tory of Europe for the use of
Alexandrine Greeks, had adopted, on some unknown authority, a division
of thirty-one dynasties from Menes to the Macedonian Conquest, and his
system has prevailed--not, indeed, on account of its excellence, but
because it is the only complete one which has come down to us.[*] All
the families inscribed in his lists ruled in succession.[**]

* The best restoration of the system of Manetho is that by
Lepsius, _Das Konigsbuch der Alten AEgypter_, which should be
completed and corrected from the memoirs of Lauth, Lieblein,
Krall, and Unger. A common fault attaches to all these
memoirs, so remarkable in many respects. They regard the
work of Manetho, not as representing a more or less
ingenious system applied to Egyptian history, but as
furnishing an authentic scheme of this history, in which it
is necessary to enclose all the royal names which the
monuments have revealed, and are still daily revealing to
us.

** E. de Rouge triumphantly demonstrated, in opposition to
Bunsen, now nearly fifty years ago, that all Manetho's
dynasties are successive, and the monuments discovered from
year to year in Egypt have confirmed his demonstration in
every detail.

The country was no doubt frequently broken up into a dozen or more
independent states, each possessing its own kings during several
generations; but the annalists had from the outset discarded these
collateral lines, and recognized only one legitimate dynasty, of which
the rest were but vassals. Their theory of legitimacy does not always
agree with actual history, and the particular line of princes which they
rejected as usurpers represented at times the only family possessing
true rights to the crown.[*]

* It is enough to give two striking examples of this. The
royal lists of the time of the Ramessides suppress, at the
end of the XVIIIth dynasty, Amenothes IV. and several of his
successors, and give the following sequence--Amenothes
III., Harmhabit, Ramses I., without any apparent hiatus;
Manetho, on the contrary, replaces the kings who were
omitted, and keeps approximately to the real order between
Horos (Amenothes III.) and Armais (Harmhabit). Again, the
official tradition of the XXth dynasty gives, between Ramses
II. and Ramses III., the sequence--Minephtah, Seti IL,
Nakht-Seti; Manetho, on the other