im, as well as the detachment of troops who
accompanied him: the remaining soldiers brought home his body, which was
buried by the side of the other princes in the mountain opposite Syene.
Papi II. had ample leisure to avenge the death of his vassal and to
send fresh expeditions to Iritit, among the Amamit and even beyond, if,
indeed, as the author of the chronological Canon of Turin asserts,* he
really reigned for more than ninety years; but the monuments are almost
silent with regard to him, and give us no information about his possible
exploits in Nubia. An inscription of his second year proves that he
continued to work the Sinaitic mines, and that he protected them from
the Bedouin.

* The fragments of Manetho and the Canon of Eratosthenes
agree in assigning to him a reign of a hundred years--a fact
which seems to indicate that the missing unit in the Turin
list was nine: Papi II. would have thus died in the hundreth
year of his reign. A reign of a hundred years is impossible:
Mihtimsauf I. having reigned fourteen years, it would be
necessary to assume that Papi II., son of Papi I., should
have lived a hundred and fourteen years at the least, even
on the supposition that he was a posthumous child. The
simplest solution is to suppose (1) that Papi II. lived a
hundred years, as Ramses II. did in later times, and that
the years of his life were confounded with the years of his
reign; or (2) that, being the brother of Mihtimsauf I., he
was considered as associated with him on the throne, and
that the hundred years of his reign, including the fourteen
of the latter prince, were identified with the years of his
life. We may, moreover, believe that the chronologists, for.
lack of information on the VIth dynasty, have filled the
blanks in their annals by lengthening the reign of Papi II.,
which in any case must have been very long.

On the other hand, the number and beauty of the tombs in which mention
is made of him, bear witness to the fact that Egypt enjoyed continued
prosperity. Recent discoveries have done much to surround this king and
his immediate predecessors with an air of reality which is lacking in
many of the later Pharaohs.

[Illustration: 282.jpg HEAD OF THE MUMMY OF METESOUPHIS I]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey. The
mummy is now in the Gizeh Museum (cf. Maspero, _Guide