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Chronological

About This Item

  • Title: Chronological
  • Date: Between 1854 and 1860
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: duk.00066
  • Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Transcribed from digital images of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This manuscript consists of a backing sheet with two smaller manuscript scraps pasted on, which together, at one time, likely formed part of Whitman's cultural geography scrapbook. The pasted-on manuscript scraps were originally part of the notebook "women," which probably dates from about 1854 to about 1860. Prose notes written on the back of the bottom paste-on relate to what became section 2 of "I Sing the Body Electric," first published as the fifth poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. Both manuscript scraps were probably written shortly before or early in 1855, though the notes on the backing sheet to which they have been pasted may have been written at a later date.
  • Related Item(s):
  • Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray Kirsten Clawson Kenneth M. Price Kevin McMullen Brett Barney Ashlyn Stewart
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Chronological." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 06 April 2026. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: duk.00066.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Whitman's hand blue double overline and underline
Highlighting yellow background with top and bottom border
Paste-on gray box with black borders
Laid in white box with black borders
Erasure white text with dark gray background
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
[begin surface 1]

Chronological

Time first began to be computed from "the Christian era," (the birth of Christ.) about the year 536 [begin surface 2] Moses of course was born in Egypt, while the Jews were settled, ^descendants and companions of Joseph and companions. as as a sort of half captive, and degraded race there—^Moses born in 1571 B.C. Queens reigned in Egypt, and governed absolutely. Sesostris, Ramses 2d, 1355 B.C. reigned over 62 years. He partitioned the land among the peasants, and compounded [illegible] them to pay a fixed tax to him. [begin surface 3] [begin surface 4]
y'rs B.C.
Birth of Hercules 1205
Death of Hercules 1153
Trojan expedition 1136
Troy taken 1127
very unsatisfactory previous to 776 B.C. when the Greek Olympiads commence [begin surface 5]
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