The founder of the “twelfth dynasty,” Amenemhat I., deserves a few words of description.  He found Thebes in a state of anarchy; civil war raged on every side; all the traditions of the past were forgotten; noble fought against noble; the poor were oppressed; life and property were alike insecure; “there was stability of fortune neither for the ignorant nor for the learned man.”  One night, after he had lain down to sleep, he found himself attacked in his bed-chamber; the clang of arms sounded near at hand.  Starting from his couch, he seized his own weapons and struck out; when lo! his assailants fled; detected in their attempt to assassinate him, they dared not offer any resistance, thus showing themselves alike treacherous and cowardly.  Amenemhat, having once taken arms, did not lay them down till he had defeated every rival, and so fought his way to the crown.  Once acknowledged as king, he ruled with moderation and equity; he “gave to the humble, and made the weak to live;” he “caused the afflicted to cease from their afflictions, and their cries to be heard no more;” he brought it to pass that none hungered or thirsted in the land; he gave such orders to his servants as continually increased the love of his people towards him.  At the same time, he was an energetic warrior.  He “stood on the boundaries of the land, to keep watch on its borders,” personally leading his soldiers to battle, armed with the khopesh or falchion.  He carried on wars with the Petti, or bowmen of the Libyan interior, with the Sakti or Asiatics, with the Maxyes or Mazyes of the north-west, and with the Ua-uat and other negro tribes of the south; not, however, as it would seem, with any desire of making conquests, but simply for the protection of his own frontier.  With the same object he constructed on his north-eastern frontier a wall or fortress “to keep out the Sakti,” who continually harassed the people of the Eastern Delta by their incursions.

The wars of Amenemhat I. make it evident that by his time Thebes had advanced from the position of a petty kingdom situated in a remote part of Egypt, and held in check by two or more rival kingdoms in the lower Nile valley and the Delta, to that of a power which bore sway over the whole land from Elephantine to the Mediterranean.  “I sent my messengers up to Abu (Elephantine) and my couriers down to Athu” (the coast lakes), says the monarch in his “Instructions” to his son—­the earliest literary production from a royal pen that has come down to our days; and there is no reason to doubt the truth of his statement.  In the Delta alone could he come into contact with either the Mazyes or the Sakti, and a king of Thebes could not hold the Delta without being master also of the lower Nile valley from Coptos to Memphis.  We must regard Egypt, then, under the “twelfth dynasty.” as once more consolidated into a single state—­a state ruled, however, not from Memphis, but from Thebes, a decidedly inferior position.