Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs_ A Popular History of Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz [63]
Amenemhat III built another pyramid at Dahshur, though he was probably buried in the labyrinthian structure at Hawara. Once again we find this strange and as yet unexplained phenomenon of two tombs, which appeared at the very beginning of the dynasties. I doubt we have yet found the complete explanation for such lavishness, but the theories keep coming.
Amenemhat III is the last of the great Twelfth Dynasty kings. The end of the dynasty is lost in obscurity, and the impact of its collapse put an end to stable government for two centuries. A period of upheaval, which we call the Second Intermediate Period, followed the fall of the Middle Kingdom, as the First Intermediate Period followed the Old Kingdom. We may talk glibly about the failure of centralized government as a cause of the anarchy, but the more basic question—what caused the centralized government to fail—is still unanswerable.
Superficially, the broad sequence of events at the end of the Old Kingdom is paralleled by what happened after the fall of the Middle Kingdom. There is even a repetition of that most ominous of all portents, the appearance of a woman on the throne of Horus. The Twelfth Dynasty lady, Sobekneferu, was apparently the last of her line; if there had been an eligible male around, he would probably have married her and taken over the throne. What is surprising is that no ineligible male (speaking from the legitimist point of view) came to carry out this procedure. We might learn a great deal, not only about the rules of inheritance in Egypt, but about the causes of the fall of the Middle Kingdom, if we knew more about this lady. It is assumed she was the sister of the last Amenemhat (number four in our reckoning). Statues (headless, unfortunately) of the lady show her in an unusual combination of male and female clothing. She must be considered a reigning queen, since one object gives her the full royal titulary. Her tomb has disappeared, unless it is one of the two disintegrated pyramids between Dahshur and Lisht, at Mazghuna. Both these pyramids were explored by—guess who? Petrie. But he found no identifying marks. There is never enough money for excavation, and one of the obvious methods of pyramid identification has never been tried at Mazghuna—the excavation of the tombs around the pyramid. It would be illuminating to find the tomb of Queen-King Sobekneferu’s vizier with a long account of his career and hers. It is more likely, however, that these pyramids date from the Thirteenth Dynasty.
What were the accomplishments of the Middle Kingdom, as compared with the Old? In one sense they were not as profound or as dramatic. The men of this second great period may have climbed as high as did their ancestors, but they did not have to start so far down on the ladder. Writing, monumental building, a state religion, a philosophy of kingship and the social order, and many other basic elements of civilization were defined in the Old Kingdom and reused by its successor. But there are changes. One of the most striking is the alteration in the face of kingship, as it appears in the statues. Look at the portrait of Senusert III—the deep lines from nose to mouth, the unsmiling, somber set of the mouth, the heavy furrows in the brow. The face of Khafre, of the Fourth Dynasty, is truly the face of a god; the features show supreme confidence, in himself and in the universe. The faces of the Middle Kingdom rulers show the weight of grave responsibility, if nothing more tragic.
We may see in these faces, and in the contrast between egocentric pyramid and public irrigation works, a sign of a change in the notion of the role of the king. Is he now the shepherd of his people rather than a remote godling; the primus inter pares of a feudal state rather than a being unique in his divinity? That would be imposing modern viewpoints that would have made no sense to the Egyptian of the Middle Kingdom. At best, any conclusion