dered, leading
after his death to the condemnation of many high-placed men and women.
Nine kings of the name of Rameses now followed each other ingloriously in
the space of about eighty years to the end of the XXth Dynasty, the power
of the high priests of Ammon ever growing at their expense. At this time
the Theban necropolis was being more systematically robbed than ever
before. Under Rameses IX. an investigation took place which showed that
one of the royal tombs before the western cliffs had been completely
ransacked and the mummies burnt. Three years later the Valley of the
Tombs of the Kings was attacked and the sepulchres of Seti I. and Rameses
II. were robbed.

The Deltaic Dynasties; Libyan period.

The authority of the last king of the XXth Dynasty, Rameses XII., was
shadowy. Hrihor, the high priest in his reign, gradually gathered into
his own hands all real power, and succeeded him at Thebes, c. 1100 B.C.,
while a prince at Tanis named Smendes (Esbenteti) founded a separate
dynasty in the Delta (Dynasty XXI.). From this period dates a remarkable
papyrus containing the report of an envoy named Unamun, sent to Syria by
Hrihor to obtain cedar timber from Byblus. He took with him an image of
Ammon to bestow life and health on the prince of Byblus, but apparently
no other provision for the journey or for the negotiations beyond a
letter of recommendation to Smendes and a little gold and silver.
Smendes had trading ships in the Phoenician ports, but even his
influence was not greater than that of other commercial or pirate
centres, while Hrihor was of no account except in so far as he might pay
well for the cedar wood he required. Unamun was robbed on the voyage,
the prince of Byblus rebuffed him, and when at last the latter agreed to
provide the timber it was only in exchange for substantial gifts hastily
sent for from Egypt (including rolls of papyrus) and the promise of more
to follow. The prince, however, seems to have acknowledged to some
extent the divinity of Ammon and the debt owed by Phoenicia to Egyptian
culture, and pitied the many misfortunes of Unamun. The narrative shows
the feebleness of Egypt abroad. The Tanite line of kings generally had
the over-lordship of the high priests of Thebes; the descendants of
Hrihor, however, sometimes by marriage with princesses of the other
line, could assume cartouches and royal titles, and in some cases
perhaps ruled the whole of Egypt. Ethiopia may have been r