hand, gives Amenemes
followed by Thuoris, who appear to correspond to the
Amenmeses and Siphtah of contemporary monuments, but, after
Minephtah, he omits Seti II. and Nakhitou-Seti, the father
of Ramses III.

In Egypt, as elsewhere, the official chroniclers were often obliged to
accommodate the past to the exigencies of the present, and to manipulate
the annals to suit the reigning party; while obeying their orders the
chroniclers deceived posterity, and it is only by a rare chance that
we can succeed in detecting them in the act of falsification, and can
re-establish the truth.

[Illustration: 325.jpg TABLE OF THE KINGS]

The system of Manetho, in the state in which it has been handed down
to us by epitomizers, has rendered, and continues to render, service to
science; if it is not the actual history of Egypt, it is a sufficiently
faithful substitute to warrant our not neglecting it when we wish to
understand and reconstruct the sequence of events. His dynasties furnish
the necessary framework for most of the events and revolutions, of which
the monuments have preserved us a record. At the outset, the centre to
which the affairs of the country gravitated was in the extreme north
of the valley. The principality which extended from the entrance of the
Fayum to the apex of the Delta, and subsequently the town of Memphis
itself, imposed their sovereigns upon the remaining nomes, served as an
emporium for commerce and national industries, and received homage and
tribute from neighbouring peoples. About the time of the VIth dynasty
this centre of gravity was displaced, and tended towards the interior;
it was arrested for a short time at Heracleo-polis (IXth and Xth
dynasties), and ended by fixing itself at Thebes (XIth dynasty). From
henceforth Thebes became the capital, and furnished Egypt with her
rulers. With the exception of the XIVth Xoite dynasty, all the families
occupying the throne from the XIth to the XXth dynasty were Theban. When
the barbarian shepherds invaded Africa from Asia, the Thebaid became the
last refuge and bulwark of Egyptian nationality; its chiefs struggled
for many centuries against the conquerors before they were able to
deliver the rest of the valley. It was a Theban dynasty, the XVIIIth,
which inaugurated the era of foreign conquest; but after the XIXth, a
movement, the reverse of that which had taken place towards the end of
the first period, brought back the centre of gra