Baron Bunsen, we may then assume, has very skilfully brought back Chinese chronology to within _two generations of Hoang-ti (supra)_. If we could further identify Hoang-ti with Noah, two patriarchal generations would bring us close to the date of the Deluge as fixed by the Septuagint, if we referred them, in the first instance, to the death of Noah. Before proceeding to this identification, I must point to another chronological fact in Chinese tradition, which would give to this identification an antecedent probability. It was stated (Bunsen, "Egypt," iii. 383) that Hoang-ti established the _astronomical cycle of 60 years_ in the _sixty-first year_ of his _reign_. At p. 387, Bunsen says: "The scientific problem thus offered for our solution is the following--It is admitted that the Chinese, from the _earliest times_, made use of a sexagesimal cycle for the division of the year = 6 × 60 days (360 days), and they marked the years by a cycle of 60 years, running concurrently with the cycle of days. This cycle, therefore, must have been originally instituted at a time when the first day of the daily cycle coincided with the first year of the annual cycle, _i.e._ when they commenced on the same day. Ideler thinks it impossible to ascertain this, owing to the irregularity of the old calendar." We may ask, then, what year that could be named would so exactly satisfy these conditions as the sixty-first year of the reign of Noah after the Deluge?[51] Let us, moreover, consider how traditional this cycle of sixty years has been (p. 386),--"Scaliger made the remark that the twelve yearly zodiacal cycle, which is in use among the Tartars (Mongols, Mandshus, Igurians), the inhabitants of Thibet, the Japanese and Siamese dated from _the earliest times_. Among the Tartaric populations, however, this is a cycle of sixty years (12 × 5); of the Indians we have already spoken." [51] Martini ("Historia Sinica," p. 14, edit. Monac.) asserts that the Egyptians computed by the era of sixty years of _Hoangho_. See De Vignolle's "Miscellanea Berolinensia," I. iv. 37, on the cycle of months. Compare Ideler, App. ix., note from Bunsen, iii. 385. Humboldt ("Vues des Cordillères", p. 149; Prescott, Mex., i. 105) seems to say that, "among the Chinese, Japanese, Moghols, Mantchous, and other families of the Tartar race" (compare Mexican, do.), "their series was composed of symbols of their five elements, and the twelve zodiacal signs, making a cycle of sixty years duration." This is not incompatible with, the allegation that it is "the era of sixty years of Hoangho." It will have already been seen that the cycle of sixty years entered into the Chaldean system--viz. cycle of 60 years = a sossos, 600 years = a saros, 3600 years = a neros.