101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

Myths of the Founders 177
This portion of the story of Joseph shares some remarkable similarities to an
Egyptian tale preserved in the writings of Herodotus in his history of Egypt. According
to this Greek historian.
After the reign of Sethos [i.e. Set], the priest of Hephaestus [i.e. Ptah], the Egyptians
for a time were freed from monarchical government. Unable, however, to do
without a king, for long they divided Egypt into twelve regions and appointed a king
for each of them. United by intermarriage, the twelve kings governed in mutual
friendliness on the understanding that none of them should attempt to oust any of
the others, or to increase his power at the expense of the rest. They came to the
understanding, and ensured that the terms of it should be rigorously kept, because, at
the time when the twelve kingdoms were first established, an oracle declared that the
one who should pour a libation from the bronze cup in the temple of Hephaestus
[i.e., Ptah] would become master of all Egypt.
Herodotus then went on to discuss other events in the history of Egypt, but after
a while he returned to the above story.
Now as time went on, the twelve kings, who had kept their pact not to molest one
another, met to offer sacrifice in the temple of Hephaestus. It was the last day of the
festival, and when the moment for pouring the libation had come, the high priest, in
going to fetch the golden cups which were always used for the purpose, made a mistake
in the number and brought one too few, so that Psammetichus, finding himself
without a cup, quite innocently and without any ulterior motive took his helmet off,
held it out to receive the wine, and so made his libation. The other kings at once connected
this action with the oracle, which had declared that whichever of them poured
their libation from a bronze cup, should become sole monarch of Egypt. They proceeded
to question him, and when they were satisfied that he had acted with no malice,
they decided not to put him to death, but to strip him of the greater part of his
power and banish him to the marsh-country, forbidding him to leave it or have any
communication with the rest of Egypt.
After giving some details about Psammetichus’s background and of a second oracle
predicting that bronze men from the sea would aid the king, Herodotus tells us