Page 155 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

126 The Chariots [1720-1650 B.C.]

trises, for all that they had made their capital at Thebes in the
deep and uncivilized south, had given Egypt two hundred years
of peace and prosperity at home and expanding trade and politi­
cal influence abroad. Up as far as Ugarit in the north of Syria
their influence had extended, and the cedar of Lebanon and the
gold of Nubia had adorned their palaces. But when Amenemhet
IV had died, he had had no son to succeed him.
As was only right and proper, his wife-and-sister, Sebekne-
frure, also of the blood royal, had continued to rule alone, until
such time as she should select a consort to share her throne. And
three years later she had done so. But the man she selected,
Khutouire Ugafa, was a commoner, and what was worse he was
from the delta. And the nobles of Thebes had refused to accept
this perfectly legal succession, and they had set up a rival phar­
aoh, from a younger branch of the royal family, in Thebes, and
the south had seceded.
The Civil War that had followed had been long and bitter,
as the grandfathers could testify from their own experience.
Several times they had been conscripted for campaigns against
the south, or to withstand a threat from the southern armies.
Twice the intermittent struggle had even invaded the delta, and
the village had been burnt. And even when there had been no
active warfare between the north and the south, there had been
intrigues and plots, palace revolutions, and army mutinies fo­
mented by the opposing sides. The old men could no longer count
the number of princes and priests and generals who, after mur­
dering their predecessor, had proclaimed themselves pharaoh,
only to fall themselves to an assassin some months or years later.
There must have been at least fourteen successive pharaohs, they
reckoned, in the north, and ten or twelve in the renegade south.
Both sides claimed, of course, to be the rightful rulers of the
whole country, but once at least—it was the last time the village
had been burnt—the southern usurpers had actually held con­
trol of the north for a space of years, under a king calling himself
Sebekhotep III. That had been some fifteen—or was it twenty?
—years ago, they explained. And the king of the north, the right­
ful pharaoh, had had to flee the country. But he had returned,