ABSTRACT
PE',I'A-BAsT, i.e., "The gift of Bast," the Il€Tov(3a<Yn<; of 1\fanetho, who says that he reigned forty (variant, twenty-five) years, and that in his time the Olympiads began (see Cory, Anc. Fragrnents, p. 124), appears to have been connected with the royal family of BubaRtis, or with one of the royal priestly families of Thebes. Whether he reigned twenty-five or forty years it is a remarkable fact that the monuments of his reign are so rare, for besides tho few objects enumerated by Wiedemann,l i.e., a small shrine at Paris, a wooden flat statue of Isis, and a bronze torso of the king inlaid with gold, to which may also be added the scarab in the British l\fuseum (No. 17,269, inscribed scarcely any other monument of Pe!ii-Bast is known. His capital was Bubastis, but his authority was
respected at Thebes, a fact proved by the inscriptions which 1\1. G. Legrain I discovered on the front of the stone quay at Thebes, which was built with special care in order to protect the temple of Amen at Karnak from the inundations of the Nile which, even in those remote days, threatened to undermine the building and make it fall. Here we have forty-five inscriptions, the earliest of which is dated in the sixth year of Shashanq 1., and the latest in the nineteenth year of Psammetichus I.; among these are inscriptions which mark the highest point reached by the waters of the Nile in the 16th, 19th, and 23rd years of the reign of Peta-Bast. Side by side, however, with the inscription dated in the 16th year of his reign we find one which indicates that the 16th year of that king was equivalent to the second year of a king of the South and North called Auuth-meri-Amen.? Of the history of this "king" Auuth we know nothing, but we may safely assume that he was the high priest of Amen-Ita at Thebes, and that at some period unknown to us he arrogated to himself the title "King of the South and North," just as so many of his predecessors had done. His rule must have lasted but a few years, for in the
19th year of the reign of Pets-Bast we find that the name of another high priest of Amen stands side by side with that of this king. Peta-Bast is also men-
. tioned in a historical romance found in Demotic in which he and his kinsfolk, among whom is specially mentioned the governor of the nome of Mendes, are parties in a great dispute with Pamai the Less of Heliopolis, and Paqrur, the governor of the East, concerning a suit of armour which was stolen.' Many of the statements in this document appear to be based on historical facts .
