delivered the fellahin from their ruinous raids and ensured to the Egyptians safety from foreign attack.  Amenemhait had, moreover, the wit to recognize that Thebes was not the most suitable place of residence for the lord of all Egypt; it lay too far to the south, was thinly populated, ill-built, without monuments, without prestige, and almost without history.  He gave it into the hands of one of his relations to govern in his name, and proceeded to establish himself in the heart of the country, in imitation of the glorious Pharaohs from whom he claimed to be descended.  But the ancient royal cities of Kheops and his children had ceased to exist; Memphis, like Thebes, was now a provincial town, and its associations were with the VIth and VIIIth dynasties only.  Amenemhait took up his abode a little to the south of Dahshur, in the palace of Titoui, which he enlarged and made the seat of his government.  Conscious of being in the hands of a strong ruler, Egypt breathed freely after centuries of distress, and her sovereign might in all sincerity congratulate himself on having restored peace to his country.  “I caused the mourner to mourn no longer, and his lamentation was no longer heard,—­perpetual fighting was no longer witnessed,—­while before my coming they fought together as bulls unmindful of yesterday,—­and no man’s welfare was assured, whether he was ignorant or learned.”—­“I tilled the land as far as Elephantine,—­I spread joy throughout the country, unto the marshes of the Delta.—­At my prayer the Nile granted the inundation to the fields:—­no man was an hungered under me, no man was athirst under me,—­for everywhere men acted according to my commands, and all that I said was a fresh cause of love.”

In the court of Amenemhait, as about all Oriental sovereigns, there were doubtless men whose vanity or interests suffered by this revival of the royal authority; men who had found it to their profit to intervene between Pharaoh and his subjects, and who were thwarted in their intrigues or exactions by the presence of a prince determined on keeping the government in his own hands.

These men devised plots against the new king, and he escaped with difficulty from their conspiracies.  “It was after the evening meal, as night came on,—­I gave myself up to pleasure for a time,—­then I lay down upon the soft coverlets in my palace, I abandoned myself to repose,—­and my heart began to be overtaken by slumber; when, lo! they gathered together in arms to revolt against me,—­and I became weak as a serpent of the field.—­Then I aroused myself to fight with my own hands,—­and I found that I had but to strike the unresisting.—­When I took a foe, weapon in hand, I make the wretch to turn and flee;—­strength forsook him, even in the night; there were none who contended, and nothing vexatious was effected against me.”  The conspirators were disconcerted by the promptness with which Amenemhait had attacked them, and apparently the rebellion was suppressed on the same night in