"I assert, in the first instance (there being nothing whatever to the contrary), that we have the Old Chronicle in a _perfectly genuine form, i.e._ in the text of Syncellus and Africanus, but by no means in Bunsen; and further, that it really is, and they from whom we have it _tell us it was_, the oldest Greco-Egyptian writing of the kind current in the time of Africanus.... Bunsen pronounces the Old Chronicle to be the compilation of a Jewish or Christian impostor of the third century ('Eusebius appearing on all occasions as the authority,' &c.) In the _Old Chronicle_, as given by Syncellus and Africanus, there is _nothing whatever_ borrowed from Eusebius; but Eusebius has borrowed from and altered the Old Chronicle, so as to suit his own sacred chronology. The 'Book of Sothis,' too, has worked up and altered the Old Chronicle, with which it is by no means to be identified.... But I deal with three so-called Manethos--viz. (1.) the original Manetho of Josephus and Eratosthenes, who had only twenty-three historical dynasties of his total of thirty dynasties (the Old Chronicle, from which he took the number of thirty, having twenty-nine historical and one [that of the sun god] unhistorical); (2.) the Manetho of Ptolemy of Mendes, which is the Manetho of Africanus, who has thirty-one dynasties, all pretending to be historical; and, lastly, the Manetho of the 'Book of Sothis,' used by Anianus and Panadorus (to which last alone Bunsen's ... mention of 'fifteen dynasties of the Dog-star' refers).... If any figures in the Manetho of the 'Book of Sothis' of the fifth century A.D., are borrowed from Eusebius, there is nothing in this, Eusebius himself having used and altered the Old Chronicle before, just as the author of the Book of Sothis or Anianus may have used Eusebius and the old chronicle. But I am not now dealing with the question of fact, whether Eusebius' figures were so followed or not.... When Bunsen says, 'Perhaps it may not be mere accident that the figures 3984 agrees,' &c.; he should have said rather that some 'chronographers' 'agree' 'with it,' and perhaps so agree not by accident. I do not remember whether any one, or who in particular, of modern chronographers agree with it; but certainly if any do, it is _quite by accident_. The number 3984, as given by the Old Chronicle to Chronos and the other twelve gods, has no relation whatever to any reckoning of the year of the world to Christ; and a chronologer might as well adapt his sum of years from the Creation to Christ, or to any other fanciful number, as to this. The truth is, that with the shorter numbers of the Vulgate, many chronologers have made out sums of about four thousand years, some rather more, some less."