The First Intermediate Period, c.2181 - 2040BC

There was a downside to the technological progress made during the Old Kingdom. Feats of engineering like the Sphinx and the pyramids at Giza had made the Egyptians complacent. This feeling of invincibility was exacerbated by the position of their country, hidden as it was in the fertile Nile Valley. A word encapsulated how they felt about their civilisation - ma'at (stability). However, the situation on the ground was not as rosy as many Egyptians would have liked to think. The long reign of Pepi II had weakened central government, as the nomarchs (local governors) increasingly began to assert their independence from Pharaoh. On the death of Pepi II, everything collapsed. Any nominal authority exerted by central government disappeared, as the nomarchs jostled for position, attempting to found their own dynasties.

Papyri dating from the Middle Kingdom show this breakdown very clearly. Due to the unstable nature of the period, no firm historical records survive from the First Intermediate Period. There are some sources that mention a seventh dynasty which had 70 kings and which reigned for a total of 70 days. These are apocryphal, but nevertheless show how much the system had broken down.

We can place an eighth dynasty, which was possibly descended in some way from Pepi II and which ruled from Memphis, but we must assume that any influence they exerted was confined to the area immediately around Memphis, as the Nile Delta has been invaded by "asiatics" (the name given by Egyptians to people from what we now call the Middle East). The kings of the eighth dynasty are somewhat ephemeral, but we know of 2 possible ones - Wajdkare and Qakare Iby.

After perhaps between 20 and 30 years, the eighth dynasty fell and the nomarchs once again jostled for supreme power. We now see the emergence of a ninth dynasty, ruling from Herakleopolis, perhaps founded by one Meryibre Khety. Both this dynasty and its Herakleopolitain successor, the tenth dynasty, seem to have been highly unstable, with frequent changes of ruler.

Running concurrent to the tenth dynasty, another dynasty was being established in Thebes (the eleventh dynasty). Founded by Intef I in c. 2134BC, the first 3 kings of DXI (all called Intef, by the way, and buried in an area called Dra Abu el-Naga, near to what would later become the Valley of the Kings) fought an ongoing conflict with the Herakleopolitain DX monarchs, with frequent clashes in the area around Abydos, where their two spheres of influence met. Intef II pushed the border North as far as Antaeopolis, taking the important cult centre of Abydos in the process, and his successor Intef III extended his influence further north to Asyut.