First Intermediate Period
In the First Intermediate Period as the age separating Dynasty VI and XII
is called, Manetho, or rather the Manetho known to us from the chronicles
of his exceptors, is seen at his worst. His Seventh Dynasty consists of
seventy kings of Memphis, who reigned for seventy days. His Eight
Dynasty, likewise Memphite, comprises twenty-seven kings and 146 years
of reign. Dynasty IX and X are both Heracleopolitan, with nineteen kings
apiece and a total duration of 594 years. Dynasty XI is of Diospolite or
Theban origin, counting sixteen kings with the meager allowance of
forty-three years. Such is the account given by Africanus. The figures
offered by Eusebius are somewhat less fantastic, but inspire confidence
just as little. For all this stretch of time only one king is mentioned,
namely Achthoes, who is placed in Dynasty IX. Of him the authorities
state that he was more cruel than all his predecessors, but in the end was
smitten with madness and killed by a crocodile. This scrap of
pseudo-history is obviously comparable to the already quoted legends
concerning Cheops, Pepy II, and Notices, but the existence of Achthoes is
not open to doubt. In spit of all defects, our Manetho does provide a
framework into which the findings of research fit reasonably well, as will
be seen from the enumeration of five overlapping stages hereafter to be
discussed in some detail. These are:
- rapid disintegration of the old Memphite regime following upon the
overlong reign of Pepy II;
- bloodshed and anarchy resulting from the collapse of the monarchy
and the rivalries of the provincial feudal lords or 'nomarchs', also
possibly fomented by the infiltration of Asiatics into the Delta;
- rise of a new line of Pharaohs with an Akhtoy (Manetho's Achthoes)
at the head and Heracleopolis as their capital;
- ever-growing importance of Thebes under a yet more energetic
family of warrior princes of whom the first four bore the name of
Inyotef (Antef in older histories of Egypt) and the remaining three the
name of Menthotpe (Mentuhotep);
- civil war with the Heracleopolitans from which Menthotpe I
emerged as victor, reuniting the Two lands and paving the way for
the Middle Kingdom--this ushered in by Ammenemes I, one of the
greatest of all Egyptian monarchs (Dynasty XII).
Our last chapter dealt with the eight by no less than eighteen kings prior to
making its great leap to the last rulers of Dynasty XI. It is not easy to
reconcile any of the Abydos names with the four which alone are
preserved in the Canon, but it seems likely that the fourth cartouche from
the end gave the Prenomen of that Ibi of the Turin fragments who's
significant pyramid was discovered by Jeguier at Saqqara. The recurrence
of the name Neferkare', which had been the Prenomen of Pepy II, as either
whole or part in no less than six names of the Abydos series shows how
great was still felt to be the solidarity of these petty rulers with the most
venerable of the Pharaohs of Dynasty VI. But perhaps the most persuasive
evidence of their short-lived domination is offered by some inscriptions
discovered by Raymond Weill at Coptos in 1910-11. Under the ruins of a
structure of Roman date were found carefully towed away a number of
decrees carved in hieroglyphic on slabs of limestone, some dating from
the reign of Pepy II, and most of them designed to protect the temple of
Min and its priesthood from interference and the corvee. But among them
as many as eight were apparently dispatched on the same day in the first
year of a King Neferkare, the last king but one in the series of the Abydos
list. The addressee was in each case the vizier Shemai and each royal
command was concerned either with him or some member of his family.
One of the decrees confirmed him in his vizierate in all the twenty-two
nomes of Upper Egypt, while another recorded the appointment of his son
Idi to the post of Governor of Upper Egypt in the seven southernmost
nomes. A third decree grants precedence over all other women to
Shemai's wife Nebye, who is described as a 'King's eldest daughter', and
perhaps even more remarkable is a fourth making elaborate arrangements
for the funerary cult of both husband and wife in all the temples of the
land. There is no hint of unrest or political disturbance in any of these
texts, though we may possibly read into them a desperate anxiety on the
king's part to conciliate one specially powerful Upper Egyptian magnate.
Thus the chances are that all the reigns corresponding to Manetho's
Dynasty VII and VIII were compressed into a relatively short space of
time, perhaps no more than a quarter of a century. At what precise moment
serious disorders broke out it is impossible to say, but their reality is
beyond a doubt, and there is no reason to think that they persisted, whether
continuously or intermittently, until well on into Dynasty XI. It is the
picture of a rill revolution that is painted in one of the most curious and
important pieces of Egyptian literature that have survived the hazards of
time. This extremely tattered papyrus in the Leyden collection dates from
no earlier than Dynasty XIX, but the condition of the country which it
discloses is one which cannot be ascribed to the imagination of a
romancer, nor does it fit into any place of Egyptian history except that
following the end of the Old Kingdom. The beginning is unfortunately lost,
and with it the circumstances in which the speaker made his lengthy
harangue. A long series of brief paragraphs first portrays the havoc into
which the land has been thrown by the machinations of low-born
adventurers and Asiatics pushing their way into the Delta. A few
examples will suffice to illustrate the tone and substance of the narration:
The bowman is ready. The wrongdoer is everywhere.
There is no man of yesterday. A man goes out to plow with
his shield. A man smites his brother, his mother's son. Men
sit in the bushes until the benighted traveler comes, in
order to plunder his load. The robber is a possessor of
riches. Boxes of ebony are broken up. Precious
acacia-wood is left asunder.
The general upheaval has reversed the status of rich and poor:
He who possessed no property is now a man of wealth.
The poor man is full of joy. Every town says: let us
suppress the powerful among us. He who had no yoke of
oxen is now the possessor of a herd. The possessors of
robes are now in rags. Gold and lapis lazuli, silver and
turquoise are fastened on the necks of female slaves. All
female slaves are free with their tongues. When their
mistress speaks it is irksome to the servants. The children
of princes are dashed against the walls.
These quotations, chosen at random, might, it is true, reflect the distorted
vision of a die-hard aristocrat, but there are others describing the political
confusion of the times, the dissolution of the laws, and the destruction of
public offices and records which cannot well be so constructed. Even the
person of the king seems to have been subjected to violence, though the
sentence where this appears to be stated is of not quite certain
interpretation. Still more important are a few passages which affirm the
part played by foreigners in the restriction of true Egyptian territory to
Upper Egypt, Elephantine and Thinis being towns specifically mentioned.
The many pages of nostalgic lamentations are followed by adjurations to
piety and religious observance, and it is these which justify the title
'Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage' by which the entire composition is
known. Opinions have differed as to the way in which the remaining
portions of the book are to be understood. Some have thought to find a
reference to Pepy II dying in extreme old age and succeeded by a child too
young to have any sense. But these events, if really alluded to, must have
lain in the author's past and that king upon whom the wise Ipuwer heaped
reproaches for his weakness and indolence may well have been among the
last of the Memphite line. However that may be, the trustworthiness of the
Leyden papyrus as a depiction of Egypt in the First Intermediate Period is
indisputable. And here for the first time Egyptian literature sounds that
note of despairing pessimism which became a commonplace with the
writers of the succeeding centuries even when no longer justified by
prevailing conditions.
We have thus to picture to ourselves the Memphite kingdom as growing
weaker and weaker until it failed any longer to command the allegiance of
the nomarchs farther upstream. Direct information from the Delta now
ceases entirely. Expeditions in quest of the turquoise of Sinai are at an
end, not to be resumed until the approach of Dynasty XII. If a
barbarous-looking cylinder with the cartouche of Khendy and a scarab
with the name of Tereru really belong to the kings so named in the Abydos
list, this would be an indication that they had to look to Syrian skill for
even such trumpery objects. It was perhaps in the extreme south that
conditions became most gravely unsettled. The casual mention of a King
Neferkare' in a rock-tomb at Mo'alla, some 20 miles south of Luxor,
places the inscriptions of its owner 'Ankhtify among the earliest records
of the age. This 'Ankhtify was the 'great chieftain (or 'nomarch') of the
nome of Nekhen', the third nome of Upper Egypt, that of which
Hieraconpolis opposite El-Kab was the capital. He tells how Horus of
Edfu, the god of the next nome to the south, had bidden him set it in order,
with the result that he took over the chieftaincy, and tranquilized the
region so thoroughly that a man would even embrace the slayer of his
father or of his brother. Many are the incidents of 'Ankhtify's prowess
which he describes in laconic sentences interposed between this force and
Thebes and Coptos, whose combined soldiery had attacked the fortress of
Armant. 'Ankhtify's references to his marital successes are of great
obscurity, but if his account can be trusted he managed to cow the
inhabitants to both the east and the west of Thebes, so that at all events we
are here dealing with a time before the dynasty of the Inyotefs had
established for themselves an invincible supremacy. More significant than
all these allusions to deeds of valor are the repeated mentions of years of
famine in which 'Ankhtify claims to have supplied other towns besides his
own with gifts or loans of corn. This beneficent activity of his extending
even as far north as Dendera. We need not take too seriously the statement
that 'the entire south died of hunger , every man devouring his own
children', but the inscriptions of other more or less contemporary princes
constantly harp upon the lack of grain, a lack which we may surmise was
due to the impossibility of undisturbed agriculture as to a succession of
low Niles. It may here be noted that the deplorable state of Upper Egypt is
clearly reflected in the clumsiness of its artistic efforts. Evidently
Egyptian civilization was at its lowest ebb.
Concerning the rise of the 'House of Akhtoy' we are left almost completely
in the dark. Heracleopolis is the modern Ihnasya el-Medina, a town to the
west of the river opposite Beni Suef 55 miles south of Memphis. Not a
shred of local evidence has survived to indicate its early importance, but
Manetho's description of his Ninth and Tenth Dynasties as
Heracleopolitan is amply confirmed by testimony from elsewhere. As
regards his Achthoes it turns out that no less than three distinct kings chose
to retain the name for their second cartouche. The king who without proof,
but not without probability, is assumed to have been the first, adopted
Meryibtowe ('Beloved of the heart of the Two Lands') as his Horus name.
By way of emphasizing his claim he did not hesitate to equip himself with
a full Pharaonic titualry. To have raised himself to such a height he must
have possessed an exceptionally forceful character, but all that remains
directly to authenticate his existence is a copper brazier in the Louvre, an
ebony walking-stick from Mer, and a few other equally insignificant
objects. A second Akh-toy whose Prenomen was Wahkare' is known only
from a finely decorated coffin from El-Bersha, where his cartouches seem
to have been inadvertently written in place of those of the real owner, the
steward Nefri. Yet a third king of the name Akhtoy Nebkaure' is attested
only by a weight from Petrie's excavations at Er-Retaba and by a mention
of him in one of the few Egyptian works of fiction that have survived in
their entirety. This tells the story of a peasant from the outlying oasis of
the Wady Natrun who was robbed of his donkey and his merchandise on
the way to Heracleopolis, but poured out his complaints to the thief's
liege-lord with such eloquence that he was detained in order that his
supplications, reproaches, and invective might be written down for the
sovereign's delectation. In the Turin Canon no less than eighteen kings
belonging to the same royal line were originally recorded, and the name
Akhtoy occurs twice, each time unexpectedly preceded by a Neferkare',
while all the adjoining names are damaged, unidentifiable, or lost. It is
from some tombs at Asyut that we obtain our most trustworthy glimpse of
the Heracleopolitan era. The inscriptions in these three tombs are marred
by the twin defects which are the bane of so much of our hieroglyphic
evidence, namely extensive lacunae in the text and our still inadequate
knowledge of the Egyptian language. Nevertheless the information that
they afford is illuminating. The earliest of the three tomb-owners would
hardly have retained his name Akhtoy had he not been a partisan of the
Heracleopolitan faction. Indeed, his youth seems to have been passed in a
time of comparative calm. He tells how he was taught to swim together
with the royal children, and was made a nomarch while still a babe of a
cubit in height. Though he mentions that he recruited a regiment of
soldiers, the achievements upon which he most prided himself were
irrigation works and the encouragement of farming. He ends his main
narrative with the words 'Heracleopolis praised God for me', the Egyptian
way of expressing gratitude. In the next oldest tomb Prince Tefibi plumes
himself upon his impartial beneficence and the sense of security which his
soldiers inspired:
When night came, he who slept upon the road praised me.
He was like a man in his own house.
None the less the nomes of the south were on the move, probably under
the command of one of the early Inyotefs. Tefibi relates that he came into
conflict with them, and we cannot doubt of his success, though the
half-lines that told the sequel are among the obscurest of a narrative
where everything is obscure. It is in the tomb of his son, again an Akhtoy,
that the most explicit account of the civil war is to be found. A
Heracleopolitan king Merykare', of whom we shall hear more later, is
named twice. Prince akhtoy, for some unexplained reason addressed in the
second person, is credited with having induced the sovereign himself to
sail upstream:
....he cleared the sky, the entire land with him, the princes
of Upper Egypt and the magnates of Heracleopolis, the
region of the Mistress of the Land being come to repel
fighting, the earth trembling....all people darting about, the
towns....ing, fear falling upon their limbs. The magistrates
of the Great House are under the fear of, and the favorites
under respect for, Heracleopolis.
It appears that the king's fleet reached Shashotp, a town a little to the south
of Asyut, before returning amid rejoicing to his capital. Doubtless out of
thankfulness for a signal a success, King Merykare' ordered extensive
repairs to be made to the temple of Wepwawe, the jackal god of Asyut.
If any part of Egypt was relatively peaceful in these troubled times, it was
assuredly the portion midway between Memphis and Thebes. Many
cemeteries of the central provinces, like those at Beni Hasan and Akhmim,
have yielded fairly rich funerary equipment. No finer sarcophagi of the
period have been unearthed than those from El-Bersha, at this time the
burial-place of the 'great chieftains of the Hare Nome', whose seat of
administration was Khmun, the later Hermopolis and the modern
El-Ashmunen. A new family of princes had come into power, replacing
the Old Kingdom nomarchs who's tombs had been situated at Sheikh Sa'id
a little farther to the south. These places were well within the domain of
the Heracleopolite kingdom, but curious evidence has come to light
showing that their rulers' loyalty to the northern cause was considerably
less than whole-hearted. The walls of the tombs are free from any
compromising indications, but such abound at the alabaster quarries of
Hatnub, a little way out in the eastern desert. Here the lucky find of a large
number of ink-written graffiti not only heaps flattering epithets upon the
local nomarchs, but accompanies their names with wish-formulate such as
'may he liver for ever' or 'the protection of life be around him like
re'eternally', formulate both earlier and later elsewhere reserved
exclusively for the Pharaoh. Still more strange, these graffiti are dated in
the regneal years, not of the contemporary king, but of the provincial
princes themselves. Two of the earliest are credited with thirty and twenty
years of rule respectively, a sure sign that they were less plagued by
disturbances than the nomarchs farther to the south where the rival
kingdoms were finally to meet in battle. Very incongruously manner these
inscriptions express fidelity to 'the king's house', though the king's name is
carefully suppressed, except once when an otherwise unknown
Meryhathor is mentioned. It must be imagined, however, that the laudatory
phrases are completed without reference to rebellion and bloodshed. One
prince even seems to allude to a fight with his own fellow-citizens, though
as usual the expressions are so vague that we cannot be quite certain of
their importance. Also there are apparent contradictions which we are
utterly at a loss to resolve, as when a ship's captain who lived under
Prince Neheri tells us that in the king's business he traveled as far south as
Elephantine and as far north as the papyrus marshes of the Delta, a feat
surely impossible in the political conditions of the times.
It remains to characterize a literary composition which, had it been
preserved in a less ragged and corrupt condition, might well have thrown
more light on a particular phase of the Heracleopolitan domination than
all our other evidence put together. The text is contained in three papyri,
one in Leningrad, another in Moscow, and the third in Copenhagen, all of
them written no earlier than the end of Dynasty XVIII, and all riddled with
lacunae and obscurities of every kind. It is a book of wise counsels
addressed to the king Merykare' with whom we became acquainted in the
tombs of Asyut. The name of the father is lose, but he may well have been
an Akhtoy, though not the first of the name. Perhaps the earliest portion,
had it been better preserved, might have been the most interesting of all,
since it offers advice as to how unruly but popular vassals can best be
dealt with. Stress is laid on ability to speak well and persuasively, and
imitation of the ancient models is strongly recommended. Yet it is
desirable to look to the future, a trait of character upon which nobles of
the period particularly plumed themselves. It is wise to favor the rich,
since they are less open to corruption that the poor. Justice and kindness
to the oppressed are all the more essential since after death there comes a
Day of Judgment when a man's deeds, however far back in the past they
lie, will be requited as they deserve. The recruiting of young troops and
the endowment of them with fields and cattle are obviously wise
precautions. Yet nothing is more important than reverent service to the
gods and the building of monuments in their honor. It is exasperating that
just those sections which deal with concrete events are the most obscure
of all, and the scholars who have used them with the greatest confidence
have sometimes exceeded what is philological permissible. Nevertheless,
the claim of the royal counsel-giver to have taken Thinis 'like a
cloud-burst' is unmistakably worded. In the same passage he seems,
however, to have expressed regret for the devastation which he had
caused in what was always the most sacred region in all Egypt. Still, this
incursion of the Hercleopolitans so far south seems to have brought about
a temporary lull in the hostilities between the belligerents, since now
'thous standest well with the South; the bearers of loads
come to thee with gifts...the red granite (of Aswan) comes
to thee unhindered'.
Far more perplexing are the paragraphs dealing with Merykare's relations
with the Delta and with the Asiatic barbarians to the east. There is a
reference to Djed-eswe, the area around the pyramid of Teti at Saqqara,
and the actual mention on that site of many priests devoted to the funerary
cult of this very Heracleopolitan monarch proves that he must have been
buried there, though his pyramid has never been found. A passage
describing the nature of the Asiatics has been translated above, and
reveals at least that Merykare' was in close contact with them. The book
ends with exhortations to be industrious, with earnest emphasis upon the
responsibilities of kingship, and with the warning that God, even if His
power be hidden, nevertheless sways the fortunes of men, for He is the
creator and arbiter of all. Last of all come the words:
'Behold I have spoken to thee the best of my inner thoughts;
set them steadfastly before thy face'.
In the Old Kingdom, Thebes, later to become the southern capital and
second in importance among the cities of Egypt only to Memphis, was no
more than an insignificant village stretching along the eastern bank of the
Nile. Indeed, at that time it was perhaps the humblest of four small
townships which lay within the confines of the fourth Upper Egyptian
nome, the others being 20 miles to the south-east, Hermonthis (Armant)
opposite across the river, and Medamud to the north of Thebes near the
eastern desert. All four observed the cult of the warlike falcon-headed
god Montju (Mont), ultimately raising stately temples in his honor. It is
unknown how Thebes or Wise, to give the town its Egyptian name, came
to outstrip its companions so vastly, but the beauty of its situation may
have been the decisive factor, for the entire land might be searched in vain
for equal magnificence of scenery. The western desert, at no great
distance beyond the fields, is dominated by the massive bluff of the Kurn,
beneath whose lofty eminence smaller hills offer unrivaled opportunity for
rock-tombs. To the north, almost facing the Temple of Mont at Karnak,
there winds into the mountain the long and narrow gorge of Biblan
el-Moluk 'the Tomb of the Nobles', at the end of which the monarchs of
the New Kingdom caused their mysterious sepulchers to be hewn. About a
mile to the south and separating Kurna and Dra'Abu'n-Naga the shorter
and wider recess called Der el-Bahri after the Coptic monastery which
came to be placed there leads to a sheer cliff of indescribable grandeur.
On the east bank a large area of radiant fields discloses far away a line of
hills behind which the sun rises in all its glory. For the modern tourists the
attraction of Thebes is enhanced by the accessibility and good
preservation of its many monuments, advantages which apart from the
pyramids and their surrounding mastabas are sadly lacking in the
neighborhood of Memphis.
Among the multitude of tombs interspersed among the houses of the
modern village of Kurna only three belong to the Old Kingdom, and of
these only one belongs to a 'Great Chieftain of the nome', a small and
mean affair suggesting that its owner was a personage of little
consequence. The ease with which, as we have seen , 'Ankhtify of Mo'alla
overran the region around and beyond Armant prompts the belief that it
was not until a good deal later that the Theban territory began to take the
lead among the provinces of the south. The initiative was undoubtedly due
to a nobleman subsequently remembered as Inyotef the great, born of Iku,
and on another stele described as 'hereditary prince Inyotef. He is
included in the disorderly enumeration of kings of that name in the already
mentioned Table of Karnak. There are three stele which may fairly claim
to be contemporary records of this prince, on two of which he or his
homonym is described as 'Great Chieftain of Upper Egypt', while on the
third he is 'Great Chieftain of the Theban nome'. It seems simpler to
presuppose only a single ancestor of the name, and at all events we are
justified in picturing to ourselves an Inyotef-'o ('Inyoref the great') who
subjugated parts of the south far beyond the territory of his won
metropolis, yet did not dare to assume the predicates of royalty.
The first Inyotef to have his name enclosed in a cartouche has left no
contemporary monument, and apart from the rather doubtful mention in the
Table of Karnak, is known only from an all-important relief of the reign of
Nebhepetre' Menthotpe discovered in the temple of Tod. Here that
monarch is shown giving an offering to Mont, while behind him stands the
local goddess Tjenenti. She is followed by three kings who must surely be
Menthotpe's immediate predecessors in retrograde order. Each of them
bears within a cartouche the title and name 'Son of Re'Inyotef', but they are
differentiated on a block above the separate Horus names (3) lost, (2)
Wah-'ankh, and (1) Seher-towe. Thus Seher-towe 'Pacifier of the Two
Lands' was the first royal Inyotef and either a son or a descendant of the
hereditary prince of the same name. Winlock conjectured, perhaps
correctly, that he was the owner of the northernmost of three great tombs
of a peculiar type excavated in the plain in a line between the temple of
Mont at Karnak and the opening into the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.
These tombs are called saff or 'row' because they have doorways which
give them the appearance of being surrounded by porticoes on three sides.
It seems probable that they were the burial-places of the first three
Inyotefs, since it is definitely known that one of them, perhaps that in the
center, belonged to the Horus Wah-'ankh Inyotef II. By a curious chance
there is a reference to this in the papyrus of the reign of Ramesses IX (c.
1115 BC) describing the official tour of inspection to examine the royal
tombs which it was feared had been tampered with by the tomb-robbers.
Here we read:
The pyramid-tomb of King Si-re' In-'o which is north of the
House of Amenhotpe of the Forecourt and whose pyramid
is crushed down upon it; and its stele is set up in front of it
and the image of the king stands upon this stele with his
hound named Behka between his feet. Examined this day; it
was found intact.
Mariette found the lower part of this very stele in 1860, and depicted
upon it were not merely one dog but five. Unfortunately it was left to be
broken up by natives, but what remains of its inscriptions is of great
interest. After telling how he built or restored a number of temples,
Wah-'ankh narrates that he established his northern boundary in the tenth
or Aphroditopolite nome of Upper Egypt. Then he goes on to say that he
captured the whole of the Abydos territory and opened up all its prisons.
These extensions of his dominion are confirmed on the monuments of
several of his officers of state, the finest of which belonged to a
chancellor named Tjetji, whose main pride, expressed in certainly
exaggerated terms, was that he was put in control of the vast treasure
brought to his lord not only from Upper and Lower Egypt, but also as
tribute from the chieftains of the desert countries. Form Wah-'ankh's own
sepulchral stele we learn that it was set up in his fiftieth year, this length
of reign proving, like the similar indications in the inscriptions of the
princes of the hare nome at Hatnub, that at least in the tract of land under
his sway tranquil conditions prevailed. This would naturally be favorable
to good craftsmanship, and it is interesting to see that the sculptors of
reliefs at Thebes had by now developed a highly individual and not
unpleasant style of their own, particularly in the forms of their
hieroglyphs. This artistic skill, however, goes hand in hand with a great
crudity on other stele, showing that the reviving culture was not yet at all
sure of itself.
Neither Wah-'ankh himself nor his successors hesitate any longer to
employ the proud title 'King of Upper and Lower Egypt', though a number
of years had to elapse before it corresponded to the truth. The next king
was another Si-Re' Inyotef, who adopted as his Horus name on which
meant 'Strong, lord of a Good Start' (Nakht-neb-tep-nufe). It deserved to
be mentioned here that such deliberately invented names often have a
greater significance that is apt to be attributed to them. If they do not
register historical facts, at least they may embody aspirations, and
examples of both possibilities will come to our notice before the end of
this discussion. Inyotef III was the last of his name for several centuries,
and all that is known of his doings is that he restored the ruined tomb at
Aswan of a god prince named Hekayeb.
Inyotef III was followed by the first of several Pharaohs who exchanged
the family name of Inyotef for Menthotpe, a name which signifies 'Mont is
content'. And contented the local god had good reason to be, for
Menthotpe I's long reign of fifty-one years witnessed, after many years of
conflict, the reunion of all Egypt under a single ruler. It is only
comparatively recently that the personality of this great king has begun to
emerge from the obscurity which previously surrounded him. We owe it to
H. Stock to have recognized that three separate titularies, previously
attributed to three distinct Pharaohs all bearing the name Menthotpe,
really belonged to one and the same sovereign, each titulary reflecting a
different stage in his career. Such a radical change of titularyis almost
unique in the Pharaonic annals but is justified by the momentous events
which it reflects. At the beginning of his reign Menthotpe I, like the earlier
rulers of his house, dispensed with a Prenomen, and was satisfied to be
called the Horus S'ankh-ib-towe 'He who makes to live the heart of the
Two Lands', i.e. possibly who revives their hopes. A British Museum
stele which is among the few monuments recording this phase notes that in
his fourteenth year Thinis revolted, perhaps thereby giving the signal for
the king's northward advance. In the next phase Methotpe often prefixed
the Prenomen Nebhepetre' to his surname, at the same time using the
Horus name Nebhedje, which means 'Lord of the White Crown'.
Presumably this was intended to signify his now well-established
sovereignty over Upper Egypt. Nothing dated has survived from this
period, but the Horus name in question tells its own tale. From the
thirty-ninth year onward, and probably a good deal earlier, the Horus
name is metamorphosed into Sam-towe 'Unifyer of the Two Lands', while
the Prenomen, still to be read as Nebhepetre', is strangely written with an
oar instead of with the indeterminate object. This latter fact led to the
ultimate Prenomen being wrongly read a Nebherure' and being attributed
to a Menthotpe different from the two bearers of the Nomen already
mentioned. Discarding this mistake, instead of the five distinct Menthotpes
or Metuhoteps counted by most historians in Dynasty XI, we shall here
acknowledge only three.
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