was applied to past ages, more and more wrong; so that the astronomical events which they asserted to have happened, as they had calculated that they would have happened, the better informed astronomer of our day knows would not have happened exactly so, but in a manner differing more and more from their statement, as the event was more and more remote. And thus the fact which they asserted to have been observed, had not really happened; and the confirmation, which it had been supposed to lend to their history, disappeared. And thus, there is not, in the asserted antiquity of Indian civilization and Indian astronomy, anything which has a well-founded claim to disturb our belief that the nations of the more western regions of Asia had a civilization as ancient as theirs. And considerations of nearly the same kind may be applied to the very remote astronomical facts which are recorded as having been observed in the history of some others of the ancient nations above mentioned. 24. Still less need we be disturbed by the long series of dynasties, each occupying a large period of years, which the Egyptians are said to have inserted in their early history, so as to carry their origin beyond the earliest times which I have mentioned. If they spoke of the Greek nations as children compared with their own long-continued age, as Plato says they did, a few thousands of years of previous existence would well entitle them to do so. So far as such a period goes, their monuments and their hieroglyphical inscriptions give a reality to their pretensions, which we may very willingly grant. And even the history of the Jews supposes that the Egyptians had attained a high point in arts, government, knowledge, when Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, was still leading the life of a nomad. But this supposition is not inconsistent with the account which the Jewish Scriptures give, of the origin of nations; especially if, as we have said, we abstain from any rigid and narrow interpretation of the chronology of those scriptures; as on every ground, it is prudent to do.