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The wars of Amenemhat I. make it evident that by his time Thebes had advanced
from the position of a petty kingdom situated in a remote part of Egypt, and
held in check by two or more rival kingdoms in the lower Nile valley and the
Delta, to that of a power which bore sway over the whole land from Elephantine
to the Mediterranean. "
I sent my messengers up to Abu (Elephantine) and my
couriers down to Athu" (the coast lakes), says the monarch in his "Instructions"
to his son—the earliest literary production from a royal pen that has come
down to our days; and there is no reason to doubt the truth of his statement. In
the Delta alone could he come into contact with either the Mazyes or the Sakti,
and a king of Thebes could not hold the Delta without being master also of the
lower Nile valley from Coptos to Memphis. We must regard Egypt, then, under the
"twelfth dynasty." as once more consolidated into a single state—a state
ruled, however, not from Memphis, but from Thebes, a decidedly inferior
position.
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Ancient Egypt History 
