Herodotos knows that Psammetikhos was king of Sais and that his father’s name had been Necho. But when he goes on to say that Necho had been slain by the Ethiopian Sabako, and that Psammetikhos himself had been driven in consequence into Syria, he takes us into the domain of fiction and not of fact. Necho had been one of twenty Egyptian satraps under Esar-haddon and Assur-bani-pal, and though he had once been carried in chains to Assyria on a charge of treason, he had returned to his government loaded with honours. Sabako had been dead long before, and Tirhakah was vainly endeavouring to drive the Assyrians and their vassal-satraps out of Egypt. Still further from the truth was the legend which associated Psammetikhos with the Fayyûm. When the Egyptians had been “freed,” we are told, after the reign of the priest of Ptah, there arose twelve kings who divided the country between them. They married into each other’s families and swore an oath ever to remain friends. By way of leaving a monument of themselves they built the Labyrinth, with its twelve courts, each court for a king, six of them being on the north side and six on the south. But an oracle had announced that this friendly intercourse would be broken if ever one of them at their annual gathering in the temple of Ptah should pour a libation to the god from a bronze helmet. The prince who did so would become king of all Egypt. This untoward accident eventually occurred. Psammetikhos on one occasion accidentally used his helmet in place of the proper libation-bowl, and he was thereupon chased away by his colleagues, first into the marshes and then into Syria. An oracle, however, again came to his help. It declared that he would be avenged when men of bronze came from the sea, and, taking the hint, he hired some Ionian and Karian pirates, armed with bronze, who had landed for the sake of plunder, and with their assistance became undisputed master of Egypt. With this story of the foundation of the twenty-sixth dynasty, the Egyptian folk-lore of Herodotos came fitly to an end. The twelve kings owe their origin to the twelve courts of the Labyrinth. They are a reminiscence of the twenty vassal-kings or satraps whom the Assyrians appointed to govern the country, and among whom Psammetikhos and his father had been included. But even the twelve courts are not altogether correct. We learn from Strabo that there were many more than twelve—as many, in fact, as were the nomes of Egypt. This makes us distrustful of the further statement of Herodotos that the halls contained one thousand five hundred chambers above the ground, and one thousand five hundred below. The information must have come from the guides, and it is not likely that he verified it. To count three thousand chambers would have occupied at least a day.