Qau el-Kebir, called Tjebu in ancient Egyptian and Antaeopolis in Greek, was a village in Middle Egypt and the capital of the 10^th Upper Egyptian nome. The main deity of the town was Nemtywy. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, substantial parts of a Ptolemaic temple were still preserved, but they were destroyed by a change of the Nile ’ s streambed. The cemeteries in the deserts east of the town include tombs of almost all periods of Egyptian history beginning from the Badarian Period. Those of the First Intermediate Period are especially well equipped and are an important source for burial customs of that period in a provincial town. The three large, rock-cut tombs of Middle Kingdom governors belong to the biggest private tombs built in the Middle Kingdom. However, because of the destruction of the tombs, the dating and sequence of the governors during the 12^th Dynasty remains problematic. In the New Kingdom, the tomb of the governor May equipped with a sarcophagus and datable to Thutmose III was built. Several New Kingdom hippopotami bone deposits are perhaps connected with the cult of Nemtywy and Seth. The Ptolemaic temple dates to Ptolemy VI. Its pronaos with 3 x 6 columns is known from depictions in the Description de l ’ Égypte.

In the Egyptian late Middle Kingdom (from Senusret III in the mid 12th to the 13th Dynasty), innovations are visible at all levels of Egyptian culture and administration. At this time, the country was heavily centralized, and there are several indications of a wish for tighter control in administration, while local governors lost much of their power. Royal activities were mainly focused on the Memphis-Fayum region, with Abydos and Thebes being two other important centers. At Avaris in the east Delta, the population grew substantially, also due to the influx of many foreigners from the Near East. Senusret III launched military campaigns against Nubia and Palestine, on a scale not attested before. In addition to his pyramid at Dahshur, he had a great funerary complex at Abydos. Amenemhat III is mainly known for his huge funerary complex at Hawara, later called the “Labyrinth” by the ancient Greeks. In sculpture, a new style of portraiture for both kings shows them at an advanced age, rather than the usual idealized young ruler. The 12th Dynasty ends with the little known ruling queen Neferusobek. The transition to the following dynasty remains enigmatic. In stark contrast to the 12th Dynasty, the 13th Dynasty consisted of about 50 kings ruling for just 150 years. Culture and administration went on without any major break. Many kings still built pyramids in the Memphite region. Neferhotep I and Sobekhotep IV belong to the better attested kings of the dynasty: production of Abydos stelae seems to peak under them, and a dense network of officials is attested on the stelae. Far fewer sources survive for later rulers, but a stark decline on all levels is visible, perhaps related to the takeover of the east Delta fringe by foreigners living there.