[Illustration:  335.jpg THREE HOPLITES IN ACTION]

     Drawn by faucher-Gudin, from an archaic vase-painting in the
     collection of Salzmann.

In the north, the Delta and the Nile valley, as far as Siut, were in the power of a military aristocracy, supported by irregular native troops and bands of mercenaries, for the most part of Libyan extraction, who were always designated by the generic name of Mashauasha.  Most of these nobles were in possession of not more than two or three cities apiece:  they had barely a sufficient number of supporters to maintain their precarious existence in their restricted domains, and would soon have succumbed to the attacks of their stronger neighbours, had they not found a powerful protector to assist them.  They had finally separated themselves into two groups, divided roughly by the central arm of the Nile.  One group comprised the districts that might be designated as the Asiatic zone of the country—­Heliopolis, Bubastis, Mendes, Tanis, Busiris, and Seben-nytos—­and it recognised as chief the lord of one or other of those wealthy cities, now the ruler of Bubastis, now of Tanis, and lastly Pakruru of Pisaptit.  The second group centred in the lords of Sais, to whom the possession of Memphis had secured a preponderating voice in the counsels of the state for more than a century.*

* This grouping, which might already have been suspected from the manner in which the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments of the period show us the feudal princes rallying round Necho I. and Pakruru, is indicated by the details in the demotic romance published by Krall, where the foundation of the story is the state of Egypt in the time of the “twelve kings.”

The fiefs and kingdoms of Middle Egypt wavered between the two groups, playing, however, a merely passive part in affairs:  abandoning themselves to the stream of events rather than attempting to direct it, they owed allegiance to Sais and Tanis alternately as each prevailed over its rival.  On passing thence into the Thebaid a different world appeared to be entered.  There Amon reigned, ever increasingly supreme, and the steady advance of his influence had transformed his whole domain into a regular theocracy, where the women occupied the highest position and could alone transmit authority.  At first, as we have seen, it was passed on to their husbands and their children, but latterly the rapidity with which the valley had changed masters had modified this law of succession in a remarkable way.  Each time the principality shifted its allegiance from one king to another, the new sovereign naturally hastened to install beside the divine female worshipper a man devoted to his interests, who should administer the fief to the best advantage of the suzerain.  It is impossible to say whether he actually imposed this minister on her as a husband, or whether the time came when she was obliged to submit to as many espousals