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    The Ancient Fragments Containing What Remains of the Writings of Sanchoniatho, Berossus, Abydenus, Megasthenes, and Manetho
    The Ancient Fragments Containing What Remains of the Writings of Sanchoniatho, Berossus, Abydenus, Megasthenes, and Manetho
    The Ancient Fragments Containing What Remains of the Writings of Sanchoniatho, Berossus, Abydenus, Megasthenes, and Manetho
    Ebook155 pages1 hour

    The Ancient Fragments Containing What Remains of the Writings of Sanchoniatho, Berossus, Abydenus, Megasthenes, and Manetho

    By I.P. Cory

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    About this ebook

    The Pergamum Collection publishes books history has long forgotten. We transcribe books by hand that are now hard to find and out of print.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles River Editors
    Release dateMar 22, 2018
    ISBN9781629211718
    The Ancient Fragments Containing What Remains of the Writings of Sanchoniatho, Berossus, Abydenus, Megasthenes, and Manetho

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      The Ancient Fragments Containing What Remains of the Writings of Sanchoniatho, Berossus, Abydenus, Megasthenes, and Manetho - I.P. Cory

      PREFACE.

      In presenting this collection of Ancient Fragments to the world, some explanation of what is comprehended under that title is not altogether unnecessary. We are accustomed to regard the Hebrew scriptures, and the Greek and Latin writings, as the only certain records of antiquity: yet there have been other languages, in which have been written the annals and the histories of other countries. Where then are those of Assyria and Babylon, of Persia and Egypt and Phoenicia, of Tyre and Carthage? Of the literature of all these mighty empires where are even the remains? It will, no doubt, tend to excite some reflections of a melancholy cast, to look on this small volume as an answer. That they are all contained in it, I should be unwilling to assert: yet, with some diligence and research, I have not been able to discover other fragments, which I could consider sufficiently authenticated, to increase its size.

      It was my wish to have included in this collection all the fragments of the earlier Gentile world, which have reached us through the medium of the Greek language. Of the early historians of Greece the names only of some have come down to us; whilst of others, such as Eupolemus and Histiaeus, several very interesting fragments have escaped the general wreck. In the classic ages of their literature, the acquaintance of the Greek historians with antiquity is generally confined and obscure: nor was it till the publication of the Septuagint, that they turned their attention to the antiquities of their own and the surrounding nations: and for this reason we meet with more certain notices of ancient history in the later, than in the earlier times of Greece. To have drawn a line then, to have inserted the earlier writers to the exclusion of the later, would have been to omit the more valuable. To have reprinted the fragments of many authors, such as Nicolaus Damascenus, a writer of Damascus, of the Augustan age, would have introduced, with some matter worthy of attention, much of little interest. To have selected from them all, the passages relating to ancient times and foreign states, would have been a task as useless as laborious, and would have swelled the collection to a series of volumes. I have therefore excluded all native Greek historians—and every writer of the Augustan age and downwards—I have also omitted all fragments which bear about them the stamp of forgery, or are the productions of Hellenistic Jews; or of authors who have had access to the sacred Scriptures, and following the words throw no additional light upon the subjects: under one or other of which divisions may be classed the Antediluvian books of Enoch, the large fragments of Artapanus, the Sibylline Oracles, the correspondence of Solomon and Hiram king of Tyre, the tragedy of Ezekiel in which Moses figures as the hero, with several compositions of a similar description.

      The contents then of this volume are Fragments which have been translated from foreign languages into Greek; or have been quoted or transcribed by Greeks from foreign authors; or have been written in the Greek language by foreigners who have had access to the archives of their own respective countries. They are arranged under the following heads: the Phoenician, the Chaldaean, the Egyptian, the Tyrian, the Persian, and the Carthaginian.

      In the following review of these ancient writers, I have passed from themselves into a slight examination of their works: not with a view of entering at all into the details, but merely to call the attention to some few great landmarks, which stand prominently forth amidst what might otherwise be deemed a wild, pathless and interminable. For the most ample and satisfactory explanation of the whole, I must refer to the inimitable works of Mr. Faber and Bryant.

      Under the first head is contained only the Phoenician Theology of Sanchoniatho, who is considered to be the most ancient writer of the heathen world. In what age he wrote is uncertain: but his history was composed in the Phoenician language, and its materials collected from the archives of the Phoenician cities. It was translated into Greek by Philo Byblius, and for the preservation of these fragments we are indebted to the care of Eusebius. I have deviated but little from the quaint translation of Bishop Cumberland, generally so far only as to render it more consonant with the text of Stephen, or to substitute more modern expressions for phrases become now almost obsolete.

      The cosmogony is one of those jargons of Theology and Physics, which were refined by the later heathens into some resemblance of the sublimest mystery of the Christian faith. As the most ancient, it is the most valuable; and as it speaks more plainly than the rest, it affords a key to their interpretation.

      The generations contain many very curious passages. They are the only well authenticated heathen account of the times before the flood.

      In the first generation is an allusion to the fall: in the second Genus may be Cain: after which we lose the traces of similarity: at the fifth there is an interruption. But taking up the thread of inquiry, at the end of the first fine, in Taautus or Thoyth, we may perhaps recognize Athothis, the second king of Egypt, the Hermes Trismegistus, who appears again as the adviser of Cronus. His predecessor Misor, corresponds then with Mizraïm, the first king of Egypt, the Menes and Mines of the dynasties. In the preceding generation is Amynus, Ammon, or Ham, the same with the Cronus, of what is supposed a different hue. An ascent higher we find, Agrus, the husbandman, who was worshipped in Phoenicia as the greatest of the gods: he corresponds with Noah, the Ouranus of the other hue, whose original name was Epigeus or Autochthon, a name of similar import with Agrus. There is also some slight appearance of identity between Hypsistus, the father of Autochthon or Ouranus, and Geïnus Autochthon, the father of Agrus.

      The generations conclude with an intimation, that they contain the real history of those early times, stripped of the fictions and allegories with which it had been obscured by the son of Thabion, the first hierophant of Phoenicia. That such is the case we are assured by Philo Byblius, in the remarks on Sanchoniatho with which he prefaces his translation of the work. The passage also informs us that the history thus disguised was handed down to Isiris, the brother of Chna, the first Phoenician. Bishop Cumberland conjectures that this Isiris is the Osiris of the Egyptian worship, and with greater probability supposes him the same with Mizraïm, the son of Ham, who was the brother of Canaan. But he strangely wanders from the truth in

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