ar IV. Amenothes
III. also worked limestone quarries, and built at Saqqarah
the earliest chapels of the Serapeum which are at present
known to us.

Since the close of the XIIth dynasty these cities had depended entirely
on their own resources, and their public buildings were either in ruins,
or quite inadequate to the needs of the population, but now gold from
Syria and Kush furnished them with the means of restoration. The Delta
itself shared in this architectural revival, but it had suffered too
severely under the struggle between the Theban kings and the Shepherds
to recover itself as quickly as the remainder of the country. All
effort was concentrated on those of its nomes which lay on the Eastern
frontier, or which were crossed by the Pharaohs in their journeys into
Asia, such as the Bubastite and Athribite nomes; the rest remained sunk
in their ancient torpor.*

* Mariette and E. de Rouge, attribute this torpor, at least as far as
Tanis is concerned, to the aversion felt by the Pharaohs of Egyptian
blood for the Hyksos capital, and for the provinces where the invaders
had formerly established themselves in large numbers.

Beyond the Red Sea the mines were actively worked, and even the oases of
the Libyan desert took part in the national revival, and buildings rose
in their midst of a size proportionate to their slender revenues. Thebes
naturally came in for the largest share of the spoils of war. Although
her kings had become the rulers of the world, they had not, like the
Pharaohs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties, forsaken her for some more
illustrious city: here they had their ordinary residence as well as
their seat of government, hither they returned after each campaign to
celebrate their victory, and hither they sent the prisoners and the
spoil which they had reserved for their own royal use. In the course
of one or two generations Thebes had spread in every direction, and had
enclosed within her circuit the neighbouring villages of Ashiru, the
fief of Maiit, and Apit-risifc, the southern Thebes, which lay at the
confluence of the Nile with one of the largest of the canals which
watered the plain. The monuments in these two new quarters of the town
were unworthy of the city of which they now formed part, and Amenothes
III. consequently bestowed much pains on improving them. He entirely
rebuilt the sanctuary of Maut, enlarged the sacred lake, and collected
within one of the courts of the tem