ie 
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ever, have not been found on the Egyptian monuments. It 
is first shown from Assyrian and Jewish synchronisms relating 
to the reigns of Shebek and Tirhaka, that an interval, not very 
different from what is assigned to these three reigns, must 
have elapsed between the reigns of Tirhaka and Psammitichus I. 
The omission of these names from the monuments is then at- 
tempted to be explained. It was first shown, by a genealogy 
of the Saite dynasty, that none of its kings, with the excep- 
tion of the last, was descended from Queen Amenirtas, who, 
it was maintained, was the representative of the ancient Pha- 
raohs. Five kings, however, in succession married into this 
family ; the queen being, in three instances, half-sister to the 
king. By these marriages they strengthened their title to the 
crown, which otherwise was only possession by conquest. It 
was then argued that, as the Assyrian inscriptions spoke of 
“Kings of Egypt,” as well as ‘‘ the King of Meroe,” Tirhaka, 
who, however, was monumentally ‘‘ King of Upper and Lower 
Egypt ;” and as the story of the dodecarchy, as given by Hero- 
dotus, must have had some foundation—though it was not 
correctly given—the following view was likely to be a correct 
one :—A dodecarchy of Egyptian chiefs (Aiks) existed under 
the Ethiopian monarchs. On the death of Tirhaka some of 
them, including Stephinates, the dodecarch of Sais, assumed 
royal titles; subsequéntly Amenirtas, the ‘“‘ Ammeris, the 
Ethiopian” of Eusebius, who was probably a daughter of 
Tirhaka, claimed supreme authority over these dodecarchs, 
and established it to a great extent. The termination of the 
dodecarchy, by Psammitichus obtaining the sole power, may 
have happened in some such way as Herodotus describes ; this, 
however, could not have been previous to his fifty-four years’ 
reign, as Herodotus states. He ruled, from his father’s death, 
as dodecarch and king, only fifty-four years in all. If this view 
be a correct one, it is not necessary to suppose that any monu- 
ments of any Saite prince before Psammitichus I. existed. Dr. 
Hincks, however, supposes that a stéle in the Louvre, in which 
