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

Myths of the Founders 179
The Herodotus account begins with a claim that prior to Psammetichus, Egypt
experienced a period of kinglessness and prior to this period a King Sethos reigned.
This does not coincide with Egyptian history for the seventh century B.C. There was
neither a period of kinglessness nor a king Sethos in this time frame. (By the seventh
century B.C., Sethos, i.e., Set, had strong negative connotations as a symbol of evil.)
The last known King Sethos was Sethos II and before him Sethos I, both from
the Nineteenth dynasty in the thirteenth century B.C. There was no period of kinglessness
prior to their reigns, either.
Throughout Herodotus’s history of Egypt, he frequently distorted and inaccurately
recorded the dynastic chronology, having earlier dynasties following later ones.
In fact, Herodotus places Psammetichus’s predecessors from the Twenty-fifth dynasty
immediately after the kings of the fourth dynasty, an error of almost two thousand years.
This suggests that Herodotus’s King Sethos and period of kinglessness belong
more properly to the Hyksos period, when Set-worshipping aliens displaced the legitimate
Theban rulers. The Egyptians considered the Hyksos period to be one without
a legitimate Egyptian king.
Whether the Egyptian story of the twelve kings originated in the sixteenth century
Hyksos period or the seventh century Psammetichus period, there was ample
opportunity for the story to have influenced the biblical writers who finalized the
biblical text.