CHAPTER I--THE CLOSE OF THE THEBAN EMPIRE--(continued)


_Ramses III.: Manners and Customs--Population--The predominance of Amon
and his high priests._


Opposite the Thebes of the living, Khafîtnîbûs, the Thebes of the dead,
had gone on increasing in a remarkably rapid manner. It continued to
extend in the south-western direction from the heroic period of
the XVIIIth dynasty onwards, and all the eminence and valleys were
gradually appropriated one after the other for burying-places. At the
time of which I am speaking, this region formed an actual town, or
rather a chain of villages, each of which was grouped round some
building constructed by one or other of the Pharaohs as a funerary
chapel. Towards the north, opposite Karnak, they clustered at
Drah-abu'l-Neggah around pyramids of the first Theban monarchs, at
Qurneh around the mausolæ of Ramses I. and Seti I., and at Sheikh
Abd el-Qurneh they lay near the Amenopheum and the Pamonkaniqîmît,
or Ramesseum built by Ramses II. Towards the south they diminished
in number, tombs and monuments becoming fewer and appearing at wider
intervals; the Migdol of Ramses III. formed an isolated suburb, that of
Azamît, at Medinet-Habu; the chapel of Isis, constructed by Amenôthes,
son of Hapû, formed a rallying-point for the huts of the hamlet of
Karka;* and in the far distance, in a wild gorge at the extreme limit
of human habitations, the queens of the Ramesside line slept their last