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The date recorded for the death of Sehote-pabra Amenemhat I., the founder of the XIIth Dynasty agrees with the limit of his reign on the monuments. And the expressions for his death are valuable as showing the manner in which a king's decease was regarded; under the emblem of a hawk the bird of Ra he flew up and joined the sun.
Knowest thou that this Macedonian Queen of thine hath seized the temple lands and revenues, and driven away the priests all, save the holy Amenemhat, who lies here, and whom she left, I know not why; ay, and caused the worship of the Gods to cease within these walls. Well, he's gone! he's gone! and indeed he is better with Osiris, for his life was a sore burden to him.
The chamber at its foot was found to contain three coffins only, though it is large enough for many more. Two of these, which in all probability inclosed the bodies of the High Priest, Amenemhat, and of his wife, father and mother of Harmachis, the hero of this history, the shameless Arabs who discovered them there and then broke up. The Arabs broke the bodies up.
Thence-forward it increased, and in the time of the XIIth Dynasty, when the labyrinth of Amenemhat III was built, there seems to have been some kind of more or less regular communication between the two countries. It is certain that artistic ideas were exchanged between them at this period.
It must be remembered that, in any case, it is probable that the king was not actually buried here, but in the pyramid of Hawara. The pyramid of Amenemhat II, which lies between the two brick pyramids, was built entirely of stone.
Those of King Ameni Entef Amenemhat, at Gizeh, are blocks of red granite more than three feet in length, the top of which is hollowed out in regular rows of cup-holes, each cup-hole being reserved for one particular offering.
None were left within them, except the thirty-seven; my father, the High Priest Amenemhat; that aged priest who had led me to the Shrine of Isis; the old wife, Atoua, who, according to ancient custom, was to prepare me for the anointing; and some five other priests, sworn to secrecy by that oath which none may break.
Their royal city was in the North, in the neighbourhood of Lisht and Mêdûm, where their pyramids were erected, and their chief care was for the lake province of the Fayyûm, which was largely the creation of Amenemhat III, the Moeris of the Greeks. It was not till Thebes became the focus of the national resistance to the Hyksos that its period of greatness began.
First came those who clear the path, then my father Amenemhat in all his priestly robes, and the wand of cedar in his hand. Then, clad in pure linen, I, the neophyte, followed alone; and after me the white-robed priests, holding aloft banners and emblems of the Gods.
And me she took and smeared with mud to make my fair skin darker, and, drawing my garment from me, set me to play in the dirt of the yard, which I did right gladly. Then the man hid himself, and presently the soldiers rode up and asked of the old wife if this were the dwelling of the High Priest Amenemhat?