uled with the
Thebais, but the records of the time are very scanty. Syria was wholly
lost to Egypt. The mummies from the despoiled tombs of the kings were
the object of much anxious care to the kings of this dynasty; after
being removed from one tomb to another, they were finally deposited in a
shaft near the temple of Deir el Bahri, where they remained for nearly
three thousand years, until the demand for antiquities at last brought
the plunderer once more to their hiding-place; eventually they were all
secured for the Cairo museum, where they may now be seen.

Libyan soldiers had long been employed in the army, and their military
chiefs settled in the large towns and acquired wealth and power, while
the native rulers grew weaker and weaker. The Tanite dynasty may have
risen from a Libyan stock, though there is nothing to prove it; the
XXIInd Dynasty are clearly from their names of foreign extraction, and
their genealogy indicates distinctly a Libyan military origin in a
family of rulers of Heracleopolis Magna, in Middle Egypt. Sheshonk
(Shishak) I., the founder of the dynasty, c. 950 B.C., seems to have
fixed his residence at Bubastis in the Delta, and his son married the
daughter of the last king of the Tanite dynasty. Heracleopolis seems
henceforth for several centuries to have been capital of Middle Egypt,
which was considered as a more or less distinct province. Sheshonk
secured Thebes, making one of his sons high priest of Ammon, and whereas
Solomon appears to have dealt with a king of Egypt on something like an
equal footing, Sheshonk re-established Egyptian rule in Palestine and
Nubia, and his expedition in the fifth year of Rehoboam subdued Israel
as well as Judah, to judge by the list of city names which he inscribed
on the wall of the temple of Karnak. Osorkon I. inherited a prosperous
kingdom from his father, but no further progress was made. It required a
strong hand to curb the Libyan chieftains, and divisions soon began to
show themselves in the kingdom. The XXIInd Dynasty lasted through many
generations; but there were rival kings, and M. Legrain thinks that he
has proof that the XXIIIrd Dynasty was contemporaneous with the end of
the XXIInd. The kings of the XXIIIrd Dynasty had little hold upon the
subject princes, who spent the resources of the country in feuds amongst
themselves. A native kingdom had meanwhile been established in Ethiopia.
Our first knowledge of it is at this moment, when the Ethiopia