"Mon maître m'envoya en mission pour lui préparer une grande demeure éternelle. Les couloirs et la chambre intérieure étaient en maçonnerie, et renouvelaient les merveilles de construction des dieux. Il y eut en elle des colonnes sculptées, belles comme le ciel, un bassin creusé qui communiquait avec le Nil, des portes, des obélisques, une façade en pierre de Rouou."
There was nothing pyramidal about this idea, but one hundred and fifty years later we find Amenemhāt III. returning both to the gigantic irrigation works and the pyramid building of the earlier dynasties.
The scene of these labours was the Fayyûm, where, to crown the new work, two ornamental pyramids were built, surmounted by statues, and finally the king himself was buried in a pyramid near the Labyrinth.
The Buildings of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
The blank in Egyptian history between the twelfth and eighteenth dynasties is known to have been associated with the intrusion of the so-called Hyksos. It is supposed these made their way into Egypt from the countries in and to the west of Mesopotamia; it is known that they settled in the cities with east and west walls. They were finally driven out by Aāhmes, the king of solstitial-solar Thebes, who began the eighteenth dynasty.
On page 338 I have shown what happened after the first great break in Egyptian history—a resuscitation of the solar worship at Annu, Abydos and Thebes.
I have next to show that precisely the same thing happened after the Hyksos period (Dyn. 13 (?) Mariette, 2233 Brugsch; Dyn. 18, 1703 B.C., Mariette, 1700 B.C. Brugsch) had disturbed history for some five hundred years.
It is known from the papyrus Sellier (G.C. 257) that Aāhmes, the first king of the eighteenth dynasty, who re-established the independence of Egypt, was in reality fighting the priests of Sutech in favour of the priests of Amen-Rā, the solstitial-solar god, a modern representative of Atmu of Annu.
Amen-Rā was the successor of Menthu. So close was the new worship to the oldest at Annu, that at the highest point of Theban power the third priest of Amen took the same titles as the Grand Priest of Annu, "who was the head of the first priesthood in Egypt." The "Grand Priest of Annu," who was also called the "Great Observer of Rā and Atmu," had the privilege of entering at all times into the Hahenben or Naos. The priest Padouamen, whose mummy was found in 1891, bore these among his other titles.
The assumption of the title was not only to associate the Theban priesthood with their northern confrères, but surely to proclaim that the old Annu worship was completely restored.