FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   238   239   240   241   242   243   244   245   246   247   248   249   250   251   252   >>  
o realize their aims by court intrigues or advantageous marriage alliances. We can easily picture from their history what Egyptian feudalism really was, what were its component elements, what were the resources it had at its disposal, and we may well be astonished when we consider the power and tact which the Pharaohs must have displayed in keeping such vassals in check during two centuries. Amenemhait I. had abandoned Thebes as a residence in favour of Heracleopolis and Memphis, and had made it over to some personage who probably belonged to the royal household. The nome of Uisit had relapsed into the condition of a simple fief, and if we are as yet unable to establish the series of the princes who there succeeded each other contemporaneously with the Pharaohs, we at least know that all those whose names have come down to us played an important part in the history of their times. Montunsisu, whose stele was engraved in the XXIVth year of Amenemhait I., and who died in the joint reign of this Pharaoh and his son Usirtasen I., had taken his share in most of the wars conducted against neighbouring peoples,--the Anitiu of Nubia, the Monitu of Sinai, and the "Lords of the Sands:" he had dismantled their cities and razed their fortresses. The principality retained no doubt the same boundaries which it had acquired under the first Antufs, but Thebes itself grew daily larger, and gained in importance in proportion as its frontiers extended southward. It had become, after the conquests of Usirtasen III., the very centre of the Egyptian world--a centre from which the power of the Pharaoh could equally well extend in a northerly direction towards the Sinaitic Peninsula and Libya, or towards the Red Sea and the "humiliated Kush" in the south. The influence of its lords increased accordingly: under Amenemhait III. and Amenemhait IV. they were perhaps the most powerful of the great vassals, and when the crown slipped from the grasp of the XIIth dynasty, it fell into the hands of one of these feudatories. It is not known how the transition was brought about which transferred the sovereignty from the elder to the younger branch of the family of Amenemhait I. When Amenemhait IV. died, his nearest heir was a woman, his sister Sovkunofriuri: she retained the supreme authority for not quite four years,* and then resigned her position to a certain Sovkhotpu.** * She reigned exactly three years, ten months, and eighteen days,
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   238   239   240   241   242   243   244   245   246   247   248   249   250   251   252   >>  



Top keywords:

Amenemhait

 

centre

 

vassals

 

Pharaohs

 

Usirtasen

 

retained

 

Thebes

 

Pharaoh

 

Egyptian

 

history


Peninsula

 

Sinaitic

 
equally
 

extend

 

northerly

 
direction
 

humiliated

 

powerful

 

increased

 
influence

Antufs

 

advantageous

 

boundaries

 

acquired

 
larger
 

gained

 

conquests

 
intrigues
 

southward

 

importance


proportion

 

frontiers

 
extended
 

resigned

 

authority

 

sister

 

Sovkunofriuri

 
supreme
 
position
 

months


eighteen

 

Sovkhotpu

 

reigned

 

feudatories

 

realize

 

dynasty

 

transition

 
branch
 

family

 

nearest