great pylon, erected the obelisks and gateways, built the bari or vessel of the god, and found a further field for his activity on the opposite bank of the Nile, where he helped to complete both the chapel at Qurneh and also the Ramesseum.  Ramses II. had always been able to make his authority felt by the high priests who succeeded Baukuni-khonsu, but the Pharaohs who followed him did not hold the reins with such a strong hand.  As early as the reigns of Minephtah and Seti II. the first prophets, Rai and Rama, claimed the right of building at Karnak for their own purposes, and inscribed on the walls long inscriptions in which their own panegyrics took precedence of that of the sovereign; they even aspired to a religious hegemony, and declared themselves to be the “chief of all the prophets of the gods of the South and North.”  We do not know what became of them during the usurpation of Arisu, but Nakhtu-ramses, son of Miribastit, who filled the office during the reign of Ramses III., revived these ambitious projects as soon as the state of Egypt appeared to favour them.  The king, however pious he might be, was not inclined to yield up any of his authority, even though it were to the earthly delegate of the divinity whom he reverenced before all others; the sons of the Pharaoh were, however, more accommodating, and Nakhtu-ramses played his part so well that he succeeded in obtaining from them the reversion of the high priesthood for his son Amenothes.  The priestly office, from having been elective, was by this stroke suddenly made hereditary in the family.  The kings preserved, it is true, the privilege of confirming the new appointment, and the nominee was not considered properly qualified until he had received his investiture from the sovereign.*

     * This is proved by the Maunier stele, now in the Louvre; it
     is there related how the high priest Manakh-pirri received
     his investiture from the Tanite king.

Practically the Pharaohs lost the power of choosing one among the sons of the deceased pontiff; they were forced to enthrone the eldest of his survivors, and legalise his accession by their approbation, even when they would have preferred another.  It was thus that a dynasty of vassal High Priests came to be established at Thebes side by side with the royal dynasty of the Pharaohs.

The new priestly dynasty was not long in making its power felt in Thebes.  Nakhtu-ramses and Amenothes lived to a great age—­from the reign of Ramses III. to that of Ramses X., at the least; they witnessed the accession of nine successive Pharaohs, and the unusual length of their pontificates no doubt increased the already extraordinary prestige which they enjoyed throughout the length and breadth of Egypt.  It seemed as if the god delighted to prolong the lives of his representatives beyond the ordinary limits, while shortening those of the temporal sovereigns.  When the reigns of the Pharaohs began once more to