Page:The Pharaohs and their people; scenes of old Egyptian life and history (IA pharaohstheirpeo00berkiala).pdf/281

 The successive deaths and interments of the Apis bulls, form, in fact, very nearly all the events recorded during the reigns of the eight kings who succeeded the warlike Shishak. Takelath, the sixth in succession of this dynasty, sent his son Usarkon, who had been appointed high priest of Amen, to Thebes, to examine and to regulate the temple endowments there. The same inscription tells of some celestial portent which excited general attention, and was considered to portend trouble at hand.

Celestial omens were hardly needed to tell that dark days were near. The last kings of the twenty-second dynasty had to contend with rival princes who founded dynasties in the Delta, and, in the hopeless confusion arising from the mutual jealousies and struggles for supremacy amongst these contending families, the descendants of the priest-kings, closely watching the course of events from their Nubian retreat, beheld the long looked-for opportunity arrived. About the middle of the eighth