[Illustration:  417.jpg ONE OF THE OVERTURNED AND BROKEN STATUES OF MIRMASIIAU AT TANIS]

     Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph in Rouge-Banville’s
     Album photographique de la Mission de M. de Bouge, No.
     114.

The same king erected colossal statues of himself at Tanis, Bubastis, and at Thebes:  he was undisputed master of the whole Nile Valley, from near the spot where the river receives its last tributary to where it empties itself into the sea.  The making of Egypt was finally accomplished in his time, and if all its component parts were not as yet equally prosperous, the bond which connected them was strong enough to resist any attempt to break it, whether by civil discord within or invasions from without.  The country was not free from revolutions, and if we have no authority for stating that they were the cause of the downfall of the XIIIth dynasty, the lists of Manetho at least show that after that event the centre of Egyptian power was again shifted.  Thebes lost its supremacy, and the preponderating influence passed into the hands of sovereigns who were natives of the Delta.  Xois, situated in the midst of the marshes, between the Phatnitic and Sebennytic branches of the Nile, was one of those very ancient cities which had played but an insignificant part in shaping the destinies of the country.  By what combination of circumstances its princes succeeded in raising themselves to the throne of the Pharaohs, we know not:  they numbered, so it was said, seventy-five kings, who reigned four hundred and eighty-four years, and whose mutilated names darken the pages of the Turin Papyrus.  The majority of them did little more than appear upon the throne, some reigning three years, others two, others a year or scarcely more than a few months:  far from being a regularly constituted line of sovereigns, they appear rather to have been a series of Pretenders, mutually jealous of and deposing one another.

The feudal lords who had been so powerful under the Usirtasens had lost none of their prestige under the Sovkhotpus:  and the rivalries of usurpers of this kind, who seized the crown without being strong enough to keep it, may perhaps explain the long sequence of shadowy Pharaohs with curtailed reigns who constitute the XIVth dynasty.  They did not withdraw from Nubia, of that fact we are certain:  but what did they achieve in the north and north-east of the empire?  The nomad tribes were showing signs of restlessness on the frontier, the peoples of the Tigris and Euphrates were already pushing the vanguards of their armies into Central Syria.  While Egypt had been bringing the valley of the Nile and the eastern corner of Africa into subjection, Chaldaea had imposed both her language and her laws upon the whole of that part of Western Asia which separated her from Egypt:  the time was approaching when these two great civilized powers of the ancient world would meet each other face to face and come into fierce collision.