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Article VOICES EEOM DEAD NATIONS. BY KENNETH R. ... ← Page 4 of 7 →
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Voices Eeom Dead Nations. By Kenneth R. ...
has well observed ^ that , in order to estimate aright the difficulty of the undertaking , and the grandeur of its success , we must first have clearly before us the circumstances under which it w as commenced . Down to that period , " when Scaliger lived * the scholars of Western Europe had contented themselves with St . Jerome ' s translation of the
practical portions of the labours of Eusebius , namely , the canon of synchronisms . The key to that canon , the collection of original records , with the compiler ' s commentary on the contents , he had left untranslated . Manetho ' s lists were unknown , and even that of Eratosthenes slumbered with the work of Syncellus in the obscurity of the Paris Boyal Library . Scaliger , in searching for the first ,
discovered the second also , and published both in a critical form , after the Parisian MS . Here , therefore , was a solid groundwork obtained—a standpoint
and a fact , or series of facts , or fictions dressed up so as to seem facts , by which the Egyptian chronology was to be restored to some extent . Scaliger was staggered by his discovery , however , for the records thus obtained stretched back to a time far beyond the flood , and beyond his own first year of the world . This was one of the numerous blows given to that very popular method of arriving at results according to pre-arranged principles , which has reached even to our time ; but , at any rate , we know every failure , as the history of science well testifies , leads us nearer and nearer to success ; and
the traveller after truth tracks his way over the pathless sand deserts of uncertainty by the whitening bones of those p ^ edecessors who perished before his time . As the soldier mounts the breach and wins the fortress by passing over the bodies of his fallen comrades , so the investigator of the ruins of ancient history makes his roadway over the confuted theories of the adventurers of former centuries .
Night is darkest , it has been said , just before dawn . Certain it is that the dawn of Egyptian science was immediately preceded by the blackest and most Egyptian darkness that could be imagined : the most foolish and contradictory theories respecting the mysterious hieroglyphics of
Egypt , found partizans . " Vain would it be , " says one of the most popular waiters on Egypt , f " without ransacking the libraries of every civilized country , and selecting from their dusty shelves the vast accumulations of works , published by the learned and the unlearned during the last three centuries , to attempt a detailed spefication of the extraordinary aberrations of human intellect ; those
manifold and incomprehensible misconceptions on ancient Egypt , that , at the present hour , excite our surprise and our regret . The mere mechanical labour of such an undertaking would be more tedious than any literary enterprise wo can well conceive , whilst its result would be unprofitable beyond . the moral it would teach It may bo laid down as a rule without exception , prior to the year
* Egypt ' s Place in Universal History , vol . i . p . 231 . f ( -Hidden , Chapters on Ancient Egypt , p . 2 . A . book which , for the moderate sum of two shillings , contains more exact information than is to be found in many a more pretentious volume .
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Voices Eeom Dead Nations. By Kenneth R. ...
has well observed ^ that , in order to estimate aright the difficulty of the undertaking , and the grandeur of its success , we must first have clearly before us the circumstances under which it w as commenced . Down to that period , " when Scaliger lived * the scholars of Western Europe had contented themselves with St . Jerome ' s translation of the
practical portions of the labours of Eusebius , namely , the canon of synchronisms . The key to that canon , the collection of original records , with the compiler ' s commentary on the contents , he had left untranslated . Manetho ' s lists were unknown , and even that of Eratosthenes slumbered with the work of Syncellus in the obscurity of the Paris Boyal Library . Scaliger , in searching for the first ,
discovered the second also , and published both in a critical form , after the Parisian MS . Here , therefore , was a solid groundwork obtained—a standpoint
and a fact , or series of facts , or fictions dressed up so as to seem facts , by which the Egyptian chronology was to be restored to some extent . Scaliger was staggered by his discovery , however , for the records thus obtained stretched back to a time far beyond the flood , and beyond his own first year of the world . This was one of the numerous blows given to that very popular method of arriving at results according to pre-arranged principles , which has reached even to our time ; but , at any rate , we know every failure , as the history of science well testifies , leads us nearer and nearer to success ; and
the traveller after truth tracks his way over the pathless sand deserts of uncertainty by the whitening bones of those p ^ edecessors who perished before his time . As the soldier mounts the breach and wins the fortress by passing over the bodies of his fallen comrades , so the investigator of the ruins of ancient history makes his roadway over the confuted theories of the adventurers of former centuries .
Night is darkest , it has been said , just before dawn . Certain it is that the dawn of Egyptian science was immediately preceded by the blackest and most Egyptian darkness that could be imagined : the most foolish and contradictory theories respecting the mysterious hieroglyphics of
Egypt , found partizans . " Vain would it be , " says one of the most popular waiters on Egypt , f " without ransacking the libraries of every civilized country , and selecting from their dusty shelves the vast accumulations of works , published by the learned and the unlearned during the last three centuries , to attempt a detailed spefication of the extraordinary aberrations of human intellect ; those
manifold and incomprehensible misconceptions on ancient Egypt , that , at the present hour , excite our surprise and our regret . The mere mechanical labour of such an undertaking would be more tedious than any literary enterprise wo can well conceive , whilst its result would be unprofitable beyond . the moral it would teach It may bo laid down as a rule without exception , prior to the year
* Egypt ' s Place in Universal History , vol . i . p . 231 . f ( -Hidden , Chapters on Ancient Egypt , p . 2 . A . book which , for the moderate sum of two shillings , contains more exact information than is to be found in many a more pretentious volume .