At length the end of the month arrived, and they all appeared together before the magistrates, when they said:  “Let the scribe, Khamoisit, who is accountable, be sent for!” He was thereupon brought before the notables of the town, and they said to him:  “See to the corn which thou hast received, and give some of it to the people of the necropolis.”  Pmontuniboisit was then sent for, and “rations of wheat were given to us daily.”  Famine was not caused only by the thriftlessness of the multitude:  administrators of all ranks did not hesitate to appropriate, each one according to his position, a portion of the means entrusted to them for the maintenance of their subordinates, and the latter often received only instalments of what was due to them.  The culprits often escaped from their difficulties by either laying hold of half a dozen of their brawling victims, or by yielding to them a proportion of their ill-gotten gains, before a rumour of the outbreak could reach head-quarters.  It happened from time to time, however, when the complaints against them were either too serious or too frequent, that they were deprived of their functions, cited before the tribunals, and condemned.  What took place at Thebes was repeated with some variations in each of the other large cities.  Corruption, theft, and extortion had prevailed among the officials from time immemorial, and the most active kings alone were able to repress these abuses, or confine them within narrow limits; as soon as discipline became relaxed, however, they began to appear again, and we have no more convincing proof of the state of decadence into which Thebes had fallen towards the middle of the XXth dynasty, than the audacity of the crimes committed in the necropolis during the reigns of the successors of Ramses III.

The priesthood of Amon alone displayed any vigour and enjoyed any prosperity in the general decline.  After the victory of the god over the heretic kings no one dared to dispute his supremacy, and the Ramessides displayed a devout humility before him and his ministers.  Henceforward he became united to Ra in a definite manner, and his authority not only extended over the whole of the land of Egypt, but over all the countries also which were brought within her influence; so that while Pharaoh continued to be the greatest of kings, Pharaoh’s god held a position of undivided supremacy among the deities.  He was the chief of the two Bnneads, the Heliopolitan and the Hermopolitan, and displayed for the latter a special affection; for the vague character of its eight secondary deities only served to accentuate the position of the ninth and principal divinity with whose primacy that of Amon was identified.  It was more easy to attribute to Amon the entire work of creation when Shu, Sibu, Osiris, and Sit had been excluded—­the deities whom the theologians of Heliopolis had been accustomed to associate with the demiurge; and in the hymns which they sang at his solemn festivals they did not hesitate