From this description it will have been seen that the temple is an important monument of the Egyptian art and architecture of the Middle Kingdom.  It is the only temple of that period of which considerable traces have been found, and on that account the study of it will be of the greatest interest.  It is the best preserved of the older temples of Egypt, and at Thebes it is by far the most ancient building recovered.  Historically it has given us a new king of the XIth Dynasty, Sekhahe-tep-Ra Mentuhetep, and the name of the queen of Neb-hapet-Ra Mentuhetep, Aasheit, who seems to have been an Ethiopian, to judge from her portrait, which has been discovered.  It is interesting to note that one of the priestesses was a negress.

The name Neb-hapet-Ra may be unfamiliar to those readers who are acquainted with the lists of the Egyptian kings.  It is a correction of the former reading, “Neb-kheru-Ra,” which is now known from these excavations to be erroneous.  Neb-hapet-Ra (or, as he used to be called, Neb-kheru-Ra) is Mentuhetep III of Prof.  Petrie’s arrangement.  Before him there seem to have come the kings Mentuhetep Neb-hetep (who is also commemorated in this temple) and Neb-taui-Ra; after him, Sekhahetep-Ra Mentuhetep IV and Seankhkara Mentuhetep V, who were followed by an Antef, bearing the banner or hawk-name Uah-ankh.  This king was followed by Amenemhat I, the first king of the XIIth Dynasty.  Antef Uah-ankh may be numbered Antef I, as the prince Antefa, who founded the XIth Dynasty, did not assume the title of king.

Other kings of the name of Antef also ruled over Egypt, and they used to be regarded as belonging to the XIth Dynasty; but Prof.  Steindorff has now proved that they really reigned after the XIIIth Dynasty, and immediately before the Sekenenras, who were the fighters of the Hyksos and predecessors of the XVIIIth Dynasty.  The second names of Antef III (Seshes-Ra-up-maat) and Antef IV (Seshes-Ra-her-her-maat) are exactly similar to those of the XIIIth Dynasty kings and quite unlike those of the Mentuheteps; also at Koptos a decree of Antef II (Nub-kheper-Ra) has been found inscribed on a doorway of Usertsen (Senusret) I; so that he cannot have preceded him.  Prof.  Petrie does not yet accept these conclusions, and classes all the Antefs together with the Mentuheteps in the XIth Dynasty.  He considers that he has evidence from Herakleopolis that Antef Xub-kheper-Ra (whom he numbers Antef V) preceded the XIIth Dynasty, and he supposes that the decree of Nub-kheper-Ra at Koptos is a later copy of the original and was inscribed during the XIIth Dynasty.  But this is a difficult saying.  The probabilities are that Prof.  Steindorff is right.  Antef Uah-ankh must, however, have preceded the XIIth Dynasty, since an official of that period refers to his father’s father as having lived in Uah-ankh ’s time.