erefore, take the record of all this
opening period of history for what it is--namely, a system invented at a
much later date, by means of various artifices and combinations--to be
partially accepted in default of a better, but without, according to it,
that excessive confidence which it has hitherto received. The two
Thinite dynasties, in direct descent from the fabulous Menes, furnish,
like this hero himself, only a tissue of romantic tales and miraculous
legends in the place of history. A double-headed stork, which had
appeared in the first year of Teti, son of Menes, had foreshadowed to
Egypt a long prosperity, but a famine under Ouenephes, and a terrible
plague under Semempses, had depopulated the country; the laws had been
relaxed, great crimes had been committed, and revolts had broken out.

During the reign of the Boethos a gulf had opened near Bubastis, and
swallowed up many people, then the Nile had flowed with honey for
fifteen days in the time of Nephercheres, and Sesochris was supposed to
have been a giant in stature. A few details about royal edifices were
mixed up with these prodigies. Teti had laid the foundation of the great
palace of Memphis, Ouenephes had built the pyramids of Ko-kome near
Saqqara. Several of the ancient Pharaohs had published books on
theology, or had written treatises on anatomy and medicine; several had
made laws called Kakou, the male of males, or the bull of bulls. They
explained his name by the statement that he had concerned himself about
the sacred animals; he had proclaimed as gods, Hapis of Memphis, Mnevis
of Heliopolis, and the goat of Mendes.

After him, Binothris had conferred the right of succession upon all
women of the blood-royal. The accession of the III dynasty, a Memphite
one according to Manetho, did not at first change the miraculous
character of this history. The Libyans had revolted against Necherophes,
and the two armies were encamped before each other, when one night the
disk of the moon became immeasurably enlarged, to the great alarm of the
rebels, who recognized in this phenomenon a sign of the anger of heaven,
and yielded without fighting. Tosorthros, the successor of Necherophes,
brought the hieroglyphs and the art of stone-cutting to perfection. He
composed, as Teti did, books of medicine, a fact which caused him to be
identified with the healing god Imhotpu. The priests related these
things seriously, and the Greek writers took them down from their lip