e Nile, was one of those very ancient cities which had played but
an insignificant part in shaping the destinies of the country. By what
combination of circumstances its princes succeeded in raising themselves
to the throne of the Pharaohs, we know not: they numbered, so it was
said, seventy-five kings, who reigned four hundred and eighty-four
years, and whose mutilated names darken the pages of the Turin Papyrus.
The majority of them did little more than appear upon the throne, some
reigning three years, others two, others a year or scarcely more than a
few months: far from being a regularly constituted line of sovereigns,
they appear rather to have been a series of Pretenders, mutually jealous
of and deposing one another.

The feudal lords who had been so powerful under the Usirtasens had
lost none of their prestige under the Sovkhotpus: and the rivalries of
usurpers of this kind, who seized the crown without being strong enough
to keep it, may perhaps explain the long sequence of shadowy Pharaohs
with curtailed reigns who constitute the XIVth dynasty. They did not
withdraw from Nubia, of that fact we are certain: but what did they
achieve in the north and north-east of the empire? The nomad tribes were
showing signs of restlessness on the frontier, the peoples of the Tigris
and Euphrates were already pushing the vanguards of their armies into
Central Syria. While Egypt had been bringing the valley of the Nile and
the eastern corner of Africa into subjection, Chaldaea had imposed both
her language and her laws upon the whole of that part of Western Asia
which separated her from Egypt: the time was approaching when these two
great civilized powers of the ancient world would meet each other face
to face and come into fierce collision.

END OF VOL. II.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria,
Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12), by G. Maspero

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