med with the _khopesh_ or falchion. He carried on wars with
the Petti, or bowmen of the Libyan interior, with the Sakti or Asiatics,
with the Maxyes or Mazyes of the north-west, and with the Ua-uat and
other negro tribes of the south; not, however, as it would seem, with
any desire of making conquests, but simply for the protection of his own
frontier. With the same object he constructed on his north-eastern
frontier a wall or fortress "to keep out the Sakti," who continually
harassed the people of the Eastern Delta by their incursions.

The wars of Amenemhat I. make it evident that by his time Thebes had
advanced from the position of a petty kingdom situated in a remote part
of Egypt, and held in check by two or more rival kingdoms in the lower
Nile valley and the Delta, to that of a power which bore sway over the
whole land from Elephantine to the Mediterranean. "I sent my messengers
up to Abu (Elephantine) and my couriers down to Athu" (the coast lakes),
says the monarch in his "Instructions" to his son--the earliest literary
production from a royal pen that has come down to our days; and there is
no reason to doubt the truth of his statement. In the Delta alone could
he come into contact with either the Mazyes or the Sakti, and a king of
Thebes could not hold the Delta without being master also of the lower
Nile valley from Coptos to Memphis. We must regard Egypt, then, under
the "twelfth dynasty." as once more consolidated into a single state--a
state ruled, however, not from Memphis, but from Thebes, a decidedly
inferior position.

[Illustration: SPEARING THE CROCODILE.]

Amenemhat I. is the only Egyptian king who makes a boast of his hunting
prowess. "I hunted the lion," he says, "and brought back the crocodile a
prisoner." Lions do not at the present time frequent Egypt, and, indeed,
are not found lower down the Nile valley than the point where the Great
Stream receives its last tributary, the Atbara. But anciently they seem
to have haunted the entire desert tracts on either side of the river.
The Roman Emperor Hadrian is said to have hunted one near Alexandria,
and the monuments represent lions as tamed and used in the chase by the
ancient inhabitants. Sometimes they even accompanied their masters to
the battlefield. We know nothing of Amenemhat's mode of hunting the king
of beasts, but may assume that it was not very different from that
which prevailed at a later date in Assyria. There, dogs and beaters were