* The two dynasties of Tanis and Sais may be for the present
     reconstituted as follows:—­

[Illustration:  373.jpg TABLE OF DYNASTIES OF TANIS AND SAIS]

His real character is unknown, but as he left a deep impression on the memories of his people, it is natural to conclude that he displayed, at times, both ability and energy.  Many legends in which the miraculous element prevailed were soon in circulation concerning him.  He was, according to these accounts, weak in body and insignificant in appearance, but made up for these defects by mental ability and sound judgment.  He was credited with having been simple in his mode of life, and was renowned as one of the six great legislators produced by Egypt.  A law concerning debt and the legal rates of interest, was attributed to him; he was also famed for the uprightness of his judgments, which were regarded as due to divine inspiration.  Isis had bestowed on him a serpent, which, coiling itself round his head when he sat on the judgment-seat, covered him with its shadow, and admonished him not to forget for a moment the inflexible principles of equity and truth.

Neither Tafnakhti nor any of the local sovereigns mentioned on the stele of Pionkhi wore comprised in the official computation; there is, therefore, no reason to add them to this list.

A collection of the decisions he was reputed to have delivered in famous cases existed in the Graeco-Roman period, and one of them is quoted at length:  he had very ingeniously condemned a courtesan to touch the shadow of a purse as payment for the shadowy favours she had bestowed in a dream on her lover.

[Illustration:  374.jpg KING BOCCHORIS GIVING JUDGMENT BETWEEN TWO WOMEN, RIVAL CLAIMANTS TO A CHILD]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

An Alexandrian poet, Pancrates, versified the accounts of this juridical collection,* and the artists of the Imperial epoch drew from it motives for mural decoration; they portrayed the king pronouncing judgment between two mothers who disputed possession of an infant, between two beggars laying claim to the same cloak, and between three men asserting each of them his right to a wallet full of food.**

     * Pancrates lived in the time of Hadrian, and Athenaeus, who
     has preserved his memory for us, quotes the first book of
     his Bocchoreidion.

** Considerable remains of this decorative cycle have been discovered at Pompeii and at Rome, in a series of frescoes, in which Lumbroso and E. Lowy recognise the features of the legends of Bocchoris; the dispute between the two mothers recalls the famous judgment of Solomon (1 Kings iii. 16-28).

A less favourable tradition represents the king as an avaricious and irreligious sovereign:  he is said one day to have conceived the sacrilegious desire to bring about a conflict between an ordinary bull and the Mnevis adored at Heliopolis.  The gods, doubtless angered by his crimes, are recorded to have called into being a lamb with eight feet, which, suddenly breaking into articulate speech, predicted that Upper and Lower Egypt would be disgraced by the rule of a stranger.*