Painet´-em II and the people of his family possessed only the poorest region of Egypt and Nubia: it was as much as they could do to secure their mummies the same burial as that of the wealthier men of their time. No more special monuments for each of the dead, but one common vault for all; no more immense sarcophagi in hard stone, but mere coffins in polished wood, sometimes stolen from earlier kings or private persons. There is nothing which more clearly marks the decadence of Thebes than this increasing poverty of the last Theban kings.[b] [Illustration: FEMALE HEAD-DRESS, ANCIENT EGYPT] FOOTNOTES [7] [Vases with tops of human forms or divinities, used to hold the entrails of embalmed bodies.] [8] [Hieratic writing is a modified form of hieroglyphics.] [9] [Syringes (plural of syrinx) are narrow and deep rock tunnel-tombs.] CHAPTER VII. THE PERIOD OF DECAY [XIXTH-XXVTH DYNASTIES: _ca._ 1285-655 B.C.] And the Lord shall smite Egypt; he shall smite and heal it: and they shall return even to the Lord, and he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them. In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.--_Isaiah_ xix. 22, 23. * * * * * So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.--_Isaiah_ xx. 4. After the summit, the inevitable decline. The first of world powers under the Ramessides, Egypt again becomes degenerate, and, after some five hundred years of reanimation, passes into the power of the priests, who in turn are supplanted by invading hosts, this time from Ethiopia. Then the Assyrian conquerors, taking their turn at world-domination, invade Egypt along the route which Tehutimes and Ramses had followed of old in invading Assyria. Dismembered Egypt falls an easy prey to Esarhaddon. It revolts under Asshurbanapal again and again, and is as often reconquered. But a mixed population of Ethiopians and Assyrians again gives a certain measure of new vitality to the old body, and, the destruction of the Assyrian empire having rid the Egyptians of one of their enemies, they were presently able, under Psamthek I (Psammetichus), to overthrow the Ethiopian “usurpers,” and establish once more a “native” dynasty.