[24:1] See Taylor's Diegesis, p. 198, and Knight's Ancient Art and Mythology, p. 107. "Plato was told that Egypt had hymns dating back ten thousand years before his time." (Bonwick: Egyptian Belief, p. 185.) Plato lived 429 B. C. Herodotus relates that the priests of Egypt informed him that from the first king to the present priest of Vulcan who last reigned, were three hundred forty and one generations of men, and during these generations there were the same number of chief priests and kings. "Now (says he) three hundred generations are equal to ten thousand years, for three generations of men are one hundred years; and the forty-one remaining generations that were over the three hundred, make one thousand three hundred and forty years," making _eleven thousand three hundred and forty years_. "Conducting me into the interior of an edifice that was spacious, and showing me wooden colossuses to the number I have mentioned, they reckoned them up; for every high priest places an image of himself there during his life-time; the priests, therefore, reckoning them and showing them to me, pointed out that each was the son of his own father; going through them all, from the image of him who died last until they had pointed them all out." (Herodotus, book ii. chs. 142, 143.) The discovery of mummies of royal and priestly personages, made at Deir-el-Bahari (Aug., 1881), near Thebes, in Egypt, would seem to confirm this statement made by Herodotus. Of the thirty-nine mummies discovered, one--that of King Raskenen--is about three thousand seven hundred years old. (See a Cairo [Aug. 8th,] Letter to the London Times.) [24:2] Owen: Man's Earliest History, p. 28. [24:3] Bonwick: Egyptian Belief, p. 185. [24:4] Ibid. p. 411. [24:5] Owen: Man's Earliest History, pp. 27, 28. [24:6] Goldzhier: Hebrew Mytho. p. 319. [24:7] Ibid. p. 320. [25:1] Translated from the _Bhagavat_ by Sir Wm. Jones, and published in the first volume of the "Asiatic Researches," p. 230, _et seq._ See also Maurice: Ind. Ant. ii. 277, _et seq._, and Prof. Max Müller's Hist. Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 425, _et seq._ [25:2] See Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 55. [25:3] See Thornton's Hist. China, vol. i. p. 30, Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 205, and Priestley, p. 41. [25:4] Priestley, p. 42. [26:1] Bunce: Fairy Tales, Origin and Meaning, p. 18. [26:2] The _oldest_ Greek mythology, however, has no such idea; it cannot be proved to have been known to the Greeks earlier than the 6th century B. C. (See Goldzhier: Hebrew Mytho., p. 319.) This could not have been the case had there ever been a _universal_ deluge. [26:3] Tales of Ancient Greece, pp. 72-74. "Apollodorus--a Grecian mythologist, born 140 B. C.,--having mentioned Deucalion consigned to the ark, takes notice, upon his quitting it, of his offering up an immediate sacrifice to God." (Chambers' Encyclo., art, _Deluge_.)