With the advent of the Kassite kings a new chapter opens in the history of Western Asia. Up to that time Egypt and Babylon, the two chief centres of ancient civilization, had no doubt indirectly influenced one another, but they had not come into actual contact. During the period of the Kassite kings both Babylon and Assyria established direct relations with Egypt, and from that time forward the influence they exerted upon one another was continuous and unbroken. We have already traced the history of Babylon up to this point in the light of recent discoveries, and a similar task awaits us with regard to Assyria. Before we enter into a discussion of Assyria’s origin and early history in the light of recent excavation and research, it is necessary that we should return once more to Egypt, and describe the course of her history from the period when Thebes succeeded in displacing Memphis as the capital city. CHAPTER VII TEMPLES AND TOMBS OF THEBES We have seen that it was in the Theban period that Egypt emerged from her isolation, and for the first time came into contact with Western Asia. This grand turning-point in Egyptian history seemed to be the appropriate place at which to pause in the description of our latest knowledge of Egyptian history, in order to make known the results of archaeological discovery in Mesopotamia and Western Asia generally. The description has been carried down past the point of convergence of the two originally isolated paths of Egyptian and Babylonian civilization, and what new information the latest discoveries have communicated to us on this subject has been told in the preceding chapters. We now have to retrace our steps to the point where we left Egyptian history and resume the thread of our Egyptian narrative. The Hyksos conquest and the rise of Thebes are practically contemporaneous. The conquest took place perhaps three or four hundred years after the first advancement of Thebes to the position of capital of Egypt, but it must be remembered that this position was not retained during the time of the XIIth Dynasty. The kings of that dynasty, though they were Thebans, did not reign at Thebes. Their royal city was in the North, in the neighbourhood of Lisht and Mêdûm, where their pyramids were erected, and their chief care was for the lake province of the Fayyûm, which was largely the creation of Amenemhat III, the Moeris of the Greeks. It was not till Thebes became the focus of the national resistance to the Hyksos that its period of greatness began. Henceforward it was the undisputed capital of Egypt, enlarged and embellished by the care and munificence of a hundred kings, enriched by the tribute of a hundred conquered nations.