opirri, high priest
of the Theban Amon, and that of the last king of the same
dynasty, Psusennes IL, who conferred the same office on
prince Auputi, son of Sheshonqu. The king's right of
nomination harmonized very well with the hereditary
transmission of the priestly office through members of the
same family, as we shall have occasion to show later on.

He reserved the high priesthood of the Memphite Phtah and that of Ra of
Heliopolis either for the princes of his own family or more often for
his most faithful servants; they were the docile instruments of his
will, through whom he exerted the influence of the gods, and disposed
of their property without having the trouble of administrating it. The
feudal lords, less removed from mortal affairs than the Pharaoh, did not
disdain to combine the priesthood of the temples dependent on them with
the general supervision of the different worships practised on their
lands. The princes of the Gazelle nome, for instance, bore the title
of "Directors of the Prophets of all the Gods," but were, correctly
speaking, prophets of Horus, of Khnumu master of Haoirit, and of Pakhit
mistress of the Speos-Artemidos. The religious suzerainty of such
princes was the complement of their civil and military power, and their
ordinary income was augmented by some portion at least of the revenues
which the lands in mortmain furnished annually. The subordinate
sacerdotal functions were filled by professional priests whose status
varied according to the gods they served and the provinces in which they
were located. Although between the mere priest and the chief prophet
there were a number of grades to which the majority never attained,
still the temples attracted many people from divers sources, who, once
established in this calling of life, not only never left it, but never
rested until they had introduced into it the members of their families.
The offices they filled were not necessarily hereditary, but the
children, born and bred in the shelter of the sanctuary, almost always
succeeded to the positions of their fathers, and certain families thus
continuing in the same occupation for generations, at last came to be
established as a sort of sacerdotal nobility.*

* We possess the coffins of the priests of the Theban Montu
for nearly thirty generations, viz. from the XXVth dynasty
to the time of the Ptolemies. The inscriptions give us their
genealogi