eighth century, just at the time when Assyria was uniting together and
blending into one all the long-divided tribes and nations of Western
Asia, Egypt suicidally broke itself up into no fewer than twenty
governments!

Such a condition of things was, of course, fatal to literature and art.
Art, as has been said, "did not so much decline as disappear." After
Sheshonk I. no monarch of the line left any building or sculpture of the
slightest importance. The very tombs became unpretentious, and merely
repeated antique forms without any of the antique spirit. Each Apis,
indeed, had, in his turn, his arched tomb cut for him in the solid rock
of the Serapeum at Memphis, and was laid to rest in a stone sarcophagus,
formed of a single block. A stela, moreover, was in every case inscribed
and set up to his memory: but the stelæ were rude memorials, devoid of
all artistic taste; the tombs were mere reproductions of old models; and
the inscriptions were of the dullest and most prosaic kind. Here is one,
as a specimen: "In the year 2, the month Mechir, on the first day of the
month, under the reign of King Pimai, the god Apis was carried to his
rest in the beautiful region of the west, and was laid in the grave, and
deposited in his everlasting house and his eternal abode. He was born in
the year 28, in the time of the deceased king, Sheshonk III. His glory
was sought for in all places of Lower Egypt. He was found after some
months in the city of Hashedabot. He was solemnly introduced into the
temple of Phthah, beside his father--the Memphian god Phthah of the
south wall--by the high-priest in the temple of Phthah, the great prince
of the Mashuash, Petise, the son of the high-priest of Memphis and great
prince of the Mashuash, Takelut, and of the princess of royal race,
Thes-bast-per, in the year 28, in the month of Paophi, on the first day
of the month. The full lifetime of this god amounted to twenty-six
years." Such is the historical literature of the period. The only other