During Mentuhotpe's fifty-year reign the mines and trade routes were reopened; incursions into Libya, Nubia and Sinai resumed; and arts and crafts flourished again. His successors, Mentuhotpe III and IV, were most notable for their expeditions to the Land of Punt. Inscriptions from Wadi Hammamat name the vizier in charge of the second expedition as Amenemhat (or Ammenemes), who subsequently founded the XII Dynasty (c.1991-1786 BC).

 

Amenemhat returned the capital to Memphis and safeguarded the Nile Delta from raiders by constructing the Walls of the Prince, a fortified cordon sanitaire. Northern Nubia was annexed, and trade extended further into Palestine and Syria.

Under Amenemhat's son, Senusert I (aka Sesostris I), the administrative capital was transferred to the Fayoum , where massive waterworks were undertaken. Amenemhat II curbed the power of the nomarchs, while Senusert III may have abolished the office completely. These kings also built the last pyramids , at Lahun, El-Lisht and Hawara, where the final pyramid was erected by Amenemhat III, alongside the Labyrinth described by Herodotus.

According to Rohl's New Chronology, it was Amenemhat III who took Joseph as his vizier and let the Israelites settle in the Delta (c.1662 BC). Graves at Avaris suggest a large Semitic population stricken by calamities, akin to the Biblical account of the events leading up to the Exodus , which Rohl assigns to the reign of the XIII Dynasty pharaoh Dudimose (c.1447 BC). Both these dates are utterly at variance with the conventional chronology, which places the Exodus two centuries later, during the New Kingdom.

However, there is no disagreement that the late XII Dynasty was a troubled time , with the Nile flooding at record levels, bringing poor harvests and famine in its wake. The faces of the statues of pharaohs of this era are uniquely stern and careworn. Whether or not Egypt was also smitten by plagues and disrupted by an exodus from the Delta, it was obviously in poor shape to resist an invasion.