The new family (XIIIth Dynasty) which ascended the throne with Sebekhotep I, seems, from numerous similarities of name, to have been connected with the previous dynasty; for instance, two of its rulers took the prename of Amenemhat I, and their surname, generally supposed to have been derived from the god’s name Sebek, is linked to the name of the last queen, Sebek-neferu-Ra.
Sebekhotep I appears only once in the monuments, in a measurement of the height of the Nile at Kummeh in the first year of his reign; besides him only the sixth of his successors, with the remarkable name of Amenie-Antef-Amenemhat are on the two altar tablets of the Theban Amen.
Evidently none of these reigns was of long duration; usurpations and probably also revolts of the nomarchs shook the kingdom, as at the end of the VIth dynasty.
The Turin papyrus has an incision at Ranseneb, the eleventh or twelfth successor of Sebekhotep I. Most of the rulers of the next family (about fifteen in number) are known to us only by single monuments, and we see that they still rule the united kingdoms of Usertsen III, from Tanis to Semneh, albeit in a stormy fashion. Certainly one must not estimate the accounts of their power and brilliancy too highly, as has been the case lately. They have left us only short inscriptions and statues, some of which are masterpieces of work, and albeit the former are of short reigns and very circumscribed, they are full of significance. The fact that the sixth king bore the name of Mermesha (i.e. General) shows that he was an usurper. We have two colossal statues of this ruler, found in Tanis. The tenth king, Neferhotep, was the son of a private person, brought perhaps by marriage near to the throne, and we find the name of this ruler here and there on temple buildings at Karnak and Abydos; and finally the five reigns, of which we know the duration are only very short; all these are points which cast a clear light on the condition of Egypt at the time.
The above-named Neferhotep, who reigned eleven years, seems to have been the most powerful ruler of the period; this great ruler appears with his family in inscriptions in the district of the First Cataract (Assuan, Konosso, Sehel) and in the temple of Karnak, also in a large and very interesting inscription at Abydos, and the museum of Bologna has a statue of him, as well as of his second son, Sebekhotep V (Kha-nefer-Ra). The elder, Sehathor, died after a reign of a few months. There was a colossal granite statue of Sebekhotep V found at Tanis, another far in the Nubian country on the island of Arqo, far above the Second Cataract, and the Louvre has two more. There is frequent mention of him at Karnak. The three last rulers of this house are of no great importance. Far less is known of the next rulers than of the above. Their names, probably about a hundred, are divided into dynasties and fill nearly five divisions of the Turin papyrus. Where we have dates, there are, on the whole, about twenty-two, more or less recognisable; they show that the reigns were of short duration, a few months, one or two years, and, far more rarely, three or four years. There is only one case of a longer reign, and that was in the case of the first ruler of the new house, Mer-nefer-Ra Ai, who reigned thirteen years, eight months, and eighteen days.
It follows that only a very few of these kings are known to us through the monuments, and the majority only by insignificant memorials. Their names appear only occasionally in the stone quarries at Hammamat, or in Karnak and Abydos, or they have statues, which are far inferior to those of the preceding epoch.
And yet we have from this, as well as from the preceding epoch, a line of graves and tomb steles in Abydos, as well as numerous rock tombs in El-Kab (Eleithyia), and probably also the great rock graves of Assiut (Lycopolis), which attest the position and power of the high priests of Anubis and the governors of the nome. They are as important for this period as the graves of Beni-Hasan are for the XIIth Dynasty, but unfortunately they are in a much worse condition, and much poorer in historical information.
THE FOREIGN RULE
The facts above mentioned clearly show that the Egypt of this period was governed under conditions similar to those existing in the Roman Empire in the third century after Christ.
In fact, as a fuller light is thrown upon Egyptian history, there seems to have been a whole line of dynasties, evidently local, coexistent with the chief king at Thebes. If Neferhotep and Sebekhotep V still reigned over Egypt from Nubia to Tanis, the Delta was lost under their successors. It is not an improbable theory of Stern’s that Manetho’s XIVth Dynasty of seventy-six kings from Xoïs (Sakha), in the western Delta, included Libyan foreign rulers who occupied the Delta.