yet we are to lay great stress on his assertion that the
Egyptian priests told him "that during the long succession of ages of
the three hundred and forty-five high priests of Heliopolis, whose
statues they showed him in the Temple of the Sun, there had been no
change in the length of human life or the course of nature." [49] A
valuable piece of evidence _if_ Herodotus reports rightly, and _if_ the
priest was not like the average guide, and _if_ the statues answered to
real existences, and _if_ each of the three hundred and forty-five high
priests made a truthful assertion of the above to his successor for the
benefit of posterity.

Manetho's History is, however, the chief source of our information as to
the antiquity of Egyptian civilization. He was commissioned to compile
this History by Ptolemy Philadelphus, "from the most authentic temple
records and other sources of information," [50] whose infallibility is
taken for granted. He was "eminently qualified for such a task, being,"
as Mr. Laing will vouch, [51] "a learned and judicious man, and a priest
of Sebbenytus, one of the oldest and most famous temples." Let us by all
means read Manetho's History; but where is it? It is "unfortunately
lost, ... but fragments of it have been preserved in the works of
Josephus, Eusebius, Julius Africanus, and Syncellus.... With the curious
want of critical faculty of almost all the Christian Fathers" [52] (so
different from the learned, judicious, upright priests of the sun),
"these extracts, though professing to be quotations from the same book,
contain many inconsistencies and in several instances they have been
obviously tampered with, especially by Eusebius, in order to bring their
chronology more in accordance with that of the Old Testament, ... but
there can be _no doubt_ that his original work assigned an antiquity to
Menes of over 5500 B.C." [53] "On the whole, we have to fall back on
Manetho as the only authority for anything like precise dates and
connected history."

Manetho, however, needed confirmation against the aspersions of the
orthodox, who thought he might be deficient in critical delicacy, and
prone to exaggerate as even later historians had done. Their casuistic
minds also suggested that his list comprised Kings who had ruled
different provinces simultaneously. But this "effugium" was cut off by
the witness of contemporary monuments and manuscripts. "This has now
been done to such an extent that it may be fa