north, [thus] keeping alive its
people, and providing the food thereof, and there was no hungry man
therein. I gave to the widow as to the woman who possessed a husband. I
made no distinction between the elder and the younger in whatsoever I
gave. When years of high Nile floods came, the lords (_i.e._ the
producers) of wheat and barley, the lords of products of every kind, I
did not cut off (or deduct) what was due on the land [from the years of
low Nile floods], I Ameni, the vassal of Horus, the Smiter of the
Rekhti,[2] generous of hand, stable of feet, lacking avarice because of
his love for his town, learned in traditions (?), who appeareth at the
right moment, without thought of guile, the vassal of Khnemu, highly
favoured in the king's house, who boweth before ambassadors, who
performeth the behests of the nobles, speaker of the truth, who judgeth
righteously between two litigants, free from the word of deceit, skilled
in the methods of the council chamber, who discovereth the solution of a
difficult question, Ameni.

[Footnote 1: He afterwards reigned as Amenemhat II.]

[Footnote 2: Titles of Ameni repeated.]

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THETHA

This inscription is cut in hieroglyphs upon a large rectangular slab of
limestone now preserved in the British Museum (No. 100). It belongs to
the period of the eleventh dynasty, when texts of the kind are very
rare, and was made in the reign of Uahankh, or Antef. It reads:

Thetha, the servant in truth of the Horus Uahankh, the King of the
South, the King of the North, the son of Ra, Antef, the doer of
beneficent acts, living like Ra for ever, beloved by him from the bottom
of his heart, holder of the chief place in the house of his lord, the
great noble of his heart, who knoweth the matters of the heart of his
lord, who attendeth him in all his goings, one in heart with His Majesty
in very truth, the leader of the great men of the house of the king, the
bearer of the royal seal in the seat of confidential affairs, keeping
close the counsel of his lord more than the chiefs, who maketh to
rejoice the Horus (_i.e._ the king) through what he wisheth, the
favourite of his Lord, beloved by him as the mouth of the seal, the
president of the place of confidential affairs, whom his lord loveth,
the mouth of the seal, the chief after the king, the vassal, saith:

I was the beloved one of his Lord, I was he with whom he was well
pleased all day and every day.