Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II may be the most important ruler who is routinely overlooked in popular histories of Egypt. Of those who know his name and deeds, few understand the significance of his reign to the later administrative, military, economic, and cultic development of Egypt. Mentuhotep II laid the groundwork for the imperial city of Waset (in Greek: Thebes, and modern-day Luxor), created the cult of the god Amun as we know it for the Middle and New Kingdoms, and established the festival cycle of Waset – later called the “pattern for every city”.
He was the first to incorporate onceouter regions into the pharaonic state; he mounted expeditions to the far south-west, hundreds of miles from the Nile Valley, and established an Upper Egyptian and Lower Nubian regional association that greatly influenced later historical events. From the era of Mentuhotep II, we have multiple historical records of private people, both Egyptian and Nubian, who played important roles in the events of the time.
Prelude to Empire
The rulers of Old Kingdom Egypt continued the precedent set by Early Dynastic kings, exerting control over Lower Nubia and the desert oases, sending expeditions for stones and minerals, and trading with more distant regions. In their approach to the deserts and the southland, the Egyptians appear to have viewed their outposts in those areas as small islands in a territory that remained outside the true pharaonic state. The southern districts of Egypt, the “Head of the South”, were less well developed, but these were soon
