POSITION OF THE NOBLES

115

XIIIth Dynasty, when the royal power had fallen into weak hands, the princes and nobles regained their old position of independence, which naturally included the privilege of making war upon each other when and where they liked, a privilege which they had been

obliged to forego under the strong rule of the Amenemḥāts and Usertsens. We are justified in assuming that a very large proportion of the royal names which have been assigned to the XIIIth and XIVth Dynasties belonged to petty chiefs and nobles, who masqueraded as great kings. In the East a strong government has

always brought with it security of life and property, and in consequence material prosperity to the country and increased well-being to its inhabitants, and Egypt under the XIIth Dynasty afforded no exception to this rule; probably at no period of her existence were the masses of the population in better case than in the period of the XIIth Dynasty, a period which has, with great justice, been described as the "Golden Age" of Egyptian history.

We have already seen that in the Vth and VIth Dynasties the power of the priests had become very great, but under the Middle Empire their temporal power seems to have been considerably curtailed and their political influence not to have been very great, a fact probably due to the transfer of the temporal power of the country from the old priestly seats of Heliopolis and Memphis to the new capital Thebes, of which the local god, called Amen, had, up to this period, been ministered to by a priesthood, poor and limited in number. We have abundant proofs that the cult of Amen was increasing greatly in the XIIth Dynasty, but many centuries had to elapse before the confraternity of the priests of Amen reached the height of power and influence which the Heliopolitan priests enjoyed at the period of the Vth Dynasty. In the Middle Empire Amen was not identified with Ra, for the cult of Thebes had not yet absorbed that of Heliopolis; of the worship of Sebek, which was very considerable at this time, we have already spoken.

BOOK OF THE DEAD IN THE XIITH DYNASTY I17

In the matter of funeral ceremonies there was a great revival, a fact proved by the numerous inscribed and painted coffins, "Canopic " jars, and boxes to hold the same, etc., which are such distinguishing characteristics of the tombs of the XIth and XIIth Dynasties. It seems that the "Canopic" jars were first introduced at this period, when, instead of the covers of the jars being fashioned in the shapes of the heads of the genii of the dead in use in later periods, the cover of each jar was in the form of a human head, which eventually was appropriated to Amset or Mesthȧ. In connection with the performance of funeral ceremonies we find that at this period the Book of the Dead was

finally arranged in the form

which was afterwards

practically stereotyped by the sacred scribes and religious writers of Thebes in the XVIIIth Dynasty.

2

Of the secular literature of the period little can be said. The "Instructions of Amenemḥāt I." were, no doubt, originally the work of the king himself, and the Story of Sa-nehat, though known to us only from papyri of a later period, must have been composed about the end of the reign of Usertsen I.; the Story of the Shipwreck belongs, according to M. Maspero,1 to about the same period, as well as some other stories which have only come down to us in a fragmentary condition. Under the heading of secular literature may also be mentioned the collection of wills and other legal documents, which were found at Kahûn by Professor Petrie; these documents are of peculiar interest, inasmuch as they throw great light upon the domestic and family affairs of middleclass Egyptians at this period. Moreover, Kahûn itself is of great interest on account of the excavations which have been conducted both there and at Illahûn, and which have revealed to us the oldest towns that have hitherto been uncovered. The town of Illahûn was made specially for the workmen who were building the neighbouring pyramid of Usertsen II., and it seems that temporary towns of a similar character always sprang up wherever pyramids were being built. It will be noticed that the kings of the XIIth Dynasty continued to build pyramid tombs, as their ancestors in

1 Contes Populaires, p. 135 ff.

2 See Griffith, Kahun Papyri, London, 1899.