ABSTRACT
THE TWENTY-FOURTH DYNAS'fY. FROM: SArS.
son of the Sun, BAKENHENE}'.
BAKENHENEF, according to Manetho, was the only king of the XXIVth Dynasty, and he reigned six years; this statement is supported by the evidence of a stele found in the Serapeum at ~a~~ttra, whereon it is said that on the fifth day of the month Thoth of the sixth year of his reign an Apis bull died, and was buried in the same chamber as the one which had died in the thirty-seventh year of the reign of Shashanq IV.1 The information to be derived from the monuments concerning this king is scanty, and nearly all that is known of him is derived from Greek tradition. According to Diodorus (i. 34) he was the son of 'I'nephakh thos,? in Egyptian 'l'afnekhteth, the king of Sais, whose
acts have already been described. The same writer (i. 94) enumerates six great lawgivers in Egypt, among whom comes Bocchoris.l who is described as a " wise "and prudent man; he established everything that "concerned the kings, and prescribed exact rules and "laws for the making of contracts. He was so wise, "and of so piercing a judgment in his decisions , that " many of his sentences, for their excellency , are kept "in memory to this very day. He was, they say, of a "very weak constitution of body,» and extraordinary " covetous." Elsewhere it is said (i. 79) that he made a law that" if a man borrowed money, and the lender " had no writing to show for it, and the other denied "it upon oath, he should be quit of the debt; to that " end, therefore, in the first place, they were to sacrifice "to the goels, as men making conscience, and tender
"and scrupulous in taking of an oath." Several other Greek writers 1 extol the simplicity of the life of Bocchoris and praise his judicial acumen and justice, and centuries after his death wealthy noblemen in Italy decorated the walls of their houses with scenes in which the Egyptian king was depicted giving his decisions in the cases of the two women who both claimed to be the mother of a child, and of the two beggars, each of whom swore that a certain cloak was his property, and of the three beggars, each of whom declared that he was the rightful owner of a basket of food." On the other hand, Aelian" takes the view that Bocchoris did not deserve the reputation which he had acquired for judicial acumen and for a well-balanced and even mind and disposition, but that his nature was exactly the opposite, and goes on to say that he was once so irreligious as to make a savage bull fight with the sacred Mnevis Bull, and that Mnevis was grievously wounded in the side by the horns of the other bull, and died in consequence. By this act Bocchoris fell into shame and disgrace, and the Egyptians hated him ever after. The same writer (xii. 3, ed. Didot, p. 202) tells a story, in which, however, he has no belief, to the effect that in the days of Bocchoris a lamb was born which had eight legs, two tails, two heads, and four horns, and
which had the power of human speech i l\Ianetho also says (Cory, op. ci t., p. 126) that a sheep spoke in the reign of Bocchoris, but he gives no details of the physical characteristics of the animal. The legend of this lamb has also been found by Prof. Krall in a Demotic papyrus preserved in the collection of the Archduke Rainer, in which it is said that the animal portended danger from Assyria, that the images of the gods of Egypt should be taken to Nineveh (?), but should be brought back after a period of nine hundred years, when a new era of peace and prosperity would begin in Egypt.' Professor Wiedemann thought 2 that the number 990, which follows in Manetho after his statement about the length of the reign of Bocchoris, had reference to some chronological calculation, and judging by Prof. Krall's discovery it seems as if he were right. Legends of the kind which have grown up round the name of Bocchoris only prove that the Greeks possessed no genuine historical information about him."
