All praise to the good old Egyptian priest, who wrote in Greek the chronology of his country’s rulers; thanks to the industry and labour of Egyptologists, which have resulted in the corroboration of his researches; and thanks also to the Pharaohs who, in the midst of a splendid career of magnificence and victories, have found time for the meditations of the cloister, and have left behind them a consecrated attestation of the succession of their ancestors. In a small and secluded chapel adjoining the sanctuary of the great temple of Karnak, called the Hall of Ancestors, a record was found of Thothmes III. making oblations to sixty-one of his predecessors. This record is preserved in the national library of Paris; and whilst it verifies Manetho’s list, is especially correct as to the succession of the eighteenth dynasty, 1703 to 1464 B.C. The papyrus of Turin, so called from being preserved in that city, contains a list of the kings from the earliest period of Egyptian government, although the papyrus itself is broken into fragments. In the tablet of Abydos, preserved in the British Museum, Rameses II. does homage to fifty ancestors; but the names of twenty are lost. This tablet is a valuable record of the twelfth dynasty, 3064 to 2851 B.C., sustained by the family of Amenemha and Usertesen, and especially of the nineteenth dynasty, 1402 to 1288 B.C., the Ramessean period. A second tablet, similar to the above, and found in a companion temple, the one dedicated to Rameses II., the other to his father Seti, agrees in every respect with the British tablet. And last, though far from being the least, is the tablet of Sakkarah, found by Mariette in the tomb of an Egyptian priest, by name Tounar-i, of the time of Rameses II. The belief already existed in those days, that a well-behaved commoner, when he entered the land of spirits, might be permitted, as a reward of good conduct, to associate with kings; and so Tounar-i would seem to have prepared beforehand a list of his probable visiting acquaintance in the future world. Here he has assembled the cartouches of fifty-eight kings, closely corresponding with Manetho’s list, and naturally with a respectful regard to precedency; so that his prospective visiting list admits of being turned to useful account by his successors. Saqqarah, or as it is commonly written, Sakkarah, is supposed to be the ancient Thinis, the capital of the Pharaohs of the first and second dynasties: the tablet is preserved in the museum at Boulak. On it we should doubtless find delineated the oval of Menes, with those of Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, of the giant Apappus, and the rosy-cheeked but vengeful Nitocris.[22]