In the north, the Delta and the Nile valley, as far as Siut, were in the power of a military aristocracy, supported by irregular native troops and bands of mercenaries, for the most part of Libyan extraction, who were always designated by the generic name of Mashauasha. Most of these nobles were in possession of not more than two or three cities apiece: they had barely a sufficient number of supporters to maintain their precarious existence in their restricted domains, and would soon have succumbed to the attacks of their stronger neighbours, had they not found a powerful protector to assist them. They had finally separated themselves into two groups, divided roughly by the central arm of the Nile. One group comprised the districts that might be designated as the Asiatic zone of the country--Heliopolis, Bubastis, Mendes, Tanis, Busiris, and Seben-nytos--and it recognised as chief the lord of one or other of those wealthy cities, now the ruler of Bubastis, now of Tanis, and lastly Pakruru of Pisaptit. The second group centred in the lords of Sais, to whom the possession of Memphis had secured a preponderating voice in the counsels of the state for more than a century.* * This grouping, which might already have been suspected from the manner in which the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments of the period show us the feudal princes rallying round Necho I. and Pakruru, is indicated by the details in the demotic romance published by Krall, where the foundation of the story is the state of Egypt in the time of the "twelve kings."