* Herodotus seems to have been ignorant of the real name of the founder of Cyrene, which has been preserved for us by Pindar, by Callimachus, by the spurious Heraclides of Pontus, and by the chronologists of the Christian epoch.  Herodotus says that Battos signifies king in the language of Libya.

     ** The description given by Herodotus of these Libyan tribes
     agrees with the slight amount of information furnished by
     the Egyptian monuments for the thirteenth century B.C.

The most civilised of these tribes were those which now dwelt nearest to the coast:  first the Adyrmakhides, who were settled beyond Marea, and had been semi-Egyptianised by constant intercourse with the inhabitants of the Delta; then the Giligammes, who dwelt between the port of Plynus and the island of Aphrodisias; and beyond these, again, the Asbystes, famed for their skill in chariot-driving, the Cabales, and the Auschises.  The oases of the hinterland were in the hands of the Nasamones and of the Mashauasha, whom the Greeks called Maxyes.

One of the revolutions so frequent among the desert tribes had compelled the latter to remove from their home near the Nile valley, to a district far to the west, on the banks of the river Triton.

[Illustration:  440.jpg THE OASIS OF AMOK AND THE SPRING OF THE SUN]

     Drawn by Boudier, from Minutoli.

There they had settled down in a permanent fashion, dwelling in houses of stone, and giving themselves up to the cultivation of the soil.  They continued, however, to preserve in their new life some of their ancient customs, such as that of painting their bodies with vermilion, and of shaving off the hair from their heads, with the exception of one lock which hung over the right ear.  The Theban Pharaohs had formerly placed garrisons in the most important oases, and had consecrated temples there to their god Amon.

[Illustration:  440b.jpg PORTION OF THE RUINS OF CYRENE]

One of these sanctuaries, built close to an intermittent spring, which gave forth alternately hot and cold water, had risen to great eminence, and the oracle of these Ammonians was a centre of pilgrimage from far and near.  The first Libyans who came into contact with the Greeks, the Asbystes and the Giligammes, received the new-comers kindly, giving them their daughters in marriage; from the fusion of the two races thus brought about sprang, first under Battos and then under his son Arkesilas I., an industrious and valiant race.

[Illustration:  443.jpg MAP OF LYBIA IN THE VITH CENTURY B.C.]