** The fragments of the royal Turin Papyrus exhibit, in fact, no separation between the kings which Manetho attributes to the IVth dynasty and those which he ascribes to the Vth, which seems to show that the Egyptian annalist considered them all as belonging to one and the same family of Pharaohs.

Nothing on the contemporary monuments, it is true, gives indication of a violent change attended by civil war, or resulting from a revolution at court:  the construction and decoration of the tombs continued without interruption and without indication of haste, the sons-in-law of Shopsiskaf and of Mykerinos, their daughters and grandchildren, possess under the new kings, the same favour, the same property, the same privileges, which they had enjoyed previously.  It was stated, however, in the time of the Ptolemies, that the Vth dynasty had no connection with the IVth; it was regarded at Memphis as an intruder, and it was asserted that it came from Elephantine.* The tradition was a very old one, and its influence is betrayed in a popular story, which was current at Thebes in the first years of the New Empire.  Kheops, while in search of the mysterious books of Thot in order to transcribe from them the text for his sepulchral chamber,** had asked the magician Didi to be good enough to procure them for him; but the latter refused the perilous task imposed upon him.

* Such is the tradition accepted by Manetho.  Lepsius thinks that the copyists of Manetho were under some distracting influence, which made them transfer the record of the origin of the VIth dynasty to the Vth:  it must have been the VIth dynasty which took its origin from Elephantine.  I think the safest plan is to respect the text of Manetho until we know more, and to admit that he knew of a tradition ascribing the origin of the Vth dynasty to Elephantine.

** The Great Pyramid is mute, but we find in other pyramids inscriptions of some hundreds of lines.  The author of the story, who knew how much certain kings of the VIth dynasty had laboured to have extracts of the sacred books engraved within their tombs, fancied, no doubt, that his Kheops had done the like, but had not succeeded in procuring the texts in question, probably on account of the impiety ascribed to him by the legends.  It was one of the methods of explaining the absence of any religious or funereal inscription in the Great Pyramid.

“‘Sire, my lord, it is not I who shall bring them to thee.’  His Majesty asks:  ‘Who, then, will bring them to me?’ Didi replies, ’It is the eldest of the three children who are in the womb of Ruditdidit who will bring them to thee.’  His Majesty says:  ’By the love of Ra! what is this that thou tellest me; and who is she, this Ruditdidit?’ Didi says to him:  ’She is the wife of a priest of Ra, lord of Sakhibu.  She carries in her womb three children of Ra, lord of Sakhibu, and the god has promised to her that they shall fulfil this beneficent office