Ancient Egypt and the geological antiquity of man,1847–1863

Egyptological disagreements

The first to review Horner’s paper was biblical chronologist and Egyptologist Samuel Sharpe, best known for helping prepare the Egyptian court at the 1854 Sydenham Crystal Palace. Sharpe was president of the eclectic Syro-Egyptian Society of London, a group whose members were the public face of British Egyptology and closely associated with the Unitarian movement. The society’s aim was to “establish a secular, chronological context for biblical events,” and members were sympathetic to dissenting chronologies and rational interpretations of scripture. ⁶² Sharpe discussed Horner’s results in a meeting of 8 March 1859 and claimed his conclusions rested on two faulty assumptions. First, he challenged Horner’s analysis of the Nile sediments’ secular increase. Sharpe pointed out that a large embankment would have likely surrounded the statue of Ramses II in antiquity preventing any mud from being deposited around it. It would only be possible to measure alluvial deposits from the period in which the city was abandoned, and the enclosure wall neglected – a date which could not be known for certain. The sediments had likely been deposited only in the last eight hundred years. ⁶³ Horner read Sharpe’s critique after it was summarized in the Athenaeum and the two corresponded on the matter. Sharpe explained that Horner’s findings were impossible for a second reason –there were no buildings in Egypt as old as 2000 BCE, therefore no mud brick could exist from that time. While there could be pottery that dated to an earlier period, he wrote: “your diggings near Memphis hardly proves even that.” ⁶⁴ The author of an unsigned article in the Quarterly Review agreed that “there is not a single known structure of burnt brick” in pre-Roman Egypt. ⁶⁵

Both criticisms were problematic for Horner, who complained to his daughter, “If, as is probable, there was an embankment, Sharpe’s objection is good; but as to the amount to which it will affect the rate of secular increase, nothing can be said until we know at what period the Nile inundation again overflowed the site . . . “ ⁶⁶ Horner followed up with Harris and Hekekyan, to whom he sent copies of both reviews. Harris thought that Sharpe’s embankment theory was probably correct; however, he had examples of burnt brick with hieratic inscriptions in his private collection that suggested the second criticism was unfounded. Sharpe’s critique was overall “worthy of attention” but his calculations were probably wrong. ⁶⁷ Pleased with this feedback, Horner surmised that the article in the Quarterly Review “was in part at least, written in the British Museum, and it will not be difficult for me, I apprehend, to point to pottery in that collection more than a thousand years old before the existence of Rome.” ⁶⁸

Hekekyan’s response did not come quickly and Horner grew frustrated. He worried that Sharpe was correct that the pottery fragments were Roman, not Egyptian: “Now is this assertion true? If it is, then it is a most astounding and incomprehensible fact that you found fragments of burial brick at the lowest depths in so many of the borings excavations!” ⁶⁹ Hekekyan was occupied performing additional excavations and compiling his monograph. He eventually replied to reassure Horner that Egyptians undoubtedly made burnt brick thirteen thousand years earlier. There was simply a problem of preservation, so “the ruins of only a few of the most solid have survived dilapidation to our time.” ⁷⁰ While Hekekyan was not personally acquainted with Sharpe, he promised to send the scholar “a list of eight geochronological sections” to prove his point. However, this never came to fruition. ⁷¹

Two years later Hekekyan was finally close to finishing his book and told Horner that it “will contain embodied in it my answer to the attacks made on the general results of your late researches.” ⁷² Published with Horner’s assistance in London, his book was titled A Treatise on the Chronology of Siriadic Monuments (1863). It introduced the term “geo-astronomy” and suggested that the Pharaonic dynasties recorded by the Egyptian priest Manetho in the third century BCE were based on astrogeological Nile observations. Ancient Egyptian monuments, he believed, were designed with advanced knowledge and concretized measurements relating to the movement of Sirius. He attempted to show that those who built Siriadic monuments were far more skilled than their modern descendants and that the Egyptian race had not evolved unidirectionally. ⁷³ This view was inspired by the French savants Hekekyan regularly cited, especially Girard, who attempted to recover and repurpose what he believed was the extreme metrological precision contained within Egyptian hydraulic monuments. ⁷⁴ Hekekyan appropriated this Napoleonic idea in order to align himself with those superior ancients and their European descendants.

Hekekyan’s book only referred to his excavations with Horner allegorically, through a fictional discussion in ancient Heliopolis between Manetho and a visiting Greek scholar. Hekekyan likened himself to Manetho (thus to an ancient chronologist), telling the Greek about an excavation in Memphis forty years earlier that “was found studded with remnants of the work of man” and “an abundance of baked clay fragments.” That deepest stratum was 8,280 years old and the country had been occupied by humans since that time. The Greek lamented that he does not “know how these things will be received in Athens, where it is the general belief that the world itself was created only 4,004 years before the fall of Troy” – a reference to Ussher’s creation date of 4004 BCE. ⁷⁵ Evidently, Manetho’s absolute dates represented Hekekyan and Horner’s chronology while the Greek’s reluctance represented those who dismissed those dates because of their deviance from scripture.

Just prior to the book’s publication, Hekekyan visited England for the London Exposition of 1862, during which time he finally met Horner and dined with his family and the Lyells. After returning to Egypt in 1863, Horner wrote confirming the publication and distribution of Hekekyan’s book. Much to Horner’s disappointment, the book never directly disputed Sharpe. Horner was moreover saddened and shocked “to find that in your conversation with Sir Charles Lyell you left an impression on him, that you consider Mr Sharpe’s objection to be valid. I thought that you considered me right all along on this fundamental posit.” ⁷⁶ Hekekyan did not respond before Horner’s death in March 1864, and Sharpe’s criticism remained a problem for the legacy of Horner’s chronological scale.

Geologists’ reluctance

The responses to Horner’s research from gentlemanly naturalists were overwhelmingly respectful. He was Vice-President of the Royal Society at the time of publication and enjoyed the high praise of his peers. Horner was particularly well situated because his Bloomsbury household regularly provided the elite social spaces for scientific discussion and debate. ⁷⁷ Darwin was a regular attendee at Horner’s home and refereed both his publications for the Royal Society. He recommended the second be published in full, “considering the importance of any investigation leading to the result that Man had existed in Egypt for between 13,000 & 14,000 years.” He believed the article would be “of great assistance to some future investigator.” ⁷⁸ Most members of the scientific establishment eventually deduced Sharpe’s embankment theory obliterated Horner’s specific conclusions, but they nevertheless believed his research was highly valuable. They agreed that the method by which Horner came upon his data – through Hekekyan’s keen observations and detailed records – was more than satisfactory.

This was emphasized in some of the early books on prehistory. Many dismissed Horner’s conclusions but repeated his words verbatim that Hekekyan was “well qualified for the task” and that the work was very important. In Prehistoric Man (1862), Daniel Wilson compared Horner’s conclusions to other suspect archaeological claims, cautioning his readers that man-made objects are frequently given incorrect and premature dates. Horner’s “speculations relative to the age of pottery and burnt brick” were uncertain, but “his researches were carried out on a comprehensive scale, by observers well qualified for the task.” ⁷⁹ In Pre-historic Times (1865), John Lubbock praised Horner’s thoroughness but thought “the calculations very doubtful.” He reasoned that the pedestal of the fallen statue of Ramses II could have been at a lower or higher elevation in antiquity than Horner proposed – either way, his dating would be incorrect. Lubbock also grappled with the embankment issue and could not accept Horner’s claims without reservation. He nonetheless conceded that “his experiments are of great importance.” ⁸⁰

Horner found his most ardent geological supporter in Lyell. Early in 1859, Lyell proudly advertised Horner’s papers on Egypt, “proving that pottery was made there 13,000 years ago.” ⁸¹ Yet a few months later in his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), he focused on the antiquity of man but did not even mention Horner. ⁸² This was likely because Lyell had failed to dispel the doubts from Sharpe’s embankment theory in the interim. However, in preparation for his Geological Evidence for the Antiquity of Man, Lyell strove to defend Horner against the criticism that his burnt bricks were Roman. He consulted Samuel Birch, the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, while dining together at Horner’s home in 1860. Birch confided that Sharpe and the Quarterly Review were wrong because he had two burnt bricks in his collection with hieroglyphic inscriptions that were from the second millennium BCE. ⁸³ On the topic of Horner’s methods, Lyell also told his readers about Hekekyan who “was in every way highly qualified for the task.” The sixty workmen were also suitable because they were “men inured to the climate and able to carry on the sinking of shafts and borings during the hot months . . . in a season which would have been fatal to Europeans.” Lyell defended Horner against any racial suspicions that “Arabs can always find whatever their employers desire to obtain” and argued anyone “well acquainted with the sagacity and energy of Hekekyan Bey” would not “suspect him of having been deceived.” ⁸⁴ There may have been flaws with the final conclusions, but according to Lyell and his colleagues, Hekekyan and Horner’s collaboration was entirely credible.

Geologists’ tepid reactions to Horner’s chronology can be understood as a reflection of their attitudes towards absolute dating. Victorian geologists eagerly assigned relative chronologies to strata by the objects, rocks, or fossils found within them, arguing that one layer was sequentially older than another. However, attempts to definitively date any of those objects were controversial. Prehistoric artefacts without inscriptions on them were even harder to read than rocks. Many avoided doing so or commenting about those who did. Lyell shared Horner’s ideologies and therefore did not shy away but settled on roughly one hundred thousand years for the age of humans in Antiquity of Man. ⁸⁵ The precision of Horner’s 13,371 figure was irrelevant, as Horner’s general claim for remote antiquity supported Lyell’s. Geologists such as Lubbock, who similarly dismissed Horner’s absolute dates but highlighted the importance of the research, ultimately conceded one hundred thousand years or more for the age of man.

Others thought Lyell’s figure was too extreme and settled on the ten thousand years proposed by geologist Joseph Prestwich. Among the latter camp were John Phillips and James David Forbes, neither of whom were supporters of Lyell’s uniformitarianism. ⁸⁶ In their anonymous reviews of Lyell’s book, both criticized Horner for assigning absolute dates to his strata, suggesting there was not enough data to do so with certainty. Phillips, who had previously had a good relationship with Horner, said the estimation of the strata was vague and mocked Lyell for allowing “that Egyptologists regard the experiments as inconclusive, and the period consumed in the deposition . . . as still undetermined.” The calculations from the alluvial sediments of both the Mississippi and Nile were “manifestly inadequate” to support the “immense antiquity” of humans in Europe. ⁸⁷ Forbes similarly wrote that Horner’s calculations were “liable to even greater uncertainties” than Lyell’s from the Mississippi Valley. Forbes highlighted all the “very serious doubts” that had been raised against the calculations by Egyptologists, then thanked Lyell for explaining them and absolving the reader “from the task of analyzing these considerations.” ⁸⁸ Both followers of Lyell and Prestwich thought the Egyptologists’ critiques invalidated Horner’s absolute dates; only the former agreed that the general claim could be retained because his methodology and analysis were sound.

Credibility at stake

In contrast to the geologists, the Tory Quarterly Review suggested Horner’s chronology was not credible because he had not been to Egypt to supervise the work personally, and indeed because no European had directly witnessed the excavations. The anonymous author was (Sir) William Smith, a lexicographer known for making classical and biblical history accessible to a wide audience. Smith’s popular approach mimicked those of the earlier scriptural geologists and opposed elite geologists like Lyell, who had long been accused of only producing complicated works restricted to scientific experts. Smith dismissed Horner’s research supposedly because it was lacking first-hand observations and relied instead on unknown field informants.

Mr Horner is both a sound geologist and a man of honour, and he certainly would not intentionally deceive us. But unfortunately, his testimony in this case is of little or no value, as he is not an independent witness, but simply a reporter of the observations of others. If he had been personally present, and had seen with his own eyes the boring-instrument bring up from a depth of thirty-nine feet of Nile-deposit a piece of pottery, we should have the testimony of a worthy and competent witness; but his mere belief of the alleged fact, without personal observation, is of no value whatever in a scientific point of view . . . We know nothing of the credibility or competency of the person or persons who made the discovery. But we do know that in all such cases, whatever is wanted is always found . . . all who have had experience in these matters attach no importance to such specimens, unless the alleged discoverer is a scientific observer of whose character and competency there can be no question. ⁸⁹

The damning review concluded that “instead of establishing the existence of man in Egypt more than 13,000 years” ago, all Horner supplied was “convincing proof of the worthlessness of [his] theory.”

Many of the negative reviews that followed cited Smith and highlighted the absurdity of Horner’s reliance on someone they claimed was a virtually unknown informant. The Assyriologist Reverend Edward Hincks thought it likely that Horner’s potsherd was “a contrivance of some Arab Douster-swivel” – a reference to a German swindler in Walter Scott’s The Antiquary (1816). ⁹⁰ Smith’s article was also quoted by Reginald Stuart Poole, a young numismatist at the British Museum who had spent years living and working in Egypt with his uncle, famed Orientalist Edward William Lane. Poole had published Horae Aegyptiacae, or the Chronology of Ancient Egypt (1851) at the age of seventeen and quickly became a proponent of an Egyptian chronology that agreed with Biblical accounts and was supported by fixed astronomical dates supplied by George Airy. ⁹¹ He was one of a small handful of traveling Egyptologists known for their first-hand explorations. By contrast, members of the Syro-Egyptian Society such as Sharpe and Birch never went to Egypt. They relied on travelers, collectors, and antiquaries to observe and communicate information back to them. Horner was grouped with the latter.

In an appendix to the sixth edition of his uncle’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1860), Poole described Horner’s excavations as “a series of so-called scientific investigations (not conducted by himself).” He reiterated that Horner’s conclusions were not trustworthy because he did not go to Egypt personally. He further objected to the geologist widening his disciplinary scope to include historical dates.

If Mr Horner had confined himself to the purely scientific question, the depth, etc. of the plain of Egypt in various sections, his results, supposing them to be trustworthy, would have been a contribution to the literature of the subject, and would have given important help to any really historical facts hereafter to be obtained . . . Mr. Horner’s so-called historical facts being worthless, we may be asked what prospect there is of trustworthy evidence that may establish a synchronism between science and history. The chance appears remote, indeed. ⁹²

Poole argued that geologists should stick to rocks and sequencing sedimentary layers while chronologers like himself continued to preside over human history. In his view, their research programs and disciplinary authorities were only compatible if distinct. These attacks on Horner’s locality and Hekekyan’s expertise were undoubtedly frustrating for Horner, who had gone to great lengths to confirm Hekekyan’s trustworthiness. Horner’s geological colleagues approved of the collaboration, as did Sharpe, who told Horner “I can see no fault in the manner in which your investigations have carried on. I think them most valuable.” ⁹³ Despite Horner’s best efforts to certify him, there was permanent racial distrust of Hekekyan; it was only mobilized by those who considered it beneficial to their agendas. Poole and Smith criticized Horner’s methodology and questioned Hekekyan’s credibility because the historicity of scriptural chronology was threatened by Horner and Hekekyan’s geological chronology.

Scriptural chronology and the German threat

The negative reviews were exacerbated by Horner’s close association with Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen, a high-ranking Prussian protestant diplomat and scholar in Britain, a proponent of German higher criticism and comparative philology, and one of the most influential and controversial writers on ancient Egypt from the 1840s through 1860s. ⁹⁴ Bunsen’s most divisive work was his five-volume Egypt’s Place in Universal History, which garnered wide attention in Britain following the German to English translations of the first three volumes in 1848, 1854, and 1859. Bunsen argued Egyptian texts supported the chronologies supplied by classical authors. The books were part of his larger research program on universal linguistic diffusion. His chronology was accepted by fellow continental Egyptologers Lepsius and Vicomte Emmanuel de Rougé, and his good friend Birch, who edited the final two English volumes posthumously, calling them “the most critical work yet published on the subject of Egyptian history.” ⁹⁵

Horner quoted Bunsen in his publication and Bunsen included a summary of Horner’s research in the introduction to his third English volume. The affiliation was mutually beneficial as both men corroborated one another and attempted to push back human antiquity beyond the traditional 6,000 years – Horner to 13,000 and Bunsen to 20,000. Bunsen defended Horner’s argument and assured his readers that Horner’s evidence was well grounded. He labelled Horner’s research “historical, not geological” because “the soil which has been penetrated is exclusively historical soil, coeval with mankind.” ⁹⁶ Together, Horner’s chronology and Bunsen’s linguistic history attempted to blur disciplinary boundaries between geology and ancient history.

Horner’s papers were reviewed alongside Bunsen’s universal history in 1859 and both authors received similar criticisms. Smith also rejected Bunsen’s chronology and accused him of hypocritically denying the authenticity of the Bible but using other ancient sources uncritically. Bunsen had “blind faith” in the Greek writers who were not “independent witnesses” to Egyptian civilization. Smith initially thought Bunsen might have “scientific corroboration” because Horner presented “at first sight something more tangible than his linguistic theory.” But like Bunsen’s Greek authors, Horner was not an independent witness, and his pottery was “no more likely than Mr. Bunsen’s chronology, to compel us to abandon our faith in the old Hebrew records.” ⁹⁷

This fight over ownership of chronological expertise was engulfed in wider debates about Scriptural authority and Biblical criticism. Evangelical fears over radical chronologies eased slightly by the early 1860s, but many, including Smith and Poole, continued to endorse a traditional Mosaic timeline for civilized humans. Smith claimed to be uncompromised by religious convictions but admitted he considered “the chronology of the Scriptures to be more credible” than Bunsen’s classical authors or Horner’s geological strata. ⁹⁸ Poole, who wrote on Egypt and chronology in Smith’s influential three-volume Dictionary of the Bible (1863), similarly found Bunsen’s history “repugnant to the Bible.” He argued Bunsen was eager to accept Horner’s chronology merely because it “fitted his elastic chronology with sufficient accuracy.” ⁹⁹

Many nonconformists defended Bunsen’s chronology despite the controversy. The Unitarian minister John Kenrick, a prominent member of the Syro-Egyptian Society, who had himself written on human prehistory, endorsed Bunsen. Kenrick hoped that the thoroughness of the work and Bunsen’s character would “protect him from the outcry of impiety, so often raised against those who call in question opinions supposed to involve the authority of Scripture.” ¹⁰⁰ Bunsen always knew his Egyptian history would be contentious for this reason and did not want “to be misunderstood or abused as an unbeliever.” ¹⁰¹ He thought himself a pious person who fought against religious dogmatism, and like his fellow German biblical critics, claimed to only seek the truth. Bunsen defended himself against the “theologians” and the “zealots,” musing that “one might have supposed that in the nineteenth century chronological and purely philological research would be very safe against these hateful charges of being dangerous and pernicious.” Unfortunately, he considered Poole part of a “growing systematic opposition to all free and independent research.” ¹⁰²

The feud between Bunsen and Poole was not unprecedented. Bunsen was equally critical of Poole’s Horae Aegyptiacae calling the book “a failure from beginning to end.” It was full of “arbitrary assumptions” specifically made to complement biblical chronology, “which he has taken under his protection.” ¹⁰³ Poole in return criticized Lepsius’s Die Chronologie der Aegypter (1849) and Leonora and Joanna Horner’s translation of Lepsius’s Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Peninsula of Sinai (1853), arguing that Lepsius was “going out of his proper sphere of usefulness to join himself to a party which rejects everything in the Bible.” ¹⁰⁴ Members of this party were the lions of Egyptian philology – Bunsen, De Rougé, and Birch – none of whom had been to Egypt. Lepsius’s Egyptian expedition may have earned him respect from the traveling Egyptologists, but that credibility was questioned when he aligned himself with the biblical critics. It is unsurprising that Bunsen and Horner believed Poole to be the author of the scathing article in the Quarterly Review. Bunsen told Horner that the article did not warrant a response.

No, my dear Mr. Horner, not one word shall I answer Mr. Poole’s article! Nothing is to refute when there is not a single, really argued account to match. The tone & tenor is that of the writings of a whipped schoolboy. Rougé gave him 10 years ago a very well meant admonition. I endorsed it (in my preface) which was the least I could do, after the immature and fanatical book he had written against Lepsius and my (and indeed against all since) chronology of Egypt . . . However it be, I have better things to do than answer so stupid an article. The [?] of your excavations I should think ought to be treated in the same way, silence of contempt. What fact or argument has he brought forward? ¹⁰⁵

The continental Egyptologists and their British supporters were further disassociated from Poole by their disciplinary affiliations. Historians have shown that by mid-century, professional alliances had formed between German historicism, liberal Anglican historians, and British geologists, such as Horner and Lyell. ¹⁰⁶ Those involved were united by an appreciation for the Roman history of Barthold Georg Niebuhr and the school of comparative philology that he represented. Unitarian Egyptologists Kenrick and Sharpe shared this affinity. ¹⁰⁷ Bunsen too enjoyed a close relationship with Niebuhr and dedicated the first volume of his Egyptian chronology to him. Bunsen also utilized geological terminology; his “law of [language] development” was based on a close reading of “linguistic strata.” ¹⁰⁸ These geologists, philologists, and historians aligned in their belief that a historicist approach, based on empirical evidence, would produce the most truthful accounts of the early stages of civilization.

Bunsen and Horner’s opinions were consequently defended very publicly by the liberal churchman Rowland Williams in the influential Essays and Reviews (1860). Williams wrote that before them, archaeologists unanimously believed that “Biblical chronology was too narrow in its limits.” While Bunsen’s twenty thousand years might be extreme, it would be difficult to disprove. As for Horner, “if pottery in a river’s mud proves little, its tendency may agree with that of the discovery of very ancient pre-historic remains in many parts of the world.” Bunsen’s comparative linguistics “plead as convincingly as the succession of strata in geology, for enormous lapses of time.” ¹⁰⁹

Essays and Reviews was widely read and criticized. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce condemned the publication, claiming the essays merely strung together “already abundantly repelled objections and fallacies of German rationalism.” Much of Wilberforce’s criticism focused directly on Bunsen and William’s “daring flippancy.” ¹¹⁰ In response, Lubbock drafted a letter in support of Essays and Reviews to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1861, proclaiming to “welcome these attempts to establish religious teachings on a firmer and broader foundation.” Horner, Lyell, and Darwin were among the co-signers of the address. ¹¹¹ The letter cemented a union between historical critics and geologists in opposition to evangelical theologians. It appears Smith, Poole, and others attacked Bunsen and Horner’s chronologies, in part, because they were unfaithful to scripture and represented a branch of continental Egyptology that was closely affiliated with the German higher critics and their geological allies in Britain.

The chronological problem of human origins

Horner and Bunsen’s Egyptian chronologies also proved useful for members of the Ethnological Society of London investigating the origins of the earliest human races. The founder James Cowles Prichard had propounded an ethnology that relied heavily on philology and biblical chronology to demonstrate the unity of mankind. Prichard and Bunsen presented alongside one another at the 1848 meeting of the BAAS. Bunsen claimed then that “Egyptological discoveries are most intimately connected with the great question of the primeval language and civilization of mankind” and that they supported “the opinion of the high, but not indefinite antiquity of human history,” as well as “the hypothesis of the original unity of mankind and of a common origin of all languages of the globe.” ¹¹² Bunsen’s universal history took a diffusionist approach, arguing that ancient people migrated from East to West and brought languages with them. This was complementary to the monogenist umbrella under which the Ethnological Society functioned. Prichard ultimately accepted Bunsen’s twenty thousand years because it allowed enough time for human races to develop from a common origin. ¹¹³ In the new Darwinian context of the early 1860s, members like Lyell and Lubbock were still thinking about human antiquity in a monogenist framework. They thus regarded Bunsen’s and Horner’s chronologies as a part-solution to the problem of civilization – this being the challenge confronting ethnologists, philologists, and geologists to explain human diffusion and racial variety in a relatively short period of time.

In contrast, society members who were part of a growing opposition of polygenists – those who believed in multiple origins for the human species – rejected Bunsen’s chronology. Poole was one of these vocal opponents. He contributed to an apologetic movement that used pre-Adamite polygenism to harmonize archaeology, anthropology, philology, and geology with Genesis. ¹¹⁴ Poole’s uncle Edward William Lane anonymously provided a pre-Adamite theory in The Genesis of the Earth and of Man (1856), using his expertise in Semitic languages. Poole edited the expanded second edition in 1860. Poole supported Lane’s argument that there were two distinct human sources for linguistic traditions: a civilized Caucasian race descended from Adam and a barbarous pre-Adamite race that had produced crude flint tools. The latter had originated in the Nile Valley and spread through Africa and Asia. ¹¹⁵ Poole and Lane used the pre-Adamite theory to defend the biblical creation date and reconcile it with the recent geological evidence for remote human antiquity. They added a note to the second edition summarizing the errors in Horner’s research and concluding it merely showed that Egypt was inhabited by uncivilized humans thousands of years before Adam and Eve. ¹¹⁶

Poole used his uncle’s book and the ethnological society as additional platforms to attack Bunsen’s monogenist chronology. The book’s preface accused Bunsen of being “the representative of a school” who believes in “the unity of origin of the human race.” ¹¹⁷ At an 1862 meeting of the society, after President John Crawfurd read his polygenist paper on the antiquity of man, Poole agreed that “no period of time could account for the growth of such languages” in the manner that Bunsen had suggested. Similarly, he argued stone, bronze, and iron tools in the archaeological record were evidence of different races, rather than successive periods in time. For him, neither language diffusion nor prehistoric artefacts were absolute evidence of the antiquity of one human species. ¹¹⁸ The explanation offered by Poole for his continued rejection of Bunsen and Horner’s chronologies varied. Elsewhere he denounced their credibility based on their lack of field experience and deviance from scripture. Here he denied their joint supposition of a single human origin to secure his role as a leading pre-Adamite theorist and polygenist ethnologist.

When the polygenists broke away in 1863 to establish the competing Anthropological Society of London, Poole followed and was elected a local secretary. ¹¹⁹ James Hunt, the president and anonymous editor of the new society’s Anthropological Review, similarly asserted the vast age of humans. Like Poole, he believed all savage races developed their languages independently. ¹²⁰ Hunt sarcastically lambasted Lyell in the very first volume for including Horner’s Egyptian research in his book on human antiquity. He targeted Hekekyan’s credibility.

We are sorry to find that Sir Charles Lyell has thought it worthwhile to notice such absurdities. Because some burnt brick was found sixty feet deep, therefore it must be twelve thousand years old! At least Hekekyan Bey, an Armenian, vouches for the pottery being found at that depth, and no doubt correctly. To waste money of the Royal Society, and to occupy the paper and print of the Philosophical Transactions, was bad enough, but to base a chronology on the evidence of Mr Horner adduced was preposterous. ¹²¹

Hunt opposed the Egyptian research because it supported Bunsen’s monogenism; his racial distrust of Hekekyan was a convenient justification for his criticism. However, he took even greater issue with Horner’s objective to determine absolute dates. Hunt accepted that recent geological and paleontological discoveries in Europe and North America, such as flint implements and human fossils, were compelling evidence of remote human antiquity. Humans were so old, he reasoned, that any attempt to assign even approximate dates to their age was entirely absurd. In his first presidential address to the Anthropological Society and in the first volume of the Anthropological Review, Hunt criticized Bunsen and Horner’s chronologies for this reason. He explained that “the naturally slow progress among primitive people . . . render the calculation to fix the age of mankind nearly impossible,” and “it belongs to Egyptologists and chronologists to separate the fabulous from the probability of these computations.” Readers were instructed not to dwell on Horner’s figure of 13,371 years for civilized humans in Egypt because his theory was worthless. He suggested Lane and Poole offered a pre-Adamite theory that was far more plausible and credible, not only because it explained how Egyptian civilization was already advanced only a short time after the biblical deluge, but because it did not calculate the age of man. Just like the reluctant geologists who only endorsed relative dating techniques, Hunt opposed Horner, Bunsen, and Lyell’s absolute dates. He claimed that calculations to fix human chronology, whether on geological, archaeological, or linguistic evidence, were conjectural and an example of the poor “method of inquiry” that had been employed by anthropologists. Hunt instead promoted a new science of man that was based on “facts” and not “idle speculation,” such as that apparent in Horner and Bunsen’s publications. ¹²² His rejection of the geological chronology was therefore part of a strategy to legitimize his new society and the methodological direction he hoped it would take.

Leonard Horner and the antiquity of man

Human antiquity was a controversial geological issue for the first half of the nineteenth century. With few exceptions, gentlemanly geologists in Britain cautiously avoided discussing human chronology, especially in meetings of the Geological Society, fearing the religious and theoretical implications. ¹²³ Man’s appearance on earth marked the beginning of the most recent epoch in geological time. Therefore, estimating the age of the human species required taking a stance on biblical authority, as well as revising the temporal basis of the Quaternary period itself. The strongest cases for a lengthy human period were through identifications of flint tools. These had been found by naturalists in European caves from the late eighteenth century, often alongside human fossils and bones of extinct animals. Until the 1850s, British geologists rejected flint tools as dubious, either because their investigators were considered untrustworthy or because of the complexity of cave stratigraphy. ¹²⁴ The year Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species was also a landmark for the disciplinary development of prehistoric archaeology. Some historians regard the year 1859 – when Hugh Falconer, Joseph Prestwich, and John Evans carefully documented and announced their discoveries of hand-axes in Brixham Cave and the Somme Valley – so consequential that they have dubbed it a “revolution in human time.” ¹²⁵ The credibility of these discoveries encouraged similar proclamations by geologists William Pengelly and John Flower in the months following, and eventually, legitimization by Lyell in his address to the BAAS in September 1859. Flint tools were finally accepted by the scientific elite as sound evidence of human antiquity. ¹²⁶ The study of human prehistory in Britain, previously the scholarly domain of philologists and text-based chronologists, quickly became the subject of inquiry by geologists, anthropologists, and evolutionary theorists.

Horner spearheaded this mid-century shift in geological focus. His 1847 presidential address to the Geological Society was partly responsible for the ensuing flurry of interest in recent chronology, as it gave members the new freedom to pursue the topic. Unlike flint tool enthusiasts, Horner believed that sedimentation was the key to proving remote human antiquity and to defining the start of the last geological epoch. Horner made arrangements for his Egyptian research in 1851 and published his findings in 1855 and 1858, expecting that geologists might now consider human chronology on the condition that evidence was presented by a trustworthy source such as himself. While Horner’s research was not received as he had hoped, and his absolute dates were rejected by most of his colleagues, he did not fail entirely. His project contributed significantly to the scientific acceptance of the antiquity of man by encouraging its discussion among geologists. His final presidential address in 1861 also focused on human antiquity and was of strategic importance to his cause. Horner summarized the recent flint tool discoveries before mentioning his and Bunsen’s Egyptian researches, and Rowland William’s comments in Essays and Reviews. He argued that his geological chronology, along with these other philological, archaeological, and geological studies, “has been gradually producing an impression in the minds of earnest thinkers that the first appearance of man on the earth must be carried far beyond the time hitherto usually assigned to it.” ¹²⁷

Horner also used his presidential authority to address the theological opposition on its own grounds. He blamed the widely held belief that humans had only existed very recently on the marginal note that appeared alongside the first sentence of most Bibles: the creation date of 4004 BCE. He argued this number was merely one of many proposed by chronologists. He was concerned about the confusion that would inevitably confront any young person who was told at school that the earth was only 6,000 years old, and was then told in a geological lecture that the earth was probably half a million years old. The only solution was to remove Ussher’s note: “It is untrue, and therefore it is mischievous.”

Horner’s controversial statements solicited a wide-range of private responses from friends. Fellow gentlemen of science endorsed and applauded him. Darwin had written reservedly in the first edition of Origin that “Mr. Horner’s researches have rendered it in some degree probable that man sufficiently civilized to have manufactured pottery existed in the Valley of the Nile thirteen or fourteen thousand years ago.” After the poor reception of the geological chronology, Darwin removed his reference to Horner for the American revised edition in 1860. ¹²⁸ He nevertheless wrote to Horner enthusiastically in 1861,

I thought that I had read up pretty well on antiquity of man, but you bring all the facts so well together in a condensed form, that the case seems much clearer to me. How curious about the Bible! I declare I had fancied that the date was somehow in the Bible. You are coming out in a new light as a Biblical critic! ¹²⁹

Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, a Whig compatriot from Edinburgh, was relieved. He had “never read a statement so clear, and convincing.” The antiquity of man was “no longer possible to doubt,” and he was “glad to be able to indulge that opinion without having [his] Scriptural faith impeached.” The physician Richard Fowler applauded Horner’s remarks on Ussher, which he had no doubt were “the cause of the clamour which the over religious public had raised against Geologists for writing up the mountain to be older than Moses.” The educationalist Richard Dawes agreed entirely about Horner’s concern for the youth. He thought it was courageous to “quote the essays and reviews notwithstanding the anger of the Bishops.”

Other public figures reacted more cautiously. William Gladstone had aligned himself with the Oxonian High Church movement and “wish[ed] well to all who are engaged in the careful collection of facts, and in concluding with caution from them.” The Archbishop of Canterbury John Bird Sumner, in possession of Lubbock’s letter supporting Essays and Reviews, declared that he had long believed in a “pre-Adamite world” and that it is “reasonable to believe that any former system of things should contain creations having the qualities of man than the contrary.” The liberal Dean of Westminster and Oxford Professor Arthur P. Stanley thanked Horner: “Every scientific man who writes as you have done, calmly and reverentially on the relations of religion and science, does a substantial service to each.”

In more public spaces, Horner’s efforts to push back human antiquity were depicted as an attack on scripture. One reader asked the editor of The Times how “Bunsen, Horner, Darwin, and others assign at least 14,000 years as the term of man’s existence on earth,” while ignoring the biblical flood entirely? ¹³⁰ Elsewhere, paleontologist Philip Egerton, another prominent member of the Ethnological and Geological societies, depicted the geological chronology as one example of several recent attempts to clarify man’s antiquity and ancestry. This was illustrated in the poem ‘Monkeyana’, produced anonymously by him for Punch on 18 May 1861. ¹³¹ The poem was written from the perspective of a gorilla in the Zoological Society Gardens trying to understand his place in nature. The gorilla reviews the contributions of Darwin and the anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation to evolutionary thought, before contemplating Horner’s alluvial research.

Leonard Horner relates,

That Biblical dates

The age of the world cannot trace;

That Bible tradition,

By Nile’s deposition,

Is put to the right about face.

According to the gorilla, Horner’s was the first important attempt to trace human lineage, followed shortly by Pengelly and Prestwich’s archaeological flint tools, and Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley’s debates about the anatomical differences between apes and humans. The poem parodies Horner’s project as a geological endeavor to undermine biblical chronology. His alluvial research was apparently successful in demonstrating that “biblical dates” cannot determine the age of the earth, and that the antiquity of man was much older than “that Bible tradition” had long claimed. The poem shows that by 1861, two years before Lyell’s influential publication, human antiquity was already a topic of general discussion for the Victorian public and Horner and Hekekyan’s Egyptian research was central to that conversation.