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triumphal chariot of the same king is decorated in low relief with battle scenes which are masterly alike in design and execution.

The material splendour of the period, however, cannot mask the fact that the nation was rapidly decaying. The

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FIG. 40.-CARPENTERS MAKING MUMMY-CASES.

culminating-point, the meridian height of Egypt's power and greatness, was probably reached about the time of the reign of Amenhotep III., and rather earlier than later in that reign; and whatever evidence of prosperity may be found in the subsequent reigns is but the evening glory of a sun that was sinking fast towards the Western horizon.

1. PORTRAIT BUST OF RAMSFS 11. (YOUNG).

PLATE XXVI.

2. QUEEN NEFERTARI, FROM COLOSSAL STATUE OF RAMSES H., LUOSOR.

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CHAPTER XIV

THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE-PRIEST-KINGS AND SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE

WITH the death of Ramses III. the glories of the Egyptian Empire came to a final close. Henceforward we have to trace the progress of a gradual decline in power and prestige on the part of the great kingdom of the Nile Valley. The decline is not absolutely unbroken. There are a few strenuous attempts at revival, as when Sheshenq, Taharqa, or the Saite kings endeavour to regain for Egypt something of the position which she once held. But these efforts, one and all, were doomed to failure, or at best to only a brief and partial success; and the star of Egypt steadily pales before the new constellations which were beginning to rise on the Eastern horizon. Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia all have their share in the downfall of the greatest and longest-lived monarchy of the ancient East; but the real root of the decline was in Egypt itself. It was internal decay and dissension which made the land unequal to the task of asserting itself against the new powers which successively held the East in thrall.

Ramses III. was succeeded by his son Ramses IV. (1171-1165 B.C.). The chief memorial of the reign of this weak successor of a great father is the Harris Papyrus, the significance of whose contents we have already noticed in connection with the preceding reign. This gigantic

record of benefactions to the gods was apparently designed by Ramses IV. as a pleading for his father before the judgment-seat of Osiris, and it contains many prayers offered on his own account for a long and prosperous reign-prayers whose substance is echoed by a stele which the young king set up at Abydos in his fourth year, on which he prays that Osiris would grant him a reign longer than that of his great predecessor Ramses II., inasmuch as in his four years he had done more for the god than Ramses II. had done in his sixty-seven years. Osiris, however, was deaf to the appeal of his devoted servant, for the reign of Ramses IV. lasted for only two years more. His brief tenure of office was unmarked by any great event. The one thing of which we have record is, quite characteristically, the sending of a great expedition to the quarries of the Wady Hammamat in order to secure stone for temple-building. The expedition was on a gigantic scale, almost 9,000 men being engaged in it; and, characteristically also, it was managed, or mismanaged, so as to result in a great expenditure of human life, 900 men, or one in every ten, perishing on the journey.

Behind the figure of Ramses IV. there defiles the shadowy line of the Ramessides—a set of puppet-kings, distinguished for nothing but the docility with which they obey the behests of their masters, the priests of Amen at Thebes, in whose hands the real power of the kingdom, such as it was, had now come to lie. Indeed, it appears that, comparatively early in the story of the Ramesside dynasty, not only the substance of power, but also the actual title to the throne, had passed to the family of the high-priest of Amen; for in the reign of Ramses VI., the uncle of the preceding king and brother of Ramses IV., the high-priest Amenhotep married the king's daughter Aset, or Isis, the heiress of the kingdom, and thus became,

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