The language fared no better in the face of this invasion, and the written character soon became as corrupt as the language; words foreign to the Egyptian vocabulary, incorrect expressions, and barbarous errors in syntax were multiplied without stint. The taste for art decayed, and technical ability began to deteriorate, the moral and intellectual standard declined, and the mass of the people showed signs of relapsing into barbarism: the leaders of the aristocracy and the scribes alone preserved almost intact their inheritance from an older civilisation. Egypt still attracted them: they looked upon it as their rightful possession, torn from them by alien usurpers in defiance of all sense of right, and they never ceased to hope that some day, when the god saw fit, they would win back their heritage. Were not their kings of the posterity of Sibu, the true representatives of the Ramessides and the solar race, compared with whom the northern Pharaohs, even those whose mothers ranked as “worshippers” of Amon, were but mere mushroom kings? Thebes admitted the validity of their claims: it looked to them for help, and the revolts by which it had been torn ever since the reign of Osorkon II. were, perhaps, instigated by the partisans of Ethiopia. In the time of Petubastis its high priests, Harsiisît and Takelôti, were still connected with the Tanites; after that it placed itself under the immediate orders of Ethiopia, and the pontificate disappeared. The accession of a sovereign who was himself invested by hereditary right with the functions and title of high priest of Amon henceforth rendered the existence of such an office superfluous at Thebes: it would almost have meant an imperium in imperio. The administration of religious, and perhaps also of political, affairs was, therefore, handed over to the deputy prophet, and this change still further enhanced the importance of the “female worshippers of the god.” In the absence of the king, who had his capital at Napata, they remained the sole representatives of legitimate authority in the Thebaid: the chief among them soon came to be regarded as a veritable Lady of Thebes, and, subject to the god, mistress of the city and its territory.
It is not quite clear whether it was Piônkhi Miamun or one of his immediate predecessors who took possession of the city. The nomes dependent on Amon followed the example of the capital, and the whole Theban territory as far as Siut had been occupied by Ethiopian troops, when in the twenty-first year of the king’s reign the princes of the Delta and Middle Egypt appealed to the court of Napata for help.
Even had they not begged it to do so, it would have been compelled before long to intervene, for Tafnakhti was already on his way to attack it; Piônkki charged Luâmarsakni and Pu-arama, the generals he had already stationed in the Thebaid, to hold Tafnakhti in check, till he was able to get together the remainder of his army and descend the Nile to support them. Their instructions were to spare none of the rebellious towns, but to “capture their men and their beasts, and their ships on the river; to allow none of the fellaheen to go out into the fields, nor any labourer to his labour, but to attack Hermopolis and harass it daily.” They followed out these orders, though, it would seem, without result, until the reinforcements from Nubia came up: their movements then became more actively offensive, and falling on Tafnakhti’s ships, which were making for Thebes heavily laden with men and stores, they sunk several of them.
Drawn by Boudier, from an engraving in Vivant Denon.
Anxious to profit by this first success, they made straight for Heracleopolis with a view to relieving it. Tafnakhti, accompanied by the two kings Namrôti and Auputi, was directing the siege in person; he had under his command, in addition to contingents from Busiris, Mendès, Thoth, and Pharbaîthos, all the vassals of Osorkon III., the successor of Petubastis and titular Pharaoh of the whole country. The Ethiopian fleet engaged the Egyptian ships at the end of the island of Heracleopolis, near the mouth of the canal leading from the Nile to the Bahr-Yusuf.* Tafnakhti was defeated, and the remnants of his squadron took refuge in Pipuga under cover of his land forces.** At dawn, the next day, the Ethiopians disembarked and gave battle. The struggle was long and fierce, but indecisive. Luâmarsakni and Puarama claimed the victory, but were obliged to effect a retreat on the day following their so-called success, and when they dropped anchor in the harbour of Hermopolis, they found that Namrôti had made his way back to the city by land and forestalled them. Powerless to hold the field without support, he collected all the men and cattle he could lay hands on, and awaited the progress of events behind his ramparts. The Ethiopians invested the town, and wrote to inform Piônkhi of what they had done—not, however, without some misgiving as to the reception which awaited their despatches. And sure enough, “His Majesty became enraged thereat, even as a panther: ‘If they have allowed a remnant of the warriors of the north to remain, if they have let one of them escape to tell of the fight, if they make him not to die in their slaughter, then by my life, by the love of Râ, by the praise of Amon for me, I will myself go down and overthrow that which Tafnakhti hath done,*** I will compel him to give up war for ever! Therefore, after celebrating the festivals of the New Year, when I shall have sacrificed to Amon of [Napata], my father, in his excellent festival wherein he appears in his procession of the New Year, when he shall have sent me in peace to look upon the [Theban] Amon in his festivals at Thebes, and when I shall have carried his image in procession to Luxor, in the festival celebrated in his honour among the festivals of Thebes, on the night of the feast appointed in the Thebaid, established by Râ at the creation, when I have led him in the procession and brought him unto his throne, on the day for introducing the god, even the second of Athyr, then will I make the enemy taste the savour of my claws.’”
* The ancient geographers looked upon the nome of
Heraoleopolis as a large island, its southern boundary
being, probably, the canal of Harabshent: the end of the
island, which the Egyptians called “the forepart of
Khninsu,” was probably Harabshent and its environs.
** Pi-puga is probably El-Fokâ, on the Nile, to the north of
Harabshent.
*** The king does not mention his adversary by name in the
text; he is content to indicate him by a pronoun in the
third person—“that which he hath done... then will I make
him taste,” etc.