Drawn by Boudier, from a sketch by Petrie, Ten Years’
     Digging in Egypt, p. 74, No. 2.

Three or four kings followed him in rapid succession; the least insignificant among them appearing to have been a Monthotpii Nibtouiri.  Nothing but the prenomen—­Sonkheri—­is known of the last of these latter princes, who was also the only one of them ever entered on the official lists.  In their hands the sovereignty remained unchanged from what it had been almost uninterruptedly since the end of the VIth dynasty.  They solemnly proclaimed their supremacy, and their names were inscribed at the head of public documents; but their power scarcely extended beyond the limits of their family domain, and the feudal chiefs never concerned themselves about the sovereign except when he evinced the power or will to oppose them, allowing him the mere semblance of supremacy over the greater part of Europe.  Such a state of affairs could only be reformed by revolution.  Amenemhait I., the leader of the new dynasty, was of the Theban race; whether he had any claim to the throne, or by what means he had secured the stability of his rule, we do not know.  Whether he had usurped the crown or whether he had inherited it legitimately, he showed himself worthy of the rank to which fortune had raised him, and the nobility saw in him a new incarnation of that type of kingship long known to them by tradition only, namely, that of a Pharaoh convinced of his own divinity and determined to assert it.  He inspected the valley from one end to another, principality by principality, nome by nome, “crushing crime, and arising like Tumu himself; restoring that which he found in ruins, settling the bounds of the towns, and establishing for each its frontiers.”  The civil wars had disorganized everything; no one knew what ground belonged to the different nomes, what taxes were due from them, nor how questions of irrigation could be equitably decided.  Amenemhait set up again the boundary stelae, and restored its dependencies to each nome:  “He divided the waters among them according to that which was in the cadastral surveys of former times.”  Hostile nobles, or those whose allegiance was doubtful, lost the whole or part of their fiefs; those who had welcomed the new order of things received accessions of territory as the reward of their zeal and devotion.  Depositions and substitutions of princes had begun already in the time of the XIth dynasty.  Antuf V., for instance, finding the lord of Koptos too lukewarm, had had him removed and promptly replaced.  The fief of Siut accrued to a branch of the family which was less warlike, and above all less devoted to the old dynasty than that of Khiti had been.  Part of the nome of the Gazelle was added to the dominions of Nuhri, prince of the Hare nome; the eastern part of the same nome, with Monait-Khufui as capital, was granted to his father-in-law, Khnumhotpu I. Expeditions against the Uauaiu, the Mazaiu, and the nomads of Libya and Arabia