This unexpected blow roused Piankhi from his inaction.  Having collected a fresh army, he quitted Napata in the first month of the year, and reached Thebes in the second, where he stopped awhile to perform a number of religious ceremonies; at their close, he descended the Nile to Hermopolis, invested it, and commenced its siege.  Moveable towers were brought up against the walls, from which machines threw stones and arrows into the city; the defenders suffered terribly, and after a short time insisted on a surrender.  Namrut made his peace with his offended sovereign through the intercession of his wife with Piankhi’s wives, sisters, and daughters, and was allowed once more to do homage to his lord in the temple of Thoth, leading his war-horse in one hand and holding a sistrum, the instrument wherewith it was usual to approach a god, in the other.  Piankhi entered Hermopolis, and examined the treasury, store-houses, and stables, finding in the last a number of horses, which had been reduced almost to starvation by the siege.  Either on this account, or for some other reason, Piankhi treated the Hermopolitan prince with coldness, and did not for some time reinstate him in his kingdom.

[Illustration:  PIANKHI RECEIVING THE SUBMISSION OF NAMRUT AND OTHERS.]

Continuing his triumphal march towards the north, Piankhi received the submission of Heracleopolis, the capital of Pefaabast, and of various other cities on either bank of the Nile, and in a short time appeared before Memphis and summoned it to surrender; but his summons was set at nought.  Tafnekht had recently visited the city, had strengthened its defences, augmented its supplies, and reinforced its garrison with an addition of eight thousand men, thereby greatly inspiriting them.  It was resolved to resist to the uttermost.  So the gates were shut, the walls manned, and Piankhi challenged to do his worst.  “Then was His Majesty furious against them, like a panther.”  Piankhi attacked the city fiercely, both by land and water.  Taking the command of the fleet in person, he sailed down the Nile, and, bringing his vessels close up to the walls and towers on the riverside, made use of the masts and yards as ladders, and so scaled the fortifications; then after slaughtering thousands on the ramparts, he forced an entrance into the town.  Memphis, upon this, surrendered.  Piankhi entered the town, and sacrificed to the god Phthah.  A number of the princes, including Aupot and Merkaneshu, a leader of mercenaries, came in and made their submission; but two of the principal rebels still remained unsubdued—­Tafnekht, the leader of the revolt, and Osorkon, king of Bubastis, Piankhi proceeded against the latter.  Advancing first on Heliopolis, instead of resistance he was received with acclamations, the people, priests, and soldiery having gone over to his side.  “Nothing succeeds like success.”  Egypt was as prone as other countries to “worship the rising sun;” and Piankhi’s victories had by this time marked