The princely line from which the commanding figure of King Mentuhotep III stood forth to the healing of the reunited kingdom was of Theban origin. The feeble ancestors of his race bore alternately the names of Antef and Mentuhotep. They had set up their regal dwelling in that city of Thebes which afterward became of such world-wide importance, and their tombs (simple, homely tiled pyramids) lay at the foot of the “Western Mountain” of the Theban necropolis. Here a few ruins of ancient date indicate the names of the rulers. It was here too that, more than twenty years ago, two quite modest sarcophagi belonging to these Pharaohs were brought to light by some Arabs in search of gold, and unconscious of what a treasure they had found. In that part of the city of the dead which nowadays goes among the inhabitants by the name of Assassif, those sarcophagi were found, only lightly covered with sand and rubble and one of them containing the embalmed body of a king, his head adorned with a royal circlet. The cover of the casket was richly gilded, and the sacred symbols which decked the central strip soon revealed the name of Pharaoh Antef in the royal cartouche. In the year 1854, when Brugsch for the first time stayed on the banks of the Nile, he had the unhoped-for good fortune to stumble, in a lumber room in the house of the Greek consul, across the coffin of a second Antef, which was notably distinguished from the first by his cognomen of “the Great.” The coffin is now preserved in the Louvre, a precious and valuable relic of the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs. The black rocks of the island of Konosso, near Osiris’s favoured island of Philæ above the First Cataract, preserve the memory of the Mentuhotep (II) who bore the royal name of Neb-taui-Ra, “Sun of the Lord of the Country.” A sculpture chiselled in the hard stone shows the Pharaoh as the conqueror of thirteen peoples, and as the devout servant of his original progenitor Khem or Amsu, the famous god of Coptos. The place of this name (Qobt it was actually called among the Egyptians) had at that time a great reputation. This Mentuhotep also appears perpetuated on the wall in the rocky valley, together with his mother, Ama. He had, so his inscription distinctly says, caused a deep well, ten cubits in diameter, to be sunk in the waterless, desolate waste, in order to provide reviving draughts of fresh water for all pilgrims with their beasts of burden and all men whom the king had commissioned to quarry stone in the hot valley.