At the close of Menthotpe I's glorious reign nothing seemed to suggest that the power of his family was nearing its end. Yet so it was. The Turin Canon concedes to S'ankhkare' Menthotpe III twelve years of rule, but makes him, though not quite accurately, the last king of Dynasty XI. Likewise in the Abydos and Saqqara king-lists S'ankhkare' is the immediate predecessor of Shetepibre' Ammenemes I, the founder of Dynasty XII and of what is known to us as the Middle Kingdom.

 

Nothing very definite is known about the campaigns in which Menthotpe I regained the Double Crown, and so put an end to the internal anarchy which had finally given place to separate kingdoms in the north and the south. A tomb discovered by Winlock at Thebes contained the bodies of no less than sixty soldiers slain in battle doubtless at no great distance from the capital. Probably fighting was required upstream as well as downstream.

 

Though he mentions that he recruited a regiment of soldiers, the achievements upon which he most prided himself were irrigation works and the encouragement of farming , He ends his main narrative with the words 'Heracleopolis praised God for me', the Egyptian way of expressing gratitude. In the next oldest tomb Prince Tefibi plumes himself upon his impartial beneficence and the sense of security which his soldiers inspired: 

In the First Intermediate Period as the age separating Dynasty VI and XII is called, Manetho, or rather the Manetho known to us from the chronicles of his exceptors, is seen at his worst. His Seventh Dynasty consists of seventy kings of Memphis, who reigned for seventy days. His Eight Dynasty, likewise Memphite, comprises twenty-seven kings and 146 years of reign.