Herodotes - pannous/hieros GitHub Wiki

Hitherto my own observation and judgment and inquiry are the vouchers for that which I have said; but from this point onwards I am about to tell the history of Egypt according to that which I heard, to which will be added also something of that which I have myself seen.
Of Min, who first became king of Egypt, the priests said that on the
one hand he banked off the site of Memphis from the river: for the
whole stream of the river used to flow along by the sandy mountain- range on the side of Libya, but Min formed by embankments that bend of the river which lies to the South about a hundred furlongs above Memphis, and thus he dried up the old stream and conducted the river
so that it flowed in the middle between the mountains: and even now
this bend of the Nile is by the Persians kept under very careful
watch, that it may flow in the channel to which it is confined,[83]
and the bank is repaired every year; for if the river should break
through and overflow in this direction, Memphis would be in danger of being overwhelmed by flood. When this Min, who first became king, had made into dry land the part which was dammed off, on the one hand, I say, he founded in it that city which is now called Memphis; for Memphis too is in the narrow part of Egypt;[84] and outside the city
he dug round it on the North and West a lake communicating with the
river, for the side towards the East is barred by the Nile itself.

Then secondly he established in the city the temple of Hephaistos a great work and most worthy of mention. 100. After this man the priests enumerated to me from a papyrus roll the names of** other kings, three hundred and thirty** in number; and in all these generations of men eighteen were Ethiopians, one was a woman, a native Egyptian, and the rest were men and of Egyptian race: and the name of the woman who reigned was the same as that of the Babylonian queen, namely Nitocris.

…

Therefore passing these by I shall make mention of the king who came after these, whose name was Sesostris. He (the priests said)
first of all set out with ships of war from the Arabian gulf and
subdued those who dwelt by the shores of the Erythraian Sea, until as he sailed he came to a sea which could no further be navigated by reason of shoals: then secondly, after he had returned to Egypt, according to the report of the priests he took a great army[86] and marched over the continent, subduing every nation which stood in his way: and those of them whom he found valiant and fighting desperately for their freedom, in their lands he set up pillars which told by inscriptions his own name and the name of his country, and how he had subdued them by his power; but as to those of whose cities he obtained possession without fighting or with ease, on their pillars he
inscribed words after the same tenor as he did for the nations which
had shown themselves courageous, and in addition he drew upon them the hidden parts of a woman, desiring to signify by this that the people
were cowards and effeminate. 103. Thus doing he traversed the continent, until at last** he passed over to Europe from Asia and subdued the Scythians and also the Thracians**. These, I am of opinion, were the furthest[87] people to which the Egyptian army came, for in their country the pillars are found to have been set up, but in the
land beyond this they are no longer found.

…

For the people of Colchis are evidently Egyptian, and this I perceived
for myself before I heard it from others. So when I had come to
consider the matter I asked them both; and the Colchians had remembrance of the Egyptians more than the Egyptians of the Colchians;

(In the late eighth century BC, Sarduri II the King of Urartu, inscribed his victory over Qulḫa on a stele; )