of a high Nile and the cessation of the famine.

Pharaoh was touched by the benevolence which his divine father had shown
him; he forthwith made a decree by which he ceded to the temple all his
rights of suzerainty over the neighboring nomes within a radius of
twenty miles.

Henceforward the entire population, tillers and vinedressers, fishermen
and hunters, had to yield the tithe of their income to the priests; the
quarries could not be worked without the consent of Khnumu, and the
payment of a suitable indemnity into his coffers; finally, metals and
precious woods, shipped thence for Egypt, had to submit to a toll on
behalf of the temple.

Did the Ptolemies admit the claims which the local priests attempted to
deduce from this romantic tale? and did the god regain possession of the
domains and dues which they declared had been his right? The stele shows
us with what ease the scribes could forge official documents when the
exigencies of daily life forced the necessity upon them; it teaches us
at the same time how that fabulous chronicle was elaborated, whose
remains have been preserved for us by classical writers. Every prodigy,
every fact related by Manetho, was taken from some document analogous to
the supposed inscription of Zosiri.

The real history of the early centuries, therefore, eludes our
researches, and no contemporary record traces for us those vicissitudes
which Egypt passed through before being consolidated into a single
kingdom, under the rule of one man. Many names, apparently of powerful
and illustrious princes, had survived in the memory of the people; these
were collected, classified, and grouped in a regular manner into