The Rhampsinitos of folk-lore was similarly rich. He built a treasury for his wealth beside his palace, which should secure it against all attempts at robbery. But the architect left in it a stone which could be easily removed by any one who knew its secret, and before he died the secret was communicated to his two sons. To the amazement of the king, therefore, the gold began to disappear, though his seals remained unbroken and the doors fast locked. He set a trap, accordingly, by the side of the chests of gold; and one of the thieves was caught in it. He thereupon induced his brother to cut off his head, so that his body might not be recognised, and to decamp with it. Next morning Rhampsinitos found the headless corpse, which was thereupon exposed to public view under the protection of armed guards, who were ordered to arrest whoever showed any signs of recognising it. The mother of the dead man, frantic at the treatment of his body, which would deprive him of all hope in the next world, threatened to disclose the whole story unless her surviving son could secure his brother’s corpse and give it honourable burial. Loading several asses with wine-skins, therefore, he drove them past the place where the guards sat over the corpse. There he allowed some of the wine to escape, accidentally as it were, and when the guards began eagerly to drink it he craftily encouraged them to do so until they had all fallen into a drunken sleep. He then seized the body and carried it to his mother. The king was now more than ever desirous of discovering such a master-thief, and ordered his daughter to adopt the Babylonian custom of sitting in public and admitting the attentions of any one who passed on condition that he told her the cleverest trick he had ever performed. The thief provided himself with the arm of a mummy, which he concealed under his cloak, and thus prepared presented himself to the princess and disclosed to her all he had done. As she tried to seize him, he left the dead man’s arm in her hand and escaped. The king, struck with admiration, determined that so exceedingly clever a youth should be his own son-in-law, and issued a proclamation not only pardoning him but allowing him to marry his daughter. Such was the way in which Egyptian history was constructed by the combined efforts of the popular imagination, the foreign dragomen, and Herodotos!