[Illustration:  331.jpg A RAMSES OF THE XXth DYNASTY]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-
     Bey.  This is the Ramses VI. of the series now generally
     adopted.

These may still be seen in the Biban el-Moluk, and no visitor can refrain from admiring them for their magnitude and decoration.  As to funerary chapels, owing to the shortness of the reigns of these kings, there was not time to construct them, and they therefore made up for this want by appropriating the chapel of their father, which was at Medinet-Habu, and it was here consequently that their worship was maintained.  The last of the sons of Ramses III. was succeeded by another and equally ephemeral Ramses; after whom came Ramses X. and Ramses XI., who re-established the tradition of more lasting reigns.  There was now no need of expeditions against Kharu or Libya, for these enfeebled countries no longer disputed, from the force of custom, the authority of Egypt.  From time to time an embassy from these countries would arrive at Thebes, bringing presents, which were pompously recorded as representing so much tribute.* If it is true that a people which has no history is happy, then Egypt ought to be reckoned as more fortunate under the feebler descendants of Ramses III. than it had ever been under the most famous Pharaohs.

     * The mention of a tribute, for instance, in the time of
     Ramses IV. from the Lotanu.

Thebes continued to be the favourite royal residence.  Here in its temple the kings were crowned, and in its palaces they passed the greater part of their lives, and here in its valley of sepulchres they were laid to rest when their reigns and lives were ended.  The small city of the beginning of the XVIIIth dynasty had long encroached upon the plain, and was now transformed into an immense town, with magnificent monuments, and a motley population, having absorbed in its extension the villages of Ashiru,* and Madit, and even the southern Apit, which we now call Luxor.  But their walls could still be seen, rising up in the middle of modern constructions, a memorial of the heroic ages, when the power of the Theban princes was trembling in the balance, and when conflicts with the neighbouring barons or with the legitimate king were on the point of breaking out at every moment.**

* The village of Ashiru was situated to the south of the temple of Karnak, close to the temple of Mut.  Its ruins, containing the statues of Sokhit collected by Amenothes III., extend around the remains marked X in Mariette’s plan.

* These are the walls which are generally regarded as marking the sacred enclosure of the temples:  an examination of the ruins of Thebes shows us that, during the XXth and XXIst dynasties, brick-built houses lay against these walls both on the inner and outer sides, so that they must have been half hidden by buildings, as are the ancient walls of Paris at the present day.