Mentuhotep II and the Reunification of Egypt (c. 2055 BC)

Mentuhotep II was the Theban king who reunited Egypt after more than a century of division, ruling from about 2055 to 2004 BC. By defeating the rival kingdom based at Herakleopolis, he brought the First Intermediate Period to an end and founded what historians call the Middle Kingdom. His terraced funerary temple at Deir el-Bahari became a model for later royal architecture at Thebes.

Background: a divided Egypt

After the collapse of the Old Kingdom around 2181 BC, Egypt split into competing centres during the First Intermediate Period. In the north, the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties ruled from Herakleopolis Magna, near the Faiyum. In the south, a family of local rulers at Thebes formed the Eleventh Dynasty.

The Theban kings Intef I, Intef II and Intef III gradually extended their territory. The frontier between the two kingdoms ran through the region of Thinis and Abydos, where fighting continued on and off for decades. Mentuhotep II, the son of Intef III and a woman named Iah, inherited this conflict when he became king.

The war of reunification

Few details of the war survive. An important clue is a revolt in the Thinite region in about Mentuhotep’s 14th year, mentioned in a contemporary inscription. The king appears to have crushed it and then pushed north towards Herakleopolis.

The Herakleopolitan kingdom eventually fell, and Mentuhotep took control of Middle and Lower Egypt. Some provincial governors who had backed his rivals were removed, while others who accepted Theban rule kept their posts. The governors of Asyut, long loyal to Herakleopolis, disappear from the record at about this time.

The king’s changing names track this process. Egyptian kings had several official names, including a Horus name. Mentuhotep II used three in succession: Seankhibtawy (“he who makes the heart of the Two Lands live”), then Netjerihedjet (“divine one of the White Crown”) and finally Sematawy (“he who unites the Two Lands”). The last name is often dated to around his 39th year, and is taken as a sign that reunification was complete.

The Tomb of the Warriors

In 1923 the American Egyptologist Herbert Winlock excavated a tomb near Deir el-Bahari containing the bodies of about 60 soldiers. Many showed wounds from arrows and blows to the head, and some appear to have lain exposed for a time before they were buried. They were long seen as men who died in Mentuhotep II’s wars and were honoured with burial near their king. Some later scholars have argued for a slightly later date, but the find remains one of the most vivid pieces of evidence for warfare in this period.

Ruling a reunited land

Mentuhotep II reorganised the state with Thebes as its religious and political heart. He appointed loyal officials, many from Thebes, to key posts, including a vizier and a chancellor named Khety. The office of governor of Upper Egypt was reduced in importance, and provincial governors came under closer royal supervision.

He also looked beyond Egypt’s borders. Inscriptions refer to campaigns against Nubia to the south and against people in Sinai and the eastern desert. Trade and quarrying expeditions resumed, and royal workshops at Thebes developed a new art style that would shape Middle Kingdom sculpture.

Among his officials was Meketre, whose tomb at Thebes later yielded famous wooden models of daily life, including boats, a granary and a scene of cattle being counted. Meketre’s career continued into the following Twelfth Dynasty, which shows how Mentuhotep’s administration laid foundations for his successors.

The temple at Deir el-Bahari

Mentuhotep II chose a bay in the cliffs of Deir el-Bahari on the west bank of Thebes for his funerary complex. A long causeway led up from a valley temple to a temple built on terraces, with pillared colonnades and a central core that some scholars reconstruct as a pyramid or mound and others as a flat-roofed building.

Behind it, a hall of columns led to a sanctuary cut into the cliff, and a long passage ran down to the king’s burial chamber deep in the rock. Tombs and shrines of several royal women, including Kawit, Ashayet, Kemsit and Henhenet, were incorporated into the complex; their decorated limestone sarcophagi are now in Cairo.

In 1900 Howard Carter excavated a shaft below the temple’s forecourt, known as Bab el-Hosan (“Gate of the Horse”) because, by Carter’s account, his horse had stumbled into it. It contained an empty coffin and a striking seated sandstone statue of the king, painted black and wearing the red crown, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

About 500 years later, Queen Hatshepsut built her own terraced mortuary temple directly beside Mentuhotep’s, clearly inspired by it.

Excavating the temple

The temple was first cleared by the Swiss Egyptologist Édouard Naville for the Egypt Exploration Fund between 1903 and 1907. Winlock’s team from the Metropolitan Museum of Art worked in the area in the 1920s, and the German archaeologist Dieter Arnold studied the architecture in detail in the 1960s and 1970s. Their work showed that the design changed several times during the long reign, which helps explain why reconstructions of its central core still differ.

Key people

• Intef III: Mentuhotep’s father and predecessor, who held Theban territory as far north as the Abydos region.
• Iah: the king’s mother, named on monuments of the period and honoured as a royal mother.
• Tem and Neferu: royal wives of Mentuhotep II; Tem was the mother of his successor Mentuhotep III.
• Khety: chancellor in the later part of the reign, who oversaw royal works and expeditions and was buried in a tomb near the temple.
• Meketre: chief steward, whose tomb models are among the best-known objects from ancient Egypt, now divided between Cairo and New York.

Legacy

Mentuhotep II’s reign lasted about 51 years, and his achievement endured. Under his successors Mentuhotep III and Mentuhotep IV, and then the Twelfth Dynasty founded by Amenemhat I, Egypt enjoyed a long period of stability, a flourishing of literature and large building projects, among them early work at the Karnak temple complex.

Later Egyptians remembered him as a founder of the state. In New Kingdom lists and processions of royal ancestors he appears beside Menes, the legendary first king, and Ahmose I, who expelled the Hyksos. He was also worshipped at Thebes after his death, and his temple remained a place of cult for centuries.

Timeline

• c. 2055 BC: Mentuhotep II succeeds Intef III as king of Thebes.
• Around year 14: A revolt in the Thinite region is suppressed.
• Later in the reign: The Herakleopolitan kingdom falls and Egypt is reunited.
• Around year 39: The king adopts the Horus name Sematawy, “he who unites the Two Lands”.
• c. 2004 BC: Mentuhotep II dies after a reign of about 51 years and is buried at Deir el-Bahari.
• 1900: Howard Carter excavates the Bab el-Hosan shaft and its seated statue.
• 1923: Herbert Winlock excavates the Tomb of the Warriors near Deir el-Bahari.
• 1960s: Dieter Arnold carries out a detailed architectural study of the temple.

Why it matters

Mentuhotep II turned a regional Theban power into the ruler of all Egypt, ending the First Intermediate Period. The Middle Kingdom that he founded was later seen as a classical age of Egyptian culture, and his temple set a pattern for royal building on the west bank of Thebes.