As to the second half of your question, there absolutely was. As Hieroglyphics were not translated until the 19th century, then earlier scholars had to rely on Classical, Hellenistic or Roman texts that talked about Egypt, rather than any sources from Egypt itself. The Hellenistic historian Manetho made the most complete list of Egyptian rulers, and even then we now know a lot of his lists had some errors, either merging some rulers together or listing the same ruler twice. Also, it doesn't help that Manetho's work is completely lost, and the fragments of his lists quoted by other sources contradict each other (in Josephus, Africanus, and Eusebius).

Outside of Manetho, other Greco-Roman sources mention rulers of Egypt that are loosely based off of real people, but heavily embellished from legends or merging deeds from multiple different rulers. The most famous example of this, and essentially the Egyptian version of "King Arthur", is Sesostris.

The legends of Sesostris is mostly described by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, which says that he basically conquered the entire world, first pushing up the levant as far as modern-day Georgia, then pushing east through India and then going by sea across across the Indian Ocean to southern Arabia back to Egypt. Once he got back home, he had to depose his brother who had seized power in his absence. Herodotus personally believed it possible that Egypt conquered as far as Georgia, called Pontus at his time, on the grounds that people of that region looked African to him. This northern border of Sesostris is associated with the Caspian Gates in other myths, where supposedly monsters or demons further north prevented him from going farther. One legend says that when Alexander the Great reached this area, he found a statue of Sesostris that read "I conquered the world up to this point, and no farther".

The name Sesostris is based on the Egyptian name Senusret, which refers to several Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom. However, the legends of his conquests seem to mostly draw on the lives of Thutmosis III and Ramesses II.