to have been the chiefs of a barbaric people of Asiatic origin, those same “Lords of the Sands” so roughly handled by Uni, but who are considered to have invaded the Delta soon after, settled themselves in Heracleopolis Parva as their capital, and from thence held sway over the whole valley.  They appeared to have destroyed much and built nothing; the state of barbarism into which they sank, and to which they reduced the vanquished, explaining the absence of any monuments to mark their occupation.  This hypothesis, however, is unsupported by any direct proof:  even the dearth of monuments which has been cited as an argument in favour of the theory, is no longer a fact.  The sequence of reigns and details of the revolutions are wanting; but many of the kings and certain facts in their history are known, and we are able to catch a glimpse of the general course of events.  The VIIth and VIIIth dynasties are Memphite, and the names of the kings themselves would be evidence in favour of their genuineness, even if we had not the direct testimony of Manetho:  the one recurring most frequently is that of Nofirkeri, the prenomen of Papi II., and a third Papi figures in them, who calls himself Papi-Sonbu to distinguish himself from his namesakes.  The little recorded of them in Ptolemaic times, even the legend of the seventy Pharaohs reigning seventy days, betrays a troublous period and a rapid change of rulers.*

* The explanation of Prof.  Lauth, according to which Manetho is supposed to have made an independent dynasty of the five Memphite priests who filled the interregnum of seventy days during the embalming of Nitokris, is certainly very ingenious, but that is all that can be said for it.  The legendary source from which Manetho took his information distinctly recorded seventy successive kings, who reigned in all seventy days, a king a day.

We know as a fact that the successors of Nitokris, in the Royal Turin Papyrus, scarcely did more than appear upon the throne.  Nofirkeri reigned a year, a month, and a day; Nofirus, four years, two months, and a day; Abu, two years, one month, and a day.  Each of them hoped, no doubt, to enjoy the royal power for a longer period than his predecessors, and, like the Ati of the VIth dynasty, ordered a pyramid to be designed for him without delay:  not one of them had time to complete the building, nor even to carry it sufficiently far to leave any trace behind.  As none of them had any tomb to hand his name down to posterity, the remembrance of them perished with their contemporaries.  By dint of such frequent changes in the succession, the royal authority became enfeebled, and its weakness favoured the growing influence of the feudal families and encouraged their ambition.  The descendants of those great lords, who under Papi I. and II. made such magnificent tombs for themselves, were only nominally subject to the supremacy of the reigning sovereign; many of them were, indeed, grandchildren