tion.

In the study of both Egyptian and Babylonian chronology there has been a
tendency of late years to reduce the very early dates that were formerly
in fashion. But in Egypt, while the dynasties of Manetho have been
telescoped in places, excavation has thrown light on predynastic
periods, and we can now trace the history of culture in the Nile Valley
back, through an unbroken sequence, to its neolithic stage. Quite
recently, too, as I mentioned just now, a fresh literary record of
these early predynastic periods has been recovered, on a fragment of
the famous Palermo Stele, our most valuable monument for early Egyptian
history and chronology. Egypt presents a striking contrast to Babylonia
in the comparatively small number of written records which have survived
for the reconstruction of her history. We might well spare much of
her religious literature, enshrined in endless temple-inscriptions and
papyri, if we could but exchange it for some of the royal annals of
Egyptian Pharaohs. That historical records of this character were
compiled by the Egyptian scribes, and that they were as detailed and
precise in their information as those we have recovered from Assyrian
sources, is clear from the few extracts from the annals of Thothmes
III's wars which are engraved on the walls of the temple at Karnak.(1)
As in Babylonia and Assyria, such records must have formed the
foundation on which summaries of chronicles of past Egyptian history
were based. In the Palermo Stele it is recognized that we possess a
primitive chronicle of this character.

(1) See Breasted, _Ancient Records_, I, p. 4, II, pp. 163
ff.

Drawn up as early as the Vth Dynasty, its historical summary proves that
from the beginning of the dynastic age onward a yearly record was kept
of the most important achievements of the reigning Pharaoh. In this
fragmentary but invaluable epitome, recording in outline much of the
history of the Old Kingdom,(1) some interesting parallels have long been
noted with Babylonian usage. The early system of time-reckoning, for
example, was the same in both countries, each year being given an
official title from the chief event that occurred in it. And although in
Babylonia we are still without material for tracing the process by which
this cumbrous method gave place to that of reckoning by regnal years,
the Palermo Stele demonstrates the way in which the latter system was
evolved in Egypt. For the events from which th