th the words and the tune of which were
handed down from generation to generation. He did not, moreover, disdain
the luxuries of the table, for he invented the art of serving a dinner,
and the mode of eating it in a reclining posture. One day, while
hunting, his dogs, excited by something or other, fell upon him to
devour him. He escaped with difficulty, and, pursued by them, fled to
the shore of Lake Moeris, and was there brought to bay; he was on the
point of succumbing to them, when a crocodile took him on his back and
carried him across to the other side.[*] In gratitude he built a new
town, which he called Crocodilopolis, and assigned to it for its god the
crocodile which had saved him; he then erected close to it the famous
labyrinth and a pyramid for his tomb. Other traditions show him in a
less favourable light. They accuse him of having, by horrible crimes,
excited against him the anger of the gods, and allege that after a reign
of sixty to sixty-two years, he was killed by a hippopotamus which came
forth from the Nile.[**]

* This is an episode from the legend of Osiris: at Phihe,
in the little building of the Antonines, may be seen a
representation of a crocodile crossing the Nile, carrying on
his back the mummy of the god. The same episode is also
found in the tale of Onus el Ujud and of Uard f'il-Ikmam,
where the crocodile leads the hero to his beautiful prisoner
in the Island of Philae. Ebers, _AEgypte_, French trans., vol.
ii. pp. 415, 416, has shown how this episode in the Arab
story must have been inspired by the bas-relief at Philae and
by the scene which it portrays: the temple is still called
"Kasr," and the island "Geziret Onus el-Ujud."

** In popular romances, this was the usual end of criminals
of every kind; we shall see that another king, Akhthoes the
founder of the IXth dynasty, after committing horrible
misdeeds, was killed, in the same way as Menes, by a
hippopotamus.

They also related that the Saite Tafnakhti, returning from an expedition
against the Arabs, during which he had been obliged to renounce the pomp
and luxuries of royal life, had solemnly cursed him, and had caused his
imprecations to be inscribed upon a stele set up in the temple of Amon
at Thebes. Nevertheless, in the memory that Egypt preserved of its first
Pharaoh, the good outweighed the evil. He was worshipped in Memphis side
by side wit