The inscriptions supply us with proofs that some of these princes lived and reigned:—­Sondi, who is classed in the II dynasty, received a continuous worship toward the end of the III dynasty.  But did all those who preceded him, and those who followed him, exist as he did?  And if they existed, do the order and relation agree with actual truth?  The different lists do not contain the same names in the same position; certain Pharaohs are added or suppressed without appreciable reason.  Where Manetho inscribes Kenkenes and Ouenephes, the tables of the time of Seti I give us Ati and Ata; Manetho reckons nine kings to the II dynasty, while they register only five.  The monuments, indeed, show us that Egypt in the past obeyed princes whom her annalists were unable to classify:  for instance, they associated with Sondi a Pirsenu, who is not mentioned in the annals.  We must, therefore, 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