They also relate that the
Saite Tafnakhti, returning from an expedition against the Arabs, during
which he had been obliged to renounce the pomp and luxuries of life, had
solemnly cursed him, and had caused his imprecations to be inscribed
upon a "stele"[21] 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 with
Phtah and Ramses II.; his name figured at the head of the royal lists,
and his cult continued till the time of the Ptolemies.
[Footnote 21: The burned tile showing the impression of the stylus, made
on the clay while plastic.--ED.]
His immediate successors have only a semblance of reality, such as he
had. The lists give the order of succession, it is true, with the years
of their reigns almost to a day, sometimes the length of their lives,
but we may well ask whence the chroniclers procured so much precise
information. They were in the same position as ourselves with regard to
these ancient kings: they knew them by a tradition of a later age, by a
fragment papyrus fortuitously preserved in a temple, by accidentally
coming across some monument bearing their name, and were reduced, as it
were, to put together the few facts which they possessed, or to supply
such as were wanting by conjectures, often in a very improbable manner.
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