Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/339

NfMKKOUS DYNASTIES OF KIXCS. 323 stage of Fetichism, and the attempts of different persons, noticed in Diodorus and Plutarch, to account for their origin, partly by legends, partly by theory, will give little satisfaction to any one. 1 Though Thebes first, and Memphis afterwards, were undoubt- edly the principal cities of Egypt, yet if the dynasties of Mane- tho are at all trustworthy, even in their general outline, the Egyptian kings were not taken uniformly either from one or the other. Manetho enumerates on the whole twenty-six different dynasties or families of kings, anterior to the conquest of the country by Kambyses, the Persian kings between Kambyses and the revolt of the Egyptian Amyrtaeus, in 405 B. c. constitut- ing his twenty-seventh dynasty. Of these twenty-six dynas- ties, beginning with the year 5702 B. c. , the first two are Thin- ites, the third and fourth, Memphites, the fifth, from the island of Elephantine, the sixth, seventh, and eighth, again Memphites, the ninth and tenth, Ilerakleopolites, the elev- enth, tAvelfth, and thirteenth, Diospolites or Thebans, the four- teenth, Choites, the fifteenth and sixteenth, Hyksos, or shep- herd kings, the seventeenth, shepherd kings, overthrown and succeeded by Diospolites, the eighteenth (B. c. 1655-1327, in which is included Rameses, the great Egyptian conqueror, identi- fied by many authors with Sesostris, 1411 B. c.), nineteenth, and twentieth, Diospolites, the twenty-first, Tanites, the twenty- second, Bubastites, the twenty-third, again Tanites, the twenty-fourth, Sa'ites, the twenty-fifth, Ethiopians, beginning with Sabakon, whom Herodotus also mentions, the twenty- sixth, Saites, including Psammetichus, Nekos, Apries or Uaphris, and Amasis or Amosis. We see by these lists, that, according to the manner in which Manetho construed the antiquities of his country, several other cities of Egypt, besides Thebes and Mem^ phis, furnished kings to the whole territory ; but we cannot trace any correspondence between the nomes which furnished kings, and those which Herodotus mentions to have been exclusively occupied by the military caste. Many of the separate nomes were of considerable substantive importance, and had a marked local character each to itself, religious as well as political ; thougt 1 Diodor. 5, 86-87; Ptutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 377, w//.