in probability the first formed into a national government after the flood, and therefore the more capable of having these arts and sciences flourish among them, which might preserve the memory of oldest times to the view of posterity. And yet even among these, who enjoyed all the advantages of ease, quiet, and a flourishing empire, we find no undoubted or credible records preserved, but the same vanity as among the Egyptians, in arrogating antiquity to themselves beyond all proportion of reason or satisfaction from their own history, to fill up that vast measure of time with: which makes it most probable, what Diodorus observes of them, that in things pertaining to their arts, they Diodor. made use of lunar years of 30 days: so they had. c. 26. need, when Tully tells us that they boasted of ob- Cicero de servations of the stars for 470,000 years. It had been impossible for them to have been so extravagant in

Biblioth.

Divin. 1. ii.

c. 97.