The undertaking and successful completion of so many great structures had necessitated a renewal of the working of the ancient quarries, and the opening of fresh ones. Amenemhâît I. sent Antuf, a great dignitary, chief of the prophets of Mînû and prince of Koptos, to the valley of Rohanû, to seek out fine granite for making the royal sarcophagi. Amenemhâît III. had, in the XLIIIrd year of his reign, been present at the opening of several fine veins of white limestone in the quarries of Turah, which probably furnished material for the buildings proceeding at Heliopolis and Memphis. Thebes had also its share of both limestone and granite, and Amon, whose sanctuary up to this time had only attained the modest proportions suited to a provincial god, at last possessed a temple which raised him to the rank of the highest feudal divinities. Amon’s career had begun under difficulties: he had been merely a vassal-god of Montû, lord of Hermonthis (the Aûnû of the south), who had granted to him the ownership of the village of Karnak only. The unforeseen good fortune of the Antufs was the occasion of his emerging from his obscurity: he did not dethrone Montû, but shared with him the homage of all the neighbouring villages--Luxor, Medamut, Bayadîyeh; and, on the other side of the Nile, Gurneh and Medînet-Habu. The accession of the XIIth dynasty completed his triumph, and made him the most powerful authority in Southern Egypt. He was an earth-god, a form of Mînû who reigned at Koptos, at Akhmîm and in the desert, but he soon became allied to the sun, and from thenceforth he assumed the name of Amon-Râ. The title of “sûton nûtîrû” which he added to it would alone have sufficed to prove the comparatively recent origin of his notoriety; as the latest arrival among the great gods, he employed, to express his sovereignty, this word “sûton,” king, which had designated the rulers of the valley ever since the union of the two Egypts under the shadowy Menés. Reigning at first alone, he became associated by marriage with a vague indefinite goddess, called Maût, or Mût, the “mother,” who never adopted any more distinctive name: the divine son who completed this triad was, in early times, Montû; but in later times a being of secondary rank, chosen from among the genii appointed to watch over the days of the month or the stars, was added, under the name of Khonsû. Amenemhâît laid the foundations of the temple, in which the cultus of Amon was carried on down to the latest times of paganism. The building was supported by polygonal columns of sixteen sides, some fragments of which are still existing. [Illustration: 381.jpg THE OBELISK OF ÛSIRTASEN I., STILL STANDING IN THE PLAIN OF HELIOPOLIS] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger.