them; Surmubelus and Theuro in fome time altered them, and I fear, whoever they were, they altered them for the worfe; for fuch were the alterations which fucceeding generations made in the records of their anceftors, as appears from what the fame writer further offers y. "When Saturnus," fays he, [now I think Saturnus to be only another name for Mizraim,] "went "to the fouth," [i. e. when he removed from the lower Egypt into Thebais, which I have taken notice of in its place,] "he made Taautus king of all Egypt, and "the Cabiri" [who were the fons of Mizraim]" made "memoirs of these transactions:" fuch were the firft writings of mankind; fhort hints or records of what they did, and where they fettled: "but the fon of "Thabio, one of the first interpreters of the Sacra of the

Phoenicians, by his comments and interpretations, "filled these records full of allegory, and mixed his physiological philosophy with them, and so left them "to the priests, and they to their fucceffors; and with "these additions and mixtures they came into the " hands of the Greeks, who were men of an abounding fancy, and they, by new applications, and by increasing the number, and the extravagancy of the fable, "did in time leave but little appearance of any thing "like truth in them." We have much the fame "Sanchoaccount of the writings of Sanchoniathon. "niathon of Berytus," we are told", "wrote his history "of the Jewish antiquities with the greatest care and "fidelity, having received his facts from Hierombalus, "a priest; and having a mind to write an universal "hiftory of all nations from the beginning, he took the "greatest pains in fearching the records of Taautus ;

See Eufeb. Præp. Evang. 1. i. c. 10.

z See Eufeb. Præp. Evang. 1. i. c. 9. ad fin.

"but

"but fome later writers [probably the perfons before " mentioned] had corrupted his remains by their allego"rical interpretations, and phyfical additions; for (fays Philo) the more modern igoλóyo, priests, or explain"ers of the Sacra, had omitted to relate the true facts as "they were recorded, inftead of which they had ob"fcured them by a invented accounts and mysterious "fictions, drawn from their notions of the nature of "the univerfe; fo that it was not easy for one to "diftinguish the real facts which Taautus had recorded, "from the fictions fuperadded to them. But he [i. e. Sanchoniathon] finding fome of the books of the "Ammonei, which were kept in the libraries or regif"tries of the temples, examined every thing with the greatest care, and, rejecting the allegories and fables "which at first fight offered themselves, he at length "brought his work to perfection. But the priests that "lived after him, adding their comments and explica"tions to his work, in fome time brought all back to "mythology again." This, I think, is a juft account of what has been the fate of the ancient heathen remains ; they were clear and true when left by their authors, but

We have an inftance in Plutarch, (lib. de Ifide ad in. p. 355. Par. 1624.) of the manner in which the ancient records were obfcured by fable. The ancient Egyptians had recorded the alteration of the year which I have treated of, and perhaps obferved, that it was caufed by the fun's annual courfe becoming five days longer than it before was, and that the moon's courfe was proportionably fhortened. The mythologic priefts turned this account into the following fable: Rhea, they

fay, having privately lain with Saturn, begged of the fun that the might bring forth in no month nor year; Mercury hereupon was fet to play at dice with the moon, and won from her the feventy-fecond part of each day, which being given to the fun, made the five additional days, over and above the settled months of the year, in one of which Rhea was brought to bed. Five days are the feventy-fecond part of 360 days, which was the length of the ancient year.

after

after-writers corrupted them by the addition of fable and falfe philofophy; and therefore any one that would endeavour to give a probable account of things from the remains of Thyoth or Sanchoniathon, must set afide what he finds to be allegory and fable, as the fureft way to come at the true remains of these ancient authors. This I have endeavoured to do in my accounts of the Phoenician and Egyptian antiquities. I have added nothing to their hiftory; and if their ancient remains be carefully examined, the nature of what I have omitted will justify my omitting it; and what I have taken from them will, I believe, fatisfy the judicious reader, that these ancient writers, before their writings were corrupted, left accounts very agreeable to that of Mofes.

Some perfons think the remains we have of Sanchoniathon, and the extracts from Taautus, to be mere figments, and that very probably there never were either fuch men or fuch writers. But to this I answer with Bishop Stillingfleet b: Had it been fo, the antagonists of Porphyry, Methodius, Apollinaris, but especially Eusebius, who was fo well versed in antiquities, would have found out so great a cheat; for however they have been accused of admitting pious frauds, yet they were fuch as made for them, and not against them, as the works of these writers were thought to do, when the enemies of Christianity produced them; and I dare fay, that if the fragments of thefe ancients did indeed contradict the facred history, instead of what they may, I think, when fairly interpreted, be proved to do, namely, to agree with it, and to be thereby an additional argument of its uncorrupted truth and antiquity, our modern enemies of revealed religion would think it a partiality not to allow them as much authority as our Bible.

Origines Sacræ, b. i. c. 2.

As

As the works of Taautus and Sanchoniathon were corrupted by the fables of authors that wrote after them, fo probably the Chaldæan records fuffered alterations from the fancies of those who in after- -ages copied them, and from hence the reigns [or lives] of Berofus's antediluvian kings [or rather men] came to be extended to fo incredible a length. The lives of men in these times were extraordinary, as Mofes has represented them; but the profane hiftorians, fond of the marvellous, have far exceeded the truth in their relations. Berofus computes their lives by a term of years called farus; each farus, he fays, is 603 years, and he imagines fome of them to have lived ten, twelve, thirteen, and eighteen fari, i. e. 6030, 7236, 7839, and 10854 years: but mistakes of this fort have happened in writers of a much later date. Diodorus, and other writers, reprefent the armies of Semiramis, and her buildings at Babylon, more numerous and magnificent than can be conceived by any one that confiders the infant ftate kingdoms were in when the reigned. Abraham, with a family of between three and four hundred persons, made the figure of a mighty prince in these early times, for the earth was not full of people: and if we come down to the times of the Trojan war, we do not find reason to imagine, that the countries which the heathen writers treated of were more potent or populous than their contemporaries, of whom we have accounts in the facred pages; but the heathen hiftorians, hearing that Semiramis, or other ancient princes, did what were wonders in their age, took care to tell them in a way and manner that should make them wonders in their own. In a word, Mofes is the only writer whofe accounts are liable to no exception. We muft make allowances in many particulars to all others,

and

and very great ones in the point before us, to reconcile them to either truth or probability; and I think I have met with a saying of an heathen writer, which seems to intimate it; for he uses words fomething to this purpose: Datur hæc venia antiquitati, ut mifcendo ficta veris primordia fua auguftiora faciat.

с

In my history of the Affyrian empire after the flood, I have followed that account which the ancient writers are fuppofed to have taken from Ctefias. Herodotus differs much from it; he imagines the Affyrian empire to have begun but 520 years before the Medes broke off their subjection to it, and thinks Semiramis to have been but five generations older thand Nitocris, the mother of Labynetus, called in Scripture Belshazzar, in whose reign Cyrus took Babylon. Five generations, fays Sir John Marshame, could not make up 200 years. Herodotus has been thought to be mistaken in this point by all antiquity. Herennius obferves, that Babylon was built by Belus, and makes it older than Semiramis by 2000 years, imagining perhaps Semiramis to be as late as Herodotus has placed her, or taking Atoffa, the daughter of Cyrus, to be Semiramis, as Photius & fuggefts Conon to have done. Herennius was indeed much mistaken in the antiquity of Babylon; but whoever confiders his opinion will find no reason to quote him, as Sir John Marshamh does, in favour of Herodotus. Porphyryi is faid to place Semiramis about the time of the Trojan war; but as he acknowledges in the fame place that the might be older, his opinion is no confirmation of Herodotus's account. From Mofes's

c Herodot. 1. i. §. 95.

d Id. ibid. §. 184.

e Can, Chron. §. 17. p. 489. Lond. 1672.

Ap. Steph. Byz. in voce Bab.

8 Phot. Myriob. Tm. 186. Narrat. 9.

h In loc. fupr. cit.

i Euseb. Præp. l. x. c. 9.