With this result before us the only course open is to seek for external evidence, and attempt to ascertain the antiquity of the civilisation of Egypt independently of the priests and their traditions. The first fixed point in Egyptian chronology is given by the campaign of Pharaoh Sisak against Judah and Jerusalem. Sisak caused a sketch of his enterprise to be delineated on the wall of a structure erected by him in the temple at Karnak. According to Manetho's list, Sisak (Sesonchis), the first ruler of his twenty-second dynasty, begins his reign in the year 934 B.C.[32] But the chronology of the Hebrews, which from the establishment of the monarchy downwards coincides within a few insignificant variations with the Assyrian records, proves that Sisak must have been king in the first half of the tenth century B.C. The campaign against Judah falls in the middle of this century. From Sisak to the expulsion of the Hyksos there was an interval of at least 500 years, as we may maintain approximately from the names of kings and their reigns recorded on monuments. If therefore we accept the excerpt from Manetho's history given in Josephus (and that excerpt was made precisely for this period, and has come down to us in the best shape), and allow 511 years for the reign of the Hyksos, we arrive at the year 2000 B.C. as the end of the old monarchy. From this monarchy numerous monuments have come down to us belonging to the Amenemha, and Sesurtesen, the twelfth dynasty of Manetho; and again to the time preceding these princes belong the greatest monuments in Egypt, the pyramids of Memphis, which, according to Manetho's list, are the work of the fourth dynasty. These pyramids therefore may have been built about the year 2500 B.C. The plan and execution of these monuments presuppose a very long practice in the treatment and preparation of materials; the size, permanence, and solidity of the construction were impossible without great experience in the use of stone; and their massive form requires an acquaintance with the principles of architecture which can only be obtained in the course of centuries. And independently of the advanced state of architecture exhibited by these monuments at the first sight, their erection is a proof of a condition of social and civic life far removed from primitive tribal communities. So long as tribes few in number and isolated from each other possessed the valley of the Nile, under the rule of their tribal chiefs, such structures were impossible. They presuppose a settled population, accustomed to work, and skilled in it. And more than this. The whole population could not any longer be occupied in agricultural work; there must have been a considerable amount of superfluous labour, living upon the productions obtained from the earth by others. Such structures required the united force of many thousands, the continued efforts of long years. And as the use of complex machinery for moving and raising