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By Root 523 0

gained control under a prince named Akhtoy (aka Khety). Akhtoy’s successors retained his name, and the only way we can tell one from another is by means of their alternative appellations. (As I mentioned, kings had several different names.) Manetho gives them two dynasties, the Ninth and Tenth. Of the first dozen or so of these Herakleopolitan kings we know very little, but by the middle of the Tenth Dynasty we are on firmer ground. The third king of this dynasty, Wahkare Akhtoy III, was a good ruler, and he felt himself qualified to give advice to his son, who would succeed him on the throne. Instructions for King Merikare is the title of the text, one of the best known of all Egyptian literary works. It is one of a general type of which the Egyptians were very fond; we call it “wisdom literature,” and it consists of helpful hints to youth from an older, more worldly-wise individual.

Akhtoy was a king, so his precepts are intended for a youth who will hold the responsibilities of the highest office. There are none of the prosaic comments upon manners, which amuse us in some of the other teachings, written for and by commoners. “If you are one of those sitting at the table of one greater than yourself, take what he gives when it is set before you. Speak only after he has addressed you; this will be very pleasing to his heart.”

So runs the advice of Ptahhotep, a Fifth Dynasty vizier. The Merikare text contains no such trivia. Akhtoy begins with some sound precepts as to character: “Be not evil; kindness is good. Be a craftsman in speech, for the tongue is a sword to a man and speech is stronger than fighting.” After some weighty comments on statecraft and the handling of officials, the royal author rises to genuine heights of feeling and expression when he speaks of the judging of the heart in the West, the land of the dead.

The council that judges the deficient—you know that they are not lenient on that day of judging the miserable. A man survives after death, and his deeds are placed beside him as his treasures. Existence yonder is for eternity and he who reaches it without wrongdoing shall exist there like a god, stepping out freely like the Lords of Eternity. More acceptable is the character of one upright of heart than the [sacrificial] ox of the evildoer.

Unfortunately for Merikare, his father was a better poet than he was a politician. The older king does mention the domestic situation, warning his son about the wretched Asiatics of the north and assuring him that “it is well with the Southern Region.” That statement comes into the category of Famous Last Words. We cannot blame the king, because he was unable to predict the future, but he might have remembered the past. Once before there had come a conqueror, stepping with long strides down the Nile to unify the Two Lands. He had come from the south.

This is one of those cases which almost lead us to suspect that history can repeat itself. For three millennia the kingdom of the Nile would exist, its unity broken from time to time by internal strife and by foreign invasion. And from the beginning, even with Menes the Unifier, the force of renewed cohesion would come from the south. Why? We do not know. In fact, if we were trying to predict from which area the conqueror would originate, we would in most cases choose the north. The success of Upper Egypt at the beginning of the dynasties, under Menes, is inexplicable if the north was really more sophisticated, more highly developed. The same is true of the situation after the first great breakdown at the end of the Old Kingdom. Herakleopolis during the Tenth Dynasty was the most effective of all the city-states of the divided country, and she seemed well on the way to leading the reunification. In art and in military power she was ahead of her contemporaries; the literature she produced is of high quality. Yet—once again—the conqueror came from the south.

Four hundred and fifty miles south of Memphis the frowning cliffs retreat from the river edge, leaving a broad and fruitful plain. At the end of the Old Kingdom