Intef the Elder and Mentuhotep I

In the Old Kingdom Thebes was a provincial town, far in the south and of little weight beside Memphis. Its governors held the hereditary title of nomarch, the head of a province that the Egyptians called a nome. When Memphis weakened, such governors began to act as small rulers of their regions, making their own treaties and fighting their neighbours. In Upper Egypt this meant that Thebes, Coptos, Hierakonpolis and others each looked to its own interest. From such a small start a family grew that, after about a century and a half, would take the whole country.

Intef the Elder is known from his own stele, now in Cairo, which was found at Dra Abu el-Naga on the west bank of Thebes. It gives him the titles of hereditary prince, count and great lord of the Theban nome. His mother was called Iku, and a statue dedicated much later by Senusret I names "Intef the Elder, born of Iku", which is probably the same man. The Karnak chapel of ancestors, built by Thutmose III some six hundred years after him, lists him by his titles but without a royal cartouche. A stele of an official of Mentuhotep II asks prayers for him, which shows that he was honoured with an offering cult. All of this agrees that he was a great man of Thebes who was remembered, but not a pharaoh.

The evidence for Mentuhotep I is even thinner. The Karnak list of ancestors has a place with the beginning of a cartouche reading "Men-" and the Horus name Tepy-a, "the ancestor", and this is the basis of the modern label Mentuhotep I. A statue base from the sanctuary of Heqaib on Elephantine calls a Mentuhotep "father of the gods", a title that is used for the non-royal fathers of pharaohs. It suggests that he was a forefather of the royal line without having been pharaoh himself. No monument of his own time can be safely given to him. Some scholars suspect that he was a founder invented or enlarged by the family later, when it needed a royal beginning.

Two mix-ups are common, and it is better to clear them at once. Intef the Elder is not the pharaoh Intef I. The latter, called Sehertawy, was the first of the family to take a royal Horus name. He is treated on his own page. Mentuhotep I is likewise not the pharaoh who united Egypt. That was Mentuhotep II, who reigned from about 2009 BCE, the fourth pharaoh of the line, after Intef I, II and III. The numbers I and II are modern. The Egyptians did not number their pharaohs.

The Thebans were not alone in Upper Egypt. At Moalla, south of Thebes, the tomb of the nomarch Ankhtifi tells of his wars against the Thebans and the people of Coptos, and of famine in the land. His text shows a south divided among strong local lords at the time when the Theban family was rising. It does not tell how the Thebans won. Their rise seems to have come step by step, but no source describes the first steps in detail. Whatever Intef the Elder and Mentuhotep I really did, the later pharaohs of Thebes took them as proof that their house was old.

Most of what we know of both men comes from the chapel built by Thutmose III in the temple of Amun at Karnak, in the 15th century BCE, where he set up a list of kings whom he honoured as his ancestors. The list is now in the Louvre, and its fragments are not in chronological order. Using it as a source for the First Intermediate Period is therefore risky. The list tells us that some seven hundred years later the Egyptians still thought of a Theban family which began with these men. Whether they were pharaohs or governors, this is how the dynasty wanted its beginning to be seen.

Intef the Elder and Mentuhotep I are the two earliest names of the family that made Thebes the capital of Egypt. Both were local leaders, remembered and honoured by their descendants, and neither has left a safe account of his deeds. They matter because they show how an empire starts, as a family of governors in a far province. Their successor Intef I was the first to claim the royal title.