rinces of Mondit-Khufui: Khnumhotpil, Khiti, Amoni-Amenemhait--The
lords of Thebes, and the accession of the XIIIth dynasty: the Sovkhotpus
and the Nfirhotpus--Completion of the conquest of Nubia; the XIVth
dynasty_.

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CHAPTER III--THE FIRST THEBAN EMPIRE

_The two Heracleopolitan dynasties and the XIIth dynasty--The conquest
of Ethiopia, and the making of Greater Egypt by the Theban kings._

The principality of the Oleander--Naru--was bounded on the north by the
Memphite nome; the frontier ran from the left bank of the Nile to the
Libyan range, from the neighbourhood of Riqqah to that of Medum. The
principality comprised the territory lying between the Nile and the Bahr
Yusuf, from the above-mentioned two villages to the Harabshent Canal--a
district known to Greek geographers as the island of Heracleopolis;--it
moreover included the whole basin of the Fayum, on the west of the
valley. In very early times it had been divided into three parts: the
Upper Oleander--Naru Khoniti--the Lower Oleander--Naru Pahui--and
the lake land--To-shit; and these divisions, united usually under
the supremacy of one chief, formed a kind of small state, of which
Heracleopolis was always the capital. The soil was fertile, well
watered, and well tilled, but the revenues from this district, confined
between the two arms of the river, were small in comparison with the
wealth which their ruler derived from his hands on the other side of the
mountain range. The Fayum is approached by a narrow and winding gorge,
more than six miles in length--a depression of natural formation,
deepened by the hand of man to allow a free passage to the waters of the
Nile. The canal which conveys them leaves the Bahr Yusuf at a point a
little to the north of Heracleopolis, carries them in a swift stream
through the gorge in the Libyan chain, and emerges into an immense
amphitheatre, whose highest side is parallel to the Nile valley, and
whose terraced slopes descend abruptly to about a hundred feet below the
level of the Mediterranean. Two great arms separate themselves from this
canal to the right and left--the Wady Tamieh and the Wady Nazleh; they
wind at first along the foot of the hills, and then again approaching
each other, empty themselves into a great crescent or horn-shaped lake,
lying east and west--the Moeris of Strabo, the Birket-Kerun of the
Arabs. A third branch penetrates the space enclosed by the other