The Hyksos conquest and the rise of Thebes are practically contemporaneous.  The conquest took place perhaps three or four hundred years after the first advancement of Thebes to the position of capital of Egypt, but it must be remembered that this position was not retained during the time of the XIIth Dynasty.  The kings of that dynasty, though they were Thebans, did not reign at Thebes.  Their royal city was in the North, in the neighbourhood of Lisht and Medum, where their pyramids were erected, and their chief care was for the lake province of the Fayyum, which was largely the creation of Amenemhat III, the Moeris of the Greeks.  It was not till Thebes became the focus of the national resistance to the Hyksos that its period of greatness began.  Henceforward it was the undisputed capital of Egypt, enlarged and embellished by the care and munificence of a hundred kings, enriched by the tribute of a hundred conquered nations.

But were we to confine ourselves to the consideration only of the latest discoveries of Theban greatness after the expulsion of the Hyksos, we should be omitting much that is of interest and importance.  For the Egyptians the first grand climacteric in their history (after the foundation of the monarchy) was the transference of the royal power from Memphis and Herakleopolis to a Theban house.  The second, which followed soon after, was the Hyksos invasion.  The two are closely connected in Theban history; it is Thebes that defeated Herakleopolis and conquered Memphis; it is Theban power that was overthrown by the Hyksos; it is Thebes that expelled them and initiated the second great period of Egyptian history.  We therefore resume our narrative at a point before the great increase of Theban power at the time of the expulsion of the Hyksos, and will trace this power from its rise, which followed the defeat of Herakleopolis and Memphis.  It is upon this epoch—­the beginning of Theban power—­that the latest discoveries at Thebes have thrown some new light.

More than anywhere else in Egypt excavations have been carried on at Thebes, on the site of the ancient capital of the country.  And here, if anywhere, it might have been supposed that there was nothing more to be found, no new thing to be exhumed from the soil, no new fact to be added to our knowledge of Egyptian history.  Yet here, no less than at Abydos, has the archaeological exploration of the last few years been especially successful, and we have seen that the ancient city of Thebes has a great deal more to tell us than we had expected.

The most ancient remains at Thebes were discovered by Mr. Newberry in the shape of two tombs of the VIth Dynasty, cut upon the face of the well-known hill of Shekh Abd el-Kurna, on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor.  Every winter traveller to Egypt knows, well the ride from the sandy shore opposite the Luxor temple, along the narrow pathway between the gardens and the canal, across the bridges and over