The frontiers were vigilantly guarded, and now that quiet times had come back the mines in the Sinaitic peninsula were re-opened and worked. A thousand years had passed since they were first explored at the command of Senefru, and his name had become venerable in its antiquity throughout that region, where he was worshipped as a guardian deity, together with the goddess Hathor, protectress of the district. One warlike expedition was undertaken during this reign, for the purpose of fixing the boundary to the south and of bringing back gold from Nubia. The command was intrusted to one Ameni, who has left a brief record of the expedition. The king’s eldest son accompanied him, and his success was certainly remarkable, if his statement is true, that of the 400 men he took with him not one was missing when he returned with the golden spoil. This Ameni was the head of that illustrious family, whose tombs at Beni-Hassan have proved such an invaluable storehouse for the investigator. They were hereditary governors of the district, or nome, and their power was very great. Under the firm controlling hand of the sovereigns of this great dynasty, the power and ambition of the prince-governors, which had once split up and half ruined Egypt, were turned into nobler channels, and sought after more peaceful honours. The _Maxims of Amenemhat I._ seem to awaken a response and to find an echo in the memorials left by some of the powerful governors, who were now serving loyally under the crown. Ameni, who gives an account of his warlike doings in the south, also tells us that he was a ‘kind master and gentle of heart, a governor who loved his city.’ He ruled for many years in his district of Mah, and he says: ‘I kept back nothing for myself; no little child was vexed through me; no widow was afflicted. I never interfered with the fisherman or troubled the shepherd. There was neither famine nor hunger in my days. I diligently cultivated every field in my district, from the north to the south, to its utmost extent, so that there was food enough for all. I gave to the widow as to the married woman, and I never showed favour to the great above the lowly.’ King and noble may alike have fallen short of their ideal, but at any rate their standard was high, and their words recall those of the departed spirit, who had to declare before Osiris in the judgment-hall of Truth—‘I have not oppressed the miserable; I have not imposed work beyond his power on any officer; I have allowed no master to maltreat his slave; I have caused none to weep or to perish with hunger. I have neither blasphemed the king nor my father, nor have I mocked or despised God in my heart. I have given bread to the hungry, water to him that was athirst, clothes to the naked, and shelter to the wanderer.’ There is a beautiful eulogy somewhere recorded on an Egyptian tomb—‘His love was the food of the poor, the blessing of the weak, the riches of him who had nothing.’