Authorities agree that the Twenty-second Dynasty made Bubastis its principal city, and seem to have been descended from a race of great chiefs. Shashanq or Sheshenk I, the Sesonchis of the Greeks, and Shishak of I Kings, was the first king of the dynasty, a Libyan, son of the chief Namareth, who was buried at Abydos, and of whom there are statues in Florence, as well as gold bracelets with his name in the British Museum. Also the grandson of Shashanq, the “great prince of Mashauasha,” and the Egyptian princess, Mehtet-en-usekht. Shashanq I married a Rammeside princess, and through her, probably, or possibly through his Egyptian grandmother, laid claim to the throne. His reign seems to have begun before the death of Paseb-khanut II, last king of the Twenty-first, Tanite Dynasty. One author says his wife’s rank was shown by the prefix Sutem-sat, or others claim that this belonged to the Egyptian grandmother.
Shashanq I married Karama, or Karamat, called “a morning star of Amen,”[282] daughter of the last Tanite king. She had been despoiled of her inheritance and was restored to all her rights by this marriage. The custom of taking more than one wife often enables the student to reconcile apparent discrepancies.
Brugsch says the ordinance relating to this marriage was engraved on the north side of a pylon, near the temple of Amon in Karnak. “Thus spake Amon, the king of the gods,” “with regard to any object of any kind, which Karamat, the daughter of the king of Upper Egypt, Miamun Pisebkhan, has brought with her as the hereditary possession which had descended to her in the Southern district of the country, and with regard to each object of any kind whatever which the people of the land have presented to her, which they have at any time taken from the (royal) lady, we hereby restore it to her. Any object of any kind. Any object of any kind whatsoever (which) belongs (as an inheritance to the children) that (we hereby restore) to her children for all time. Thus speaks Amon-Ra, the king of the gods, the great king of the beginning of all being, Mut, Khonsu and the great gods,” etc., etc., at great length and with much repetition, closing with a number of threats, if this command is not complied with, and ending with “we will sink their noses in the earth,” and an unfinished, “we will.”
Josephus says that Jeraboam, the son of Nebat, who revolted against Solomon, took refuge with Shashanq I, until Solomon’s death, and married[283] a daughter of the king of Egypt. Later Shashanq I made an expedition against Rehoboam, son of Solomon, who governed the two tribes, and was proud of the victory by which he recovered the Egyptian hold on Palestine. The dates of the Twenty-second Dynasty are given by Budge as 966 to 750 B. C. Shashanq I also repaired the temples and caused his son, the viceroy of a part of Egypt, to remove to a place of greater safety various royal mummies, who perhaps travelled more after death than during life. Shashanq reigned twenty-one years, called himself “Prince, doubly mighty, subduer of the nine Bows, greatest of the mighty ones of all lands,” thus falling not a whit behind his Rammeside predecessors in his estimate of himself.
He was succeeded by his son Osorkon, or Usarkon I, who, according to Manetho, reigned fifteen years. There is a head of Osorkon in the British Museum, of a Mongolian type, once thought to be one of the Hyksos kings. He appears to have had two wives, Ta-shet-Kensu, whose son Thekeleth succeeded to the throne, and Maat-Ka-Ra, daughter of a Tanite king, whose son Shashanq became high priest and commander of the forces. He is, by some, credited with a third wife, but she was perhaps merely a concubine, and the two others evidently occupy a first place.
Takelut or The-keleth I followed, with a wife named Shepes, daughter of Neter-mer-Heru, probably a priest, or one of the Egyptian nobles, and they had two sons; the eldest, Namareth became a priest, while a second, Osorkon, succeeded.[284] Manetho says Thekeleth I reigned twenty-three years, but there are few authentic records remaining either of him or his queens.
Usarkon or Osorkon II had three wives, and according to the same authority reigned twenty-nine years. One queen’s name was Karama, or Kareama, and she had a son called Shashanq, a name which seems frequently handed down in this race. A second queen, Mat-ketch-ankh-s, or, as she is elsewhere called, Mut-hat-ankhes, whose son Namareth was again high priest, and a third, Ast-em-khebit, daughter of the princess Thes-bast-peru, who gave to her daughter her mother’s name. During the reign of these sovereigns the goddess Bast, who had formerly been a mere local deity, rose to first importance, and Bubastis superseded Memphis and Thebes as the principal city. The king held magnificent festivals in honor of Amen and as a tribute of respect to the queen, who not only inherited sovereign rights over the principality of Thebes, but was also high priestess of Amen. Pontifical rights were sometimes inherited in the female line, and this gave her husband claims at Thebes, Bubastis being the chief seat of his government.
A colossal Hathor-headed capitol, in the museum in Boston, bears this inscription: “In the year 22, in the first day of Choriak (October 8th of our reckoning) the appearing of his majesty in the Hall of Festival. He reposes on the throne, and the consecration is begun, the consecration of the harem of the house of Amon” (the priestesses of Amon were designated as the wives of[285] the god) “and the consecration of all the women who have dwelt as priestesses therein since the day of his fathers.”
There is a bas-relief showing a procession, first the king, then the queen and her daughters, followed by many priests and women, these last slender and graceful, carrying water jars, said to be of electrum, others bearing sheafs of flowers, some the ankh or life sign, and still others in single file, clapping their hands in measured time.
Queen Karama is followed by her or the king’s daughters, and little dwarfs, like the god Bes, are also included in the procession. The princesses are called Tasbakeper, Karoma and Meri-Amen. The queen assists the king in making offerings in the great festival hall, built especially for the purpose. A sculptured bas-relief of King Osorkon II and Queen Karama, at full length, is in the British Museum. Scarabs of these and later periods are in the New York Museum and in many other places. An inscription remains telling of a great flood which occurred in this reign, so that in order to enter the temples the priests had to wade through water several feet deep, and it is said to have been the highest rise of the Nile ever known.
Of Shashanq II, who succeeded, or of his wife, almost nothing is recorded; he was probably a peaceful king and did little towards building or repairing temples.
Queen Karemama was the wife of the next king, Takelut or Theke-leth II, who reigned fifteen years, and is described as the “Great chief[286] of Mashanasha”; the queen is called “great royal wife” and “beloved of Mut.” Brugsch speaks of her as a daughter of Nimrod, and gives her a very lengthy name, which we can only hope that the lady was of sufficient size to carry. Another wife is called Mut-em-hat-sat-Amen. The former was the mother of the high priest Uarsarken. The queen was descended from one of the royal families of Thebes, and, perhaps in deference to her wishes, they dwelt for a while in Thebes, with a view also, no doubt, of propitiating the priests. The queen is also called “princess, great lady and mistress of the South.”
Shashanq III turned the huge statue of Rameses II into a pylon, having no more respect for his predecessors than did Rameses II himself, and his exploits are inscribed and described after those of Rameses II and Seti I. He adopted the pre-nomen of Rameses II. An Apis bull, a tablet records, was born in the twenty-eighth year of his reign; but, though it lasted fifty-two years, there seem to be no memorials remaining, which was also the case with his successor, Pamai. Nor in the reign of his son Shashanq or Shishak IV do we find mention of the queen. The former seems to have reigned only two, the latter thirty-seven years.
All this time Egypt was in more or less of a turmoil, with a divided or disputed succession, “Such a condition of things,” says one writer, “was of course fatal to literature and art,” which latter “did not so much decline as disappear,” and after Shashanq I no monarch of the line left[287] any building or sculpture of the slightest importance. In this period of doubt and disorder we have the names of a king, Peta-Bast, Auuth-meri-Amen and Uasar-ken or Osorkon III, whose mother and wife are probably mentioned as “Royal mother, royal wife, Tata-Bast, and son of the sun, Nasaek (en) living forever” in a golden aegis of the goddess Sekhet, in the Louvre.
Named as one of the Twenty-third Dynasty, we have Pi-ankhi, who descended on Egypt from Ethiopia, whither the priests had retired, who made his capital at Napata and who, probably through his wife was connected with the old royal families of Egypt. Pi-ankhi called himself “King of Kush,” and the mother, sister and daughter of the king bore each a title of honor as “Queen of Kush.” In inscriptions the king is spoken of as being “like a panther,” and we further read that “Then Nimrod sent forth his wife, the queen and daughter of a king, Nes-thent-nes,” or, as she elsewhere is called, Nes-thent-meh to supplicate the queens and royal king’s daughters and sisters. And they threw themselves prostrate in the women’s house before the queens (saying), “Pray come to me, ye queens, king’s daughters and king’s sisters! Appease Horus, the ruler of the palace. Exalted is his person, great his triumphs. Cause his anger to be appeased before my (prayer), else he will give over to death the king, my husband (but) he is brought low”; when they had finished her majesty was moved in her heart at the supplication of the queen. This comes from a closely[288] written memorial stone set up by the king. It is spoken of as “The Inscription of Pi-ankhi Mer-Amen, king of Egypt, in the eighth century B. C.,” and the Nimrod mentioned was probably Nemareth, one of the petty rulers of Egypt before referred to. The stone was discovered at Mont Barkal, the place where it was originally set up, and the words in brackets are those half obliterated and restored to make out the sense.
When the victor entered the conquered city we are told that “then came to him the king’s wives, and the king’s daughters, and they praised his majesty, after the manner of women; but his majesty did not turn his countenance upon them.” Ungallant majesty, who was hastening on to further conquests and had no time for social amenities! To Nemareth, however, who finally came, leading “a horse with his right hand, and holding a sistrum made of gold and lapis-lazuli in his left,” Pi-ankhi was more condescending—nobly forgave him, like some other nations we have heard of, for defending his own territory, and accompanied him to the temples, and then to Nemareth’s stables, where he, with further condescension, actually scolded the grooms for giving the horses too short rations during the siege.
Elsewhere the queen Pi-anchi, or the next monarch, is spoken of as “sister and wife, the queen of Kekmi (Egypt) Ge-ro-a-ro-pi.” The stone from which this was taken has two pictures, the other showing also the Ethiopian queen. Says Brugsch, “While this sister of the king is designated as Queen of Nubia, another, who was also[289] a wife of Miamun-Mut, is called Queen of Egypt.” His majesty seems to have spent a great deal of time sailing up and down the river, yet conquering wherever he went. And it is probable, after the weak rulers had all submitted to him, he returned to Ethiopia, where he died.
According to Manetho there was but one king of the Twenty-fourth Dynasty, of the old line, named Barkenrenef, who reigned for six years only, at Sais, and there is no mention of his wife. But meanwhile an Ethiopian, possibly the son of Pi-ankhi, held authority at Thebes, and is called “King of the South, Kasta.” He seems to have married a priestess of Amon, called “divine adorer” or “morning star,” a daughter of Osorken III by the name of Shep-en-apt, and Sabaka, who became king, and Amenartas, a priestess, who held the rank of “Neter tuat,” which her mother had also borne.
This Sabaka, or Sabaco, became king of the Nubian Twenty-fifth Dynasty and reigned about twelve years. He called himself “king of the South and North” and “son of the sun.” He appears to have made repairs on various temples and was a contemporary of Sargon and Sennacherib, kings of Assyria, with which country, as well as with Palestine, the confused history of Egypt, through all this period, is much associated.
Queen Amenartas, or, as she is elsewhere called, Ameneritis, married Pi-ankhi, a Nubian prince, and styled herself “royal daughter, royal sister, royal............