Apart from his military feats, Intef II emphasizes in his biographical inscription that he had built many temples to the gods, and, in fact, the earliest surviving fragment of royal construction at Kamak temple is a column of Wahankh Intef II. At Elephantine, excavations in the temple Of the godess Satet have revealed an unbroken series of building stages reaching back to the Early Dynastic Period. While the rulers of the Old Kingdom dedicated only a few votive offerings to Satet on Elephantine, Intef II was the first king to erect chapels for both Satet and Khnum, and to commemorate his activity in inscriptions on their door frames. Each of his successors during the nth Dynasty followed this example.
The sequence of events that has been revealed so clearly in the excavations at Elephantine was also true for many other temple sites. In fact, apart from a few specific exceptions, royal building activity in the provincial temples of Upper Egypt is attested only from the nth Dynasty onwards. Intef II, therefore, may be said to have inaugurated a new policy of royal presence and activity in the sanctuaries throughout the country—a policy that was to be continued on an even larger scale by Senusret I and many later kings.
The private and royal monuments from the time of Intef II also include splendid examples of Theban nth-Dynasty art. Some of the lesser monuments, such as the stelae of Djary, still exhibit the bold artistic style of the First Intermediate Period in Upper Egypt, but at the same time the royal workshops were beginning to produce beautifully balanced works characterized by thick, rounded modelling, and often deriving a special aesthetic effect from the contrast between large, plain surfaces and areas filled with finely carved detail such as elaborately pleated kilts or intricately patterned hairstyles. In these works, there is a clearly visible desire for the creation of a fitting medium to convey the aspirations of the new Dynasty.
By concentrating on the developments in southern Upper Egypt, it is possible to trace the emergence of a new political structure that was to lead, in unbroken sequence, to the formation of the state of the Middle Kingdom. This process, which was to have an enormous effect on Egypt’s future, should probably be regarded as the most important phenomenon in the history of the First Intermediate Period. We should not forget, however, that the Theban kingdom occupied only a small, remote, and relatively unimportant part of Egypt as a whole. The periods of war and conflict that make for such startling reading in biographical narrative were therefore no doubt only localized and short-lived episodes. At most places, for most of the time and for most of the people, the First Intermediate Period probably would have been a rather less thrilling experience.
Most of the country, during the First Intermediate Period, was in the hands of the Herakleopolitan successors to the ancient Memphite monarchy. To reach a balanced assessment of the period it is, therefore.
Crucial to concentrate on the situation in the Herakleopolitan realm just as much as that of the south.
World History
