9] has
satisfied not a few of the learned, by an appeal to monumental
inscriptions still extant, that the successive dynasties of kings may be
traced back without a break, to Menes, and that the date of his reign
would correspond with the year 3640 B. C. He supposes at the same time,
what is most reasonable, that the Egyptian people must have existed for
a long period (probably at least for five centuries), in their earlier
and less settled state, before they reached the point of civilization at
which Menes consolidated them into a great and united empire. This would
carry us back to upwards of 4000 years B. C., or to an epoch coincident
with that commonly set down for the creation of the world in accordance
with computations founded on the combined ages of the successive
antediluvian patriarchs. It follows that the same epoch of Menes is
anterior by a great many centuries to the most ancient of the dates
usually fixed upon for the Mosaic deluge. The fact that no record or
tradition of any great and overwhelming flood has been detected in the
mythology, or monumental annals of the Egyptians, will suggest many
reflections to a geologist who has weighed well the evidence we possess
of a variety of partial deluges which have happened in districts not
free like Egypt, for the last 3000 years, from earthquakes and other
causes of great aqueous catastrophes. The tales and legends of
calamitous floods preserved in Greece, Asia Minor, the southern shores
of the Baltic, China, Peru, and Chili, have, as we have seen, been all
of them handed down to us by the inhabitants of regions in which the
operation of natural causes in modern times, and the recurrence of a
succession of disastrous floods, afford us data for interpreting the
meaning of the obscure traditions of an illiterate age.[940]

In his learned treatise on ancient chronology, Dr. Hales has selected,
from a much greater number, a list of no less than 120 authors, all of
whom give a different period for the epoch of the creation of the world,
the extreme range of difference between them amounting to no less than
3268 years. It appears that even amongst authorities, who in England are
generally regarded, as orthodox, there is a variance, not of years or of
one or two centuries, but of upwards of a millennium, according as they
have preferred to follow the Hebrew, or the Samaritan, or the Greek
versions of the Mosaic writings. Can we then wonder that they who
decipher the m