[Illustration: 343.jpg NECKLACE, BEARING NAME OF MENES. 1]
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin after Prisse d'Avenues. The gold medallions engraved with the name of Menés are ancient, and perhaps go back to the XXth dynasty; the setting is entirely modern, with the exception of the three oblong pendants of cornelian.
When once this half-mythical Menés was firmly established in his position, there was little difficulty in inventing a story which would portray him as an ideal sovereign. He was represented as architect, warrior, and statesman; he had begun the temple of Phtah, written laws and regulated the worship of the gods, particularly that of Hâpis, and he had conducted expeditions against the Libyans. When he lost his only son in the flower of his age, the people improvised a hymn of mourning to console him--the "Maneros"--both the words and the tune of which were handed down from generation to generation. He did not, moreover, disdain the luxuries of the table, for he invented the art of serving a dinner, and the mode of eating it in a reclining posture. One day, while hunting, his dogs, excited by something or other, fell upon him to devour him. He escaped with difficulty, and, pursued by them, fled to the shore of Lake Moeris, and was there brought to bay; he was on the point of succumbing to them, when a crocodile took him on his back and carried him across to the other side.[*] In gratitude he built a new town, which he called Crocodilopolis, and assigned to it for its god the crocodile which had saved him; he then erected close to it the famous labyrinth and a pyramid for his tomb. Other traditions show him in a less favourable light. They accuse him of having, by horrible crimes, excited against him the anger of the gods, and allege that after a reign of sixty to sixty-two years, he was killed by a hippopotamus which came forth from the Nile.[**]
* This is an episode from the legend of Osiris: at Phihe, in the little building of the Antonines, may be seen a representation of a crocodile crossing the Nile, carrying on his back the mummy of the god. The same episode is also found in the tale of Onus el Ujûd and of Uard f'il-Ikmâm, where the crocodile leads the hero to his beautiful prisoner in the Island of Philæ. Ebers, _Ægypte_, French trans., vol. ii. pp. 415, 416, has shown how this episode in the Arab story must have been inspired by the bas-relief at Philæ and by the scene which it portrays: the temple is still called "Kasr," and the island "Geziret Onus el-Ujûd."