The lord of Elephantine brought his reply in person. He described to the king, who was evidently ignorant of it, the situation of the island and the rocks of the cataract, the phenomena of the inundation, the gods who presided over it, and who alone could relieve Egypt from her disastrous plight. Zosiri repaired to the temple of the principality and offered the prescribed sacrifices; the god arose, opened his eyes, panted and cried aloud, "I am Khnumu who created thee!" and promised him a speedy return 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 neighbouring nomes within a radius of twenty miles. Henceforward the entire population, tillers and vinedressers, fishermen and hunters, had to yield the tithe of their incomes to the priests; the quarries could not be worked without the consent of Khnumu, and the payment of a suitable indemnity into his coffers, and finally, all metals and precious woods shipped thence for Egypt had to submit to a toll on behalf of the temple. Did the 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 legend of the yawning gulf at Bubastis must be connected with the gifts supposed to have been offered by King Boethos to the temple of that town, to repair the losses sustained by the goddess on that occasion; the legend of the pestilence and famine is traceable to some relief given by a local god, and for which Semempses and Uenephes might have shown their gratitude in the same way as Zosiri. The tradition of the successive restorations of Denderah accounts for the constructions attributed to Teti I. and to Tosorthros; finally, the prete tided discoveries of sacred books, dealt with elsewhere, show how Manetho was enabled to attribute to his Pharaohs the authorship of works on medicine or theology.