* The example of the “royal sons of Ramses” explains the
     variant which makes “Painotmu, son of Manakhpirri,” into
     “Painotmu, royal son of Psiukhannit-Miamon.”

The relationship of which he boasted was a distant one, but many of his contemporaries who claimed to be of the line of Sesostris, and called themselves “royal sons of Ramses,” traced their descent from a far more remote ancestor.

[Illustration:  401.jpg THE MUMMIES OF QUEEN MAKERI AND HER CHILD]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-
     Bey.

The death of one high priest, or the appointment of his successor, was often the occasion of disturbances; the jealousies between his children by the same or by different wives were as bitter as those which existed in the palace of the Pharaohs, and the suzerain himself was obliged at times to interfere in order to restore peace.  It was owing to an intervention of this kind that Manakhpirri was called on to replace his brother Masahirti.  A section of the Theban population had revolted, but the rising had been put down by the Tanite Siamon, and its leaders banished to the Oasis; Manakhpirri had thereupon been summoned to court and officially invested with the pontificate in the XXVth year of the king’s reign.  But on his return to Karnak, the new high priest desired to heal old feuds, and at once recalled the exiles.* Troubles and disorders appeared to beset the Thebans, and, like the last of the Ramessides, they were engaged in a perpetual struggle against robbers.**

     * This appears in the Maunier Stele preserved for some
     time in the “Maison Francaise” at Luxor, and now removed to
     the Louvre.

     ** The series of high priests side by side with the
     sovereigns of the XXIst dynasty may be provisionally
     arranged as follows:—­

[Illustration:  402.jpg TABLE]

The town, deprived of its former influx of foreign spoil, became more and more impoverished, and its population gradually dwindled.  The necropolis suffered increasingly from pillagers, and the burying-places of the kings were felt to be in such danger, that the authorities, despairing of being able to protect them, withdrew the mummies from their resting-places.  The bodies of Seti I., Ramses II., and Ramses III. were once more carried down the valley, and, after various removals, were at length huddled together for safety in the tomb of Amenothes I. at Drah-abu’l-Neggah.

The Tanite Pharaohs seemed to have lacked neither courage nor good will.  The few monuments which they have left show that to some extent they carried on the works begun by their predecessors.  An unusually high inundation had injured the temple at Karnak, the foundations had been denuded by the water, and serious damage would have been done, had not the work of reparation been immediately undertaken.  Nsbindidi reopened the sandstone quarries between Erment and