The First Intermediate Period

Pepy II died in about 2175. With the end of the Sixth Dynasty comes what has traditionally been called the First Intermediate Period (c.2160-2055 bc). The historical record is confused. Manetho’s so-called Seventh Dynasty does not seem to have ever existed and the Eighth showed a rapid succession of weak kings, seventeen in twenty years. In effect royal authority collapsed and it was inevitable that Egypt would break up into smaller states as ambitious nobles exploited the vacuum of power. At Heracleopolis in Middle Egypt a brutal opportunist called Kheti held sway and claimed to be the successor of the Old Kingdom dynasties. His descendants retained power up to the end of the Intermediate Period (some eighteen or nineteen of the kings of Heracleopolis are known and are grouped together as the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties) but they never seem to have earned the full allegiance of their subjects. Meanwhile a rival dynasty established itself in the south of the kingdom at Thebes, then a remote provincial capital. Its kings extended their power further south into Nubia. In retrospect this was to prove the most important political development of the period but there was nothing inevitable about the eventual success of what was to be the Eleventh ‘Theban’ Dynasty (discussed below).

The most significant development was the continuing rise of the provincial administrators as important powers in their own right. By this time the system of administration was well established and the local officials highly experienced in running it. These officials would have wanted to keep order not only to maintain their own position but to give them the opportunity to provide tombs and offerings for their own afterlives. An excellent example of the confidence of these provincial rulers comes from the tomb of Ankhtifi (found at el-Mo’alla, south of Thebes). Typically for the period, Ankhtifi’s position was one that combined the ‘overlord’ status of two nomarchs—the governors of provinces, (nomos, administrative district, another word that is Greek in origin)—as well as a religious role as ‘overseer of priests’.

His ‘autobiography’ from the tomb is bombastic:

I was the beginning and the end [i. e. the climax] of mankind, since nobody like me existed before, nor will he exist; nobody like myself was ever born nor will he be born. I surpassed the feats of the ancestors, and coming generations will not be able to equal me in any of my feats within this million of years.

I gave bread to the hungry and clothing to the naked; I anointed those who had no cosmetic oil, I gave sandals to the barefooted; I gave a wife to him who had no wife. I took care of the towns of Hefat and Hormer in every [situation of crisis when] the sky was clouded and the earth [was parched (?) and when everybody died] of hunger.

[When there was trouble in the neighbouring nome of Thebes] I sailed downstream with my strong and trustworthy troops and moored on the west bank of the Theban nome. . . and my trustworthy troops searched for battle throughout the Theban nome, but nobody dared to come out through fear of them. (Quoted by Stephan Seidlmayer in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt.)

Until recently the picture presented of the First Intermediate Period has been pessimistic. This is because it has been associated with a series of texts that detail

Social breakdown and despair. One, The Admonitions of Ipuwer, talks of a world turned upside-down, with a resulting famine, and rich and poor in upheaval. ‘Gold and lapis lazuli, silver and turquoise, carnelian and bronze are hung about the necks of slave girls while noble ladies walk in despair through the land. . . Little children say [to their fathers] he should never have caused me to live.’ (Translation: Rosalie David.) The trouble with this approach is that archaeological evidence does not support it. Recent revaluations of the period stress that the weakening of central control was successfully countered by the rise of efficient local officials who, as has been seen in the example of Ankhtifi, had no inhibitions about proclaiming their achievements, even, in some cases known from Kheti’s reign, not mentioning their king at all! Insofar as cultural vitality and craftsmanship spread outside the court to the provinces, it can even be viewed as a period of positive achievement, not least in that it showed that Egyptian society could respond creatively to change. A more careful examination of surviving texts shows that The Admonitions of Ipuwer may originate after the period and have exaggerated the disorder to justify the reassertion of power by the rulers of the Middle Kingdom or highlight the achievements of a boasting official.