thee:  ’That the hippopotami which are in the pool of the town are to be exterminated in the pool, in order that slumber may come to me by day and by night.’  He will not be able to reply good or bad, and thou shalt send him another messenger:  The King Ra-Apopi commands thee:  ’If the chief of the South does not reply to my message, let him serve no longer any god but Sutkhu.  But if he replies to it, and will do that which I tell him to do, then I will impose nothing further upon him, and I will not in future bow before any other god of the Whole Land than Amonra, king of the gods!’” Another Pharaoh of popular romance, Nectanebo, possessed, at a much later date, mares which conceived at the neighing of the stallions of Babylon, and his friend Lycerus had a cat which went forth every night to wring the necks of the cocks of Memphis:* the hippopotami of the Theban lake, which troubled the rest of the King of Tanis, were evidently of close kin to these extraordinary animals.

     * Found in a popular story, which came in later times to be
     associated with the traditions connected with AEsop.

The sequel is unfortunately lost.  We may assume, however, without much risk of error, that Saqnunri came forth safe and sound from the ordeal; that Apopi was taken in his own trap, and saw himself driven to the dire extremity of giving up Sutkhu for Amonra or of declaring war.  He was likely to adopt the latter alternative, and the end of the manuscript would probably have related his defeat.

[Illustration:  106.jpg PALLATE OF Tiuaa]

     Drawn from the original by Faucher-Gudin.

Hostilities continued for a century and a half from the time when Saqnunri Tiuaa declared himself son of the Sun and king of the two Egypts.  From the moment in which he surrounded his name with a cartouche, the princes of the Said threw in their lot with him, and the XVIIth dynasty had its beginning on the day of his proclamation.  The strife at first was undecisive and without marked advantage to either side:  at length the Pharaoh whom the Greek copyists of Manetho call Alisphragmouthosis, defeated the barbarians, drove them away from Memphis and from the western plains of the Delta, and shut them up in their entrenched camp at Avaris, between the Sebennytic branch of the Nile and the Wady Tumilat.  The monuments bearing on this period of strife and misery are few in number, and it is a fortunate circumstance if some insignificant object tarns up which would elsewhere be passed over as unworthy of notice.  One of the officials of Tiuaa I. has left us his writing palette, on which the cartouches of his master are incised with a rudeness baffling description.

We have also information of a prince of the blood, a king’s son, Tuau, who accompanied this same Pharaoh in his expeditions; and the Gizeh Museum is proud of having in its possession the i wooden sabre which this individual placed on the mummy of a certain Aqhoru, to enable him to defend himself against the monsters of the lower world.  A second Saqnunri Tiuaa succeeded the first, and like him was buried in a little brick pyramid on the border of the Theban necropolis.  At his death the series of rulers was broken, and we meet with several names which are difficult to classify—­Sakhontinibri, Sanakhtu-niri, Hotpuri, Manhotpuri, Eahotpu.*