JAMES HENRY BREASTED

PRELIMINARY SURVEY, CHRONOLOGY AND DOCUMENTARY  SOURCES

A rapid survey of the purely external features which serve to demark the great epochs in the career of the Nile valley people, will enable us the more intelligently to study those epochs in detail, as we meet them in the course of our progress. In such a survey, we sweep our eyes down a period of four thousand years of human history, from a time when the only civilization known in the basin of the Mediterranean is slowly dawning among a primitive people on the shores of the Nile. We can cast but a brief glance at the outward events which characterized each great period, especially noting how foreign peoples are gradually drawn within the circle of Egyptian intercourse from age to age, and reciprocal influences ensue; until in the thirteenth century BC the peoples of southern Europe, long discernible in their material civilization, emerge in the written documents of Egypt for the first time in history. It was then that the fortunes of the Pharaohs began to decline, and as the civilization and power, first of the East and then of classic Europe, slowly developed, Egypt was finally submerged in the great world of Mediterranean powers, first dominated by Persia, and then by Greece and Rome.

The career of the races which peopled the Nile valley falls into a series of more or less clearly marked epochs, each of which is rooted deeply in that which preceded it, and itself contains the germs of that which is to follow. A more or less arbitrary and artificial but convenient sub-division of these epochs, beginning with the historic age, is furnished by the so-called dynasties of Manetho. This native historian of Egypt, a priest of Sebennytos, who flourished under Ptolemy I (305-285 BC), wrote a history of his country in the Greek language. The work has perished, and we only know it in an epitome by Julius Africanus and Eusebius, and extracts by Josephus. The value of the work was slight, as it was built up on folk-tales and popular traditions of the early kings. Manetho divided the long succession of Pharaohs as known to him, into thirty royal houses or dynasties, and although we know that many of his divisions are arbitrary, and that there was many a dynastic change where he indicates none, yet his dynasties divide the kings into convenient groups, which have so long been employed in modern study of Egyptian history, that it is now impossible to dispense with them.

After an archaic age of primitive civilization, and a period of small and local kingdoms, the various centres of civilization on the Nile gradually coalesced into two kingdoms: one comprising the valley down to the Delta; and the other made up of the Delta itself. In the Delta, civilization rapidly advanced, and the calendar year of 365 days was intro­duced in 4241 BC, the earliest fixed date in the history of the world as known to us. A long development, as the "Two Lands", which left their imprint forever after, on the civilization of later centuries, preceded a united Egypt, which emerged upon our historic horizon at the consolidation of the two kingdoms into one nation under Menes about 3400 BC. His accession marks the beginning of the dynasties, and the preceding, earliest period may be conveniently designated as the predynastic age. In the excavations of the last ten years, the predynastic civilization has been gradually revealed in material documents exhibiting the various stages in the slow evolution which at last produced the dynastic culture.

A uniform government of the whole country was the secret of over four centuries of prosperity under the descendants of Menes at Thinis, near Abydos, close to the great bend of the Nile below Thebes, and probably also at or near later Memphis. The remarkable development of these four centuries in material civilization led to the splendor and power of the first great epoch of Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom. The seat of government was at Memphis, where four royal houses, the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, ruled in succession for five hundred years (2980-2475 BC). Art and mechanics reached a level of unprecedented excellence never later surpassed, while government and administration had never before been so highly developed. Foreign enterprise passed far beyond the limits of the kingdom; the mines of Sinai, already operated in the First Dynasty, were vigorously exploited; trade in Egyptian bottoms reached the coast of Phoenicia and the Islands of the North, while in the south, the Pharaoh's fleets penetrated to the Somali coast on the Red Sea; and in Nubia his envoys were strong enough to exercise a loose sovereignty over the lower country, and by tireless expeditions to keep open the trade routes leading to the Sudan. In the Sixth Dynasty (2625-2475 BC) the local governors of the central administration, who had already gained hereditary hold upon their offices in the Fifth Dynasty (2750-2625 BC), were able to assert themselves as landed barons and princes, no longer mere func­tionaries of the crown. They thus prepared the way for an age of feudalism.

The growing power of the new landed nobility finally caused the fall of the Pharaonic house, and after the close of the Sixth Dynasty, about 2400 BC, the supremacy of Memphis waned. In the internal confusion which followed, we can discern nothing of Manetho's ephemeral Seventh and Eighth Dynasties at Memphis, which lasted not more than thirty years; but with the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties the nobles of Heracleopolis gained the throne, which was occupied by eighteen successive kings of the line. It is now that Thebes first appears as the seat of a powerful family of princes, by whom the Heracleopolitans and the power of the North are gradually overcome till the South triumphs.

The exact lapse of time from the fall of the Old Kingdom to the triumph of the South is at present indeterminable, but it may be estimated roughly at two hundred and seventy five to three hundred years, with a margin of uncertainty of possibly a century either way.

With the restoration of a united Egypt under the Theban princes of the Eleventh Dynasty about 2160 BC, the issue of the tendencies already discernible at the close of the Old Kingdom is clearly visible. Throughout the land the local princes and barons are firmly seated in their domains, and with these hereditary feudatories the Pharaoh must now reckon. The system was not fully developed until the advent of a second Theban family, the Twelfth Dynasty, the founder of which, Amenemhet I, probably usurped the throne. For over two hundred years (2000-1788 BC) this powerful line of kings ruled a feudal state. This feudal age is the classic period of Egyptian history. Literature flourished, the orthography of the language was for the first time regulated, poetry had already reached a highly artistic structure, the earliest known literature of entertainment was produced, sculpture and architecture were rich and prolific, and the industrial arts surpassed all previous attainments. The internal resources of the country were elaborately developed, especially by close attention to the Nile and the inundation. Enormous hydraulic works reclaimed large tracts of cultivable domain in the Fayum, in the vicinity of which the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Amenemhets and the Sesosírises, lived. Abroad the exploitation of the mines in Sinai was now carried on by the constant labour of permanent colonies there, with temples, fortifications and reservoirs for the water supply. A plundering campaign was carried into Syria, trade and intercourse with its Semitic tribes were constant, and an interchange of commodities with the early Mycenaean centers of civilization in the northern Mediterranean is evident. Traffic with Punt and the southern coasts of the Red Sea continued, while in Nubia the country between the first and second cataracts, loosely controlled in the Sixth Dynasty, was now conquered and held tributary by the Pharaoh, so that the gold mines on the east of it were a constant resource of his treasury.

The fall of the Twelfth Dynasty in 1788 BC was followed by a second period of disorganization and obscurity, as the feudatories struggled for the crown. Now and then an aggressive and able ruler gained the ascendency for a brief reign, and under one of these the subjugation of Upper Nubia was carried forward to a point above the third cat­aract; but his conquest perished with him. After possibly a century of such internal conflict, the country was entered and appropriated by a line of rulers from Asia, who had seemingly already gained a wide dominion there. These foreign usurpers, now known as the Hycsos, after Manetho's designation of them, maintained themselves for perhaps a century. Their residence was at Avaris in the eastern Delta, and at least during the later part of their supremacy, the Egyptian nobles of the South succeeded in gaining more or less independence. Finally the head of a Theban family boldly proclaimed himself king, and in the course of some years these Theban princes succeeded in expelling the Hycsos from the country, and driving them back from the Asiatic frontier into Syria.

 It was under the Hycsos and in the struggle with them that the conservatism of millennia was broken up in the Nile valley. The Egyptians learned aggressive war for the first time, and introduced a well organized military system, including chariotry, which the importation of the horse by the Hycsos now enabled them to do. Egypt was trans­formed into a military empire. In the struggle with the Hycsos and with each other, the old feudal families perished, or were absorbed among the partisans of the dominant Theban family, from which the imperial line sprang. The great Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty thus became emperors, conquering and ruling from northern Syria and the upper Euphrates, to the fourth cataract of the Nile the south. Amid unprecedented wealth and splendor, they ruled their vast dominions, which they gradually welded together into a compact empire, the first known in the early world. Thebes grew into a great metropolis, the earliest monumental city. Extensive trade relations with the East and the Mediterranean world developed; Mycenaean products were common in Egypt, and Egyptian influences are clearly discernible in Mycenaean art. For two hundred and thirty years (1580-1350 BC) the Empire flourished, but was wrecked at last by a combination of adverse influences both within and without. A religious revolution by the young and gifted king Ikhnaton, caused an internal convulsion such as the country had never before experienced; while the empire in the north gradually disintegrated under the aggressions of the Hittites, who pushed in from Asia Minor. At the same time in both the northern and southern Asiatic dominions of the Pharaoh, an overflow of Beduin immigration, among which were undoubtedly some of the tribes which later coalesced with the Israelites, aggravated the danger, and together with the persistent advance of the Hittites, finally resulted in the complete dissolution of the Asiatic empire of Egypt, down to the very frontier of the northeastern Delta. Meanwhile the internal disorders had caused the fall of the Eighteenth Dynasty, an event which terminated the First Period of the Empire (1350 BC).

Harmhab, one of the able commanders under the fallen dynasty, survived the crisis and finally seized the throne. Under his vigorous rule the disorganized nation was gradually restored to order, and his successors of the Nineteenth Dynasty (1350-1205 BC) were able to begin the recovery of the lost empire in Asia. But the Hittites were too firmly entrenched in Syria to yield to the Egyptian onset. The assaults of Seti I, and half a generation of persistent campaigning under Ramses II, failed to push the northern frontier of the Empire far beyond the limits of Palestine. Here it remained and Syria was never permanently recovered. Semitic influences now powerfully affected Egypt.

At this juncture the peoples of southern Europe emerge for the first time upon the arena of oriental history and together with Libyan hordes, threaten to overwhelm the Delta from the west. They were nevertheless beaten back by Merneptah. After another period of internal confusion and usurpation, during which the Nineteenth Dynasty fell (1205 BC), Ramses III, whose father, Setnakht founded the Twentieth Dynasty (1200-1090 BC), was able to maintain the Empire at the same limits, against the invasions of restless northern tribes, who crushed the Hittite power; and also against repeated immigrations of the Libyans. With his death (1167 BC) the empire, with the exception of Nubia which was still held, rapidly fell to pieces. Thus, about the middle of the twelfth century BC the Second Period of the imperial age closed with the total dissolution of the Asiatic dominions.

Under a series of weak Ramessids, the country rapidly declined and fell a prey first to the powerful high priests of Amon, who were obliged almost immediately to yield to stronger Ramessid rivals in the Delta at Tanis, forming the Twenty First Dynasty (1090-945 BC). By the middle of the tenth century BC the mercenaries, who had formed the armies of the second imperial period, had founded powerful families in the Delta cities, and among these the Libyans were now supreme. Sheshonk I, a Libyan mercenary commander, gained the throne as the founder of the Twenty Second Dynasty in 945 BC and the country enjoyed transient prosperity, while Sheshonk even attempted the recovery of Palestine. But the family was unable to control the turbulent mercenary commanders, now established as dynasties in the larger Delta towns, and the country gradually relapsed into a series of military principalities in constant warfare with each other. Through the entire Libyan period of the Twenty Second, Twenty Third and Twenty Fourth Dynasties (945-712 BC) the unhappy nation groaned under such misrule, constantly suffering economic deterioration.

Nubia had now detached itself and a dynasty of kings, probably of Theban origin had arisen at Napata, below the fourth cataract. These Egyptian rulers of the new Nubian kingdom now invaded Egypt, and although residing at Napata, maintained their sovereignty in Egypt with varying fortune for two generations (722-663 BC). But they were unable to suppress and exterminate the local dynasts, who ruled on, while acknowledging the suzerainty of the Nubian overlord. It was in the midst of these conflicts between the Nubian dynasty and the mercenary lords of Lower Egypt, that the Assyrians finally entered the Delta, subdued the country and placed it under tribute (670-662 BC). At this juncture Psamtik I, an able dynast of Sais, in the western Delta, finally succeeded in overthrowing his rivals, expelled the Ninevite garrisons, and as the Nubians had already been forced out of the country by the Assyrians, he was able to found a powerful dynasty, and usher in the Restoration. His accession fell in 663 BC, and the entire period of nearly five hundred years from the final dissolution of the Empire about 1150 to the dawn of the Restoration in 663 BC, may be conveniently designated the Decadence. After 1100 BC the Decadence may be conveniently divided into the Tanite-Amonite Period (1090-945 BC), the Libyan Period (945-712 BC), the Ethiopian Period (722-663 BC), and the Assyrian Period, which is contemporary with the last years of the Ethiopian Period.

Of the Restoration, like all those epochs in which the seat of power was in the Delta, where almost all monuments have perished, we learn very little from native sources; and all too little also from Herodotus and later Greek visitors in the Nile valley. It was outwardly an age of power and splendour, in which the native party endeavoured to restore the old glories of the classic age before the Empire; while the kings depending upon Greek mercenaries, were modern politicians, employing the methods of the new Greek world, mingling in the world-politics of their age, and showing little sympathy with the archaizing tendency. But their combinations failed to save Egypt from the ambition of Persia, and its history under native dynasties, with unimportant exceptions, was concluded with the conquest of the country by Cambyses in 525 BC.

Such, in mechanical review, were the purely external events which marked the successive epochs of Egypt's his­tory as an independent nation. With their dates, these epochs may be summarized thus:

Introduction of the Calendar, 4241 BC.

Predynastic Age, before 3400 BC.

The Accession of Menes, 3400 BC.

The first Two Dynasties, 3400-2980 BC.

The Old Kingdom: Dynasties Three to Six, 29S0-2475 BC.

Eighteen Heracleopolitans, 2445-2160 BC.

The Middle Kingdom: Dynasties Eleven and Twelve, 2160-1788 BC.

Internal Conflicts of the Feudatories,

The Hycsos,    1788-1580 BC.

The Empire: First Period, The Eighteenth Dynasty, 1580-1350 BC.

The Empire: Second Period, The Nineteenth and part of the Twentieth Dynasty, 1350-1150 BC.

The Decadence:

Last Two Generations of Twentieth Dy­nasty, about 1150 to 1090 BC.

Tanite-Amonite Period, Twenty First Dy­nasty, 1090-945 BC.

Libyan Period, Dynasties Twenty Two to Twenty Four, 945-712 BC.

Ethiopian Period, 722-663 B. C. (Twenty Fifth Dynasty, 712-663 BC).

Assyrian Supremacy, 670-662 B. C.

The Restoration,  Saite Period,  Twenty Sixth Dynasty, 663-525 BC.

Persian Conquest, 525 BC.

The reader will find at the end of the volume a ruller table of reigns. The chronology of the above table is obtained by two independent processes: first by "dead reckoning," and second by astronomical calculations based on the Egyptian calendar. By "dead reckoning" we mean simply the addition of the known minimum length of all the kings' reigns, and from the total thus obtained, the simple computation (backward from a fixed starting point) of the date of the beginning of the series of reigns so added. Employing all the latest dates from recent discoveries, it is mathematically certain that from the accession of the Eighteenth Dynasty to the conquest of the Persians in 525 BC the successive Pharaohs reigned at least 1052 years in all. The Eighteenth Dynasty therefore began not later than 1577 BC. Astronomical calculations based on the date of the rising of Sirius, and of the occurrence of new moons, both in terms of the shifting Egyptian calendar, place the date of the accession of the Eighteenth Dynasty with fair precision in 1580 BC. For the periods earlier than the Eighteenth Dynasty, we can no longer employ the method of dead reckoning alone, because of the scantiness of the contemporary documents. Fortunately another date of the rising of Sirius, fixes the advent of the Twelfth Dynasty at 2000 BC, with a margin of uncertainty of not more than a year or two either way. From this date the beginning of the Eleventh Dynasty is again only a matter of "dead reckoning." The uncertainty as to the duration of the Heracleopolitan supremacy makes the length of the period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms very uncertain. If we give the eighteen Heracleopolitans sixteen years each, which, under orderly conditions, is a fair average in the orient, they will have ruled 288 years. In estimating their duration at 285 years, we may err possibly as much as a century either way. The computation of the length of the Old Kingdom is based on contemporary monuments and early lists, in which the margin of error is probably not more than a generation or two either way, but the uncertain length of the Heracleopolitan rule affects all dates back of that age, and a shift of a century either way in the years B C is not impossible. The ancient annals of the Palermo Stone establish the length of the first two dynasties at roughly 420 years, and the date of the accession of Menes and the union of Egypt as 3400 BC; but we carry back with us, from the Heracleopolitan age, the same wide margin of uncertainty as in the Old Kingdom. The reader will have observed that this system of chronology is based upon the contemporary monuments and lists dating not later than 1200 BC. The extremely high dates for the beginning of the dynasties current in some histories are inherited from an older generation of Egyptologists; and are based upon the chronology of Manetho, a late, careless and uncritical compilation, which can be proven wrong from the contemporary monuments in the vast majority of cases, where such monuments have survived. Its dynastic totals are so absurdly high throughout, that they are not worthy of a moment's credence, being often nearly or quite double the maximum drawn from contemporary monuments, and they will not stand the slightest careful criticism. Their accuracy is now maintained only by a small and constantly decreasing number of modern scholars.

Like our chronology our knowledge of the early history of Egypt must be gleaned from the contemporary native monuments. Monumental sources even when full and complete are at best but insufficient records, affording data for only the meagrest outlines of great achievements and impor­tant epochs. While the material civilization of the country found adequate expression in magnificent works of the artist, craftsman and engineer, the inner life of the nation, or even the purely external events of moment could find record only incidentally. Such documents are sharply differentiated from the materials with which the historian of European nations deals, except of course in his study of the earliest ages. Extensive correspondence between statesmen, journals and diaries, state documents and reports—such materials as these are almost wholly wanting in monumental records. Imagine writing a history of Greece from the few Greek inscriptions surviving. Moreover, we possess no history of Egypt of sufficiently early date by a native Egyptian; the compilation of puerile folk-tales by Manetho, in the third century BC is hardly worthy of the name history. But an annalist of the remote ages with which we are to deal, could have had little conception of what would be important for future ages to know, even if he had undertaken a full chronicle of historical events. Scanty annals were indeed kept from the earliest times, but these have entirely perished with the exception of two fragments, the now famous Palermo Stone, which once bore the annals of the earliest dynasties from the beginning down into the Fifth Dynasty; and some extracts from the records of Thutmose III's campaigns in Syria. Of the other monuments of incidental character, but the merest fraction has survived. Under these circumstances we shall probably never be able to offer more than a sketch of the civilization of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, with a hazy outline of the general drift of events. Under the Empire the available documents, both in quality and quantity for the first time approach the minimum, which in European history would be regarded as adequate to a moderately full presentation of the career of the nation. Scores of important questions, however, still remain unanswered, in whatever direction we turn. Nevertheless a rough framework of the governmental organization, the constitution of society, the most important achievements of the emperors, and to a limited extent the spirit of the age, may be discerned and sketched in the main outlines, even though it is only here and there that the sources enable us to fill in the detail. In the Decadence and the Restoration, however, the same paucity of documents, so painfully apparent in the older periods, again leaves the historian with a long series of hypotheses and probabilities. For the reserve with which the author has constantly treated such periods, he begs the reader to hold the scanty sources responsible.

THE SIXTH DYNASTY: THE  DECLINE OF THE OLD KINGDOM

In the fullest of the royal lists, the Turin Papyrus, there is no indication that the line of Menes was interrupted until the close of the reign of Unis. That a new dynasty arose at this point there can be no doubt. As the reader has already perceived, the movement which brought in this new dynasty was due to a struggle of the local governors for a larger degree of power and liberty. The establishment of the Fifth Dynasty by the influence of the Heliopolitan party had given them the opportunity they desired. They gained hereditary hold upon their offices, and the kings of that family had never been able to regain the complete control over them maintained by the Fourth Dynasty. Gradually the local governors had then shaken off the restraint of the Pharaoh; and when about 2625 BC, after the reign of Unis, they succeeded in overthrowing the Fifth Dynasty, they became landed barons, each firmly entrenched in his nome, or city, and maintaining an hereditary claim upon it. The old title of "local governor" disappeared as a mat­ter of course, and the men who had once borne it now called themselves "great chief" or "great lord" of this or that nome. They continued the local government as before, but as princes with a large degree of independence, not as officials of the central government. We have here the first example traceable in history of the dissolution of a centralized state by a process of aggrandizement on the part of local officials of the crown, like that which resolved the Carolingian empire into duchies, landgraviates or petty principalities. The new lords were  not able to render their tenure unconditionally hereditary, but here the Pharaoh still maintained a powerful hold upon them; for at the death of a noble his position, his fief and his title must be conferred upon the inheriting son by the gracious favor of the monarch. These nomarchs or "great lords" are loyal adherents of the Pharaoh, executing his commissions in distant regions, and displaying the greatest zeal in his cause; but they are no longer his officials merely; nor are they so attached to the court and person of the monarch as to build their tombs around his pyramid. They now have sufficient independence and local attachment to locate their tombs near their homes. We find them excavated in the cliffs at Elephantine, Kasr-Sayyad, Shekh-Said and Zawiyet el-Metin, or built of masonry at Abydos. They devote much attention to the development and prosperity of their great domains, and one of them even tells how he brought in emigrants from neighboring nomes to settle in the feebler towns and infuse new blood into the less productive districts of his own nome.

The chief administrative bond which united the nomes to the central government of the Pharaoh will have been the treasury as before; but the Pharaoh found it necessary to exert general control over the great group of fiefs, which now comprised his kingdom, and already toward the end of the Fifth Dynasty he had therefore appointed over the whole of the valley above the Delta a "governor of the South," through whom he was able constantly to exert governmental pressure upon the southern nobles; there seems to have been no corresponding "governor of the North," and we may infer that the lords of the North were less aggressive. Moreover the kings still feel themselves to be kings of the South governing the North.

The seat of government, the chief royal residence, as before in the vicinity of Memphis, was still called the "White Wall," but after the obscure reign of Teti II, the first king of the new dynasty, the pyramid-city of his successor, the powerful Pepi I, was so close to the "White Wall" that the name of his pyramid, "Mennofer," corrupted by the Greeks to Memphis, rapidly became the name of the city and "White Wall" survived only as an archaic and poetic designation of the place. The administration of the residence had become a matter of sufficient importance to demand the attention of the vizier himself. He henceforth assumed its immediate control, receiving the title "governor of the pyramid-city" or "governor of the city" merely, for it now became customary to speak of the residence as the "city." Notwithstanding thorough-going changes, the new dynasty continued the official cult maintained by their predecessors. Re remained supreme and the old foundations were respected.

In spite of the independence of the new nobles, it is evident that Pepi I possessed the necessary force to hold them well in hand. His monuments, large and small, are found throughout Egypt. Now began also the biographies of the officials of the time, affording us a picture of the busy life of the self-satisfied magnates of that distant age; while to these we may fortunately add also their records at the mines and in the quarries. Loyalty now demands no more than a relief showing the king as he worships his gods or smites his enemies; and this done the vanity of the commander of the expedition and his fellows may be gratified in a record of their deeds or adventures, which becomes longer and longer as time passes. Pepi I sent his chief architect and the two "treasurers of the God," besides the master builder of his pyramid, and a body of artisans, to the quarries at Hammamat to procure the necessary fine stone for his pyramid, and they left in the quarry, besides two royal reliefs, three other inscriptions, giving a full list of their names and titles. At the alabaster quarry of Hatnub the governor of the South, who was also "great lord of the Hare-nome," recorded his execution of a commission there for Pepi I; while a military commander perpetuates his achievement of a similar commission for the same king   in the Wadi Maghara in Sinai. The pride of office among the official class is undiminished. So many titles have now become purely honourary,—high sounding predicates worn by nobles, who performed none of the duties once devolving upon the incumbents, that the actual administrators of many offices added the word ''real" after such titles. We have a very interesting and instructive example of this official class under the new regime, in Uni, a faithful adherent of the royal house, who has fortunately left us his biography. Under king Teti II he had begun his career at the bottom as an obscure under-custodian in the royal domains. Pepi I now appointed him as a judge, at the same time giving him rank at the royal court, and an income as a priest of the pyramid-temple. He was soon promoted to a superior custodianship of the royal domains, and in this capacity he had so gained the royal favor that when a conspiracy against the king arose in the harem he was nominated with one colleague to prosecute the case. Pepi I thus strove to single out men of force and ability with whom he might organize a strong government, closely attached to his fortunes and to those of his house. In the heart of the southern country he set up among the nobles the "great lord of the Hare-nome," and made him governor of the South; while he married as his official queens the two sisters of the nomarch of Thinis, both bearing the same name, Enekhnes-Merire, and they became the mothers of the two kings who followed him.

The foreign policy of Pepi I was more vigourous than that of any Pharaoh of earlier times. In Nubia he gained such control over the negro tribes that they were obliged to contribute quotas to his army in case of war, and when such war was in the north, where safety permitted, these negro levies were freely employed. The Beduin tribes of the north, having become too bold in their raiding of the eastern Delta, or having troubled his mining expeditions in Sinai, Pepi commissioned Uni to collect such an army among the negroes, supplemented by levies throughout Egypt. The king over-looked many men of much higher rank, and placing Uni in command of this army, sent him against the Beduin. He of course scattered them without difficulty, and having devas­tated their country, returned home. On four more such punitive expeditions Pepi I sent him against the tribes of this country, and a final show of hostility on their part at last called him further north than the region on the east of the Delta. Embarking his force, he carried them in troop­ships along the coast of southern Palestine, and punished the Beduin as far north as the highlands of Palestine. This marks the northernmost advance of the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom, and is in accordance with the discovery of a Sixth Dynasty scarab at Gezer below Jerusalem, in strata below those dated in the Middle Kingdom. The naive account of these wars left by Uni in his biography is one of the most characteristic evidences of the totally unwarlike spirit of the early Egyptian.

Having thus firmly established his family at the head of the state, the fact that Pepi I's death, after a reign of probably twenty years, left his son, Mernere, to administer the king­dom as a mere youth, seems not in the least to have shaken its fortunes. Mernere immediately appointed Uni, the old servant of his house, as governor of the South, under whose trusty guidance all went well. The powerful nobles of the southern frontier were also zealous in their support of the young king. They were a family of bold and adventurous barons, living on the island of Elephantine just below the first cataract. The valley at the cataract was now called the "Door of the South" and its defense against the turbulent tribes of northern Nubia was placed in their hands, so that the head of the family bore the title "Keeper of the Door of the South." They made the place so safe that when the king dispatched Uni to the granite quarries at the head of the cataract to procure the sarcophagus and the finer fittings for his pyramid, the noble was able to accomplish his errand with "only one warship," an unprecedented feat.

The enterprising young monarch then commissioned Uni to establish unbroken connection by water with the granite quarries by opening a succession of five canals through the intervening granite barriers of the cataract; and the faithful noble completed this difficult task, besides the building of seven boats, launched and laden with great blocks of granite for the royal pyramid in only one year.

The north was too difficult of access, too distinctly separated by natural limits from the valley of the Nile for the Pharaohs of this distant age to attempt more in Asia than the defense of their frontier and the protection of their mining enterprises in Sinai. The only barrier between them and the south, however, was the cataract region. Mernere had now made the first cataract passable for Nile boats at high water, and a closer control, if not the conquest of northern Nubia was quite feasible. It was not of itself a country which the agricultural Egyptian could utilize. The strip of cultivable soil between the Nile and the desert on either hand was in Nubia so scanty, even in places disap­pearing altogether, that its agricultural value was slight. But the high ridges and valleys in the desert on the east contained rich veins of gold-bearing quartz, and iron ore was plentiful also, although no workings of it have been found there. The country was furthermore the only gateway to the regions of the south, with which constant trade was now maintained. Besides gold, the Sudan sent down the river ostrich feathers, ebony logs, panther skins and ivory; while along the same route, from Punt and the countries further east, came myrrh, fragrant gums and resins and aromatic woods. It was therefore an absolute necessity that the Pharaoh should command this route. "We know little of the negro and negroid tribes who inhabited the cataract region at this time. Immediately south of the Egyptian frontier dwelt the tribes of Wawat, extending well toward the second cataract, above which the entire region of the upper cataracts was known as Kush, although the name does not commonly occur on the monuments until the Middle Kingdom. In the upper half of the huge "S" formed by the course of the Nile between the junction of the two Niles and the second cataract, was included the territory of the powerful Mazoi, who afterward appeared as auxiliaries in the Egyptian army in such numbers that the Egyptian word for soldier ultimately became "Matoi," a late (Coptic) form of Mazoi. Probably on the west of the Mazoi was the land of Yam, and between Yam and Mazoi on the south and Wawat on the north were distributed several tribes, of whom Irthet and Sethut were the most important. The last two, together with Wawat, were sometimes united under one chief. All these tribes were still in the barbarous stage. They dwelt in squalid settlements of mud huts along the river, or beside wells in the valleys running up country from the Nile; and besides the flocks and herds which they maintained, they also lived upon the scanty produce of their small grain-fields.

Doubtless utilizing his new canal, Mernere now devoted special attention to the exploitation of these regions. His power was so respected by the chiefs of Wawat, Irthet, Mazoi and Yam that they furnished the timber for the heavy cargo-boats built by Uni for the granite blocks which he took out at the first cataract. In his fifth year Mernere did what no Pharaoh before him had ever done, in so far as we are informed. He appeared at the first cataract in person to receive the homage of the southern chiefs, and left upon the rocks a record of the event,—a relief depicting the Pharaoh leaning upon his staff, while the Nubian chiefs bow down in his presence. The unprecedented nature of the event is intimated in the accompanying inscription: "The coming of the king himself, appearing behind the hill-country [of the cataract], that he might see that which is in the hill-country, while the chiefs of Mazoi, Irthet and Wawat did obeisance and gave great praise."

Mernere now utilized the services of the Elephantine nobles in tightening his hold upon the southern chiefs. Harkhuf, who was then lord of Elephantine, was also appointed governor of the South, perhaps as the successor of Uni, who was now too old for active service, or had meantime possibly died; although the title had now become an honorable epithet or title of honor worn by more than one deserv­ing noble at this time. It was upon Harkhuf and his relatives, a family of daring and adventurous nobles, that the Pharaoh now depended as leaders of the arduous and dangerous expeditions which should intimidate the barbarians on his frontiers and maintain his prestige and his trade connections in the distant regions of the south. These men are the earliest known explorers of inner Africa and the southern Red Sea. At least two of the family perished in executing the Pharaoh's hazardous commissions in these far off lands, a significant hint of the hardships and perils to which they were all exposed. Besides their princely titulary as lords of Elephantine they all bore the title “caravan-conductor, who brings the products of the countries to his lord”, which they proudly display upon their tombs, excavated high in the front of the cliffs facing modern Assuan, where they still look down upon the island of Elephantine, the one time home of the ancient lords who occupy them. Here Harkhuf has recorded how Mernere dispatched him on three successive expeditions to distant Yam. On the first, as he was still young, he was therefore accompanied by his father Iri. He was gone seven months. On the second journey he was allowed to go alone and returned in safety in eight months. Ilis third expedition was more adventurous and correspondingly more successful. Arriving in Yam, he found its chief engaged in a war with the southernmost settlements of the Temehu, tribes related to the Libyans, on the west of Yam. Harkhuf immediately went after him and had no difficulty in reducing him to subjection. The tribute and the products of the south obtained in trade during his stay were loaded upon three hundred asses, and with a heavy escort furnished by the chief of Yam, Harkhuf set out for the north. The chief of Irthet, Sethu and Wawat, awed by the large force of Egyptians, and the escort of Yamites accompanying Harkhuf, made no effort to plunder his richly laden train, but brought him an offering of cattle and gave him guides. He reached the cataract with his valuable cargo in safety, and was met there by a messenger of the Pharaoh, with a Nile boat full of delicacies and provisions from the court, dispatched by the king for the refreshment of the now weary and exhausted noble.

These operations for the winning of the extreme south were interrupted by the untimely death of Mernere. He was buried behind Memphis in the granite sarcophagus procured for him by Uni, in the pyramid for which Uni had likewise laboured so faithfully, and here his body survived, in spite of vandals and tomb-robbers, until its removal to the museum at Gizeh in 1881. As Mernere reigned only four years and died early in his fifth year without issue, the succession devolved upon his half-brother, who, although only a child, ascended the throne as Pepi II. His accession and successful rule speak highly for the stability of the family, and the faithfulness of the influential nobles attached to it. Pepi II was the son of Enekhnes-Merire, the second sister of the Thinite nomarch, whom Pepi I first had taken as his queen. Her brother Zau, Pepi II's uncle, who was now nomarch of Thinis, was appointed by the child-king as vizier, chief judge and governor of the residence city. He thus had charge of the state during his royal nephew's minority, and as far as we can now discern, the government proceeded without the slightest disturbance.

Pepi II, or in the beginning, of course, his ministers, immediately resumed the designs of the royal house in the south. In the young king's second year, Harkhuf was for the fourth time dispatched to Yam, whence he returned bringing a rich pack train and a dwarf from one of the pigmy tribes of inner Africa. These uncouth, bandy-legged creatures were highly prized by the noble class in Egypt; they were not unlike the merry genius Bes in appearance, and they executed dances in which the Egyptians took the greatest delight. The land from which they came was connected by the Nile-dwellers with the mysterious region of the west, the sojourn of the dead, which they called the "land of spirits," and the dwarfs from this sacred land were especially desired for the dances with which the king's leisure hours were diverted. The child-king was so delighted on receiving news of Harkhuf's arrival at the frontier with one of these pigmies that he wrote the fortunate noble a long letter of instruc­tions, cautioning him to have it closely watched lest any harm should come to it, or it should fall into the Nile; and promising Harkhuf a greater reward than king Isesi had given to his "treasurer of the God", Burded, when he brought home a dwarf from Punt. Harkhuf was so proud of this letter that he had it engraved on the front of his tomb, as an evidence of the great favour which he en­joyed with the royal house. Not all of these hardy lords of Elephantine, who adventured their lives in the tropical fastnesses of inner Africa in the twenty sixth century before Christ were as fortunate as Harkhuf. One of them, a governor of the South, named Sebni, suddenly received news of the death of his father, prince Mekhu, while on an expedition south of Wawat. Sebni quickly mustered the troops of his domain, and with a train of a hundred asses marched rapidly southward, punished the tribe to whom Mekhu's death was presumably due, rescued the body of his father, and loading it upon an ass, returned to the frontier. He had before dispatched a messenger to inform the Pharaoh of the facts, sending a tusk of ivory five feet long, and adding that the best one in his cargo was ten feet long. On reaching the cataract he found that this messenger had returned, bearing a gracious letter from the Pharaoh, who had also sent a whole company of royal embalmers, undertakers, mourners and mortuary priests, with a liberal supply of fine linen, spices, oils and rich perfumes, that they might immediately embalm the body of the deceased noble and proceed to the interment. Sebni then went to Memphis to pay his respects to the Pharaoh and deliver the rich cargo which his father had collected in the south. He was shown every mark of royal favour for his pious deed in rescuing his father's body. Splendid gifts and the "gold of praise" were showered upon him, and later an official communication from the vizier conveyed to him a parcel of land.

A loose sovereignty was now extended over the Nubian tribes, and Pepinakht, one of the Elephantine lords, was placed in control with the title "governor of foreign countries." In this capacity Pepi II sent him against Wawat and Irthet, whence he returned after great slaughter among the rebels, with numerous captives and children of the chiefs as hostages. A second campaign there was still more successful, as he captured the two chiefs of these countries themselves, besides their two commanders and plentiful spoil from their herds. Expeditions were pushed far into the upper cataract region, which is once called Kush in the Elephantine tombs, and, in general, the preliminary work was done which made possible the complete conquest of lower Nubia in the Middle Kingdom. Indeed that conquest would now have been begun had not internal causes produced the fall of the Sixth Dynasty.

The responsibility for the development of Egyptian commerce with the land of Punt and the region of the southern Red Sea also fell upon the lords of Elephantine. Evidently they had charge of the whole south from the Red Sea to the Nile. Not less dangerous than their exploits in Nubia were the adventures of the Elephantine commanders who were sent to Punt. There was no water way connecting the Nile with the Red Sea, and these leaders were obliged to build their ships at the eastern terminus of the Coptos caravan route from the Nile, on the shore of the sea in one of the harbours like Koser or Leucos Limen. Sailing vessels were much improved in the Sixth Dynasty by the mounting of the ancient steering oar on a kind of rudder post and the attach­ment of a tiller. While so engaged, Enenkhet, Pepi II's naval commander, was fallen upon by the Beduin, who slew him and his entire command. Pepinakht was immediately dispatched by the Pharaoh to rescue the body of the unfor­tunate noble. He accomplished his dangerous errand successfully, and having punished the Beduin, he returned in safety. In spite of these risks, the communication with Punt was now active and frequent. A subordinate official of the Elephantine family boasts in his lord's tomb that he accompanied him to Punt no less than probably eleven times and returned in safety. It will be seen that the usually accepted seclusion of the Old Kingdom can no longer be maintained. Far from allowing himself to be isolated by the deserts which enveloped his land on east and west, or the cataract which had once formed his southern boundary, the Pharaoh was now maintaining an active and flourishing commerce with the south; while the royal fleets brought cedar from the heights of Lebanon on the north. Under these circumstances direct commercial intercourse with the distant island civilization which preceded the Mycenaean culture in the north would have been nothing remarkable, and archaeological evidence now shows that it existed.

Pepi II, having ascended the throne as a mere child, doubtless born just before his father's death, enjoyed the longest reign yet recorded in history. The tradition of Manetho states that he was six years old when he began to reign, and that he continued until the hundredth year, doubtless meaning of his life. The list preserved by Eratosthenes avers that he reigned a full century. The Turin Papyrus of kings supports the first tradition, giving him over ninety years, and there is no reason to doubt its truth. His was thus the longest reign in history. Several brief reigns followed, among them possibly that of the queen Nitocris, to whose name were attached the absurdest legends. Two kings, Iti and Imhotep, whose officials visited Hammamat to secure the stone for their pyramids and statues, may possibly belong in this time, though they may equally well have ruled at the close of the Fifth Dynasty; but after the death of Pepi II all is uncertain, and impenetrable obscurity veils the last days of the Sixth Dynasty. When it had ruled something over one hundred and fifty years the power of the landed barons became a centrifugal force, which the Pharaohs could no longer withstand, and the dissolution of the state resulted. The nomes gained their independence, the Old Kingdom fell to pieces, and for a time was thus resolved into the petty principalities of prehistoric times. Nearly a thousand years of unparalleled development since the rise of a united state, thus ended, in the twenty fifth century BC, in political conditions like those which had prevailed in the beginning.

It had been a thousand years of inexhaustible fertility when the youthful strength of a people of boundless energy had for the first time found the organized form in which it could best express itself. In every direction we see the products of a national freshness and vigor which are never spent; the union of the country under a single guiding hand which had quelled internal dissensions and directed the combined energies of a great people toward harmonious effort, had brought untold blessing. The Pharaohs to whom the unparalleled grandeur of this age was due not only gained a place among the gods in their own time, but two thousand years later, at the close of Egypt's history as an independent nation, in the Twenty Sixth Dynasty, we still find the priests who were appointed to maintain their worship. And at the end of her career, when the nation had lost all that youthful elasticity and creative energy which so abounded in the Old Kingdom, the sole effort of her priests and wise men was to restore the unsullied religion, life and government which in their fond imagination had existed in the Old Kingdomas they looked wistfully back upon it across the millennia. To us it has left the imposing line of temples, tombs and pyramids, stretching for many miles along the margin of the western desert, the most eloquent witnesses to the fine intel­ligence and titanic energies of the men who made the Old Kingdom what it was; not alone achieving these wonders of mechanics and internal organization, but building the earliest known   sea-going ships and exploring unknown waters, or pushing their commercial enterprises far up the Nile into inner Africa. In plastic art they had reached the highest achievement; in architecture their tireless  genius had created the column and originated the colonnade; in government they had elaborated an enlightened and highly developed state, with a large body of law; in religion they were already dimly conscious of a judgment in the hereafter, and they were thus the first men whose ethical intuitions made happiness in the future life dependent upon character. Everywhere their unspent energies unfolded in a rich and manifold culture which left the world such a priceless heritage as no nation had yet bequeathed it. It now remains to be seen, as we stand at the close of this remarkable age, whether the conflict of local with centralized authority shall exhaust the elemental strength of this ancient people; or whether such a reconciliation can be effected as will again produce harmony and union, permitting the continuance of the marvelous development of which we have witnessed the first fruits.

THE DECLINE OF THE NORTH AND THE RISE OF THEBES.

The internal struggle which caused the fall of the Old Kingdom developed at last into a convulsion, in which the destructive forces were for a time completely triumphant. Exactly when and by whom the ruin was wrought is not now determinable, but the magnificent mortuary works of the greatest of the Old Kingdom monarchs fell victims to a carnival of destruction in which many of them were annihilated. The temples were not merely pillaged and violated, but their finest works of art were subjected to systematic and determined vandalism, which shattered the splendid granite and diorite statues of the kings into bits, or hurled them into the well in the monumental gate of the pyramid-causeway. Thus the foes of the old regime wreaked vengeance upon those who had represented and upheld it. The nation was totally disorganized. From the scanty notes of Manetho it would appear that an oligarchy, possibly representing an attempt of the nobles to set up their joint rule, assumed control for a brief time at Memphis. Manetho calls them the Seventh Dynasty. He follows them with an Eighth Dynasty of Memphite kings, who are but the lingering shadow of ancient Memphite power. Their names as preserved in the Abydos list show that they regarded the Sixth Dynasty as their ancestors; but none of their pyramids has ever been found, nor have we been able to date any tombs of the local nobility in this dark age. In the mines and quarries of Sinai and Hammamat, where records of every prosperous line of kings proclaim their power, not a trace of these ephemeral Pharaohs can be found.

It was a period of such weakness and disorganization that neither king nor noble was able to erect monumental works which might have survived to tell us something of the time. How long this unhappy condition may have continued it is now quite impossible to determine. In the alabaster quarries at Hatnub quantities of inscriptions nevertheless record work there by the lords of the Hare-nome, thus indicating the gathering power of the noble houses who disregard the king and date events in years of their own rule. One of these dynasts even records with pride his repulse of the king's power, saying: "I rescued my city in the day of violence from the terrors of the royal house." A generation after the fall of the Sixth Dynasty a family of Heracleopolitan nomarchs wrested the crown from the weak Memphites of the Eighth Dynasty, who may have lingered on, claiming royal honors for nearly another century.

Some degree of order was finally restored by the triumph of the nomarchs of Heracleopolis. This city, just south of the Fayum, had been the seat of a temple and cult of Horus from the earliest dynastic times, and the princes of the town now succeeded in placing one of their number on the throne. Akhthoes, who, according to Manetho, was the founder of the new dynasty, must have taken grim vengeance on his enemies, for all that Manetho knows of him is that he was the most violent of all the kings of the time, and that, having been seized with madness, he was slain by a crocodile. The new house is known to Manetho as the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties, but its kings were still too feeble to leave any enduring monuments; neither have any records contemporary with the family survived except during the last three generations when the powerful nomarchs of Shit were able to excavate cliff-tombs in which they fortunately left records of the active and successful career of their family. They offer us a hint of what the state of the country had been when the Heracleopolitan princes restored order, for the nobles of Siut say of their own domains: "Every official was at his post, there was no one fighting, nor any shooting an arrow. The child was not smitten beside his mother, nor the citizen beside his wife. There was no evil-doer ... nor anyone doing violence against his house". "When night came, he who slept on the road gave me praise, for he was like a man in his house; the fear of my soldier was his protection".

These Siut nomarchs enjoyed the most intimate relations with the royal house at Heracleopolis; we first find the king attending the burial of the head of their noble house; and while the daughter of the deceased prince ruled in Siut, her son, Kheti, then a lad, was placed with the children of the royal household to be educated. When old enough, he relieved his mother of the regency, and if we may judge of the entire country from the administration of this Siut noble, the land must have enjoyed prosperity and plenty. He dug canals, reduced taxation, reaped rich harvests, and maintained large herds; while he had always in readiness a body of troops and a fleet. Such was the wealth and power of these Siut nobles that they soon became a buffer state on the south of inestimable value to the house of Heracleopolis, and Kheti was made military "commander of Middle Egypt."

Meantime among the nobles of the South a similar powerful family of nomarchs was slowly rising into notice. Come four hundred and forty miles above Memphis, and less than one hundred and forty miles below the first cataract, along the stretch of Nile about forty miles above the great bend, where the river approaches most closely to the Red Sea before turning abruptly away from it, the scanty margin between river and cliffs expands into a broad and fruitful plain in the midst of which now lie the mightiest ruins of ancient civilization to be found anywhere in the world. They are the wreck of Thebes, the world's first great monumental city. At this time it was an obscure provincial town and the neighboring Hermonthis was the scat of a family of nomarchs, the Intefs and Mentuhoteps. Toward the close of the Heracleopolitan supremacy, Thebes had gained the leading place in the South, and its nomarch, Intef, was ''keeper of the Door of the South.'' The South stood together and in time of scarcity we see the nomes aiding each other with grain and provisions. Intef was soon able to organize the whole South in rebellion, mustering his forces from the cataract northward at least as far as Thebes. He and his successors finally wrenched the southern confederation from the control of Heracleopolis, and organized an independent kingdom, with Thebes at its head. This Intef was ever after recognized as the ancestor of the Theban line, and the monarchs of the Middle Kingdom set up his statue in the temple at Thebes among those of their royal predecessors who were worshipped there.

At this juncture, the unshaken fidelity of the Siut princes was the salvation of the house of Heracleopolis; for Tefibi of Siut, perhaps a son of the nomarch Kheti, whom we first found there, now placed his army in the field against the aggression of Thebes. He marched southward to stem an invasion of the southerners, and meeting them on the west shore of the river, drove them back, recovering lost territory as far south as "the fortress of the Port of the South," probably Abydos. A second army which was advancing to meet him on the east shore was likewise defeated; the ships of a southern fleet were forced ashore, their commander driven into the river and the ships apparently captured by Tefibi. His son Kheti was now appointed as "military commander of the whole land," and "great lord of Middle Egypt." He continued loyal support of his sovereign, Merikere of Heracleopolis, and was the veritable "king-maker" of that now tottering house. He suppressed an insurrection on the southern frontier, and brought the king southward, apparently to witness the submission of the rebellious districts. Returning northward with the king, Kheti narrates with pride how his (Kheti's) enormous fleet stretched for miles up the river as he passed his home. At Heracleopolis, where they landed in triumph, Kheti says, "the city came, rejoicing over her lord ... women mingled with men, old men and children." Thus in the tomb inscriptions of these Siut lords we gain a fleeting glimpse of the Heracleopolitan kings, just as they are about to disappear finally from the scene.

Meanwhile the fortunes of Thebes have been constantly rising. Intef, the nomarch, had been succeeded (whether immediately or not is uncertain) by another Intef, who was the first of the Thebans to assume royal honors and titles, thus becoming Intef I, the first king of the dynasty. He pressed the Heracleopolitans vigorously, pushed his frontier northward, and captured Abydos  and  the entire  Thinite nome. He made its northern boundary the "Door of the North," that is, the northern frontier of his kingdom, as Elephantine at the first cataract was the "Door of the South." His "Door of the North" was in all probability Tefibi of Siut's "fortress of the Port of the South." His long reign of over fifty years ended, he was followed by his son, Intef II, of whom we know little beyond the fact of his succession. It was now that the accession of a line of Mentuhoteps, probably a collateral branch of the Theban family, established the universal supremacy of Thebes. Mentuhotep II evidently brought the war with the North to a triumphant close. He boasted with impunity of his victories over his countrymen and on the walls of his temple at Gebelen he depicted himself striking down Egyptian and foreigner together, while the accompanying inscription designates the scene as the "binding of the chiefs of the Two Lands, capturing the South and Northland, the foreign countries and the two regions [Egypt], the Nine Bows [foreigners], and the Two Lands'' [Egypt]. About the middle of the twenty second century BC, therefore, the Heracleopolitan power, never very vigorous, completely collapsed, the supremacy passed from the North to the South, and thus, perhaps nearly three centuries after the fall of the Sixth Dynasty and the close of the Old Kingdom, Egypt was reunited under a strong and vigorous line of princes, capable of curbing in a measure the powerful and refractory lords, who are now firmly entrenched in the nomes all over the land. Nothing is certainly known of the family relations of this new Theban house. The kingship presumably passed from father to son, but there are clear evidences of rival claims to the scepter, nor is the order of the kings entirely certain.

Royal expeditions abroad, long interrupted, were now resumed. Nibtowere-Mentuhotep III's vizier, Amenemhet left a series of very interesting inscriptions in the Hammamat quarries, telling of his twenty five days' sojourn there for the purpose of procuring the blocks for the king's sarcophagus and lid, with an expedition of ten thousand men, the largest thus far known in the history of Egypt. Min, the god of the region, granted them the greatest marvels in furthering their work; a gazelle ran before the work­men and dropped her young upon the very block which they were able to use for the sarcophagus-lid; and later a rain-storm filled the neighboring well to the brim. The work was thus speedily completed, and Amenemhet boasts "My soldiers returned without loss; not a man perished, not a troop was missing, not an ass died, not a workman was enfeebled." The men for these expeditions were drawn from all parts of the kingdom; it is thus evident that the last three Mentuhoteps controlled the whole country, and that they had restored the power and prestige of the Pharaoh's office. Its relation to the local lords and nomarchs we shall soon be able to discern more clearly, as the Theban family known as the Twelfth Dynasty presently emerges into view.

The forces of expansion, latent for several centuries, now found  opportunity  in  Nubia   again,  as  in   the Sixth Dynasty, before the fall of the Old Kingdom. Nibhepetre-Mentuhotep IV was so fully in control of the country that he could resume the designs of the Sixth Dynasty for the conquest of Nubia, and dispatched his treasurer Kheti with, a fleet into Wawat in his forty-first year. Building enterprises, so long interrupted, were again under­taken, and on the western plain of Thebes Mentuhotep IV erected a small terraced temple under the cliffs, which afterward served as the model for queen Hatshepsut's beautiful sanctuary beside it at Der el-Bahri. Its ruins, recently discovered, constitute the oldest building at Thebes. It was evidently of mortuary character, and the reliefs on the walls depicted foreign peoples bringing tribute to the Pharaoh. Mentuhotep IV's long reign of at least forty six years gave him ample opportunity to solidify and organize his power, and he was regarded in after centuries as the great founder and establisher of Theban supremacy.

His successor, Mentuhotep V, was also able to continue the long interrupted foreign enterprises of the Old Kingdom Pharaohs. He united the responsibility for all commerce with the southern countries in the hands of a powerful official, already existent in the Sixth Dynasty, under the old title ''keeper of the Door of the South." Mentuhotep V's chief treasurer, Henu, who bore this important office, was dispatched to the Red Sea by the Hammamat road with a following of three thousand men. Such was the efficiency of his organization that each man received two jars of water and twenty small biscuit-like loaves daily, involving the issuance of six thousand jars of water and sixty thousand such loaves by the commissary every day during the desert march and the stay in the quarries of Hammamat. Everything possible was done to make the desert route thither safe and passable. Henu dug fifteen wells and cisterns, and settlements of colonists were afterward established at the watering stations. Arriving at the Red Sea end of the route, Henu built a ship which he dispatched to Punt, while he himself returned by way of Hammamat, where he secured and brought back with him fine blocks for the statues in the royal temples. Mentuhotep V ruled at least eight years.

After this succession of five Mentuhoteps, we find that the Eleventh Dynasty was then displaced by a new and vigorous Theban family with an Amenemhet at its head. We have already seen one powerful Amenemhet at Thebes as the vizier of Mentuhotep III. This new Amenemhet was able to supplant the last son of the Eleventh Dynasty, and assume the throne as first king of the Twelfth Dynasty. It is very probable also that the new king had royal blood in his veins; in any case his family always regarded the nomarch Intef as their ancestor; they paid him honor and placed his statue in the Karnak temple of Thebes. After a rule of a little over one hundred and sixty years the Eleventh Dynasty was thus brought to a close about 2000 BC. They left few monuments; their modest pyramids of sun-dried brick on the western plain of Thebes were in a perfect state of preservation a thousand years later, but they barely survived into modern times and their vanish­ing remains were excavated by Mariette. Nevertheless they laid the foundations of Theban power and prepared the way for the vigorous development which now followed under their successors.

It was not without hostilities that Amenemhet gained his exalted station. We hear of a campaign on the Nile with a fleet of twenty ships of cedar, followed by the expulsion of some unknown enemy from Egypt. Victorious in these conflicts, Amenemhet was confronted by a situation of the greatest difficulty. Everywhere the local nobles, the nomarchs whose gradual rise we witnessed in the Old Kingdom, were now ruling their great domains like independent sovereigns. They looked back upon a long line of ancestry reaching into the generations of their fathers, whose power had caused the fall of the Old Kingdom; and we find them repairing the fallen tombs of these founders of their houses. While the Eleventh Dynasty kings had evidently curbed these ambitious lords to some extent, Amenemhet was obliged to go about the country and lay a strong hand upon them one after another. Here and there some aggressive nomarch had seized the territory and towns of a neighbor, thus gaining dangerous power and wealth. It was necessary for the safety of the crown in such cases to restore the balance of power. "He established the southern landmark, perpetuating the northern like the heavens; he divided the great river along its middle; its eastern side of the 'Horizon of Horus' was as far as the eastern highland; at the coming of his majesty to cast out evil shining like Atum himself; when he restored that which he found ruined; that which a city had taken from its neighbor; while he caused city to know its boundary with city, establishing their landmarks like the heavens, distinguishing their waters according to that which was in the writings, investigating according to that which was of old, because he so greatly loved justice." Thus the nomarch of the Oryx-nome relates how Amenemhet proceeded at the installation of his grandfather as nomarch there.

To suppress the landed nobles entirely and to reestablish the bureaucratic state of the Old Kingdom, with its local governors, was however quite impossible. The development which had become so evident in the Fifth Dynasty had now reached its logical issue; Amenemhet could only accept the situation and deal with it as best he might. He had achieved the conquest of the country and its reorganization only by skillfully employing in his cause those noble families whom he could win by favor and fair promises. With these he must now reckon, and we see him rewarding Khnumhotep, one of his partisans, with the gift of the Oryx-nome, the boundaries of a part of which he established as we have already learned from the above record in a famous tomb of the family at Benihasan. The utmost that Amenemhet could accomplish, therefore, was the appointment in the nomes of nobles favorably inclined toward his house. The state which the unprecedented vigor and skill of this great states­man finally succeeded in thus erecting, again furnished Egypt with the stable organization, which enabled her about 2000 BC to enter upon her second great period of produc­tive development, the Middle Kingdom.

THE MIDDLE  KINGDOM OR THE   FEUDAL AGE:  STATE, SOCIETY AND  RELIGION.

It had been but natural that the kings of the Eleventh Dynasty should reside at Thebes, where the founders of the family had lived during the long war for the conquest of the North. But Amenemhet was evidently unable to continue this tradition. It is easy to imagine reasons why he concluded that his presence was necessary to maintain his position among the Northern nomarchs, who may still have felt leanings toward the fallen house of Heracleopolis. Moreover all the kings of Egypt since the passing of the Thinites a thousand years before had lived there, except the Eleventh Dynasty which he had supplanted. The location which he selected was on the west side of the river some miles south of Memphis. The exact spot cannot now be identified, but it was probably near the place now called Lisht, where the ruined pyramid of Amenemhet has been discovered. The name given to the residence city was significant of its purpose; Amenemhet named it Ithtowe, which means "Captor of the Two Lands." In hieroglyphic the name is always written enclosed within a square fortress with battlemented walls; from this stronghold Amenemhet swayed the destinies of a state which required all the skill and political sagacity of a line of unusually strong rulers in order to maintain the prestige of the royal house.

The nation was made up of an aggregation of small states or petty princedoms, the heads of which owed the Pharaoh their loyalty, but they were not his officials or his servants. Some of these local nobles were "great lords" or nomarchs, ruling a whole nome; others were only "counts" of a smaller domain with its fortified town. It was thus a feudal state not essentially different from that of later Europe which Amenemhet had organized. It was a state which could exist only as long as there was a strong man like himself in the palace at Ithtowe; and the slightest evidence of weakness meant its rapid dissolution. We are dependent for our knowledge of these barons upon their surviving tombs and mortuary monuments. All such remains in the Delta have perished, so that we can speak with certainty only of the conditions in the South, and even here it is only in Middle Egypt that we are adequately informed.

The noble families of the provincial aristocracy, as we have seen, could in some cases look back upon a line of ancestry reaching into the Old Kingdom, four or five centuries earlier; they had thus gained a strong foothold in their baronies and domains. We recall also that under the weak Pharaohs of the decadence following the Old Kingdom they had ruled as almost independent dynasts, dating events in years of their own rule and no longer in those of the reign of the Pharaoh, whom in some cases they had defied and even successfully resisted. The nomarch had indeed become a miniature Pharaoh in his little realm, and such he continued to be under the Twelfth Dynasty. On a less sumptuous scale his residence was surrounded by a personnel not unlike that of the Pharaonic court and harem; while his government demanded a chief treasurer, a court of justice, with offices, scribes and functionaries, and all the essential machinery of government which we find at the royal residence. The nomarch by means of this organization himself collected the revenues of his domain, was high priest or head of the sacerdotal organization, and commanded the militia of his realm which was permanently organized. His power was considerable; the nomarch of the Oryx-nome led four hundred of his own troops into Nubia and six hundred through the desert to the gold mines on the Coptos road. The nomarch at Coptos was able to send an expedition of his own to the Hammamat quarries which brought back two blocks seventeen feet long, and a second expedition which returned with a block twenty feet six inches long drawn by nearly two hundred men along the desert road over fifty miles to the Nile. The people of the nomarch of the Hare-nome dragged from the quarry of Hatnub ten miles to the river a huge block of alabaster weighing over sixty tons and large enough for a statue of the nomarch some twenty two feet high. Such lords were able to build temples and erect public buildings in their principal towns. They taught the crafts and encouraged industries and their immediate interest and direct personal oversight resulted in a period of unprecedented economic development. One of the Siut nomarchs of the Heracleopolitan domination furnishes a hint of what was to follow, saying: "I was rich in grain. When the land was in need I maintained the city with kha and heket [grain-measures], I allowed the citizen to fetch for himself grain; and his wife, the widow and her son. I remitted all imposts [unpaid arrears] which I found counted by my fathers. I filled the pastures with cattle, every man had many breeds, the cows brought forth twofold, the folds were full of calves." A new irrigation canal which he made doubtless contributed much to the productivity of his domains. Faithful officials of the nomarch show the same solicitude for the welfare of the community over which they were placed; thus an assistant treasurer in the Theban nome residing at Gebelen in the Eleventh Dynasty tells us: "I sustained Gebelen during unfruitful years, there being four hundred men in distress. But I took not the daughter of a man, I took not his field. I made ten herds of goats, with people in charge of each herd; I made two herds of cattle and a herd of asses. I raised all kinds of small cattle. I made thirty ships, then thirty more ships, and I brought grain for Esneh and Tuphium, after Gebelen was sustained. The nome of Thebes went up stream [to Gebelen for supplies]. Never did Gebelen send up-stream or down-stream to another district [for supplies]." The nomarch thus devoted himself to the interests of his people, and was concerned to leave to posterity a reputation as a merciful and beneficent ruler. All the above records are taken from tomb-inscriptions, records designed to perpetuate such a memory among the people. Still more positive in the same direction is a passage in the biography of Ameni, nomarch of the Oryx-nome, as inscribed in his tomb at Benihasan: “There was no citizen's daughter whom I misused, there was no widow whom I oppressed, there was no peasant whom I repulsed, there was no herdsman whom I repelled, there was no overseer of serf-labourers, whose people I took for [unpaid] imposts, there was none wretched in my community, there was none hungry in my time. When years of famine came I ploughed all the fields of the Oryx-nome, as far as its southern and northern boundary, preserving its people alive, and furnishing its food, so that there was none hungry therein. I gave to the widow as to her who had a husband; I did not exalt the great above the small in all I gave. Then came great Niles, rich in grain and all things, but I did not collect the arrears of the field”. After making all due all owance for the natural desire of the nomarch to record the most favorable aspects of his government, it is evident that the paternal character of his local and personal rule, in a community of limited numbers, with which he was acquainted by almost daily contact, had proved an untold bless­ing to the country and population at large.

The domains over which the nomarch thus ruled were not all his unqualified possessions. His wealth consisted of lands and revenues of two classes: the "paternal estate," received from his ancestors and entailed in his line; and the "count's estate," over which the dead hand had no control; it was conveyed as a fief by the Pharaoh anew at the nomarch's death. It was this fact which to some extent enabled the Pharaoh to control the feudatories and to secure the appointment of partisans of his house throughout the country. Nevertheless he could not ignore the natural line of succession, which was through the eldest daughter; and as we have observed at Siut, she might even rule the domain after the death of her father until her son was old enough to assume its government. The magnificent tombs of the lords of the Oryx-nome at Benihasan reveal very clearly the influence of these customs in the fortunes of this family. At the triumph of Amenemhet I, as we have seen, he appointed one of his partisans, a certain Khnumhotep, as count of Menet-Khufu, chief city of the "Horizon of Horus," an appanage of the Oryx-nome, to which Khnumhotep also soon succeeded as nomarch. As a special favour of Sesostris I, after Amenemhet I's death, Khnumhotep's two sons inherited their father's fiefs, Nakht being appointed count of Menet-Khufu, and Ameni, of whose beneficent rule we have just read, receiving the Oryx-nome. Their sister Beket married a powerful official at the court, the vizier and governor of the residence-city, Nehri, who was nomarch of the neighbouring Hare-nome; and the son of this union, a second Khnumhotep, thereupon by succession through his mother, was appointed to succeed his uncle Nakht as count of Menet-Khufu. Observing the value in the Pharaoh's eyes of being the son of a nomarch's daughter, this second Khnumhotep himself married Kheti, the eldest daughter of his neighbour on the north, the nomarch of the Jackal-nome. Thus the eldest son of Khnumhotep the second had a claim through his mother upon the Jackal-nome, to which in due course the Pharaoh appointed him; while the second son of the marriage, after honors at court, received his father's fief of Menet-Khufu. The history of this line through four generations thus shows that the Pharaoh could not overlook the claims of the heir of a powerful family, and the deference which he showed them evidently limited the control which he might exert over a less formidable dynasty of nobles.

To what extent these lords felt the restraint of the royal hand in their government and administration it is not now possible to determine. A royal commissioner, whose duty it was to look to the interests of the Pharaoh, seems to have resided in the nome, and there were "overseers of the crown-possessions" (probably under him) in charge of the royal herds in each nome; but the nomarch himself was the medium through whom all revenues from the nome were conveyed to the treasury. "All the imposts of the king's house passed through my hand," says Ameni of the Oryx-nome.

The treasury was the organ of the central government, which gave administrative cohesion to the otherwise loose aggregation of nomarchies. It had its income paying property in all the nomes. Some of this property, as we have observed, seems to have been administered by government overseers, while to a large extent it was entrusted to the noble, probably as part of the "count's estate." The "gang-overseers of the crown possessions of the Oryx-nome" gave to Ameni three thousand bulls, of which he rendered an annual account to the Pharaoh, saying, "I was praised on account of it in the palace [of the Pharaoh]. I carried all their dues to the king's house; there were no arrears against me in any office of his." Thuthotep, the nomarch of the Hare-nome, depicted with great pride in his tomb at El Bersheh "great numbers of his cattle from the king and his cattle of the [paternal] estate in the districts of the Hare-nome." We have no means of even conjecturing the amount or proportion of property held by the crown in the nomes and "count's estates," but it is evident that the claims of these powerful feudatories must have seriously curtailed the traditional revenues of the Pharaoh. He no longer had the resources of the country at his unconditional disposal as in the Old Kingdom, even though it was officially only by the king's grace that his lords held their fiefs. Other resources of the treasury were, however, now available, and if not entirely new, were henceforth more energetically exploited. Besides his internal revenues, including the tribute of the nomes and the Residence, the Pharaoh re