Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
THE HERACLEOPOLITAN KINGDOM
About 2160 b.c., after several decades of nominal occupancy by the weak rulers of the end of the Sixth Dynasty and the Memphite kinglets of the Seventh and Eighth Dynasties, the throne of Egypt was claimed by Achthoes, the governor of the Twentieth Nome of Upper Egypt, whose city, called by the Egyptians Heneneswe and by the Greeks Heracleopolis, occupied the site of present-day Ihnāsya el-Medīna, on the west side of the Nile, just south of the entrance to the Faiyūm. Assuming the throne-name Meryibre, Achthoes evidently set about imposing his rule upon his fellow nomarchs with such vigour that he has been described by Manetho as ‘behaving more cruelly than his predecessors’ and doing ‘evil to the people of all Egypt’. Though his control of the eastern Delta and its mixed Egyptian and Asiatic population is open to question, he was apparently recognized as king throughout the rest of Egypt as far south as Aswān, where his name has been noted in a rock inscription at the First Cataract. It is by no means certain, as was once thought, that his adherents failed to take over This and the sovereignty of his second successor, Neferkare, seems to have been acknowledged in the three southernmost nomes of Upper Egypt. Elsewhere the names of Achthoes I occur on an openwork bronze vessel from Asyūt, a stronghold of the new regime in the Thirteenth Nome of Upper Egypt, on an ebony staff from Meir in the Fourteenth Nome, and on a fragment of an ivory coffer from El-Lisht, eighteen miles south of Memphis.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.