[Illustration:  306.jpg Denderah—­Temple of Tentyra]

[Illustration:  306-text.jpg—­Temple of Tentyra]

A family which, to judge from the fact that its members affected the name of Monthotpu, originally came from Hermonthis, settled in Thebes and made that town the capital of a small principality, which rapidly enlarged its borders at the expense of the neighbouring nomes.  All the towns and cities of the plain, Madufc, Hfuifc, Zorit, Hermonthis, and towards the south, Aphroditopolis Parva, at the gorge of the Two Mountains (Gebelen) which formed the frontier of the fief of El-Kab, Kusit towards the north, Denderah, and Hu, all fell into the hands of the Theban princes and enormously increased their territory.  After the lapse of a very few years, their supremacy was accepted more or less willingly by the adjacent principalities of El-Kab, Elephantine, Koptos, Qasr-es-Sayad, Thinis, and Ekhmim.  Antuf, the founder of the family, claimed no other title than that of Lord of Thebes, and still submitted to the suzerainty of the Heracleopolitan kings.  His successors considered themselves strong enough to cast off this allegiance, if not to usurp all the insignia of royalty, including the uraeus and the cartouche.  Monthotpu I., Antuf II., and Antuf III. must have occupied a somewhat remarkable position among the great lords of the south, since their successors credited them with the possession of a unique preamble.  It is true that the historians of a later date did not venture to place them on a par with the kings who were actually independent; they enclosed their names in the cartouche without giving them a prenomen; but, at the same time, they invested them with a title not met with elsewhere, that of the first Horus—­Horu tapi.  They exercised considerable power from the outset.  It extended over Southern Egypt, over Nubia, and over the valleys lying between the Nile and the Red Sea.* The origin of the family was somewhat obscure, but in support of their ambitious projects, they did not fail to invoke the memory of pretended alliances between their ancestors and daughters of the solar race; they boasted of their descent from the Papis, from Usirniri Anu, Sahuri, and Snofrui, and claimed that the antiquity of their titles did away with the more recent rights of their rivals.

The revolt of the Theban princes put an end to the IXth dynasty, and, although supported by the feudal powers of Central and Northern Egypt, and more especially by the lords of the Terebinth nome, who viewed the sudden prosperity of the Thebans with a very evil eye, the Xth dynasty did not succeed in bringing them back to their allegiance.**