Histories

pointing to these and counting, the priests showed me that each succeeded his father; they went through the whole line of figures, back to the earliest from that of the man who had most recently died.

Thus, when Hecataeus had traced his descent and claimed that his sixteenth forefather was a god, the priests too traced a line of descent according to the method of their counting; for they would not be persuaded by him that a man could be descended from a god; they traced descent through the whole line of three hundred and forty-five figures, not connecting it with any ancestral god or hero, but declaring each figure to be a “Piromis” the son of a “Piromis”; in Greek, one who is in all respects a good man.

Thus they showed that all those whose statues stood there had been good men, but quite unlike gods.

Before these men, they said, the rulers of Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt were gods, but none had been contemporary with the human priests. Of these gods one or another had in succession been supreme; the last of them to rule the country was Osiris' son Horus, whom the Greeks call Apollo; he deposed Typhon,[*](Typhon is the Egyptian Set, the god of destruction.) and was the last divine king of Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt. Osiris is, in the Greek language, Dionysus.