"All the Egyptians worship not the same gods, but Isis and Osiris they all worship and this Osiris is the same as he whom the Greeks call Bacchus or Dionysus, and his feast is in all things like to that which the Greeks keep to their God, only that there is no acting of plays. As for Isis the Greeks call her Demeter, that is to say, being interpreted, Mother Earth.... "Let so much then be said about the Egyptians and their customs and manner of life, and the gods whom they worship." [Illustration: EGYPTIAN NUMERATION.] CHAPTER III. THE PYRAMID AGE. Menes was the king who succeeded in accomplishing the unification of Egypt. We are told by Manetho that he was at first chief or governor of the eighth nome of Upper Egypt, whose capital city was Thinis, and being ambitious, subdued the surrounding nomes, until at last all Egypt was brought under his control. No doubt earlier chieftains had begun the work of conquest and left the completion to Menes, whose personality and executive strength were sufficient to efface the reigns of his predecessors. Having brought the Delta under his control and crowned himself with the white crown of Upper and the red crown of Lower Egypt, Menes realized that a capital for such a straggling kingdom as his would best be centrally located. He therefore fixed upon a site just south of the apex of the delta and built the city of Memphis. Quite possibly there was a settlement here before this time. It happened that the Nile flowed close to the western hills in this locality. The king knew well that his capital would be safer and the more easily protected were the river between it and possible Asiatic invaders on the east. So he undertook what has ever since been regarded as a bold feat of engineering; he built a high embankment across the Nile and compelled the stream to seek a new course farther east. Filling in the old channel, he built a wall around the new city, caused a temple to be at once erected to Ptah, the ancient deity of the locality, and shortly a town grew up around it. Thus we see the beginnings of the Old Empire, so called by Manetho and subsequent historians. For convenience scholars sometimes group Dynasties I. and II. and Dynasties III. to VI. together. The first period (3400-2980 B.C.) is called the Thinite age because the rulers of these two dynasties came from Thinis. The name Old Kingdom is then limited to Dynasties III. to VI. (2980-2475 B.C.) It would be useless for us to attempt to become familiar with all these early kings--some fifty in number--with reigns varying from one to many years. Should we succeed in collecting the meager facts known of each we would have little to repay us for our trouble. It is more to the purpose that we know something about the period as a whole--its general characteristics and attainments.