(4) Op. cit., p. 32 f.

(5) In Manetho's list he corresponds to {Kenkenos}, the
second successor of Menes according to both Africanus and
Eusebius, who assign the name Athothis to the second ruler
of the dynasty only, the Teta of the Abydos List. The form
Athothes is preserved by Eratosthenes for both of Menes'
immediate successors.

Though the tradition of these remote times is here recorded on a
monument of the Vth Dynasty, there is no reason to doubt its general
accuracy, or to suppose that we are dealing with purely mythological
personages. It is perhaps possible, as Monsieur Foucart suggests, that
missing portions of the text may have carried the record back through
purely mythical periods to Ptah and the Creation. In that case we should
have, as we shall see, a striking parallel to early Sumerian tradition.
But in the first extant portions of the Palermo text we are already in
the realm of genuine tradition. The names preserved appear to be those
of individuals, not of mythological creations, and we may assume that
their owners really existed. For though the invention of writing had
not at that time been achieved, its place was probably taken by oral
tradition. We know that with certain tribes of Africa at the present
day, who possess no knowledge of writing, there are functionaries
charged with the duty of preserving tribal traditions, who transmit
orally to their successors a remembrance of past chiefs and some details
of events that occurred centuries before.(1) The predynastic Egyptians
may well have adopted similar means for preserving a remembrance of
their past history.