Page 24 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

6 Bronze and Stone

with its palaces and temples built by ten successive dynasties.
Particularly famous was the He-Ku-Ptah, the “house of the spirit­
ual materialization of Ptah,” who was the god of learning and the
regional deity of Memphis. It was so famous that it gave its name
to the whole country, being written by the Greeks as Aigyptos
and by us as Egypt. And Memphis was the door to the north
for the valley dwellers, the gateway to the delta, to the old Red

Kingdom.
The delta had always been more civilized than the valley
to its south. It was in closer contact with the other old civiliza­
tions and with the growing Mediterranean trade; and it was more
fertile and more populous. That agriculture itself, and with it
many other revolutionary technical and economic innovations,
had reached the southlands from the delta was forgotten long
ago, but the feeling of belonging to a poorer, less urbane, yet
more virile, culture (the same feeling as the Scotsman has to­
wards the Englishman) persisted in the south. Yet Mena had
come from the southlands, and now it was the southlands that
once more ruled Egypt.

The history of the last three hundred years would be well
known in general outline to even the least-educated laborer of
the south. A combination of weak kings in Memphis and strong
priesthoods in the delta had allowed the sheriffs of the shires
to the south, who were originally officials appointed by the
pharaoh, to obtain hereditary office and thereby set themselves
up as barons in their own right, though nominally still subject

to the king. For a long while they were held in check by internal
rivalries. In particular the successive barons of Siut, loyal to the
king, had time and again on his behalf put down incipient re­
volts of the more independent barons of Thebes. But about
2300 b.c. Intef of Thebes declares his independence and assumes
the title of pharaoh. And apparently the kings in Memphis can
no longer restrain him. His son, too, was called Intef and followed
him on the throne of Thebes. After him came a succession of
pharaohs called Mentuhotep, who appear to be another branch
of the same family. For the line of Intefs continues, though they

no longer rule. It is in the reign of the second Mentuhotep in
the south that the old line of kings in Memphis ends, apparently