360 
These names have none of the grand combinations with the 
names of the Sun (Ra) and other deities which we find every- 
where in the later lists. Certainly not till after the time of the 
leading idolater Kakou do these appear ; even the fifteenth, 
which is said to signify “ good by So/cari ,” seems to refer to the 
supreme god of Memphis, not unlike our expressiou, “ By the 
grace of God/’ Mena and his first successors might set them- 
selves up as objects of worship; but the nation was not 
degraded to animal-worship, as in later times. To the investi- 
gation of this subject I shall return. 
The name which terminates this series of kings at the end of 
the Illrd Dynasty is Senoferu,* which is said to signify “ the 
Improver,” and he is also called “ the Master of Justice.” He 
is recorded by the Egyptian monuments as a beneficent king. 
He seems to have conquered the inhabitants of the Wadi 
Magharah (the Amalekites, probably), and in his days the mines 
of the district of Mount Sinai became either for the first time, 
or more abundantly, the source of the supplies of copper and of 
a blue stone called mafkat, much esteemed in Egypt. Chabas 
calls it mafek, and is inclined to identify it with malachite. 
The Vlth Dynasty terminated, according to Manetho, with 
the reign of the celebrated beauty Nitocris, whose name is 
transmitted to posterity in connection with the tragedy in 
which she extinguished both herself and the nobility of Egypt. 
It is as though a cataclysm had passed over the land ; for from 
her time the old empire disappears, and, beyond a barren list 
of names, we seem at present to have nothing to guide us across 
the dreary waste of history till we reach nearly to the end of 
the Xlth Dynasty. Eor 600 years, if w r e take the estimate of 
Brugsch (p. 78), the monumental guidance fails. It recom- 
mences only with the Pharaoh Neb-ker-rd. 
We open the Xlltli Dynasty with more certainty. It 
numbered eight Pharaohs, who reigned either 160 years or 
213 years 1 month and 17 days. The latter date, though so 
exact, is manifestly wrong, because it includes reigns which 
overlap each other. The former is as certainly wrong, because 
the addition sum of the reigns gives eight years more, and 
because one reign is avowedly omitted. In such confusion is 
the Egyptian chronology ! 
These small inaccuracies are trifles; but what can we say to 
the following. Herodotus tells us the priests informed him that 
“ when Mceris was king, the Nile overflowed all Egypt below 
Memphis so soon as it rose so little as eight cubits. Now 
* Brugsch, p. 1(5. 
