According to their own traditions, they colonized in a remote age.

They themselves laid claim to Danaus: and the mythus of the expedition of Osiris is not improbably construed into a figurative representation of the spread of Egyptian civilization by the means of colonies.

Besides, Egypt was subjected to more than one revolution, by which a large portion of her population was expelled the land, and scattered over the neighbouring regions [13].

And even granting that Egyptians fitted out no maritime expedition--they could easily have transplanted themselves in Phoenician vessels, or Grecian rafts--from Asia into Greece.

Nor can we forget that Egypt [14] for a time was the habitation, and Thebes the dominion, of the Phoenicians, and that hence, perhaps, the origin of the dispute whether certain of the first foreign civilizers of Greece were Phoenicians or Egyptians: The settlers might come from Egypt, and be by extraction Phoenicians: or Egyptian emigrators might well have accompanied the Phoenician.