The last sovereign of the sixth dynasty was a queen named Nitocris. After her death occurs a perfect blank in Egyptian history. Not a line of hieroglyphic writing, not a fragment of a ruin has survived from this period of darkness and silence. Of the seventh dynasty the very names are lost; of the eighth, nothing but the names has been preserved. The names, however, are so similar to those of the sixth dynasty, that we may conclude that these rulers were of the same royal line and descendants of Mena. It may be gathered from the bare fact of the accession of a female sovereign that the direct male line had failed. Nitocris appears to have left no children, and it is easy to imagine how rival claims and dissension would arise; each claimant asserting his right as next of kin, to wear the double crown. But at the same time the double crown lost much of its splendour. Other pretenders started up, ambitious men, claiming no right of kinship certainly, but anxious to make their own profit during this period of discord and weakness in the ruling house. Egypt was divided into forty-two districts or ‘nomes,’ and each of these possessed its own governor (_hak_, or prince, he was called) and each was to some extent a government complete within itself. The office of these prince-governors was often hereditary, and there was always a danger lest some powerful and popular governor should aim at setting up a petty kingdom of his own, in the event of the ruling hand becoming enfeebled. During a female reign the controlling power would be lessened, whilst the prospect of a disputed succession was awakening ambitious hopes and schemes. So long as Nitocris lived, the reverence due to a direct representative of the Pharaohs might prove some restraint, but at her death the smouldering ambitions and rivalries of scions of the royal house and of powerful provincial governors could hardly fail to burst forth, and find vent in fierce flames of discord and of civil war. Would we form to ourselves some idea of the state of Egypt during the ensuing centuries, we must picture a feeble scion of the ancient line ruling at Memphis over a territory barely extending beyond the capital; for in the north the foreign races would seize their opportunity for invading and encroaching upon the rich Delta land, thus blocking the great highway by the river; and farther south a rival dynasty is established at Heracleopolis, in Middle Egypt, not to reckon the other petty kingdoms or principalities into which the country is broken up—the whole a scene of ceaseless jealousies and mutual conflict.