The intermittent glimpses that we get of Egyptian history in the stormy period that preceded the Ethiopian conquest show how this had come to be the case. Shishak’s dynasty, the twenty-second, had been followed by the twenty-third, which Manetho calls Tanite, and which, therefore, must have had its origin in Zoan. While its second king, Osorkon II., was reigning at Tanis and Bubastis, the first sign of the coming Ethiopian invasion fell upon Egypt. Piankhi Mi-Amon, the king of Napata, descended the Nile, and called upon the rival princes of Egypt to acknowledge him as their head. Osorkon, who alone possessed a legitimate title to the supreme sovereignty, seems to have obeyed the summons, but it was resisted by two of the petty kings of Upper Egypt, those of Ashmunên and Annas, as well as by Tef-nekht or Tnêphakhtos, the prince of Sais. Ashmunên and Ahnas were accordingly besieged, and Ashmunên soon fell into the invader’s hands. Ahnas and the rest of the south thereupon submitted, and Piankhi marched against Memphis. In spite of the troops and provisions thrown into it by Tef-nekht, the old capital of the country was taken by storm, and all show of resistance to the conqueror was at an end. From one extremity of the country to the other the native rulers hastened to pay homage to the Ethiopian and to accept his suzerainty. Piankhi caused the account of his conquest to be engraved on a great stêlê of granite which he set up on Mount Barkal, the holy mountain of Napata. Here he gives a list of the seventeen princes among whom the cities of Egypt had been parcelled out, and each of whom claimed independent or semi-independent authority. Out of the seventeen, four bear upon their foreheads the royal uræus, receive the title of kings, and have their names enclosed in a cartouche. Two of them are princes of the north, Osorkon of Bubastis and Tanis, and Aupet of Klysma, near Suez. The other two represent Upper Egypt. One is the king of Sesennu or Ashmunên, the other is Pef-dod-Bast of Hininsu or Ahnas. Thebes is wholly ignored. The conquest of Piankhi proved to be but momentary. The Ethiopians retired, and Egypt returned to the condition in which they found it. It was a nation divided against itself, rent with internal wars and private feuds, and ready to fall into the hands of the first invader with military ability and sufficient troops. Two states towered in it above the rest; Tanis in the north and Ahnas in the south. Tanis had succeeded to the patrimony of Bubastis and Memphis; Ahnas to that of Thebes.