red on the official
lists. In their hands the sovereignty remained unchanged from what it
had been almost uninterruptedly since the end of the VIth dynasty. They
solemnly proclaimed their supremacy, and their names were inscribed at
the head of public documents; but their power scarcely extended beyond
the limits of their family domain, and the feudal chiefs never concerned
themselves about the sovereign except when he evinced the power or will
to oppose them, allowing him the mere semblance of supremacy over the
greater part of Europe. Such a state of affairs could only be reformed
by revolution. Amenemhait I., the leader of the new dynasty, was of the
Theban race; whether he had any claim to the throne, or by what means he
had secured the stability of his rule, we do not know. Whether he had
usurped the crown or whether he had inherited it legitimately, he showed
himself worthy of the rank to which fortune had raised him, and the
nobility saw in him a new incarnation of that type of kingship long
known to them by tradition only, namely, that of a Pharaoh convinced of
his own divinity and determined to assert it. He inspected the valley
from one end to another, principality by principality, nome by nome,
"crushing crime, and arising like Tumu himself; restoring that which he
found in ruins, settling the bounds of the towns, and establishing for
each its frontiers." The civil wars had disorganized everything; no one
knew what ground belonged to the different nomes, what taxes were due
from them, nor how questions of irrigation could be equitably
decided. Amenemhait set up again the boundary stelae, and restored its
dependencies to each nome: "He divided the waters among them according
to that which was in the cadastral surveys of former times." Hostile
nobles, or those whose allegiance was doubtful, lost the whole or part
of their fiefs; those who had welcomed the new order of things received
accessions of territory as the reward of their zeal and devotion.
Depositions and substitutions of princes had begun already in the time
of the XIth dynasty. Antuf V., for instance, finding the lord of Koptos
too lukewarm, had had him removed and promptly replaced. The fief of
Siut accrued to a branch of the family which was less warlike, and above
all less devoted to the old dynasty than that of Khiti had been. Part of
the nome of the Gazelle was added to the dominions of Nuhri, prince of
the Hare nome; the eastern part of the same