=127.= FIRST PERIOD. The early Egyptians believed that there had been a time when their ancestors were savages and cannibals, dwelling in caves in those ridges of sandstone which border the Nile Valley on the east; and that their greatest benefactors were Osiris and Isis, who elevated them into a devout and civilized nation, eating bread, drinking wine and beer, and planting the olive. The worship of Osiris and Isis, therefore, became prevalent throughout Egypt, while the several cities and provinces had each its own local divinities. According to Manetho, a native historian of later times,[13] gods, spirits, demigods, and _manes_, or the souls of men, were the first rulers of Egypt. This is merely an ancient way of saying that the earliest history of Egypt, as of most other countries, is shrouded in ignorance and fabulous conjecture. =128.= Instead of commencing its existence as a united kingdom, Egypt consisted at first of a number of scattered _nomes_, or petty states, each having for its nucleus a temple and a numerous establishment of priests. Fifty-three of these nomes are mentioned by one historian, thirty-six by another. As one became more powerful, it sometimes swallowed up its neighbors, and grew into a kingdom which embraced a large portion or even the whole of the country. =129.= The first mortal king of Mis´raim, the “double land,” was Menes, of This. His inheritance was in Upper Egypt, but by his talents and exploits he made himself master of the Lower, and selected there a site for his new capital. For this purpose he drained a marshy tract which at certain seasons had been overflowed by the Nile, made a dyke to confine the river within its regular channel, and on the reclaimed ground built the city of Memphis. Menes may therefore be considered as the founder of the empire. =130.= Athothes (Thoth), his son and successor, was skilled in medicine and wrote works on anatomy. Of the six following kings in regular descent who form this dynasty little is known, and it is even possible that they belong rather to tradition than to ascertained history. After the two Thoths came Mnevis, or Uenephes, who bore the name of the Sacred Calf of Heliopolis. He is said, nevertheless, to have been a high-minded, intelligent man, and the most affable prince on record. He built the pyramid of Koko´me, whose site can not now be identified. During his reign there was famine in Egypt.