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+Heqt+, the goddess symbolised by the frog, was the patron of birth, and assisted in the infancy of the kings. She was a popular and general deity not mainly associated with particular places. +Hershefi+ was the ram-headed god of Herakleopolis, but is never found outside of that region.
Naville had excavated there for the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1892, but had not completely cleared the temple. This work was now taken up by Prof. Petrie, who laid the whole building bare. It is dedicated to Hershefi, the local deity of Herakleopolis.
As the power of the kings diminished, that of the great landowners and nobles increased; a feudal aristocracy grew up, which divided Egypt between its members, and treated the royal authority with only nominal respect. Memphis ceased to be the capital, and a new dynasty, the Ninth, was founded by the feudal prince of Herakleopolis, now Ahnas, south of the Fayyûm.
The next prince to submit was the Governor of Herakleopolis, and when he had laid before Piānkhi his gifts he said: "Homage to thee, Horus, mighty king, Bull, conqueror of bulls. I was in a pit in hell. I was sunk deep in the depths of darkness, but now light shineth on me. I had no friend in the evil day, and none to support me in the day of battle. The city of Hensu shall pay tribute to thee.
But when we compare this tale with those following, we see good ground for its belonging to a time before the XIIth Dynasty The following tale of the peasant and the workman evidently belongs to the IXth or Xth Dynasties, when Herakleopolis was the capital, and Sanehat is certainly of the XIIth Dynasty.
Another, Merikarâ, is a more real personage, for we have contemporary records of his days in the inscriptions of the tombs at Asyût, from which we see that the princes of Thebes were already wearing down the Northerners, in spite of the resistance of the adherents of Herakleopolis, among whom the most valiant were the chiefs of Asyût.
They removed to the seat of the dominion of those whom they had supplanted, and they settled in the neighbourhood of Herakleopolis, near the fertile province of the Fayyûm, and between it and Memphis. Where the kings of the XIIIth Dynasty and the Hyksos or "Shepherds" were buried, we do not know. The kings of the restored Theban empire were all interred at Thebes.
These four baboons were often portrayed as adoring the sun; this idea is due to their habit of chattering at sunrise. The lioness appears in the compound figures of the goddesses Sekhet, Bast, Mahes, and Tefnut. In the form of Sekhet the lioness is the destructive power of Ra, the sun: it is Sekhet who, in the legend, destroys mankind from Herakleopolis to Heliopolis at the bidding of Ra.
We therefore resume our narrative at a point before the great increase of Theban power at the time of the expulsion of the Hyksos, and will trace this power from its rise, which followed the defeat of Herakleopolis and Memphis. It is upon this epoch the beginning of Theban power that the latest discoveries at Thebes have thrown some new light.
The ram was also worshipped as a procreative god; at Mendes in the Delta identified with Osiris, at Herakleopolis identified with Hershefi, at Thebes as Amon, and at the cataract as Khnumu the creator.
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