After her, even tradition is silent, and the history of Egypt remains a mere blank for several centuries. Manetho admits the existence of two other Memphite dynasties, of which the first contains seventy kings during as many days. Akhthoës, the most cruel of tyrants, followed next, and oppressed his subjects for a long period: he was at last the victim of raving madness, and met with his death from the jaws of a crocodile. It is related that he was of Heracleopolite extraction, and the two dynasties which succeeded him, the IXth and the Xth, were also Heracleopolitan. The table of Abydos is incomplete, and the Turin Papyrus, in the absence of other documents, too mutilated to furnish us with any exact information; the contemporaries of the Ptolemies were almost entirely ignorant of what took place between the end of the VIth and the beginning of the XIIth dynasty; and Egyptologists, not finding any monuments which they could attribute to this period, thereupon concluded that Egypt had passed through some formidable crisis out of which she with difficulty extricated herself.*
* Marsham (Canon Chronicus, edition, of Leipzig, 1676, p.
29) had already declared in the seventeenth century that he
felt no hesitation in considering the Heracleopolites as
identical with the successors of Menes-Misraîm, who reigned
over the Mestraea, that is, over the Delta only. The idea of
an Asiatic invasion, analogous to that of the Hyksos, which
was put forward by Mariette, and accepted by Fr. Lenormant,
has found its chief supporters in Germany. Bunsen made of
the Heracleopolitan two subordinate dynasties reigning
simultaneously in Lower Egypt, and originating at
Heracleopolis in the Delta: they were supposed to have been
contemporaries of the last Memphite and first Theban
dynasties. Lepsius accepted and recognized in the
Heracleopolitans of the Delta the predecessors of the
Hyksos, an idea defended by Ebers, and developed by Krall in
his identification of the unknown invaders with the Hirû-
Shâîtû: it has been adopted by Ed. Meyer, and by Petrie.
The so-called Heracleopolites of Manetho were assumed to have been the chiefs of a barbaric people of Asiatic origin, those same “Lords of the Sands” so roughly handled by Uni, but who are considered to have invaded the Delta soon after, settled themselves in Heracleopolis Parva as their capital, and from thence held sway over the whole valley. They appeared to have destroyed much and built nothing; the state of barbarism into which they sank, and to which they reduced the vanquished, explaining the absence of any monuments to mark their occupation. This hypothesis, however, is unsupported by any direct proof: even the dearth of monuments which has been cited as an argument in favour of the theory, is no longer a fact. The sequence of reigns and details of the revolutions are wanting; but many of the kings and certain facts in their history are known, and 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 Nofirkerî, the prenomen of Papi II., and a third Papi figures in them, who calls himself Papi-Sonbû 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. Nofirkerî reigned a year, a month, and a day; Nofîrûs, 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 they had proudly displayed their wealth, and erected them merely of brick, in which the decoration was almost entirely confined to one narrow niche near the sarcophagus. Soon the mastaba itself was given up, and the necropolis of the city was reduced to the meagre proportions of a small provincial cemetery. The centre of that government, which had weighed so long and so heavily upon Egypt, was removed to the south, and fixed itself at Heracleopolis the Great.
