First Intermediate Period

The reasons are debated, and there probably was no single cause. The very long reign of Pepi II, which lasted into the 22nd century BCE, was followed by weak rulers whose reigns were short. Over generations the pharaohs had given land and privileges to temples and officials, so the treasury was poorer, and the nomarchs, the governors of the provinces, had grown more independent and began to be buried in their own provinces instead of near the pharaoh. Some scholars add climate. Low floods of the Nile and a spell of drought around 2200 BCE may have caused hunger, though how much the weather mattered is still disputed. What is certain is that the texts of the period speak again and again of famine and of local lords who fed their own people.

In the north the line of Memphis went on for a time with pharaohs who ruled for a few years or months. The pharaohs of the Seventh and Eighth Dynasties, such as Merenre II, Netjerkare Siptah and Nitocris, are known from king lists and almost nothing else. Their story is told on the page on the Seventh and Eighth Dynasties. The best known monument of the group is the pyramid of Qakare Ibi at Saqqara South, a small monument which shows that the old ideas of kingship were still alive.

At Herakleopolis Magna, near the Faiyum, a family of governors took the royal title and ruled the north and the middle of the country. Their pharaohs called themselves the successors of the pharaohs of Memphis, and later tradition gives them the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties. Khety I is the name that stands at the head of the list. The best known of them is Merikare, the pharaoh to whom the famous Teaching is addressed. Their kingdom had real strengths. It controlled the Delta and the Faiyum, the richest farmland in the land, and it kept scribal skills and royal ideas from the Old Kingdom. The Herakleopolitan period is also the setting of the tale of the Eloquent Peasant, a story about a poor man who demands justice from an official.

In the south, the lords of Thebes rose from provincial governors to pharaohs. The earliest names, Intef the Elder and Mentuhotep I, were not pharaohs in their own time. Intef I took the first royal Horus name, Intef II reigned for some fifty years and fought for Abydos, and Intef III held the kingdom for a short time before his son Mentuhotep II. The Theban rulers built tombs of a new kind, called saff, rebuilt temples in the southern towns and left the first royal building work at Karnak.

Memphis (7th and 8th Dynasties, about 2150 – 2118 BCE). Merenre II, Netjerkare Siptah, Nitocris and a series of short-lived pharaohs, most of them known only from king lists. Details on their own pages.
Herakleopolis (9th and 10th Dynasties, dates uncertain). Meryibre Khety (Khety I), Nebkaure Khety, Wahkare Khety, Merikare. The order of the Khetys is disputed, and the Turin Canon is too damaged to settle it.
Thebes, local lords (not pharaohs). Intef the Elder and Mentuhotep I, about 2150 – 2120 BCE (estimates).
Thebes, 11th Dynasty. Intef I (a short reign before 2066 BCE), Intef II (2066 – 2017 BCE), Intef III (2016 – 2009 BCE), Mentuhotep II (from 2009 BCE).
The dates for Herakleopolis and for the early Thebans are estimates. The Egyptian king lists name the rulers but do not give years in a form that can be trusted for this period.

The age was not only one of decline. In the provinces the local lords built rock tombs at Asyut and Moalla and wrote long inscriptions about their deeds, such as feeding their people in famine. Art became more varied and often cruder, but it also grew freer. Literature flourished, and the Teaching for Merikare and the Eloquent Peasant are the best known works. Funerary beliefs spread to ordinary people as well, who began to use formulas and objects once kept for pharaohs. Some later writings, such as the Admonitions of Ipuwer, describe a land turned upside down, but when they were written and whether they describe a real collapse is disputed.

The war between north and south lasted for generations. Under Intef II the Thebans won Abydos, Intef III held it, and Mentuhotep II, who came to the throne in 2009 BCE, completed the conquest and took Herakleopolis, probably in the later part of his long reign. With him begins the Middle Kingdom, and he is remembered as the pharaoh who made Egypt one country again. The historians usually place the end of the First Intermediate Period in his reign. Which year to name depends on the chronology, and on this site the period is closed at 1980 BCE. The Middle Kingdom is dealt with in a later part of the site.