is not likely that Herhor possessed all the needful qualifications; rather we must presume that he grasped at the multiplicity of appointments in order to accumulate power, so far as was possible, in his own hands, and thereby to be in a better position to seize the royal authority on the monarch’s demise.  If Ramesses III. died without issue, his task must have been facilitated; at any rate, he seems to have had the skill to accomplish it without struggle or disturbance; and if, as some suppose, he banished the remaining descendants of Ramesses III. to the Great Oasis, at any rate he did not stain his priestly hands with bloodshed, or force his way to the throne through scenes of riot and confusion.  Egypt, so far as appears, quietly acquiesced in his rule, and perhaps rejoiced to find herself once more governed by a prince of a strong and energetic nature.

For some time after he had mounted the throne, Herhor did not abandon his priestly functions.  He bore the title of High-Priest of Ammon regularly on one of his royal escutcheons, while on the other he called himself “Her-Hor Si-Ammon,” or “Her-Hor, son of Ammon,” following the example of former kings, who gave themselves out for sons of Ra, or Phthah, or Mentu, or Horus.  But ultimately he surrendered the priestly title to his eldest son, Piankh, and no doubt at the same time devolved upon him the duties which attached to the high-priestly office.  There was something unseemly in a priest being a soldier, and Herhor was smitten with the ambition of putting himself at the head of an army, and reasserting the claim of Egypt to a supremacy over Syria.  He calls himself “the conqueror of the Ruten,” and there is no reason to doubt that he was successful in a Syrian campaign, though to what distance he penetrated must remain uncertain.  The Egyptian monarchs are not very exact in their geographical nomenclature, and Herhor may have spoken of Ruten, when his adversaries were really the Bedouins of the desert between Egypt and Palestine.  The fact that his expedition is unnoticed in the Hebrew Scriptures renders it tolerably certain that he did not effect any permanent conquest, even of Palestine.

Herhor’s son, Piankh, who became High-Priest of Ammon on his father’s abdication of the office, does not appear to have succeeded him in the kingdom.  Perhaps he did not outlive his father.  At any rate, the kingly office seems to have passed from Herhor to his grandson, Pinetem, who was a monarch of some distinction, and had a reign of at least twenty-five years.  Pinetem’s right to the crown was disputed by descendants of the Ramesside line of kings; and he thought it worth while to strengthen his title by contracting a marriage with a princess of that royal stock, a certain Ramaka, or Rakama, whose name appears on his monuments.  But compromise with treason has rarely a tranquillizing effect; and Pinetem’s concession to the prejudices which formed the stock-in-trade of his opponents only exasperated them and urged them