The priesthood formed a very large and very influential class. In theory, the King was always the Supreme Priest, the Pontifex Maximus of the kingdom, and very often several of the high-priesthoods of the different gods were held by members of the royal family, thus securing that the Pharaoh should be represented in the priestly councils whose loyalty or disloyalty might mean so much to the stability of his throne. Thus in the reign of Ramses II, his favourite son Khaemuast, the Wizard-Prince of the Setna papyrus, was high-priest of Ptah at Memphis. No doubt the fact that there was such a multitude of gods, whose priesthoods were all jealous of one another, was some security against the overwhelming influence of the priestly caste, especially in the earlier days; but the fate of Akhenaten’s movement showed that in spite of local jealousies the priestly caste was really one in face of any attempt to diminish its power and privileges; and in the end the unquestioned supremacy of Amen led to the Amen priesthood gaining a position and influence which was superior to that of the weak Ramesside Pharaohs, and which resulted in the supersession of the true royal line, and the substitution for it of the XXIst Dynasty of priest-kings. Even before things had reached such a pitch, the immense wealth which the piety of successive kings had accumulated in the coffers of the priesthoods, and especially of that of Amen, must have constituted a real danger to the state, while the amount of land held by the priests, and so exempt from taxation, went with the other accumulation to constitute a steady drain on the national resources which in the end they were not able to bear. The class of the great nobles was held in strict subordination to the royal power in the days of the strong early monarchs of the Old Kingdom; but, with the weakening of the royal authority which followed the Vth Dynasty, the honours and powers which Pharaoh had heaped on his faithful courtiers, and which had been a convenient relief to the central authority as shifting part of the burden of local administration to the shoulders of the local great men, proved a danger to the State. A kind of feudal system grew up in which the local chieftains assumed the powers and as much as they could afford of the splendours of Pharaoh himself, claiming to hold their offices by hereditary right, maintaining their own armies, holding their own courts of justice, and even daring to place after their own names in their proclamations the formula, “Living for ever and ever,” which had hitherto been the sacred attribute of the crown alone.