were rude and clumsy, the coffins heavy and massive, and the figures with which they were decorated inelegant and out of proportion, while the stelae are very rudely cut.  From the time of the VIth dynasty the lords of the Said had been reduced to employing workmen from Memphis to adorn their monuments; but the rivalry between the Thebans and the Heracleopolitans, which set the two divisions of Egypt against each other in constant hostility, obliged the Antufs to entrust the execution of their orders to the local schools of sculptors and painters.  It is difficult to realize the degree of rudeness to which the unskilled workmen who made certain of the Akhmitn and Gebelen sarcophagi must have sunk; and even at Thebes itself, or at Abydos, the execution of both bas-reliefs and hieroglyphs shows minute carefulness rather than any real skill or artistic feeling.  Failing to attain to the beautiful, the Egyptians endeavoured to produce the sumptuous.  Expeditions to the Wady Ham marnat to fetch blocks of granite for sarcophagi become more and more frequent, and wells were sunk from point to point along the road leading from Koptos to the mountains.  Sometimes these expeditions were made the occasion for pushing on as far as the port of Sau and embarking on the Eed Sea.  A hastily constructed boat cruised along by the shore, and gum, incense, gold, and the precious stones of the country were brought from the land of the Troglodytes.  On the return of the convoy with its block of stone, and various packages of merchandise, there was no lack of scribes to recount the dangers of the campaign in exaggerated language, or to congratulate the reigning Pharaoh on having sown abroad the fame and terror of his name in the countries of the gods, and as far as the land of Puanit.

The final overthrow of the Heracleopolitan dynasty, and the union of the two kingdoms under the rule of the Theban house, are supposed to have been the work of that Monthotpu whose throne-name was Nibkhrouri; his, at any rate, was the name which the Egyptians of Kamesside times inscribed in the royal lists as that of the founder and most illustrious representative of the XIth dynasty.  The monuments commemorate his victories over the Uauaiu and the barbarous inhabitants of Nubia.  Even after he had conquered the Delta he still continued to reside in Thebes; there he built his pyramid, and there divine honours were paid him from the day after his decease.  A scene carved on the rocks north of Silsileh represents him as standing before his son Antuf; he is of gigantic stature, and one of his wives stands behind him.*

* Brugsch makes him out to be a descendant of Amenemhait, the prince of Thebes who lived under Monthotpu Nibtuiri, and who went to bring the stone for that Pharaoh’s sarcophagus from the Wady Hammamat.  He had previously supposed him to be this prince himself.  Either of these hypotheses becomes probable, according as Nibtuiri is supposed to have lived before or after Nibkhrouri.

[Illustration:  318.jpg THE PHARAOH MONTHOTPU RECEIVING THE HOMAGE OF HIS SUCCESSOR—­ANTUE—­IN THE SHAT ER-RIGELEH.]