Another, Nebkaura, is known only as a figure
in the "Legend of the Eloquent Peasant," a classical story much in vogue
in later days. Another, Merikara, is a more real personage, for we have
contemporary records of his days in the inscriptions of the tombs at
Asyut, from which we see that the princes of Thebes were already wearing
down the Northerners, in spite of the resistance of the adherents of
Herakleopolis, among whom the most valiant were the chiefs of Asyut. The
civil war eventuated in favour of Thebes, and the Theban XIth Dynasty
assumed the double crown. The sceptre passed from Memphis and the North,
and Thebes enters upon the scene of Egyptian history.
With this event the Nile-land also entered upon a new era of
development. The metropolis of the kingdom was once more shifted to the
South, and, although the kings of the XIIth Dynasty actually resided
in the North, their Theban origin was never forgotten, and Thebes
was regarded as the chief city of the country. The XIth Dynasty kings
actually reigned at Thebes, and there the later kings of the XIIIth
Dynasty retired after the conquest of the Hyksos. The fact that with
Thebes were associated all the heroic traditions of the struggle against
the Hyksos ensured the final stability of the capital there when the
hated Semites were finally driven out, and the national kingdom
was re-established in its full extent from north to south.
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