11)14] The Mortuary Chapels of the Theban Nobles 161 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 22, 1914. 



Sir Ja3IES Crichtox-Browxe, J. P. M.D. LL.D. F.R.S., Treasurer 

 and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Robert Moxd, Esq., J.P. M.A. F.R.S.E. M.R.I. 

 The Mortuary Chapels of the Theban Nobles. 



When Achilles, in the ninth book of " Iliad," told of 



" Hundred- gated Thebes where twice ten score in martial 

 state 

 Of valiant men with steeds and cars march through each 

 massy gate," 



this famed capital of one of the mightiest Empires of the East 

 could look back on a thousand years of checkered history. 



The mighty sovereigns of the 12th Dynasty who had, by the con- 

 quest of Nubia, extended the boundary of Egypt from the First to 

 the Second Cataract, required a more central residence for the 

 administration of the country than " white-walled Memphis," situated 

 at the head of the Delta, and they therefore selected a village in the 

 fertile plains which stretched from Erment to Keneh (the modern 

 Luxor), to become the site of their capital. Here they erected the 

 first great Temple to Amen, the local Harvest God, who, under the 

 double appellation of Amen Ra, was later to become the principal 

 divinity of Egypt. Their great irrigation schemes, which added the 

 Province of the Fayum, their expeditions on the Red Sea to the 

 sacred land of Punt, their re-opening of the turquoise mines of Sinai, 

 and their contact with the coast of Asia Minor and the Greek Islands, 

 marked the commencement of the rise of that Egyptian power which, 

 in the next two thousand years, left an indelible mark on the evolu- 

 tion of civilization and the culture of the world. 



The internecine struggles of the succeeding dynasties, which 



' nded in the conquest of Egypt by the Canaanitic tribes, known 



as the Hyksos, kept Egypt in a state of suspended animation, until, at 



tthe end of the forty-five years' war of liberation, "Ahmes," the founder 



'of the 18th Dynasty, after the final siege and capture of the great 



Hyksos fortress of Avaris and his re-conquest of Nubia, finally 



re-established Thebes as his capital. His successors, especially 



-Vol. XXI. (No. 108) m 



