III.—The Extant Fragments
of the Five Books of the Chronography of Julius Africanus.
————————————
I.
1079
On the Mythical Chronology of the
Egyptians and Chaldeans.
The Egyptians, indeed, with their boastful notions
of their own antiquity, have put forth a sort of account of it by the
hand of their astrologers in cycles and myriads of years; which some of
those who have had the repute of studying such subjects profoundly have
in a summary way called lunar years; and inclining no less than others
to the mythical,
they think they
fall in with the eight or nine
thousands of years which the Egyptian priests in Plato falsely reckon
up to Solon.
1080
(
And after
some other matter:
)
For why should I speak of the three myriad years of the
Phœnicians, or of the follies of the Chaldeans, their forty-eight
myriads? For the Jews, deriving their origin from them as
descendants of Abraham, having been taught a modest mind, and one such
as becomes men, together with the truth by the spirit of Moses, have
handed down to us, by their extant Hebrew histories, the number of 5500
years as the period up to the advent of the Word of salvation, that was
announced to the world in the time of the sway of the
Cæsars.
1079
In Georgius Syncellus,
Chron.
, p. 17, ed. Paris, 14
Venet.
1080
The
text is:…
συμπίπτουσι
ταῖς ὀκτὼ
καὶ ἐννέα
χιλιάσιν
ἑτῶν, ἃς
Αιγυπτιων οι
παρὰ Πλατωνι
ἱερεῖς εις
Σόλωνα
καταριθμοῦτες
οὐκ
ἀληθεύουσι
.