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.

Among the Greeks, Heracles, Dionysus, and Pan are held to be the youngest of the gods. But in Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt, Pan[*](The Egyptian Khem.) is the most ancient of these and is one of the eight gods who are said to be the earliest of all; Heracles belongs to the second dynasty (that of the so-called twelve gods); and Dionysus to the third, which came after the twelve.

How many years there were between Heracles and the reign of Amasis, I have already shown; Pan is said to be earlier still; the years between Dionysus and Amasis are the fewest, and they are reckoned by the Egyptians at fifteen thousand.