Elephantine, an island opposite the modern town of Aswan, is an interesting vantage point from which to study the Second Intermediate Period. As a provincial town, it provides a counterbalance to the Theban sources, and there is an unbroken series of private and royal dedications dating from the late 12th to the i6th Dynasty. The stratified town site and cemeteries of the same period are being excavated by the German Institute of Archaeology.
The fortunes of Elephantine are inextricably linked to those of Nubia. During most of the Middle Kingdom it did not mark the southern boundary at all; that was fixed by Senusret III at Semna, 400 km. to the south. However, during the nadir of the power of the Theban kings, it is possible that Elephantine was ruled independently and even that Nubians raided the city from time to time. Booty from a raid against Elephantine or the forts is the favoured explanation for the fact that a royal tomb at Kerma in the late Second Intermediate Period contained statues of a nomarch of Asyut and his wife who lived in the reign of Senusret 1 (1956-1911BC).
The value of Lower Nubia lay in its quarries, principally of diorite, granite, and amethyst; its access to gold and copper mines; and its strategic location in terms of the control of the desert and river routes. A 6th-Dynasty local official of Elephantine, Heqaib, was deified after his death, and a series of votive stelae and statues has been found in his shrine. The I3th-i6th Dynasties are particularly well represented and, as at Memphis, the continuity is broken only with the advent of the i8th Dynasty. The genealogies recorded in the inscriptions show that the same families served both the late I3th-Dynasty kings and those of the i6th Dynasty. The status of the mayor of Elephantine evidently changed from one of great local significance to a military one within The retinue of the ICing of Thebes. One such man was Neferhotep, who was responsible to the king for the whole region from Thebes to Elephantine. After his time (the i6th Dynasty, judging from the orthography of his stele), dedications in the Heqaib shrine cease and it may be no coincidence that this is the period when the Prince of Kush was at his most powerful and even the cataract forts were falling under his control.
The fortunes of one of the forts, Buhen, may be pieced together from evidence not yet fully published. After the late 12th Dynasty, soldiers were buried with their families in Cemetery K at Buhen; these burials are characterized by pottery from the Memphite region, confirmation that the fort’s supplies were still coming from the workshops of the Residence. Cemetery K shows continuous occupation until well into the Second Intermediate Period, and there are at least two groups of intact, multiple burials that contain Tell el-Yahudiya ware juglets, including one type that does not appear at Tell el-Dab'a until stratum E/i (probably the early 15th Dynasty). One of the bodies has a large gold nugget around its neck, suggesting that settlers remained at Buhen primarily because of its proximity to the gold-mining region. By this time the boundary between Upper and Lower Egypt was in place, so that supplies from Lower Egypt could have reached Buhen only via the oasis route, which we know was in use during the reign of Apepi. Who, one wonders, was organizing this trade at the northern end? We may speculate that officials were still working at Itjtawy under the Hyksos king and we know that the Lisht cemetery was still in use. Avaris itself was the centre for the manufacture and distribution of Tell el-Yahudiya juglets, the contents of which have not yet been identified but were clearly much prized.
The fortress settlers must have felt themselves increasingly isolated and vulnerable, despite their links with Lower Egypt, and so had to accommodate themselves to the local military power, which was neither the Hyksos nor the Kings of Thebes, but the King of Kush. A family covering five generations left inscriptions at Buhen and these show that the last two generations served the King of Kush and even carried out local campaigns on his behalf; this period is marked archaeologically by the presence of pottery imported from Upper Egypt, from the Theban area, instead of pottery from Lower Egypt. The river was open between Thebes and the forts, but only, as the Kamose texts imply, if taxes were paid to the master of the southern Nile, the King of Kush. Buhen was eventually sacked (there are traces of a great fire) but more probably by the army of Kamose than by the Nubians.
Other forts, Mirgissa and Askut, show a similar history of continued occupation by Egyptians, but alongside Nubians until the end of the Second Intermediate Period. Eventually control of the cataract region by the King of Kerma became intolerable to the Theban rulers, making it essential that they should retake the forts before they could proceed in safety against the Hyksos. In the third year of Kamose’s reign, we have the earliest evidence that the region was again under Theban control. The building of a wall is recorded at Buhen, probably a renewal of the fortifications after the successful campaign mentioned in the letter from the Hyksos ruler Apepi to the King of Kush.
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