the second year of king Pamai. Another Apis was born in the twenty-sixth year of Taharqa, and died in the twentieth year of Psammitichus I. A hundred and sixty-eight tablets in honour of this one Apis have been found, fifty-three of which are dated. Another Apis, born on the nineteenth day of the month Mechir, in the fifty-third year of Psammitichus I., lived sixteen years, seven months and seventeen days, and died on the sixth Paophi of the sixteenth year of Necho II. This bull was succeeded by another, born on the seventh Paophi of the sixteenth year of Necho II., lived seventeen years, six months and five days, and died on the twelfth day of the month Pharmuti, of the twelfth year of king Apries.
As documents of this kind bring us down past the time of Cambyses and even into the Ptolemaic period, that is, into a period of well-ascertained chronology, we are able, by means of the Apis inscriptions alone, to go back from Cambyses to the first year of Taharqa, about seven hundred years before Christ, the limit of possible error being two or three years at the utmost. And with Taharqa (the Tirhaka of Scripture), who was the last king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, begins, as Brugsch observes, the latest period of the history of the Pharaohs.
