northern propylae, Ehampsinitus those on the west, Psammetichus the south, Asychis those on the east, the most noteworthy of them all.  A native of Memphis, born at the foot of the pyramids, had been familiar with the names of Menes and Cheops from childhood; he was consequently apt to attribute to them everything of importance achieved by the Pharaohs of the old days.  Menes had built the temple, Menes had founded the city, Menes had created the soil on which the city stood, and preserved it from floods by his dykes.  The thoughtful traveller would assent, for had he not himself observed the action of the mud; a day’s journey from the coast one could not let down a plummet without drawing it up covered with a blackish slime, a clear proof that the Nile continued to gain upon the sea.  Menes, at all events, had really existed; but as to Asychis, Moris, Proteus, Pheron, and most of the characters glibly enumerated by Herodotus, it would be labour lost to search for their names among the inscriptions; they are mere puppets of popular romance, some of their names, such as Piraui or Pruti, being nothing more than epithets employed by the story-tellers to indicate in general terms the heroes of their tales.  We can understand how strangers, placed at the mercy of their dragoman, were misled by this, and tempted to transform each title into a man, taking Pruti and Piraui to be Pharaoh Proteus and Pharaoh Pheron, each of them celebrated for his fabulous exploits.  The guides told Herodotus, and Herodotus retails to us, as sober historical facts, the remedy employed by this unhistorical Pheron in order to recover his sight; the adventures of Paris and Helen at the court of Proteus,* and the droll tricks played by a thief at the expense of the simple Ehampsinitus.

     * Some dragomans identified the Helen of the Homeric legend
     with the “foreign Aphrodite” who had a temple in the Tyrian
     quarter at Memphis, and who was really a Semitic divinity.

[Illustration:  359.jpg THE STEP PYRAMID SEEN FROM THE GROVE OP PALM TREES TO THE NORTH OF SAQQARAH]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Haussoullier.

The excursions made by the Greek traveller in the environs of Memphis were very similar to those taken by modern visitors to Cairo:  on the opposite bank of the Nile there was Heliopolis with its temple of Ra, then there were the quarries of Turah, which had been worked from time immemorial, yet never exhausted, and from which the monuments he had been admiring, and the very Pyramids themselves had been taken stone by stone.*

     * These are “the quarries in the Arabian Mountain,”
     mentioned by Herodotus without indication of the local name.

The Sphinx probably lay hidden beneath the sand, and the nearest Pyramids, those at Saqqarah, were held in small esteem by visitors;* they were told as they passed by that the step Pyramid was the most ancient of all, having been erected by Uenephes, one of the kings of the first dynasty, and they asked no further questions.