vium of the most productive
character--dotted with _dom_ and date palms, sometimes growing single,
sometimes collected into clumps or groves. On the western side the
Libyan range gathers itself up into a single considerable peak, which
has an elevation of twelve hundred feet. On the east the desert-wall
maintains its usual level character, but is pierced by valleys
conducting to the coast of the Red Sea. The situation was one favourable
for commerce. On the one side was the nearest route through the sandy
desert to the Lesser Oasis, which commanded the trade of the African
interior; on the other the way led through the valley of Hammamat, rich
with _breccia verde_ and other valuable and rare stones, to a district
abounding in mines of gold, silver, and lead, and thence to the Red Sea
coast, from which, even in very early times, there was communication
with the opposite coast of Arabia, the region of gums and spices.

In this position there had existed, probably from the very beginnings of
Egypt, a provincial city of some repute, called by its inhabitants Ape
or Apiu, and, with the feminine article prefixed, Tape, or Tapiu, which
some interpret "The city of thrones". To the Greeks the name "Tape"
seemed to resemble their own well-known "Thebai", whence they
transferred the familiar appellation from the Baeotian to the
Mid-Egyptian town, which has thus come to be known to Englishmen and
Anglo-Americans as "Thebes." Thebes had been from the first the capital
of a "nome". It lay so far from the court that it acquired a character
of its own--a special cast of religion, manners, speech, nomenclature,
mode of writing, and the like--which helped to detach it from Lower or
Northern Egypt more even than its isolation. Still, it was not until
the northern kingdom sank into decay from internal weakness and
exhaustion, and disintegration supervened in the Delta and elsewhere,
that Thebes resolved to assert herself and claim independent
sovereignty. Apparently, she achieved her purpose without having
recourse to arms. The kingdoms of the north were content to let her go.
They recognized their own weakness, and allowed the nascent power to
develop itself unchecked and unhindered.

The first known Theban monarch is a certain Antef or Enantef, whose
coffin was discovered in the year 1827 by some Arabs near Qurnah, to the
west of Thebes. The mummy bore the royal diadem, and the epigraph on the
lid of the coffin declared the body which i