It is certain that Mentuhotep II reunited Egypt, but when and how he achieved this aim are matters of controversy. The Turin Canon attributes 51 years to this king, a realistic figure, as contemporary texts attest his 46th year at least. In the course of his reign he changed his royal protocol twice, and it has been argued that the names should be regarded as political manifestos. His third Horus name smi tAwy, ‘‘Unifier of the Two Lands,’’ would reflect a policy of reintegrating the two parts of Egypt. The name occurs for perhaps the first time in a graffito in the Wadi Shatt el-Rigal, where it is accompanied by a date in year 39. The Unification must have taken place before this, but the question of when exactly has given rise to much debate. Since a certain lapse of time must be allowed for the period when the first two royal protocols
Figure 5.3 Graffito in the Wadi Shatt el-Rigal, displaying king Mentuhotep II with the crown of Upper Egypt and wearing the Heb-sed robe. The king is accompanied by his third Horus name Sma-tawy, “Unifier of the Two Lands,” and the date “Regnal Year 39.” There is a debate as to whether the date is contemporary with the scene. After H. E. Winlock 1947, pl. 37.
Were in use, it remains likely that a point somewhere between, say, years 10 and 40 should be envisaged (Franke 1988: 133; Darnell 2004: 34. Gestermann 1987: 3547; Quack 1992: 106; Seidlmayer 1997: 81; Gestermann, 2008).
Texts from the Theban area providing details on the unification process are rare. Some temple scenes show Mentuhotep as a warrior, and sometimes he is shown fighting other Egyptians. Although the unification process is thus pictured as a military affair, we should not lose sight of the highly symbolic nature of these images. Egyptian iconography, by its very nature, presents the king as a victor. The historical reality behind these images is, therefore, difficult to determine (Gestermann 1987: 43-7).
Three tomb autobiographies from Assiut contain allusions to the Theban advance. The biography of Khety I (Tomb V) is still describing peaceful conditions in the later First Intermediate Period. His successor Itib, the owner of Tomb III, relates how he supported the Herakleopolitan kings against an attack from the south from which he emerged the victor. Finally, Khety II’s autobiography in Tomb IV, dated to the time of the Herakleopolitan king Merikare, states that Assiut was temporarily conquered by the advancing Thebans but that Khety threw them out again. After that he must still have remained in power long enough to have his tomb decorated with this long inscription (published by Griffith 1889 and Brunner 1937). It is generally assumed that it must have been written a short time before the Thebans took over power in the north, and clearly their advance as far north as Assiut was of a military nature.
A number of graffiti in the Hatnub quarries left by Nehri I, a nomarch of the Hare nome, also describe warlike conditions in Middle Egypt and were long believed to refer to these events (Graffiti 14-30, Anthes 1928). However, these texts are nowadays dated on palaeographic and archaeological grounds to the late Eleventh or early Twelfth Dynasty (Willems 1984: 80-102; 2007: 84-8). Therefore, the conflict to which they allude can no longer be identified with the Unification war, and this means that there is no longer any evidence that the Unification was the outcome of a military victory. Of course, that remains a distinct possibility, but it cannot be ruled out that Theban pressure on the Herakleopolitan kingdom became so strong that the nomarchs of Middle Egypt simply changed allegiance. If this happened, the Theban takeover may have been a coup rather than a conquest, and this model may explain why nomarchs remained in power in Middle Egypt, whereas the Thebans had hitherto adopted a policy of abandoning the nomarch system in newly conquered areas (Willems 1989: 598-601; 2008: 36-64).
Even before the Unification, Mentuhotep was a prolific temple builder, for instance, in Elephantine, Gebelein, Tod, Medamud, and Dendera (Habachi 1963; Fiore Marochetti 2005; Postel 2004: 133-4). Pride of place goes to the terrace temple at Deir el-Bahri (Arnold 1974a-b; 1979a; 1981). Since it has a causeway oriented towards Karnak, where the Amun temple certainly already existed (Le Saout, El-H. Maarouf, Zimmer 1987: 294-7), a connection between the two must have existed, a link which may have been used even at this period for a processional festival, an early form, perhaps, of the Festival of the Valley, which would later become one of the most significant events in the Theban religious calendar (Cabrol 2001: 543-50). Although the early Middle Kingdom scenario of these festivities eludes us, the entire landscape thus created must have served to link the cult of the king (who was buried in Deir el-Bahri) with that of Amun of Karnak and Hathor of Deir el-Bahri. This landscape set the stage for the funerary culture of the royal family and the national elite; for, whereas the Theban elite burial ground had hitherto been at el-Tarif, it was now moved to the processional road (Arnold 1971). Here in Deir el-Bahri we also find early evidence for the Coffin Texts on the coffin of one of Mentuhotep’s ‘‘wives’’ (Willems 1988: 109-10; 1996b: 53-4 and pl. 46-51). Although these Lower Egyptian texts were perhaps already known in southern Egypt, they were still most exceptional, but their appearance may well reflect an integration of Lower and Upper Egyptian trends (Gestermann 2004; Willems 2007: 104; 2008: 183-4). Parallel tendencies can be observed in the realm of art where the Theban style gradually gave way to a more classical style, probably as a result of a transfer of Herakleopolitan artisans to Thebes (Jaros-Deckert 1984).
On the whole it seems as though Mentuhotep II followed a conciliatory policy, his aim being as much to suppress antagonism between two formerly hostile regions as to adopt the style of traditional, northern Egyptian royalty. Far less is known about his successors Mentuhotep III and IV. Inscriptions datable to the former reign only derive from Thebes and other towns in southern Egypt, where Mentuhotep III continued the temple-building policy of his predecessor (Postel 2004: 245-264). A fair amount of evidence exists for the highest officials of the country in this period (Schenkel 1965: 250-71). As in the First Intermediate Period, no nomarchs existed in southern Egypt, but they are likely to have remained in office at least in the former Herakleopolitan realm at el-Bersha, Beni Hasan, and Assiut (Willems 2008: 36-65).
A mass of elite tombs around the Asasif and Deir el-Bahri testify to the fact that the national government remained stationed in Thebes. Their date has been much discussed recently, in the wake of a study of an enigmatic royal monument in western Thebes (TT281). This unfinished building is located in a valley to the south of Deir el-Bahri. It was probably intended as a terraced mortuary temple like that of Mentuhotep II and had a long causeway ending near the edge of the cultivation. The excavator, Winlock, attributed it to the successor of Mentuhotep II (1921: 29-34), a hypothesis that has long been universally accepted. On this basis a series ofofficials, whose tombs exist nearby, were dated to the same period. However, in a reassessment of the evidence Dorothea Arnold has argued that the owner of TT281 was not Mentuhotep III but Amenemhet I. This has had a great impact on the way the early Middle Kingdom administration of Egypt is currently perceived, many officials being attributed nowadays to the early Twelfth Dynasty rather than the late 11th (Dorothea Arnold 1991: 21-32; Allen 2002: 127-41; Allen 2003), but the matter is far from resolved and the dating remains an open question.
The events which led to the end of the Eleventh Dynasty are shrouded in mystery. Mentuhotep IV is known only from quarry inscriptions dated to his first two years (Postel 2004: 265-78). These years may, or may not, have to be subsumed in the seven ‘‘missing’’ (wsf) years mentioned after Mentuhotep III in the Turin Canon (which omits Mentuhotep IV) (Ryholt 1997: 10; 2004: 147-8). Nor is it clear how long the king remained in office after his highest attested date. A record of year 2 occurs in quarry inscription 113 in the Wadi Hammamat, where Mentuhotep IV sent an expedition directed by the vizier Ameny. It has been argued that this Ameny was the later king Amenemhet I who used his high position to usurp the throne, but, as yet, there is no proof of this.
World History
