d
and built their Pyramids at Thebes, and the administration of the
kingdom became centralized there. The actual capital of a king was
determined not so much by the locality from whence he ruled, as by the
place where he reposed after death. Thebes was the virtual capital
of Egypt from the moment that its masters fixed on it as their
burying-place.

Uncertainty again shrouds the history of the country after Sovkhotpu I.:
not that monuments are lacking or names of kings, but the records of the
many Sovkhotpus and Nonrhotpus found in a dozen places in the valley,
furnish as yet no authentic means of ascertaining in what order to
classify them. The XIIIth dynasty contained, so it is said, sixty kings,
who reigned for a period of over 453 years.*

* This is the number given in one of the lists of Manetho,
in Muller-Didot, _Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum_, vol. ii.
p. 565. Lepsius's theory, according to which the shepherds
overran Egypt from the end of the XIIth dynasty and
tolerated the existence of two vassal dynasties, the XIIIth
and XIVth, was disputed and refuted by E. de Rouge as soon
as it appeared; we find the theory again in the works of
some contemporary Egyptologists, but the majority of those
who continued to support it have since abandoned their
position.

The succession did not always take place in the direct line from father
to son: several times, when interrupted by default of male heirs, it
was renewed without any disturbance, thanks to the transmission of royal
rights to their children by princesses, even when their husbands did not
belong to the reigning family. Monthotpu, the father of Sovkhotpu III.,
was an ordinary priest, and his name is constantly quoted by his son;
but solar blood flowed in the veins of his mother, and procured for him
the crown. The father of his successor, Nofirhotpu IL, did not belong
to the reigning branch, or was only distantly connected with it, but his
mother Kamait was the daughter of Pharaoh, and that was sufficient
to make her son of royal rank. With careful investigation, we should
probably find traces of several revolutions which changed the legitimate
order of succession without, however, entailing a change of dynasty. The
Nofirhotpus and Sovkhotpus continued both at home and abroad the work so
ably begun by the Amenemhaits and the Usirtasens.

[Illustration: 410.jpg THE COLOSSAL STATUE OF KING SOVKHOTPU IN THE
LO