THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN Egypt could not exist as an independent kingdom unless the nomad tribes on three of her borders were in subjection to her. When once the Princes of Thebes had overcome their opponents among their own countrymen, they proceeded without delay against the southern tribes who menaced their peace, and thus under the Xlth Dynasty we find Egypt endeavouring to regain in Nubia and the Sudan the authority which her sovereigns possessed under the Vlth Dynasty.

The last king of the Xlth Dynasty was Seankhka-Ra, and it is important to mention him because he sent an expedition to Punt under the command of an officer called Hennu. The immediate object of the expedition was to bring back in ships loads of the precious myrrh or balsam called diiti, which was highly prized throughout Egypt. Menthu-hetep III. appears to have attempted to bring to Egypt by sea ship-loads of the same substance, and Seankhka-Ra followed his example. We have already seen that Ba-ur-tet, the feudal lord of the First Cataract, brought back a pygmy from Punt, in the reign of king Assa, but so far as we know he journeyed thither by land. Whether the expeditions to Punt under the Xlth Dynasty indicate that the desert route thither was unsafe for Government caravans is a little doubtful, but, as will be seen a little further on, it is by no means impossible. It must be remembered that when Thebes became the capital of the Kingdom of the South and the North in the place of Memphis, the balance of power throughout Egypt was disturbed.

It was more easy to reduce the southern tribes to order from Thebes than from Memphis, but it was also more difficult to keep a firm hand on the desert dwellers on the east and west of the Delta. It is "quite certain that even at this early period the tribute of the Sudan was of considerable importance to Egypt, for otherwise her kings would never have made such strenuous efforts to maintain their authority in that country.

With the accession of Amenemhat I., the first king of the Xllth Dynasty (about B.C. 2466), a new era of conquest dawned for Egypt. This king first set to work to put Upper Egypt in order, and to fix the boundaries of the great feudal chiefs of Beni-Hasan, Gebelen, Al-Kab, and presumably also of Elephantine, and to bring the Delta under his effective control. He seems to have 532