Proteus is called Αἰγύπτιος, but in all probability the meaning is Proteus of the Nile, which is the proper Αἴγυπτος in the masculine gender; while the country, derivatively called from it as the γῆ Αἴγυπτος, takes the feminine. We shall hereafter see how Proteus belongs to the circle of nautical and therefore Phœnician tradition[240]. That deity has upon him all the marks of the outer and non-Grecian world. He is no less an admirable type of the πρωκτής, than a regular servant of Neptune, Ποσειδάωνος ὑποδμώς (Od. iv. 386). This connection with Neptune by no means makes him Greek: Neptune was the god of the θάλασσα, which extended beyond the circle of Greek experience, even to the borders of Ocean. We see set upon the whole of this adventure the same singular religious token as upon the remote adventures of Ulysses, namely this, that Menelaus passes beyond the ordinary charge of the Hellenic deities. The means of deliverance are pointed out to him, not by Minerva, but by Eidothea, daughter of Proteus himself, whose name, function, and relationship alike remind us that it was Ino Leucothea, daughter of the Phœnician Cadmus, who appeared to Ulysses for his deliverance, in a nearly similar border-zone of the marine territory lying between the world of fable and the world of experience; for the position of Egypt was in this respect like that of Phæacia. It would seem, then, as if Homer himself knew Egypt mainly through a Phœnician medium. Of the Phœnician intercourse with that country we may safely rest assured, from their proximity, from their resort thither mentioned in Homer[241], and from the traces they left in Egypt itself. It seems a probable conjecture that they had from a very early date a colony or factory in Egypt, by which they carried on their commerce with it. In the time of Herodotus, there was at Memphis a large and well-cared-for τέμενος or demesne of Proteus, whom the priests reported to be the successor of Sesostris on the Egyptian throne. This demesne was surrounded by the habitations of the ‘Tyrian Phœnices,’ and the whole plain in which it stood was called the Τυρίων στρατόπεδον. There is another tradition in Herodotus, according to which the Phœnicians furnished Egypt with the fleet, which in the time of Necho circumnavigated Africa[242].