scarcely to be propitiated by any representations of a private or personal nature, and that I must be content to await a judgment that will depend on the degrees of success which my attempt shall be thought to have attained.
Subjoined to the treatise on Egyptian Mythology is an Analysis on the Remains of the Chronology and History of the same people, of which it is necessary to give some account, as this is not closely connected with the scope of the preceding work.
The historical records of ancient Egypt have been supposed to claim a degree of antiquity, which far exceeds the duration of the human race, as deduced from the Sacred Scriptures. Various expedients have been devised for reconciling this discrepancy, of which the hypothesis of Sir John Marsham is the most celebrated. Yet, it is a mere hypothesis, and is far from having the support, as I have endeavoured to show, of historical evidence, as far as such evidence can be collected.
My readers will demand with what prospect of success I have presumed to enter upon a field which has been so often abandoned in despair? — with what hope I have solicited their attention to a disquisition on a mass of contradictory fragments, which so many learned men have in vain
