Intef-Ka took the mantle two years after Merire-Nakht fell, in a country that no longer had a capital. He was a southern river-guard from Thebes, then a minor provincial town, with no temple training and no knowledge of the Pride's high rites. The mantle chose him anyway, for one reason: he had held a ferry crossing through a winter of riots without leaving his post.
His reign is the quietest in the roll. He had no resin, no convoy and no fortress. What he had was a memory, and he used it. Intef-Ka spent his 27 years walking the length of the Nile, finding regional guards and teaching each of them a portion of the Roll in the form of a song. When he died, no one person held the whole of it, but a dozen different people between Elephantine and the Delta each held a piece, and the pieces fit.
What he left behind: the first regional network, and the rule that the Roll should never live in a single head or a single place again.
