The undertaking and successful completion of so many great structures had necessitated a renewal of the working of the ancient quarries, and the opening of fresh ones.  Amenemhait I. sent Antuf, a great dignitary, chief of the prophets of Minu and prince of Koptos, to the valley of Rohanu, to seek out fine granite for making the royal sarcophagi.  Amenemhait III. had, in the XLIIIrd year of his reign, been present at the opening of several fine veins of white limestone in the quarries of Turah, which probably furnished material for the buildings proceeding at Heliopolis and Memphis.  Thebes had also its share of both limestone and granite, and Amon, whose sanctuary up to this time had only attained the modest proportions suited to a provincial god, at last possessed a temple which raised him to the rank of the highest feudal divinities.  Amon’s career had begun under difficulties:  he had been merely a vassal-god of Montu, lord of Hermonthis (the Aunu of the south), who had granted to him the ownership of the village of Karnak only.  The unforeseen good fortune of the Antufs was the occasion of his emerging from his obscurity:  he did not dethrone Montu, but shared with him the homage of all the neighbouring villages—­Luxor, Medamut, Bayadiyeh; and, on the other side of the Nile, Gurneh and Medinet-Habu.  The accession of the XIIth dynasty completed his triumph, and made him the most powerful authority in Southern Egypt.  He was an earth-god, a form of Minu who reigned at Koptos, at Akhmim and in the desert, but he soon became allied to the sun, and from thenceforth he assumed the name of Amon-Ra.  The title of “suton nutiru” which he added to it would alone have sufficed to prove the comparatively recent origin of his notoriety; as the latest arrival among the great gods, he employed, to express his sovereignty, this word “suton,” king, which had designated the rulers of the valley ever since the union of the two Egypts under the shadowy Menes.  Reigning at first alone, he became associated by marriage with a vague indefinite goddess, called Maut, or Mut, the “mother,” who never adopted any more distinctive name:  the divine son who completed this triad was, in early times, Montu; but in later times a being of secondary rank, chosen from among the genii appointed to watch over the days of the month or the stars, was added, under the name of Khonsu.  Amenemhait laid the foundations of the temple, in which the cultus of Amon was carried on down to the latest times of paganism.  The building was supported by polygonal columns of sixteen sides, some fragments of which are still existing.

[Illustration:  381.jpg THE OBELISK OF USIRTASEN I., STILL STANDING IN THE PLAIN OF HELIOPOLIS]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.

The temple was at first of only moderate dimensions, but it was built of the choicest sandstone and limestone, and decorated with exquisite bas-reliefs.  Usirtasen I. enlarged it, and built a beautiful house for the high priest on the west side of the sacred lake.  Luxor, Zorit, Edfu, Hierakonpolis, El-Kab, Elephantine, and Dendera,* shared between them the favour of the Pharaohs; the venerable town of Abydos became the object of their special predilection.