nd we are able to catch a glimpse of the
general course of events. The VIIth and VIIIth dynasties are Memphite,
and the names of the kings themselves would be evidence in favour of
their genuineness, even if we had not the direct testimony of Manetho:
the one recurring most frequently is that of Nofirkeri, the prenomen of
Papi II., and a third Papi figures in them, who calls himself Papi-Sonbu
to distinguish himself from his namesakes. The little recorded of them
in Ptolemaic times, even the legend of the seventy Pharaohs reigning
seventy days, betrays a troublous period and a rapid change of rulers.*

* The explanation of Prof. Lauth, according to which Manetho
is supposed to have made an independent dynasty of the five
Memphite priests who filled the interregnum of seventy days
during the embalming of Nitokris, is certainly very
ingenious, but that is all that can be said for it. The
legendary source from which Manetho took his information
distinctly recorded seventy successive kings, who reigned in
all seventy days, a king a day.

We know as a fact that the successors of Nitokris, in the Royal Turin
Papyrus, scarcely did more than appear upon the throne. Nofirkeri
reigned a year, a month, and a day; Nofirus, four years, two months,
and a day; Abu, two years, one month, and a day. Each of them hoped,
no doubt, to enjoy the royal power for a longer period than his
predecessors, and, like the Ati of the VIth dynasty, ordered a pyramid
to be designed for him without delay: not one of them had time to
complete the building, nor even to carry it sufficiently far to leave
any trace behind. As none of them had any tomb to hand his name down to
posterity, the remembrance of them perished with their contemporaries.
By dint of such frequent changes in the succession, the royal authority
became enfeebled, and its weakness favoured the growing influence of the
feudal families and encouraged their ambition. The descendants of those
great lords, who under Papi I. and II. made such magnificent tombs for
themselves, were only nominally subject to the supremacy of the reigning
sovereign; many of them were, indeed, grandchildren of princesses of the
blood, and possessed, or imagined that they possessed, as good a right
to the crown as the family on the throne. Memphis declined, became
impoverished, and dwindled in population. Its inhabitants ceased to
build those immense stone mastabas in which