ardship of his
North-land," is distinctly amusing. The hard fact of the independence of
Lower Egypt had to be glozed somehow.

The days of Theban power were coming to an end and only the prestige
of the god Amen remained strong for two hundred years more. But the
alliance of Amen and his priests with a band of predatory and destroying
foreign conquerors, the Ethiopians (whose rulers were the descendants
of the priest-kings, who retired to Napata on the succession of the
powerful Bubastite dynasty of Shishak to that of Tanis, abandoning
Thebes to the Northerners), did much to destroy the prestige of Amen
and of everything connected with him. An Ethiopian victory meant only
an Assyrian reconquest, and between them Ethiopians and Assyrians had
well-nigh ruined Egypt. In the Saite period Thebes had declined greatly
in power as well as in influence, and all its traditions were anathema
to the leading people of the time, although not of course in Akhunaten's
sense.

With the Saite period we seem almost to have retraced our steps and to
have reentered the age of the Pyramid Builders. All the pomp and glory
of Thothmes, Amenhetep, and Ramses were gone. The days of imperial Egypt
were over, and the minds of men, sickened of foreign war, turned for
peace and quietness to the simpler ideals of the IVth and Vth Dynasties.
We have already seen that an archaistic revival of the styles of the
early dynasties is characteristic of this late period, and that men
were buried at Sakkara and at Thebes in tombs which recall in form and
decoration those of the courtiers of the Pyramid Builders. Everywhere
we see this fashion of archaism. A Theban noble of this period named
Aba was buried at Thebes. Long ago, nearly three thousand years before,
under the VIth Dynasty, there had lived a great noble of the same name,
who was buried in a rock-tomb at Der el-Gebrawi, in Middle Egypt. This
tomb was open and known in the days of the second Aba, who caused to be
copied and reproduced in his tomb in the Asasif at Thebes most of the
scenes from the bas-relief with which it had been decorated. The tomb
of the VIth Dynasty Aba has lately been copied for the Archaeological
Survey of Egypt (Egypt Exploration Fund) by Mr. de Garis Davies, who has
found the reliefs of the XXVIth Dynasty Aba of considerable use to him
in reconstituting destroyed portions of their ancient originals.

During late years important discoveries of objects of this era have been
f