Petisis, king of Athribis,
made his submission.

The only prince who still remained unsubdued was Tafnekht, the original
rebel. Tafnekht had fled after the fall of Memphis, and had taken refuge
either in one of the islands of the Delta, or beyond the seas, in Aradus
or Cyprus. But he saw that further resistance was vain; and that, if he
was to rule an Egyptian principality, it must be as a secondary monarch.
Accordingly he, too, submitted himself, and was restored to his former
kingdom. Piankhi returned up the Nile to his own city of Napata amid
songs and rejoicings--whether sincere or feigned, who shall say? His own
account of the matter is the following: "When His Majesty sailed up the
river, his heart was glad; all its banks resounded with music. The
inhabitants of the west and of the east betook themselves to making
melody at His Majesty's approach. To the notes of the music they sang,
'O king, thou conqueror! O Piankhi, thou conquering king! Thou hast come
and smitten Lower Egypt; thou madest the men as women. The heart of the
mother rejoices who bare such a son, for he who begat thee dwells in the
vale of death. Happiness be to thee, O cow that hast borne the Bull!
Thou shalt live for ever in after ages. Thy victory shall endure, O king
and friend of Thebes!'"

This happy condition of things did not, however, continue long. Piankhi,
soon after his return to his capital, died without leaving issue; and
the race of Herhor being now extinct, the Ethiopians had to elect a king
from the number of their own nobles. Their choice fell on a certain
Kashta, a man of little energy, who allowed Egypt to throw off the
Ethiopian sovereignty without making any effort to prevent it.
Bek-en-ranf, the son of Tafnekht, was the leader of this successful
rebellion, and is said to have reigned over all Egypt for six years. He
got a name for wisdom and justice, but he could not alter that condition
of affairs which had been gradually brought about by the slow working of
various more or less occult causes, whereby Ethiopia had increased and
Egypt diminished in power, their relative strength, as compared with
former times, having become inverted. Ethiopia, being now the stronger,
was sure to reassert herself, and did so in Bek-en-ranf's seventh year.
Shabak, the son of Kashta, whose character was cast in a far stronger
mould than that of his father, having mounted the Ethiopian throne, lost
no time in swooping down upon Egypt from the up