* 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. Volume II., Part . _THE FIRST THEBAN EMPIRE_ _THE TWO HERACLEOPOLITAN DYNASTIES AND THE TWELFTH DYNASTY--THE CONQUEST OF ETHIOPIA, AND THE MAKING OF GREATER EGYPT BY THE THEBAN KINGS._ _The principality of Heracleopolis: Achthoës-Khîti and the Heracleopolitan dynasties--Supremacy of the great barons: the feudal fortresses, El-Kab and Abydos; ceaseless warfare, the army--Origin of the Theban principality: the principality of Sidt, and the struggles of its lords against the princes of Thebes--The kings of the XIth dynasty and their buildings: the brick pyramids of Abydos and Thebes, and the rude character of early Theban art._