the power of the Pharaoh could equally well extend in a northerly direction towards the Sinaitic Peninsula and Libya, or towards the Red Sea and the “humiliated Kush” in the south.  The influence of its lords increased accordingly:  under Amenemhait III. and Amenemhait IV. they were perhaps the most powerful of the great vassals, and when the crown slipped from the grasp of the XIIth dynasty, it fell into the hands of one of these feudatories.  It is not known how the transition was brought about which transferred the sovereignty from the elder to the younger branch of the family of Amenemhait I. When Amenemhait IV. died, his nearest heir was a woman, his sister Sovkunofriuri:  she retained the supreme authority for not quite four years,* and then resigned her position to a certain Sovkhotpu.**

* She reigned exactly three years, ten months, and eighteen days, according to the fragments of the “Royal Canon of Turin” (Lepsius, Auswahl der wichtigten Urkunden, pl. v. col. vii. 1. 2).

** Sovkhotpu Khutouiri, according to the present published versions of the Turin Papyrus, an identification which led Lieblein (Recherches sur la Chronologie Egyptienne, pp. 102, 103) and Wiedemann to reject the generally accepted assumption that this first king of the XIIIth dynasty was Sovkhotpu Sakhemkhutouiri.  Still, the way in which the monuments of Sovkhotpu Sakhemkhutouiri and his papyri are intermingled with the monuments of Amenemhait III. at Semneh and in the Fayum, show that it is difficult to separate him from this monarch.  Moreover, an examination of the original Turin Papyrus shows that there is a tear before the word Khutouiri on the first cartouche, no indication of which appears in the facsimile, but which has, none the less, slightly damaged the initial solar disk and removed almost the whole of one sign.  We are, therefore, inclined to believe that Sakhemkhutouiri was written instead of Khutouiri, and that, therefore, all the authorities are in the right, from their different points of view, and that the founder of the XIIIth dynasty was a Sakhemkhutouiri I., while the Savkhotpu Sakhemkhutouiri, who occupies the fifteenth place in the dynasty, was a Sakhemkhutouiri II.

[Illustration:  408.jpg THE TOMBS OF PRINCES OF THE GAZELLE-NOME AT BENI-HASAN]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a chromolithograph in Lepsius,
     Denkm., i. pl. 61.  The first tomb on the left, of which the
     portico is shown, is that of Khnumhotpu II.

Was there a revolution in the palace, or a popular rising, or a civil war?  Did the queen become the wife of the new sovereign, and thus bring about the change without a struggle?  Sovkhotpu was probably lord of Uisit, and the dynasty which he founded is given by the native historians as of Theban origin.  His accession entailed no change in the Egyptian constitution; it merely consolidated the Theban supremacy, and gave it a recognized position.  Thebes became henceforth