Of Thothmes and Amenôphis and the other great monarchs of the eighteenth dynasty whose memorials were to be found chiefly in the south, Herodotos had never heard. All that he knew of the kings of Egypt before the age of Psammetikhos was derived from the stories which his guides attached to the monuments which he actually saw. Had he visited the temples and tombs of Thebes and Abydos and Assuan we should have been told how Memnon led his troops to Troy or how Osymandyas conquered the world. But we have to turn to others for the dragoman’s tales of Upper Egypt; Herodotos could not record them, for he was never there. The Fayyûm is the southernmost limit of his historical knowledge, because it is also the southernmost limit of his geographical knowledge. And yet here and there we come across notices of Upper Egypt, some of which have been written by an eye-witness. But the eye-witness was not Herodotos himself, and in giving them he generally gives an indication of the fact. Thus he describes Khemmis or Ekhmîm as “near Neapolis,” the modern Qeneh, although the distance between the two towns is really ninety-five miles, a voyage of at least three days, and Neapolis was but an insignificant city by the side of Khemmis itself, or of other towns like This and Abydos that were nearer to it. Even Tentyris or Denderah, with its ancient temple of Hathor opposite Neapolis, was more important and better-known, while Thebes itself was only forty-five miles higher up the river. But the account given by Herodotos of Khemmis and its temple is a mere product of the imagination. Indeed, he implies that he received it from certain “people of Khemmis” whom he had questioned, probably through his interpreter. They told him that the temple, of which a few remains are still visible, and which was really dedicated to Min or Amon-Khem, was that of the Greek hero Perseus—a name suggested, it may be, by its likeness to that of the sacred persea tree. Each year, it was further alleged, gymnastic games in the Greek fashion were celebrated in honour of the foreign deity, who at times appeared to his worshippers, leaving behind him his sandal famous in Greek mythology. But the inventive powers of the informants of the Greek traveller did not stop here. He further assures us that the pylon of the temple bore on the summits of its two towers two images of the deity. The statement is of itself sufficient to discredit the whole story and to prove that Herodotos could never have seen the temple with his own eyes. The watch-towers that guarded the entrance of an Egyptian temple never had, and never could have, images on their roofs. They were needed for other purposes, and the very idea of their supporting statues was contrary to the first principles of Egyptian architecture and religion. It was a conception wholly Greek.