cropped. He has been
said to resemble "the Dalmatian hound": but this is questionable. His
peculiarities are not marked; but, on the whole, it seems most probable
that he is "a pet house-dog"[9] of the terrier class, the special
favourite of his master. Antefaa's dogs had their appointed keeper, the
master of his kennel, who is figured on the sepulchral tablet behind the
monarch, and bears the name of Tekenru.

The hunter king was buried in a tomb marked only by a pyramid of unbaked
brick, very humble in its character, but containing a mortuary chapel in
which the monument above described was set up. An inscription on the
tablet declared that it was erected to the memory of Antef the Great,
Son of the Sun, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, in the fiftieth year of
his reign.

Other Mentu-hoteps and other Antefs continued on the line of Theban
kings, reigning quietly and ingloriously, and leaving no mark upon the
scroll of time, yet probably advancing the material prosperity of their
country, and preparing the way for that rise to greatness which gives
Thebes, on the whole, the foremost place in Egyptian history. Useful
projects occupied the attention of these monarchs. One of them sank
wells in the valley of Hammamat, to provide water for the caravans which
plied between Coptos and the Red Sea. Another established military posts
in the valley to protect the traffic and the Egyptian quarrymen. Later
on, a king called Sankh-ka-ra launched a fleet upon the Red Sea waters,
and opened direct communications with the sacred land of Punt, the
region of odoriferous gums and of strange animals, as giraffes,
panthers, hunting leopards, cynocephalous apes, and long-tailed monkeys.
There is some doubt whether "Punt" was Arabia Felix, or the Somauli
country. In any case, it lay far down the Gulf, and could only be
reached after a voyage of many days.

The dynasty of the Antefs and Mentu-hoteps, which terminated with
Sankh-ka-ra, was followed by one in which the prevailing names were
Usurtasen and Amenemhat. This dynasty is Manetho's twelfth, and the time
of its rule has been characterized as "the happiest age of Egyptian
history?"[10] The second phase of Egyptian civilization now set in--a
phase which is regarded by many as outshining the glories of the first
The first civilization had subordinated the people to the monarch, and
had aimed especially at eternizing the memory and setting forth the
power and greatness of king after king