From the exploited .to supply the enormous quantities of stone required for building and for
theTweifthf statues; the turquoise mines in Sinai were reopened, Nubia sent her gold once more,
Dynasty to and Punt her tribute of woods and spices. The sculptors found generous patronage,
Fifteenth 6 and must have been ceaselessly employed in equipping the temples and the- tombs.
Dynasty A massive solidity characterizes their work in this epoch. It was a time when newfelt
2780b. c.to strength prompted to great undertakings; and it is significant of the spirit of the age
,c"^ that a private individual, Tehuti-hotep, quarried for his own likeness a monstrous block
of alabaster over twenty feet in height and weighing some sixty tons. The kings were
not outdone by their subjects; whole series of portrait-images of superhuman size were
hewn of the hardest stone to furnish their various temples; and if it is impossible to
accept Herodotus’ description of the statues rising fifty fathoms above the waters of
Lake Moeris, yet there can be no doubt that the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty evinced
a new and peculiar fondness for adorning their buildings with towering colossi.. It is
hardly overstrained to say that this consciousness of mastery and strength is the
dominant note throughout the work of the Middle Empire. The spontaneous grace and
vivacity of an earlier time has been in a great measure lost; the delicate refinement born
of exotic culture is still unknown; but in its massive power and conscious pride of life the
Twelfth Dynasty is perhaps more typically Egyptian than any other before or after.
The painter was no less favoured than the sculptor, and found full scope for his
talent in the brilliant decoration of princely tombs. It is no slight praise to say of the
frescoes that they are but little inferior to those which were executed under the Old
Kingdom.
Literature shared in the general revival and awakening of intellectual interests; and
if historians and philologists derive much of their most precious material from the
inscriptions and papyri of this period, this fact must be regarded, apart from the good
fortune which has preserved such documents, as evidence that literary production was
more general and more widely diffused in this age than in those which had preceded it.
The Twelfth Dynasty came tranquilly to an end under undistinguished monarchs
and merged without noticeable disturbance in the Thirteenth. The new royal house was
probably connected by ties of kinship with its predecessors and seems to have continued
the same system and policy. Though our knowledge of this dynasty is very inexact
and many details are wanting to complete its chronicle, yet a not inconsiderable number
of records and monuments enables us to form a tolerably consistent idea of the march
of events. Arrived at its zenith under the Twelfth Dynasty the prosperity of Egypt
gradually declined under the Thirteenth. A series of insignificant Pharaohs replaced one
another in quick succession, and only once or twice a man of unusual individuality
emerged to restore for a brief period a shadow of the old magnificence. Finally the
Thirteenth Dynasty succumbed of its own inherent weakness, and Egypt was again left
masterless. With the fall of the Thirteenth Dynasty we have fully entered upon a period
which is not less difficult and obscure than that which separates the Sixth Dynasty from
the Twelfth. That notable events and changes took place there is indeed ample
indication. History did not stand still as it would seem to have done in the dark ages
between die Old and the Middle Empire; on the contrary, it was a time of great international
movements, new developments of commerce, invasions and disruptions of empire.
Little of what occurred can be clearly distinguished, and until almost the end of the
Seventeenth Dynasty we are very much at the mercy of hazardous conjecture and theory.
In part this is due to an unhappy accident which has rendered the king-list of the
Turin Papyrus unintelligible at this point, a loss which is irreparable inasmuch as the
list of Abydos omits the entire period and that of Karnak is manifestly incomplete. The
remains of Manetho therefore constitute the sole documentary material available for
the reconstruction of the order and succession of the reigns; while monuments are rare
and are sometimes of disputed ownership and identity. In Manetho’s account the same
phenomenon may be observed as during the previous dark period which followed the
close of the Sixth Dynasty. A very large number of kings is recorded as reigning in
the space of a very few centuries, and this may be taken, in conjunction with the dearth
of inscriptions and monumental remains, as indicating that no central government existed,
but that princes and nobles usurped the functions of royalty. Of the Fourteenth Dynasty
hardly anything is known excepting that the seat of its government was placed at Xois
in the Delta, a detail which has a certain interest as showing that Thebes had lost its
ascendancy. A few scarabs and an inscribed dagger, which will be referred to later, are almost
the only record of their existence that these ephemeral pretenders have left behind them.
The Fifteenth Dynasty, however marks, an epoch of great interest and importance;
for Egyptologists are agreed in assigning to it the domination of that enigmatic people,
the Hyksos. Their history is buried in perplexities and doubts. Josephus has indeed
bequeathed a circumstantial account of their rule in Egypt; but as the manifesto of a per-
fervid patriot, who was only intent on unearthing evidence of the existence of his imaginary
Jewish empire, this account has a strictly limited value. It is generally considered to give
a trustworthy version of Manetho’s original history only in so far as the main outlines
are concerned. From it then may be learned that in the reign of a king who cannot
be identified, but who must certainly be placed after the Thirteenth Dynasty and before
the Seventeenth, a race from the east invaded the country and established themselves
in the Delta where they built several cities and set up their government. They oppressed
the country for 511 years, at the end of which time they were conquered by two
successive kings whose names may be recognized as Aahmes and Thothmes, and were
expelled from the country. The origin and affinities of the Hyksos have been the
theme of endless controversy. Manetho thought that they were Phoenicians, but records
the opinion of others that they were Arabs. Modern writers have variously identified
them in turn with the Canaanites, the Elamites, the Hittites, the Accadians, the Scythians.
Their name is generally admitted to be derived from the Egyptian word meaning ‘ chief
of foreign lands ’ or ‘ chief of foreign people,’ and it may be regarded as certain that
they came from the east of Egypt. The best opinion is that their irruption into the
Delta was the effect of those displacements of whole nations which are known from
other sources to have occurred at this time in Syria, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia.
The Hyksos were undoubtedly powerful kings. Josephus, quoting Manetho, speaks of
them as taxing Upper as well as Lower Egypt; and their records are found as far south as
Gebel£n. Their foreign connexions were extensive. The immigration of the Beni-Israel
shows the intimacy of their relations with the peoples of the eastern frontier; and it
cannot be a mere chance that the name of Khyan occurs not only on a granite lion at
Bagdad, but also on an inscribed alabastron at Knossos in Crete. The latter, moreover,
is no isolated discovery, for an Egyptian statue of the Middle Empire was found on the
same site, and the art of the early Minoan palace is eloquent of Egyptian influence.
There will be further occasion when describing the contents of the tombs to remark on
the far-reaching character of this commerce with the Mediterranean and the Levant.
That so few records of the Hyksos remain is due to the vindictive hatred with
From the
beginning of
the Twelfth
Dynasty to
the end of the
Fifteenth
(Twelfth
Dynasty,
2780 B. c. to
2560 B.C.).