were ever discovered; it therefore seemed probable
that they were purely legendary figures, in whose time (if they ever did
exist) Egypt was still a semi-barbarous nation. The jejune stories told
about them by Manetho seemed to confirm this idea. Mena, the reputed
founder of the monarchy, was generally regarded as a historical figure,
owing to the persistence of his name in all ancient literary accounts
of the beginnings of Egyptian history; for it was but natural to suppose
that the name of the man who unified Egypt and founded Memphis would
endure in the mouths of the people. But with regard to his successors
no such supposition seemed probable, until the time of Sneferu and the
pyramid-builders.

This was the critical view. Another school of historians accepted all
the kings of the lists as historical _en bloc_, simply because the
Egyptians had registered their names as kings. To them Teta, Ateth, and
Ata were as historical as Mena.

Modern discovery has altered our view, and truth is seen to lie between
the opposing schools, as usual. The kings after Mena do not seem to be
such entirely unhistorical figures as the extreme critics thought;
the names of several of them, e.g. Merpeba, of the Ist Dynasty, are
correctly given in the later lists, and those of others were simply
misread, e. g. that of Semti of the same dynasty, misread "Hesepti" by
the list-makers. On the other hand, Mena himself has become a somewhat
doubtful quantity. The real names of most of the early monarchs of Egypt
have been recovered for us by the latest excavations, and we can now see
when the list-makers of the XIXth Dynasty were right and when they were
wrong, and can distinguish what is legendary in their work from what is
really historical. It is true that they very often appear to have been
wrong, but, on the other hand, they were sometimes unexpectedly near
the mark, and the general number and arrangement of their kings
seems correct; so that we can still go to them for assistance in the
arrangement of the names which are communicated to us by the newly
discovered monuments. Manetho's help, too, need never be despised
because he was a copyist of copyists; we can still use him to direct our
investigations, and his arrangement of dynasties must still remain the
framework of our chronological scheme, though he does not seem to have
been always correct as to the places in which the dynasties originated.

More than the names of the kings have