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Tomb robberies, which had never been completely suppressed, increased as the necropolis workers increasingly suffered from nonpayment of wages and official corruption. They knew where the loot was buried, and they may have figured it was of more use to them than to the silent dead. At first the authorities tried to carry out regular inspections and repair the damage they found. It was extensive; in some cases even the bodies had been dismembered and left scattered on the floors of the burial chambers. Eventually the priests decided they were fighting a losing battle. The only sure way of protecting what was left of the royal dead was to collect them and tuck them away in secret hiding places.

An honorable, pious enterprise, to be sure. Or was it?

Well, partly. The ruined bodies were rewrapped and relabeled, but it now seems clear that anything of value left on or with the mummy was recycled by the emissaries of the high priests. Two of them, scribes of the tomb named Djehutymose and his son, Butehamon, have achieved belated and somewhat dubious fame among Egyptologists. Their names appear all over the cliffs of the West Bank, noting the presence of the tombs they had located—and emptied. A series of letters between the High Priest Piankh and these two men makes their activities clear. The process went on for years, and by the time it was finished the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been cleared of their former occupants and what had remained of their possessions—all except one. The location of Tutankhamon’s tomb had been forgotten by the end of the Twentieth Dynasty. The mere fact that its contents survived is proof of that.

The gold in the other tombs, even the gilding on the coffins, went into the coffers of the high priests. Stripped of their valuables and in some cases mislabeled, the pathetic remains of the royal mummies found final resting places where they lay undisturbed for three thousand years.

Even before this time the office of high priest of Amon had become hereditary, like the kingship. The High Priest Amenhotep had been preceded in the office by his brother and his father, and he had shown signs of increasing presumption by having himself carved on a temple wall the same size as the pharaoh whom he faced. This would have been inconceivable in earlier times. He had to appeal to Ramses XI, however, when the viceroy of Nubia, Panehsy by name, marched north with an army and actually beseiged the high priest at Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramses III, which had formidable walls. The royal army, led by a general named Piankh, eventually met and overcame Panehsy’s army, which retreated to Nubia. Not too surprisingly, General Piankh seems to have settled down at Thebes, where he eventually took the additional office of high priest of Amon.

His successor in both high offices was a figure of some stature. Here the presumed conflict between church and state is seen in its true light; Herihor was church and state in one person. As a soldier and viceroy of Nubia he commanded a large and effective army. The high priesthood was probably a prize of his prowess rather than the source of it. When he added the title of high priest to those of his military rank, he had more prestige than any man in Egypt except the pharaoh, and more real power than any man, including the pharaoh. It was only a matter of time before he would adjust the fiction to suit the fact and climb into the throne from behind.

The reliefs on the walls of the Khonsu temple at Karnak tell the tale with an ironic clarity that needs no words. In the outer courts the high priest usurps the functions of the king and makes offerings in his own person; inside the temple, the latest part to be built, he assumes the crown and the cartouche. So pass the Ramessids—unwept and unhonored, perhaps, but not unsung, thanks to the strenuous efforts of the second and third bearers of that now diminished name.

Ten

THE LONG DYING

Cartouche of Psamtik