The date recorded for the death of Sehote-pabra--Amenemhat I., the
founder of the XIIth Dynasty--agrees with the limit of his reign on the
monuments. And the expressions for his death are valuable as showing
the manner in which a king's decease was regarded; under the emblem of
a hawk--the bird of Ra--he flew up and joined the sun.
Sometime before his death Amenemhat had been in retirement; after twenty
years of reign (which was probably rather late in his life, as he seems
to have forced his way to the front as a successful man and founder of a
family) he had associated his son, the first Usertesen, on the throne,
and apparently resigned active life; for in the third year of Usertesen
we find the coregent summoning his court and decreeing the founding of
the temple of Heliopolis without any mention of his father. The old
king, however, lived yet ten years after his retirement, and died (as
this narrative shows us) during an expedition of his son Usertesen.
The time of year mentioned here would fall in about the middle of the
inundation in those days. Hence it seems that the military expeditions
were made after the harvest was secured, and while the country was
under water and the population disengaged from other labour.
The course of Sanehat's flight southward, reaching the Nile at Cairo
after two days' haste, indicates that the army was somewhere west of the
Delta.
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