720 for 720,000. Besides, the 720, if computed upwards from the date of Berosus's dedication, would point to no known æra; whereas, computed upwards as 720,000 days, this period is irrefragably connected with the period of Callisthenes, with the æra of Nabonassar, and with the Chaldean system of astronomy. Regarding the 480 years, mentioned in the same passage; if the reading and calculus are erroneous in the one case, so are they in the other. But for this number being 480,000 we have fortunately the testimony of Syncellus, in addition to the analogy of all other Chaldean periods, as above. But it may be asked, Why does Berosus in one place record that the Chaldeans had observations for 720,000 days, or 1971 years; and in another, for 480,000 days, or 1314 years and two months? The answer is plain: these numbers are taken from different parts of his history, and evidently refer to different epochs in the Chaldean astronomy. This is, I apprehend, the direct inference. The 480,000 days divide the 720,000 into two periods; as follows: 240,000 days, equal to 657 years 1 month 480,000 days, ...... 1314 years 2 months 720,000 days,.... 1971 years 3 months. Hence, the period of 657 years 1 month decends from the æra of the 1971 years 3 months, or B.c. 2233, to the year B.C. 1576, the epoch of the 480,000 days, or 1314 years 2 months; which terminate, like the 720,000, with the labours of Berosus. But the year B.c. 1576 falls just five years before the birth of Moses, the contemporary of Danäus, and therefore in the time of the Egyptian Belus, the father of Danäus, who carried the Egyptian improvements in astronomy, being the tropical year &c., to Babylonia, as above. Here, then, we behold a second Chaldean astronomical æra, and both the periods of Berosus historically accounted for. The preceding interval of 657 years, contains a Chaldean luni-solar period of 600, and three lunar cycles of nineteen years each. It follows, that this period, which originated at the first Chaldean equinoctio-lunar æra, also ended, as the Chaldeans computed, at a concurrence of the new moon and vernal equinox; and that the period of 480,000 days had therefore the same astronomical characters as that of 720,000 at their origin. But the first period of 657 years not being a true luni-solar cycle, there would have been an error in the time of the equinoctial conjunction at the commencement of the second æra, and a correction of the calendar be requisite, which the Egyptian improvements might enable the Chaldean astronomers to effect; and hence the origin of a new æra is in every respect accounted for. The similarity of the roots of both epochs furnishes the important conclusion, that the Nerus, or luni-solar period of 600, belongs to the interval between them, and therefore renders its great antiquity incontrovertible. The second epoch is also chronologically demonstrable. Syncellus has preserved, from Julius Africanus, a dynasty of ancient Chaldean kings, commencing with Evechous, who, he assures us, was the first monarch that reigned at Babylon after the Deluge, and which Alexander Polyhistor confirms from Berosus. The seven kings of this dynasty reigned 225 years, and were succeeded by six princes of the Chaldean race, who reigned 215 years. Polyhistor (in Euseb. Chr. Armen. lib. i.), gives a similar account; but mentions forty-nine Chaldeans reigning 458 years, and nine Arabians reigning 245 years. He has not, however, in this fragment, supplied the particulars of the names or reigns of any, save those of the first two of the Chaldeans; and in both these he agrees with Africanus, whose particulars of both dynasties are thereby confirmed by Polyhistor. The erroneous periods of the latter are therefore probably mistakes of Eusebius, or his copyist. Both the particulars and periods of Africanus are in perfect unison; and as the only two reigns mentioned in Polyhistor's fragment agree with Africanus, we may certainly infer that he is right in the rest. The Arabian dynasty was succeeded by Belus, who, we learn from Abydenus (Euseb. Chron. Armen. lib. 1), was the father of Babius, the father of Anebus, the father of Arbelus, the father of Chalaus, the father of Arbelus, the father of Ninus, the husband of the Assyrian Semiramis. The reigns of all these princes, the last two excepted, we find mixed up in the Assyrian catalogue of Syncellus, who, by inserting them, raised his Assyrian chronology so as to preserve the Eusebian synchronism of the Assyrian Ninus and the patriarch Abraham, in his own protracted computation; and no doubt Syncellus inserted all the reigns he found recorded by Africanus from Berosus. They are numbered 1, 29, 30, 31, and 32, in his Assyrian catalogue; and he has inserted the last four in the reversed genealogical order of Abydenus*, which immediately detects the fraud. The sum of these five reigns is 217 years, as in the annexed table; and the periods of the three dynasties stand as follows; the kings having all genuine Chaldean names, like those in the Ptolemaic canon. 1st dyn. 7 Chaldean kings 225 years 2d 3d 6 Arabian kings 215 5 Babylonian kings 217 18 reigns. 657 years. Here, then, we have the rulers of ancient Babylon in the first age, while it continued a distinct kingdom from Assyria, reign * "Ninus Arbeli (filius); qui Chalai; qui Arbeli; qui Anebi; qui Babii; qui Beli regis Assyriorum."—Ábyden. apud Euseb. Chr. Armen. 1. i. ing during the before-mentioned 657 years that elapsed between the first and second æras of the Chaldean observations. Their time may therefore be considered fixed, astronomically, between the years B.C. 2233 and B.c. 1576, terminating 829 years before the era of Nabonassar. The second æra of Berosus is therefore chronologically accounted for, and was probably fixed at the astronomical epoch nearest to that of the union of the kingdoms of Babel and Nineveh, and the arrival of the Egyptian Belus, as above. In the genealogy of Abydenus, Arbelus the Second (who may or may not be the Egyptian Belus), and Ninus the husband of the Assyrian Semiramis, follow the kings of the third dynasty above mentioned: but no years are given; nor does Abydenus, in the fragment preserved by Eusebius, say that any of this family reigned; it being to Africanus we are indebted for the particulars of those who ascended the throne of Babylon. Arbelus the Second and Ninus, who are not mentioned by Africanus, were therefore probably princes of the Babylonian family, under the Assyrian dominion; and the time of this Ninus will synchronize with that of Atossa, or the second Assyrian Semiramis, who flourished about the 700th year of the old Assyrian empire, according to all the catalogues extant; and who was the great Semiramis, according to the testimony of Conon and Philo Biblius. Cephalion states that Belimus, or Belochus, the father of Semiramis the Second, began to reign in the 640th year from Ninus-i.e. the 702d of the Assyrian empire. To her reign Polyhistor refers, when he fixes the union of Babylon and Assyria in the reign of Semiramis, 526 years before the overthrow of the first Assyrian empire by the Medes (Euseb. Chron. Armen. lib. i.); and Herodotus, when he limits the Assyrian dominion in Upper Asia to 520 years. From her reign Abydenus computes when he tells us that Sennacherib was the 25th king of Assyria (ibid.); for the reign of Semiramis the Second is the nineteenth from Belus in the Assyrian catalogue; and from her to the end of the first Assyrian empire there were 21 reigns inclusively; which, added to the Pul (who was, according to Polyhistor, the first ruler of the second Assyrian empire), the Tiglath-Pileser, the Shalmaneser, and the Sennacherib of Scripture, make the 25 Assyrian kings of Abydenus. In conformity with the age of the second and great Semiramis being the same with that of the Ninus of Abydenus (the son of Arbelus), Cyril, who mentions both Ninus the son of the first Assyrian Belus, and Ninus the son of Arbelus, tells us that the latter was the great Ninus. That the kingdoms of Babylon and Assyria had, previously to the time of Ninus and Semiramis the Second, existed separately, we know from the testimony of Sacred Writ, in addition to the foregoing mass of evidence; for the states of Shinar or Babylonia, and of Elassar or Assyria, had their respective kings, Amraphel and Arioch, in the time of Abraham, just as much as in that of Hezekiah, when Baladan reigned at Babylon and Sennacherib at Nineveh. The separate existence of those early kingdoms is further evident from Hipparchus, who, as we learn from Jamblichus, cited by Proclus, recorded that "the Assyrians had made astronomical observations during the period of 270,000 years, and had registered the revolutions and periods of the seven planets." These 270,000 years, or days, amount to 739 solar years and 80 days, which is, accordingly, the true period of the old Assyrian empire, dated from the subjection of Babylon to Nineveh, and the arrival of the Egyptian Belus, B.c. 1576, as above; and terminating, B.C. 837, the mean between the years B.C. 843 and 829, to which Abydenus and Castor respectively refer the rise of the empire of the Medes: the former 67, and the latter 53 years before the Olympic æra (Eus. Chr. Arm. 1. i. Excerpt. barb. lat. pp. 74, 78). The subjects of this essay might be carried to a great extent; but enough has, I trust, been said to prove that the series of ancient observations, connected with the periods of Callisthenes, Berosus, and Epigenes, possess exceedingly strong, if not unanswerable, claims to be considered authentic;-that the Chaldean astronomical and chronological system may be more clearly defined, and fixed on a more certain basis, than hitherto proposed; that the measurement of the solar tropical year was accurately understood among the Chaldeans and Egyptians, certainly 600 years, and very probably 1400 years, before the discoveries of Hipparchus ;—and that the nature and origin of the Nabonassarean æra are critically determinable. §7. Of the Astronomical Canon of Berosus, and of the Method pursued by the early Chaldean and Egyptian Chroniclers. In the annexed table, which is constructed according to the foregoing results, the Chaldean kings of the Ptolemaic canon * are included, and placed opposite those of the three most ancient dynasties, that the genuineness of the latter may be more conspicuous. I doubt not that it may be safely viewed as the * In the annexed canon I have commenced the vith, or Ptolemaic Dynasty, with Phul, the restorer of the Assyro-Chaldean empire, according to Alex. Polyhistor (Eus. Chr. Arm. l. 1), after its overthrow by the Medes (see Amos ix. 7; Eus. Chr. Hieronym. Num. 1197; Orosius, 1. i. c. 19); and have referred his æra to the termination of the first embolismal period B.c. 793, being 44 yrs. after the Median conquest, and 46 yrs. before the era of Nabonassar; the first period having doubtless ended in the reign of Phul, as the second or corrected one originated in that of Nabonassar, and these astronomical æras not having in either case any necessary connection with the regal epochs of the respective princes. Most of the original passages referred to in the present essay, will be found in Cory's "Ancient Fragments," Second Edition, 1832; a work that should not be absent from the library of any antiquarian or Biblical critic. astronomical canon of those dynasties, as understood in the ages of Nabonassar and Berosus; and that the epochs of their origin, and of their union with the Assyrian family, will be found astronomically correct. But that the years of the first eighteen reigns, as supplied by Syncellus from Africanus, are so in the particulars, by no means follows; for the sum of those reigns, 657 years, is obviously accommodated to the interval between the equinoctial epochs of the first and second series of observations, B.C. 2233 and 1576. The ancients were careful in recording the genealogies and successions of princes, with the astronomical characters of the æras of kingdoms, in the first ages, but not so as to the years of the individual reigns; which were afterwards distributed and accommodated to know epochs by annalists, as best suited their respective views of history. Hence the chronology of a kingdom might be in the general astronomically correct, yet exceedingly defective in the particulars. This will be best illustrated by reference to the Egyptian princes of the Cynic cycle, according to the respective accounts of Manetho and Eratosthenes; a history that belongs to the same age with the first three Chaldean dynasties, and is preserved by annalists of the age of Berosus and Abydenus. The Cynic cycle was the great Egyptian lunar period of 700 years, in which the conjunctions and feriæ returned in the fixed Sothoic year of 365 days 6 hours, as in our Dionysian period of 532 years; but more exactly, as will be evident to any one who makes the computation. For the Dionysian period multiplies the lunar deficiency of the Metonic cycle, instead of correcting it; while the Cynic cycle, consisting of four common Egyptian vague lunar periods of 175 years each (or the vague lunar cycle 25 × the vague solar cycle 7, equivalent to the Dionysian period in reference to the Julian year), and, supposing an intercalation of 175 days (or 6 hours x 175 x 4) instead of 6 lunations, to reconcile the moveable and fixed year, thereby corrects the error of the common lunar period within a few hours. Hence the error, which in the Dionysian period is more than 40 hours in defect, is in the Cynic cycle less than 19 in excess. To this cycle, which originated with the Egyptian monarchy, are accommodated the first 25 reigns in Lower Egypt; the first 23 in Heptanomis, being those of the third, fourth, and sixth dynasties of Manetho; as well as the first 22 reigns in the Theban Laterculus: the sums of the reigns in each list being 700 years. But the Memphites of Manetho and the Thebans of Eratosthenes are clearly the same succession, as may be immediately perceived by comparing the catalogues, from Tasertasis, the sixth Memphite king, and Toigar Amachus, the sixth Theban (whom Eratosthenes declares to be a Memphite), to Nitocris, the |