A century later, about 450 years before Christ, the priests of Memphis gave entirely different accounts to Herodotus[142]. Menes, the first king of Egypt, according to them, had built Memphis, and inclosed the Nile within dikes, as if it were possible that the first king of a country could perform operations of this kind. Between this prince and Mœris, who, according to them, reigned 900 years before the period at which this account was given (1350 years before Christ), they had a succession of three hundred and thirty other kings. After these kings came Sesostris, who extended his conquests as far as Colchis[143]; and altogether, there were, to the time of Sethos, three hundred and forty-one kings, and three hundred and forty-one chief priests, in three hundred and forty-one generations, during a space of 11,340 years. And, in this interval, as if to insure the authenticity of their chronology, these priests asserted that the sun had risen twice where he sets, without any change having taken place in the climate or productions of the country, and without any of the gods having at that time, or before, made their appearance and reigned in Egypt. To this fable, which, despite of all the pretended explanations that have been given of it, evinces so gross an ignorance of astronomy, they added, regarding Sesostris, Phero, Helenius, and Rhampsinitus, the kings who built the pyramids, and an Ethiopian conqueror named _Sabacos_, a set of tales equally absurd. The priests of Thebes did better: they shewed Herodotus, and they had before shewn to Hecatæus, three hundred and forty-five colossal figures of wood, which represented three hundred and forty-five high priests, who had succeeded to each other from father to son, all men, all born the one of the other, but who had been preceded by gods[144]. Other Egyptians told him that they had exact registers, not only of the reign of men, but also of that of gods. They reckoned 17,000 years from Hercules to Amases, and 15,000 from Bacchus. Pan had even been prior to Hercules[145]. These people evidently took for history some allegories relating to pantheistic metaphysics, which formed, unknown to them, the basis of their mythology. It is only from the time of Sethos that Herodotus commences the part of his history which is somewhat rational; and it is worthy of remark, that this part begins with an event which agrees with the Hebrew annals, the destruction of the army of the King of Assyria, _Sennacherib_[146]; and this agreement continues under Necho[147], and under Hophra or Apries.