CHAPTER IV

THE RISE OF THEBES, THE MIDDLE KINGDOM, AND THE TWELFTH DYNASTY

AFTER the passing of the Sixth Dynasty, there ensued a period of confusion in which it becomes difficult to trace the course of the history. The gradual rise in power of the local magnates seems to have culminated in a long period of civil war, during which the central authority preserved only a semblance of power, if even that. Apparently every man did what was right in his own eyes, without much regard to the feeble monarchs who still nominally held the throne. In this internecine strife the wonderful civilization of the Old Kingdom seemed to be on the verge of total destruction. The savagery with which the struggle was carried on is evidenced by the ruthless manner in which the great works of the former dynasties were violated and destroyed. There seems to have been a systematic attempt to obliterate the relics of the ancient rulers of the land; and the very portraitstatues of the kings were smashed or buried, the great diorite statue of Khafra, for instance, referred to in the preceding chapter, having been found by Mariette heaped pell-mell along with a number of others in a well-shaft in the so-called Temple of the Sphinx.

Two shadowy lines of monarchs are recorded by Manetho as the Seventh and Eighth Dynasties, with

their seat at Memphis; but little is known of them save one or two names, and their authority can only have been nominal. Thereafter the seat of government was transferred from Memphis to Herakleopolis, some distance further south, and the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties are recorded as being Herakleopolitan. They are almost as shadowy, however, as their predecessors, and only two names of any importance emerge. The first is that of King Khety Mery-ab-ra, who appears to have exercised some kind of sovereignty over the whole kingdom; the second is that of Mery-ka-ra, who appears, not as ruling, but as being more or less a puppet in the hands of one of the powerful vassals of the throne. The real power in the land lay, seemingly, in the hands of two families of such vassals-namely, the house of Khety of Siut, and that of the Antefs and Mentuhoteps, whose native town was Hermonthis, but who established their seat of government finally at Thebes, which city, formerly an unimportant country town, now began to rise into prominence.

Khety I., the first notable member of the Siut family of princes, was the fourth of his line, and was intimately connected with the royal family reigning at Herakleopolis, having been brought up in the palace along with the princes of the blood. He devoted himself to the task of consolidating and strengthening his power in the district of Siut, gathering a large army, in order to defend his province against the incursions of a league of the more southern lords. He was succeeded by his son, Tefaba, who, when the southern barons invaded his territory, defeated them, and drove them up the river. For some reason, which at present can be only vaguely surmised, the royal family at Herakleopolis lost even its feeble hold upon the throne, and King Mery-ka-ra was driven from his capital up the river. He put himself under the protection of Khety II. of Siut, the grandson of Khety I.,

1788

and this prince, gathering a numerous army and a great fleet, defeated the enemies of the unfortunate sovereign, and brought Mery-ka-ra back in triumph to Herakleopolis. A king who required thus to be held upon the throne by the strong hand of a vassal was, however, obviously unfitted for the task of curbing the turbulent barons of Egypt; and the Herakleopolitan line speedily disappears from the scene, to be succeeded by the first of the Theban dynasties.

The founder of this dynasty, the Eleventh, was the

FIG. 9.-SPEARMAN, MIDDLE KINGDOM.

He had been

hereditary prince Antef of Hermonthis. the organizer of that revolt of the South which has been referred to as having been defeated by Tefaba of Siut; and, though his first attempt was thus unsuccessful, the pressure from the South was kept up by him and by his son, also Antef by name. The latter appears to have scored sufficient successes against the hapless Herakleopolitan house and its sturdy vassals of Siut to warrant him in assuming the title of king, which he did as

Antef I. The strife against the princes of Siut was maintained, and, in spite of one or two defeats, was finally brought to a successful close by Mentuhotep I., who succeeded in establishing himself as lord of the whole land of Egypt. Thus the period of anarchy which had done so much to destroy the fruits of the labours of the first six dynasties came to an end, and the sceptre was once more held by strong and capable hands.

The Eleventh Dynasty, which had thus established itself with Thebes as its capital, consisted of a succession of Antefs and Mentuhoteps, whose order of reigning is somewhat doubtful. Under their rule the land began to recover itself again, and the foreign enterprises which had characterized the earlier dynasties were gradually resumed. We read of an expedition to the Red Sea under the command of a noble named Henu, who started from Koptos with a force of 3,000 men, traversed the desert route to Koser, digging wells by the way for the supply of future expeditions, and re-established communication by sea with the land of Punt. Having got back his cargoes in safety from Punt, he returned, bringing with him blocks of fine stone from the Wady Hammamat for the royal statues. Another expedition for quarrying purposes was also made to the Wady Hammamat. Its leader, Amenemhat, who had under him no fewer than 10,000 men, has left at Hammamat a record of the wonderful success of his expedition, which not only accomplished its purpose safely under the direct guidance of the god Min, of Koptos, but returned home without the loss of either man or beast.

How the Eleventh Dynasty finally passed away is not known. It has been conjectured that the Amenemhat whose successful expedition we have just mentioned, a man who could raise 10,000 men for a mere quarrying expedition, was too powerful to remain a subject, and that

he is to be identified with the Amenemhat who stands as the founder of the Twelfth Dynasty; but this is uncertain. The remains of the kings of the Eleventh Dynasty are not of great importance. No doubt they were too much occupied with the reorganization of the kingdom to have any great opportunities for temple-building or the erection of personal memorials, though the temple of Mentuhotep Neb-hapet-ra, recently excavated at Deir-el-Bahri, contains some fine relief work, and is otherwise interesting on account of the burials of ladies of the royal harem; but at least they rescued Egypt from the miserable condition of anarchy in which she had lain for upwards of three centuries, and it was their work which made possible the remarkable achievements which fall to be chronicled in the story of the Twelfth Dynasty.

We now reach one of the great periods of Egyptian history, in which the framework of society, which had been shaken so severely by the previous generations of civil strife, and only partially restored by the Antefs and Mentuhoteps, was at length thoroughly consolidated, and in which the growing vigour of the nation began once more to find expression in the extension of its boundaries, especially in a southerly direction, beyond the first cataract. How the founder of the dynasty, Amenemhat I., came to the throne is not ascertained; but it is evident that he was a vigorous and prudent sovereign, who proved able to bridle the ambitions and jealousies of the local magnates, and to assert the complete supremacy of the double crown over the whole land. His policy was to render the great barons more directly dependent upon the throne than formerly, and accordingly, while their right. to their paternal estates was not interfered with, the right of acting as governors over their districts was held in the Pharaoh's own hands, and bestowed at his will. The record in the tomb of the nomarch Khnem-hotep, of the