his 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 Grebelein, from which Seti I.
had obtained the building materials for the temple, and drew from thence
what was required for the repair of the edifice. Two of the descendants
of Nsbindidi, Psiukhannit I. and Amenemopit, remodelled the little
temple built by Kheops in honour of his daughter Honit-sonu, at the
south-east angle of his pyramid. Both Siamonmiamon and Psiukhannit I.
have left traces of their work at Memphis, and the latter inserted his
cartouches on two of the ob