Egypt had always kept up extensive commercial relations with certain northern countries lying beyond the Mediterranean.  The reputation for wealth enjoyed by the Delta sometimes attracted bands of the Haiu-nibu to come prowling in piratical excursions along its shores; but their expeditions seldom turned out successfully, and even if the adventurers escaped summary execution, they generally ended their days as slaves in the Fayum, or in some village of the Said.  At first their descendants preserved the customs, religion, manners, and industries of their distant home, and went on making rough pottery for daily use, which was decorated in a style recalling that of vases found in the most ancient tombs of the AEgean archipelago; but they were gradually assimilated to their surroundings, and their grandchildren became fellahin like the rest, brought up from infancy in the customs and language of Egypt.

The relations with the tribes of the Libyan desert, the Tihunu and the Timihu, were almost invariably peaceful; although occasional raids of one of their bands into Egyptian territory would provoke counter raids into the valleys in which they took refuge with their flocks and herds.  Thus, in addition to the captive Haiu-nibu, another heterogeneous element, soon to be lost in the mass of the Egyptian population, was supplied by detachments of Berber women and children.

[Illustration:  338.jpg MAP]

The relations Egypt with her northern neighbours during the hundred years of the XIIth dynasty were chiefly commercial, but occasionally this peaceful intercourse was broken by sudden incursions or piratical expeditions which called for active measures of repression, and were the occasion of certain romantic episodes.  The foreign policy of the Pharaohs in this connexion was to remain strictly on the defensive.  Ethiopia attracted all their attention, and demanded all their strength.  The same instinct which had impelled their predecessors to pass successively beyond Gebel-Silsileh and Elephantine now drove the XIIth dynasty beyond the second cataract, and even further.  The nature of the valley compelled them to this course.  From the Tacazze, or rather from the confluence of the two Niles down to the sea, the whole valley forms as it were a Greater Egypt; for although separated by the cataracts into different divisions, it is everywhere subject to the same physical conditions.  In the course of centuries it has more than once been forcibly dismembered by the chances of war, but its various parts have always tended to reunite, and have coalesced at the first opportunity.  The Amami, the Irittt, and the Sitiu, all those nations which wandered west of the river, and whom the Pharaohs of the VIth and subsequently of the XIth dynasty either enlisted into their service or else conquered, do not seem to have given much trouble to the successors of Amenemhait I. The Uauaiu and the Mazaiu were more turbulent, and it was necessary to subdue them in order to assure the tranquillity of the colonists scattered along the banks of the river from Philo to Korosko.  They were worsted by Amenemhait I. in several encounters.