Matters probably reached a head when Wahankh Intef II attacked the Thinite nome and pushed northwards, finding his advance eventually checked by the Asyut nomarchs. A record of at least one counter-attack by the Herakleopolitans has survived in the form of a very fragmentary inscription in the tomb of Ity-yeb (the second in a sequence of overseers of priests at Asyut), who reports successful military operations against the ‘southern nomes’. In addition, the narrative recounted in the Teachings for Merykara claims that King Merykara’s father had recaptured Abydos. Whether these facts are to be connected with the ‘rebellion of Thinis’, recorded on a stele from Mentuhotep II’s fourteenth regnal year, remains a matter of speculation.
It is clear, however, that this Herakleopolitan military success had no lasting effect on the outcome, since the tomb of Ity-yeb’s son, Khety II, from the time of King Merykara, contains a report concerning further conflict with the Theban aggressors. No record has survived of the sequence of events in this final phase of the war, but there can hardly be any doubt that Asyut was taken by force. In any event, the ruling family of Asyut did not survive the Theban victory.
Information on Mentuhotep II’s advances further northwards is lacking, but it seems unlikely that he had to fight every step of the way. Instead, it is probable that the network of Herakleopolitan rule over Middle Egypt collapsed after Asyut had been defeated, and local rulers might then have been eager to side with the winning party before it was too late, thus hoping to save themselves and their towns from ‘the terror which was spread by the [Theban] king’s house’.
We do not know the fate of the last Herakleopolitan king nor the details of the capture of the town of Herakleopolis, but recent excavations in the cemetery of Ihnasya el-Medina show that its funerary monuments were literally hacked to pieces at some point in the early Middle Kingdom. It seems tempting to construe this archaeological observation as evidence for the eventual sacking and pillaging of Egypt’s northern capital.
World History
