So Khons re-entered his house in peace in the thirty-third year of the king’s reign.’ The custom now so prevalent of consulting the oracle, and of acting according to its dictates, is one amongst other significant signs of the increasing power and influence of the priesthood and of the part they were gradually assuming in the government of the country. Under Rameses IX. the positions of king and priest seem already reversed. In former days the kings recorded the story of the magnificent buildings they erected in honour of the gods, and the munificent gifts with which they endowed the temples, received by the priesthood with loyal gratitude. But in the reign of Rameses IX. it is a chief priest of Amen-Ra who carves upon the temple wall a full account of all _he_ has done in rebuilding and adorning the sacred edifice—the ‘holy house of the chief priests of Amen.’ He, however, inscribes upon the work the full name of Pharaoh, and thus dedicates it to the king, who duly acknowledges his obligation, and orders rich rewards and honours to be bestowed upon the chief priest in token of the royal gratitude. The shadowy forms of the Ramessid kings grow more and more indistinct; of the three last, whose names are preserved as the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth Rameses, it is quite uncertain whether they were ever crowned in Thebes. The power of the chief priests during the reign of so many feeble monarchs had, on the other hand, steadily increased, until the government of the country was virtually in their hands. Their ambition grew with what it fed on, and by repeated intermarriages with princesses of the royal house, they might seem to acquire a certain legitimate claim to the throne, of which they at last took possession—Her-hor, ‘chief priest and first prophet of Amen,’ being proclaimed King of Upper and Lower Egypt probably about 1100 B.C. [Illustration: Mummy and Mummy-case of the Priest Nebseni.] The priests of Egypt formed, as we know, no distinct and isolated caste. They were governors of cities, commanders on the battle-field, physicians, architects, scribes; and thus were often seen in secular employments, although they alone could enter within the sacred recesses of the temple and officiate in its services. The kings themselves were so far regarded as priests, that they were admitted to perform sacred rites, and thus the regal and sacerdotal offices had long been in some sense blended before Her-hor assumed the crown as the first sovereign of the twenty-first dynasty—the dynasty of the priest-kings.