A writer in the "Quarterly Review" for 1859 (p. 382 et seq.), remarks as follows: "Bunsen assumes that Manetho gave 3,555 years as the length of the Egyptian monarchy, and he then makes a mere conjecture the keystone of his arch." Now, this may be a false deduction, not merely of Bunsen, but of Lepsius and Boekh; but it is not an assumption. It is a period wrought out by adherence to a theory based on acknowledged facts; assumed not by one man, but the then leading Egyptologists; and so little relied on by Bunsen as to be only once or twice adverted to. The reviewer goes on to object, that Manetho and Eratosthenes lived 3,000 years after the reigns their lists are supposed to authenticate; but what, in the mean time, has become of the contemporaneous lists on the monuments of the 3d and 4th dynasties, of the papyrus coeval with Moses, yet harmonizing with both Manetho and Eratosthenes? Does it become any critic of Bunsen to ignore the "Book of Kings," by Lepsius? So much, then, to show the manifest inadequacy of those who have endeavvored to throw ridicule upon these magnificent labors, and to dissipate some bewildering mists. Fortunately for us, God provides against the natural incredulity of man. It is never left to any one person to stem the tide of historical unbelief. Converging lines of investigation, converging results of varied conscientious labors, sooner or later, burn all vital and necessary convictions into human conscious

ness.

At a recent meeting of the Palestinian Exploration Society, at Oxford, which met, we believe, to examine the photographs of the synagogue recently reconstructed at Capernaum,

the only building now to be identified in which it is known that Jesus of Nazareth once stood; a building reconstructed, it is said, after all these years, without the loss of a single stone, Sir Henry Rawlinson said, that the excavations now going on at Jerusalem would give us a more exact knowledge of a long period of Hebrew history, than we now possess of any similar period in the Greek and Roman; but an assertion like this, some time before, from Bunsen, met with no reception but ridicule. When, a little before his death,

a new translation of a long-coveted papyrus was brought him, his attendant lamented that it would not be in his power to devote much attention to it; but a joyful light beamed in the eyes of the prostrate scholar, and, as his dying hand added a few notes to the manuscript, he murmured audibly, "It will come so soon, it will come so soon, the justification of more than I ever dreamed!" Very lately, the French Minister of Public Instruction received a letter from M. Lejean, sent by the French Government to explore the Persian Gulf and its immediate vicinity. He believes himself to have discovered ante-Sanscrit idioms, - to use his own language, langues paléoariennes, - still spoken, in a district lying between Kashmir and Afghanistan, by certain mountain tribes; and he thinks these languages more allied to the European tongues than to the Sanscrit itself. In the Persian Gulf, he has followed, step by step, the course of Nearchus, who commanded the fleet of Alexander, and of whose voyage some account is preserved in Arrian. He has also traced the ruins of two Persepolitan cities, whose names have been preserved, the Messambria and Hierametis of Nearchus. At the same time, Unger, the Viennese palæontologist, writes from the pyramid of Dashoor, that in the unburnt bricks of which it is built, bricks moulded and laid at least as early as 3400 B.C., he has discovered manufactured substances, giving evidence of the high civilization already claimed for that period. Recent excavations of Yemenite ruins show, through the Himyarite inscriptions in the cities of Southern Arabia, that a race speaking and writing the same language dwelt in ancient Abyssinia, and on the shores across the straits, the certainty of a hitherto conjectured identity of races throwing much light on many points of Biblical criticism. Rawlinson tells us that the ancient Egyptians thoroughly understood the motive power of steam. The remains of fine Egyptian pottery in the oldest Etruscan tombs; the more recent finding of glass bottles, with Chinese inscriptions upon them, in the oldest tombs at Thebes, — suggest not only the immense antiquity of an almost universal commerce, but show how little effect the most valuable discovery, even that of the art

of printing, can have upon a yet undeveloped people. First discoveries, like the discovery of sulphuric ether as an anæsthetic agent, seem merely tentative. This last discovery was useless, until a certain amount of general medical skill made its practical employment necessary on the one hand, and safe on the other. So the art of printing has availed little in China,so little, that its use never penetrated to the nations brought into the closest contact with that people. The cities of Bashan are at last uncovered; and the enormous rollers of stone, on which King Og threw back his portal are now revealed to modern eyes., On the other hand, the intelligent zeal of Mr. Wilkinson, the English consul at Saloniki, has proved the authentic use of the word "politarch," in the eighth verse of the seventeenth chapter of Acts. The use of this word, in relation to a city not known to have any such officers, has been used as an argument against the age of the original manuscript. The exhuming of a buried arch, bearing an inscription in honor of events which took place under the administration of certain "politarchs," has put that question to rest. While we are debating about the possible authorship and antiquity of the books of Moses, we are forced to acknowledge the age and authenticity of the Turin papyrus, sealed into a sarcophagus nineteen centuries before Christ, and the anonymous, ritualistic "Book of the Dead," written at least four thousand five hundred years ago; and, in more direct support of Baron Bunsen's work, we have a treatise recently published by the astronomer of the King of Egypt, Mahmoud Bey. The late viceroy, Said Pacha, ordered from him an astronomical investigation into the relation of the structure of the Pyramids to the dates of their erection. It was obvious that the great pyramid at Ghizeh was built when the rays of Sirius, in passing the meridian of Ghizeh, fell vertically upon the south side. A prolonged calculation shows that this happened 3300 years B.C. The bearing of this calculation is seen, when we state that Bunsen had already fixed the year 3329 as that of the beginning of the reign of Cheops, by whom this pyramid was built.

But, before giving an account of the work, we will speak briefly of the man himself.

Christian Carl Josias Bunsen, chevalier, statesman, philosopher, and theologian, was born, Aug. 25, 1791, at Corbach, the capital of the principality of Waldeck. He studied first at Marburg, and then under the celebrated Heyne at Göttingen. To his own natural bias was now added the impetus given by the influence of the greatest philologist of the time, an enthusiastic archæologist, and a man whose reputation for integrity had already passed into a proverb. It was quite in keeping with the fact, that his first profound studies were pursued under the master who had done so much to revive a knowledge of Greek and Roman antiquities, that he first came to distinction by winning an academical prize, at the age of twenty-two, for a disquisition on "Athenian Laws of Descent." He then went to Holland and Denmark, to pursue at his leisure a careful study of the tongues spoken in Iceland, Scandinavia, and Friesland. In 1815, he began to study with Niebuhr, whose character and pursuits were still further adapted to educate him for the work he was to undertake. In 1816, he went to Paris, to study the Eastern tongues under Sylvestre de Sacy, then the first living Orientalist. In addition to holding the Persian professorship in the College de France, De Sacy was at this time rector of the University of Paris; and he was a literary man of such value and distinction, that, finding it impossible to replace him, Napoleon had been obliged to retain him in office after he had refused to take the oath of hatred to royalty. His Arabic grammar and anthology are still in use; and, as a Persian scholar, he has never been surpassed. While Bunsen was at Paris, Niebuhr had gone as Prussian minister to Rome; and, as soon as he quitted De Sacy, he joined his former teacher as secretary of legation. He met at Rome the King of Prussia, whom he greatly interested by his marked Protestant ardor; and, in 1824, several important changes were wrought in the relations of the Prussian Church and State by his influence over the king. In 1827, he succeeded Niebuhr as Prussian Minister; but, not being able to influence the Papal See to the extent of his desires, he re

VOL. LXXXIII. NEW SERIES, VOL. IV. NO. III.

28

signed his position in 1837, or rather exchanged it for that of Minister to the Swiss Federation. In 1841, he was appointed Minister to England, to consult the English Government on the formation of a Protestant bishopric, which he fondly hoped would secure the interests of reform; and he was, later, more formally appointed Minister to the Court of St. James. At that time he wrote in German, and printed, we believe at Hamburg, his work on "The Constitution of the Church of the Future," afterwards translated and printed at London in 1847. It is probable that the political prejudice excited against this Prussian project, which all parties seem to have shared, created an impression unfavorable to the reception of his more scholarly work. Bunsen believed in the possibility of a Christian nation, of a Christian state. The manner in which this Church was linked to cumbrous Prussian machinery made it seem to most men impracticable and absurd, a fair mark for ridicule, and gave to his own name and Gladstone's an unenviable prominence for the time. Niebuhr had studied at Edinburgh; and, while with him in Rome, Bunsen had married the daughter of an English clergyman. From that time, England seems to have divided his affections with his native country, and some of his most valuable studies were pursued at the British Museum. At the request of his king, he presented to the Court of Prussia a memorial upon the formation of a constitutional government like that of England. He favored the cause of Schleswig-Holstein, and, by a memoir to Palmerston, protested against England's attitude in regard to it. Sympathizing with the Western allies, rather than with Prussia, he resigned his position, at the beginning of the Eastern war in 1853, and removed to Heidelberg, where he was at once regarded as the leader in all matters relating to Christian liberty.

His most distinguished works, beside that under review, are "Hippolytus and his Times" (two volumes, Leipsic, 1853), and "Complete Bible-work for the Christian Community" (two volumes, Brockhaus, Leipsic, 1853). The latter work is divided into three parts, - the first giving the newly translated text of the Old and New Testament, with abundant