Gyges,* and subsequently, perhaps, with Shamash-shumukin also; then, while his former suzerain was waging war in Elam and Chaldaea, he turned southwards, in 658 B.C., and took possession of the Thebaid without encountering any opposition from the Ethiopians, as his ancestor Tafnakhti had from Pionkhi-Miamun. Mon-tumihait** negotiated this capitulation of Thebes, as he had already negotiated so many others; in recompense for this service, he was confirmed in his office, and his queen retained her high rank. * The annexation of the Thebaid and the consequent pacification of Egypt was an accomplished fact in the year IX. of Psammetichus I. The analogy of similar documents, e.g. the stele of the high priest Menkhopirri, shows that the ceremony of adoption which consecrated the reunion of Upper and Lower Egypt cannot have been separated by a long interval from the completion of the reunion itself: in placing this at the end of the year VIII., we should have for the two events the respective dates of 658-657 and 657- 656 B.C. ** The part played by Montumihait in this affair is easily deduced: (1) from our knowledge of his conduct some years previously under Taharqa and Tanuatamanu; (2) from the position he occupied at Thebes, in the year IX., with regard to Shapenuapit, according to the stele of Legrain. A century or two earlier Psammetichus would have married one of the princesses of sacerdotal lineage, and this union would have sufficed to legalise his position; perhaps he actually associated Shapenuapit with himself by a show of marriage, but in any case he provided her with an adopted daughter according to the custom instituted by the Ethiopian Pharaohs. She already had one daughter by adoption, whom she had received at the hands of Taharqa, and who, in changing her family, had assumed the name of Amenertas in honour of the queen who had preceded Shapenuapit: Psammetichus forced her to replace the Ethiopian princess by one of his own daughters, who was henceforth called Shapenuapit, after her new mother. A deputation of the nobles and priests of Thebes came to escort the princess from Memphis, in the month of Tybi, in the ninth year of the reign: Psammetichus formally presented her to them, and the ambassadors, having listened to his address, expatiated in the customary eulogies on his splendour and generosity. "They shall endure as long as the world lasteth; all that thou ordainest shall endure. How beautiful is that which God hath done for thee, how glorious that which thy divine father hath done for thee? He is pleased that thy double should be commemorated, he rejoices in the pronouncing of thy name, for our lord Psammetichus has made a gift to his father Amon, he has given him his eldest daughter, his beloved Mtauqrit Shapenuapit, to be his divine spouse, that she may shake the sistrum before him!" On the 28th