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