The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended | Page 4

_Erechtheus's_, giving
the name of Erechthonius to the first; Homer calls the first,
_Erechtheus_: and by such corruptions they have exceedingly
perplexed Ancient History.
And as for the Chronology of the Latines, that is still more uncertain.
Plutarch represents great uncertainties in the Originals of _Rome_: and
so doth Servius. The old records of the Latines were burnt by the Gauls,
sixty and four years before the death of Alexander the great; and
Quintus Fabius Pictor, the oldest historian of the Latines, lived an
hundred years later than that King.
In Sacred History, the Assyrian Empire began with Pul and
Tiglathpilaser, and lasted about 170 years. And accordingly Herodotus
hath made Semiramis only five generations, or about 166 years older
than Nitocris, the mother of the last King of Babylon. But Ctesias hath
made Semiramis 1500 years older than Nitocris, and feigned a long
series of Kings of Assyria, whose names are not Assyrian, nor have any
affinity with the Assyrian names in Scripture.
The Priests of Egypt told Herodotus, that Menes built Memphis and the
sumptuous temple of Vulcan, in that City: and that Rhampsinitus,
Moeris, Asychis and Psammiticus added magnificent porticos to that
temple. And it is not likely that Memphis could be famous, before
_Homer_'s days who doth not mention it, or that a temple could be
above two or three hundred years in building. The Reign of
Psammiticus began about 655 years before Christ, and I place the
founding of this temple by
Menes about 257 years earlier: but the
Priests of Egypt had so magnified their Antiquities before the days of
Herodotus, as to tell him that from Menes to Moeris (who reigned 200
years before _Psammiticus_) there were 330 Kings, whose Reigns took
up as many Ages, that is eleven thousand years, and had filled up the
interval with feigned Kings, who had done nothing. And before the
days of Diodorus Siculus they had raised their Antiquities so much
higher, as to place six, eight, or ten new Reigns of Kings between those

Kings, whom they had represented to Herodotus to succeed one another
immediately.
In the Kingdom of Sicyon, Chronologers have split Apis Epaphus or
Epopeus into two Kings, whom they call Apis and Epopeus, and
between them have inserted eleven or twelve feigned names of Kings
who did nothing, and thereby they have made its Founder _Ægialeus_,
three hundred years older than his brother Phoroneus. Some have made
the Kings of Germany as old as the Flood: and yet before the use of
letters, the names and actions of men could scarce be remembred above
eighty or an hundred years after their deaths: and therefore I admit no
Chronology of things done in Europe, above eighty years before
Cadmus brought letters into _Europe_; none, of things done in
Germany, before the rise of the Roman Empire.
Now since Eratosthenes and Apollodorus computed the times by the
Reigns of the Kings of Sparta, and (as appears by their Chronology still
followed) have made the seventeen Reigns of these Kings in both
Races, between the Return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus and the
Battel of _Thermopylæ_, take up _622_ years, which is after the rate of
36½ years to a Reign, and yet a Race of seventeen Kings of that length
is no where to be met with in all true History, and Kings at a moderate
reckoning Reign but 18 or 20 years a-piece one with another: I have
stated the time of the return of the Heraclides by the last way of
reckoning, placing it about 340 years before the Battel of
_Thermopylæ_. And making the Taking of Troy eighty years older than
that Return, according to Thucydides, and the Argonautic Expedition a
Generation older than the Trojan War, and the Wars of Sesostris in
Thrace and death of Ino the daughter of Cadmus a Generation older
than that Expedition: I have drawn up the following Chronological
Table, so as to make Chronology suit with the Course of Nature, with
Astronomy, with Sacred History, with Herodotus the Father of History,
and with it self; without the many repugnancies complained of by
Plutarch. I do not pretend to be exact to a year: there may be Errors of
five or ten years, and sometimes twenty, and not much above.
* * * * *

A SHORT
CHRONICLE
FROM THE _First Memory of things in Europe to the Conquest of
Persia by Alexander the great._
_The Times are set down in years before Christ._
The Canaanites who fled from Joshua, retired in great numbers into
Egypt, and there conquered Timaus, Thamus, or Thammuz King of the
lower Egypt, and reigned there under their Kings Salatis, Boeon,
Apachnas, Apophis, Janias, Assis, &c. untill the days of Eli and Samuel.
They fed on flesh, and sacrificed men after