Unlike Bunsen’s great book, Lepsius’ work was not intended to establish the place of Egypt in universal history, but only in the external frame thereof, the annals of time. It made no attempt to be a history, but was a chronology solely. The problem involved is solved in the first volume of which we speak, and is treated in an original and at the same time broad manner. Here, as elsewhere, Lepsius never loses cognizance of the general aspect of his subject, whilst always carefully and even lovingly considering the smallest detail and assigning it its place as a part and factor of the whole. He first criticizes the chronology of the Romans, the Greeks, the Hindoos, the Chaldeans in Babylon, the Chinese and the Hebrews. In so doing he makes it clear that among all these nations the conditions for a very early computation of time were lacking, and proves that no nation and no country possessed more favorable conditions for an early chronology and history than the Egyptian. He then proceeds to consider the astronomical basis of the Egyptian chronology, and goes thoroughly into the question of the divisions of time employed by the ancient Egyptians. Here, in addition to the monuments, which he always considers as of the first importance, he cites the classic authors, and ascends in regular progression from the smaller divisions of time, the thirds, seconds and minutes, to the days, weeks, months, intercalary days and years. He dwells for some time upon these latter, and explains with remarkable clearness his views regarding the vague year and the fixed year of Sirius. After these fundamental principles are established he turns his attention to the longer periods of time, beginning with the Apis period of twenty-five years, and concluding with the conjecture that the Egyptians possessed the knowledge of a longest astronomical period of revolution of thirty-six thousand years. According to our reckoning this should undoubtedly be only twenty-six thousand years, yet the period given can be recognized in the thirty-six thousand five hundred and twenty-five years which Syncellus alleges to have been the Egyptian period of universal apocatastasis of the heavens. He then reviews the Egyptian calendar, its introduction and reforms. Although no one knows so well as he that events are commonly reckoned upon the monuments, not from an era, but according to the years of the separate reigns, he attempts to prove that the Sothiac cycle of one thousand four hundred and sixty years had been used as an era for such purposes as necessitated the conception of a longer distinct period of time.