n of two years, as the shepherd
was one day coming into the hut to feed these children, they both cried
out, with hands extended towards their foster-father, _beccos, beccos_.
The shepherd, surprised to hear a language that was quite new to him, but
which they repeated frequently afterwards, sent advice of this to the
king, who ordered the children to be brought before him, in order that he
himself might be a witness to the truth of what was told him; and
accordingly both of them began, in his presence, to stammer out the sounds
above mentioned. Nothing now was wanting but to ascertain what nation it
was that used this word; and it was found that the Phrygians called bread
by this name. From this time they were allowed the honour of antiquity, or
rather of priority, which the Egyptians themselves, notwithstanding their
jealousy of it, and the many ages they had possessed this glory, were
obliged to resign to them. As goats were brought to these children, in
order that they might feed upon their milk, and historians do not say that
they were deaf, some are of opinion that they might have learnt the word
_bec_, or _beccos_, by mimicking the cry of those creatures.

Psammetichus died in the 24th year of Josias, king of Judah, and was
succeeded by his son Nechao.

(M89) NECHAO.(459) This prince is often mentioned in Scripture under the
name of Pharaoh-Necho.(460)

He attempted to join the Nile to the Red-Sea, by cutting a canal from one
to the other. The distance which separates them is at least a thousand
stadia.(461) After a hundred and twenty thousand workmen had lost their
lives in this attempt, Nechao was obliged to desist; the oracle which had
been consulted by him, having answered, that this new canal would open a
passage to the Barbarians (for so the Egyptians called all other nations)
to invade Egypt.

Nechao was more successful in another enterprise.(462) Skilful Phoenician
mariners, whom he had taken into his service, having sailed from the
Red-Sea in order to discover the coasts of Africa, went successfully round
it; and the third year after their setting out, returned to Egypt through
the Straits of Gibraltar. This was a very extraordinary voyage, in an age
when the compass was not known. It was made twenty-one centuries before
Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese, (by discovering the Cape of Good Hope, in the
year 1497,) found out the very same way to sail to the Indies, by which
these Phoenicians had come from then