[Footnote 55: See the Book of Genesis (xii. 10) and the
administration of Joseph. The annals of the Greeks and Hebrews
agree in the early arts and plenty of Egypt: but this antiquity
supposes a long series of improvement; and Warburton, who is
almost stifled by the Hebrew calls aloud for the Samaritan,
Chronology, (Divine Legation, vol. iii. p. 29, &c.)
Note: The recent extraordinary discoveries in Egyptian
antiquities strongly confirm the high notion of the early
Egyptian civilization, and imperatively demand a longer period
for their development. As to the common Hebrew chronology, as far
as such a subject is capable of demonstration, it appears to me
to have been framed, with a particular view, by the Jews of
Tiberias. It was not the chronology of the Samaritans, not that
of the LXX., not that of Josephus, not that of St. Paul. - M.]