ABSTRACT
ACCORDING to the King List of Manetho the XXVlIIt11 Dynasty contained one king, who according to Julius Africanus and the Syncellus reigned six years; his name is given as Al\IYRTAEUS, 'AjWPTato';, and he is said to have come from Sais, "VVe have already seen that in the reign of Artaxerxes a great rebellion broke out against the Persians, which was led by Inaros, the son of Psammetichus, from Sais, and we know from classical writers that he was greatly helped in his resistance to their authority, not only by the Greeks, but by his own friend, who was also a native of his own city, called Amyrtaeus. Inaros was a Libyan, but Amyrtaeus was probably an Egyptian, and he was no doubt descended from some member of the royal house of Sais ; as he is mentioned with Inaros as a leader of the revolt, we may assume that, like Inaros, he was the king or governor of some district or city in the Eastern Delta. When Inaros was defeated by the
Persians, his friend Amyrtaeus fled to an island called Elbo, by which we must understand some place among the papyrus swamps to the north of the Delt a. According to Herodotus (ii. 140), the blind king Anysis retired to this island before the advance of Shabaka, king of Nubia, and he is said to have lived there for fifty years, during which time he made solid the island with ashes and earth. When any Egyptian came and brought him provisions, he asked them to bring him ashes also, and thus he formed a settlement in the fens of Egypt, which measured "ten stades in each direction." The exact position of this island is unknown, but it is quite clear that a considerable amount of banking up of earth had to be done in order to render it habitable; its position was also unknown to the Egyptians generally, for Herodotus says that "no one before Amyrtaeus was able to discover this " island; but for more than seven hundred years, the " kings who preceded Amyrtaeus were unable to find it " out ."
