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Earliest known Theban king, Antef I |
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The first known Theban monarch is a certain Antef or Enantef, whose coffin
was discovered in the year 1827 by some Arabs near Qurnah, to the west of
Thebes. The mummy bore the royal diadem, and the epigraph on the lid of the
coffin declared the body which it contained to be that of "Antef, king of the
two Egypts."
The phrase implied a claim to dominion over the whole country, but
a claim as purely nominal as that of the kings of England from Edward IV. to
George III. to be monarchs of France and Navarre. Antef s rule may possibly have
reached to Elephantine on the one hand, but is not likely to have extended much
beyond Coptos on the other. He was a local chieftain posing as a great
sovereign, but probably with no intention to deceive either his own
contemporaries or posterity. His name appears in some of the later Egyptian
dynastic lists; but no monument of his time has come down to us except the one
that has been mentioned.
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Ancient Egypt History 
