The town, deprived of its former influx of foreign spoil, became more and more impoverished, and its population gradually dwindled. The necropolis suffered increasingly from pillagers, and the burying-places of the kings were felt to be in such danger, that the authorities, despairing of being able to protect them, withdrew the mummies from their resting-places. The bodies of Seti I., Ramses II., and Ramses III. were once more carried down the valley, and, after various removals, were at length huddled together for safety in the tomb of Amenôthes I. at Drah-abu’l-Neggah. The Tanite Pharaohs seemed to have lacked neither courage nor good will. The few monuments which they have left show that to some extent they carried on the works begun by their predecessors. An unusually high inundation had injured the temple at Karnak, the foundations had been denuded by the water, and serious damage would have been done, had not the work of reparation been immediately undertaken. Nsbindîdi reopened the sandstone quarries between Erment and Grebeleîn, from which Seti I. had obtained the building materials for the temple, and drew from thence what was required for the repair of the edifice. Two of the descendants of Nsbindîdi, Psiûkhânnît I. and Amenemôpît, remodelled the little temple built by Kheops in honour of his daughter Honît-sonû, at the south-east angle of his pyramid. Both Siamonmîamon and Psiûkhânnît I. have left traces of their work at Memphis, and the latter inserted his cartouches on two of the obelisks raised by Ramses at Heliopolis. But these were only minor undertakings, and it is at Tanis that we must seek the most characteristic examples of their activity. Here it was that Psiûkhânnît rebuilt the brick ramparts which defended the city, and decorated several of the halls of the great temple. The pylons of this sanctuary had been merely begun by Sesostris: Siamon completed them, and added the sphinxes; and the metal plaques and small objects which he concealed under the base of one of the latter have been brought to light in the course of excavations. The appropriation of the monuments of other kings, which we have remarked under former dynasties, was also practised by the Tanites. Siamon placed his inscriptions over those of the Kamessides, and Psiûkhânnît engraved his name on the sphinxes and statues of Ame-nemhâît III. as unscrupulously as Apôphis and the Hyksôs had done before him. The Tanite sovereigns, however, were not at a loss for artists, and they had revived, after the lapse of centuries, the traditions of the local school which had flourished during the XIIth dynasty. [Illustration: 404.jpg THE TWO NILES OF TANIS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch- Bey.