Even had they not begged it to do so, it would have been compelled before long to intervene, for Tafnakhti was already on his way to attack it; Pionkki charged Luamarsakni and Pu-arama, the generals he had already stationed in the Thebaid, to hold Tafnakhti in check, till he was able to get together the remainder of his army and descend the Nile to support them.  Their instructions were to spare none of the rebellious towns, but to “capture their men and their beasts, and their ships on the river; to allow none of the fellaheen to go out into the fields, nor any labourer to his labour, but to attack Hermopolis and harass it daily.”  They followed out these orders, though, it would seem, without result, until the reinforcements from Nubia came up:  their movements then became more actively offensive, and falling on Tafnakhti’s ships, which were making for Thebes heavily laden with men and stores, they sunk several of them.

[Illustration:  262.jpg RUINS OF OXYRRHYNCHOS AND THE MODERN TOWN OF BAHNESA]

     Drawn by Boudier, from an engraving in Vivant Denon.

Anxious to profit by this first success, they made straight for Heracleopolis with a view to relieving it.  Tafnakhti, accompanied by the two kings Namroti and Auputi, was directing the siege in person; he had under his command, in addition to contingents from Busiris, Mendes, Thoth, and Pharbaithos, all the vassals of Osorkon III., the successor of Petubastis and titular Pharaoh of the whole country.  The Ethiopian fleet engaged the Egyptian ships at the end of the island of Heracleopolis, near the mouth of the canal leading from the Nile to the Bahr-Yusuf.* Tafnakhti was defeated, and the remnants of his squadron took refuge in Pipuga under cover of his land forces.** At dawn, the next day, the Ethiopians disembarked and gave battle.  The struggle was long and fierce, but indecisive.  Luamarsakni and Puarama claimed the victory, but were obliged to effect a retreat on the day following their so-called success, and when they dropped anchor in the harbour of Hermopolis, they found that Namroti had made his way back to the city by land and forestalled them.  Powerless to hold the field without support, he collected all the men and cattle he could lay hands on, and awaited the progress of events behind his ramparts.  The Ethiopians invested the town, and wrote to inform Pionkhi of what they had done—­not, however, without some misgiving as to the reception which awaited their despatches.  And sure enough, “His Majesty became enraged thereat, even as a panther:  ’If they have allowed a remnant of the warriors of the north to remain, if they have let one of them escape to tell of the fight, if they make him not to die in their slaughter, then by my life, by the love of Ra, by the praise of Amon for me, I will myself go down and overthrow that which Tafnakhti hath done,*** I will compel him to give up war for ever!  Therefore, after celebrating the festivals of the New Year, when I shall have sacrificed