THEORY OF THE EARTH. 165 



who built Memphis, but Uchoraeus ; and long be- 

 fore his time Busiris the second had built Thebes. 

 The eighth ancestor of Uchoraeus, Osymandyas, 

 possessed himself of Bactria, and crushed rebel- 

 lions in it. Long after him, Sesoosis made still 

 more extensive conquests, having proceeded as far 

 as the Ganges, and returned by Scythia and the 

 Tanais. Unfortunately these names of kings are 

 unknown to all the preceding historians, and none 

 of the nations which they conquered have preserv- 

 ed the slightest traces of them. As to the gods 

 and heroes, their reign, according to Diodorus, ex- 

 tended through a space of 18,000 years, while 

 that of the human sovereigns was 15,000. Four 

 hundred and seventy of the kings were Egyptians, 

 and four Ethiopians, without reckoning the Per- 

 sians and Macedonians. The fables, besides, with 

 which the whole is intermingled, do not yield in 

 childishness to those of Herodotus. 



In the eighteenth year of the Christian era, 

 Germanicus, the nephew of Tiberius, led by the 

 desire of becoming acquainted with the antiqui- 

 ties of this celebrated land, went over to Egypt, 

 at the risk of incurring the displeasure of a prince 

 so suspicious as his uncle, and proceeded up the 

 Nile as far as Thebes. It was no more Sesostris 

 or Osymandyas, of whom the priests spoke to him 

 as a conqueror, but Rhamses, who, at the head of 

 700,000 men, had invaded Libya, Ethiopia, Me- 



