Wilkinson places the era of Menes, the founder of Egyptian monarchy, and probably one of the earliest wanderers from the eastern cradle of our race, some 2200 years B.C. Bunsen, aiming, in his "Ægyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte," at fixing the exact year, assigns that of 3643 B.C., or, in other words, 1295 years before the commonly accepted era of the Deluge. Yet even this has not satisfied all the requisites of newly discovered data. Fleury, in his "L'Egypte Pharaonique," carries back the Menean age some 1600 years farther into the past; and Böckh, following out an independent series of investigations, fixes the same era, in his "Manetho und die Hundssternperiode," for the year B.C. 5702. The world's early historic chronology, it is now universally admitted, has been misinterpreted. The last date is just 1698 years before the creation of the world, if we are still implicitly to accept Archbishop Usher for our guide. But even this it is possible may yet be revised, as too scanty for the events which it must comprehend; unless, following the example of one distinguished archæologist, Mr. S. Sharpe, we consign all Egyptian history prior to the era of Osirtesen I. to the same order of fabulous or mythic inventions as the crude traditions of our own chroniclers, and esteem Menes as no more than the classic Saturnus, or the Scandinavian Odin. It is not our province here to do more than indicate the fact, that all early chronology is liable to correction by the contributions of new truths, its most accredited data being at best only approximations to the desired end. "Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been: to be found in the register of God, not in the records of men. Twenty-seven names make up the first story before the Flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day; and who knows when was the Equinox?"[9]