DECAY OF EGYPTIAN POWER At length Her-Heru, the high-priest of Amen, appears to have come to some understanding with him about the Hmits of their respective dominions, for it is clear that Smendes ruled from Tanis to Saut, the modern Asyut, and the high-priest from Saut to the First Cataract, or perhaps even to the Second Cataract. In spite of this arrangement, however, we find that Smendes possessed the means of making his authority felt in Upper Egypt, and a proof of this, which we owe to M. G. Daressy,' is the fact that, when a portion of the temple of Amen at Luxor was in danger of falling down because its foundations had been undermined by the waters of the Nile, it was this king, and not the high-priest Her-Heru, who repaired or rebuilt it. Smendes heard of the danger which threatened the temple when he was at Memphis, and promptly gave orders that three thousand of his own men should go to Thebes and repair the damage, and he made large numbers of the natives of Upper Egypt to work under their instructions. It seems that every man who was physically able was made to work, and the great quarry opposite was reopened so that suitable stone in abundance might be forthcoming. We have already seen that the priests of Amen were unable to prevent the robbery of the royal tombs, and that they could not keep order among the people, and from the above facts it is clear that, when the second greatest temple in Thebes was in danger of collapsing, they were content to allow the king of the North to undertake the labour and expense of the restoration of its stability. They were, in fact, unable to protect the property of the god whose devoted and faithful servants they declared themselves to be. Under the priests of Amen, Egypt was once more divided into two distinct kingdoms, and two sets of kings ruled the country, the one from Tanis, and the other from Thebes.

These kings formed the XXIst Dynasty.

Meanwhile there flourished in the Delta a certain Libyan called Buiuuaua, or Buiuua-Buiuua, who was a man of great importance among the Libyan Mashuasha tribes, and was 1 See Maspero's Recueil, torn, x., p. 133 fif., " Sur les Carrires de Gdbel6in at le roi Smendes.''

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