* Contract dated "the year the Tigris, river of the gods, was canalized down to the sea"; i.e. as far as the point to which the sea then penetrated in the environs of Kornah.

This canal of Khammurabi ran from a little south of Babylon, joining those of Siniddinam and Rimsin, and probably cutting the alluvial plain in its entire length.* It drained the stagnant marshes on either side along its course, and by its fertilising effects, the dwellers on its banks were enabled to reap full harvests from the lands which previously had been useless for purposes of cultivation. A ditch of minor importance pierced the isthmus which separates the Tigris and the Euphrates in the neighbourhood of Sippar.** Khammurabi did not rest contented with these; a system of secondary canals doubtless completed the whole scheme of irrigation which he had planned after the achievement of his conquest, and his successors had merely to keep up his work in order to ensure an unrivalled prosperity to the empire.

* Delattre is of opinion that the canal dug by Khammurabi is the Arakhtu of later epochs which began at Babylon and extended as far as the Larsa canal. It must therefore be approximately identified with the Shatt-en-Nil of the present day, which joins Shatt-el-Kaher, the canal of Siniddinam.

** The canal which Khammurabi caused to be dug or dredged may be the Nar-Malka, or "royal canal," which ran from the Tigris to the Euphrates, passing Sippar on the way. The digging of this canal is mentioned in a contract.

Their efforts in this direction were not unsuccessful. Samsuiluna, the son of Khammurabi, added to the existing system two or three fresh canals, one at least of which still bore his name nearly fifteen centuries later; it is mentioned in the documents of the second Assyrian empire in the time of Assurbanipal, and it is possible that traces of it may still be found at the present day. Abieshukh,* Ammisatana,** Ammizadugga,*** and Samsusatana,**** all either continued to elaborate the network planned by their ancestors, or applied themselves to the better distribution of the overflow in those districts where cultivation was still open to improvement.

* Abishukh (the Hebrew Abishua) is the form of the name which we find in contemporary contracts. The official lists contain the variant Ebishu, Ebishum.

** Ammiditana is only a possible reading: others prefer Ammisatana. The Nar-Ammisatana is mentioned in a Sippar contract. Another contract is dated "the year in which Ammisatana, the king, repaired the canal of Samsuiluna."

*** This was, at first, read Ammididugga. Ammizadugga is mentioned in the date of a contract as having executed certain works—of what nature it is not easy to say—on the banks of the Tigris; another contract is dated "the year in which Ammizadugga, the king, by supreme command of Sha-mash, his master, [dug] the Ndr-Ammizadugga-nulchus-nishi (canal of Ammizadugga), prosperity of men." In the Minaean inscriptions of Southern Arabia the name is found under the form of Ammi-Zaduq.

**** Sometimes erroneously read Samdiusatana; but, as a matter of fact, we have contracts of that time, in which a royal name is plainly written as Samsusatana.

We should know nothing of these kings had not the scribes of those times been in the habit of dating the contracts of private individuals by reference to important national events. They appear to have chosen by preference incidents in the religious life of the country; as, for instance, the restoration of a temple, the annual enthronisation of one of the great divinities, such as Shamash, Merodach, Ishtar, or Nana, as the eponymous god of the current year, the celebration of a solemn festival, or the consecration of a statue; while a few scattered allusions to works of fortification show that meanwhile the defence of the country was jealously watched over.* These sovereigns appear to have enjoyed long reigns, the shortest extending over a period of five and twenty years; and when at length the death of any king occurred, he was immediately replaced by his son, the notaries' acts and the judicial documents which have come down to us betraying no confusion or abnormal delay in the course of affairs. We may, therefore, conclude that the last century and a half of the dynasty was a period of peace and of material prosperity. Chaldaea was thus enabled to fully reap the advantage of being united under the rule of one individual. It is quite possible that those cities—Uru, Larsa, Ishin, Uruk, and Nippur—which had played so important a part in the preceding centuries, suffered from the loss of their prestige, and from the blow dealt to their traditional pretensions.

* Samsuiluna repaired the five fortresses which his ancestor Sumulailu had built. Contract dated "the year in which Ammisatana, the king, built Dur-Ammisatana, near the Sin river," and "the year in which Ammisatana, the king, gave its name to Dur-Iskunsin, near the canal of Ammisatana." Contract dated "the year in which the King Ammisatana repaired Dur-Iskunsin." Contract dated "the year in which Samsuiluna caused 'the wall of Uru and Uruk' to be built."

Up to this time they had claimed the privilege of controlling the history of their country, and they had bravely striven among themselves for the supremacy over the southern states; but the revolutions which had raised each in turn to the zenith of power, had never exalted any one of them to such an eminence as to deprive its rivals of all hope of supplanting it and of enjoying the highest place. The rise of Babylon destroyed the last chance which any of them had of ever becoming the capital; the new city was so favourably situated, and possessed so much wealth and so many soldiers, while its kings displayed such tenacious energy, that its neighbours were forced to bow before it and resign themselves to the subordinate position of leading provincial towns. They gave a loyal obedience to the officers sent them from the north, and sank gradually into obscurity, the loss of their political supremacy being somewhat compensated for by the religious respect in which they were always held. Their ancient divinities—Nana, Sin, Anu, and Ra—were adopted, if we may use the term, by the Babylonians, who claimed the protection of these gods as fully as they did that of Merodach or of Nebo, and prided themselves on amply supplying all their needs. As the inhabitants of Babylon had considerable resources at their disposal, their appeal to these deities might be regarded as productive of more substantial results than the appeal of a merely local kinglet. The increase of the national wealth and the concentration, under one head, of armies hitherto owning several chiefs, enabled the rulers, not of Babylon or Larsa alone, but of the whole of Chaldaea, to offer an invincible resistance to foreign enemies, and to establish their dominion in countries where their ancestors had enjoyed merely a precarious sovereignty. Hostilities never completely ceased between Elam and Babylon; if arrested for a time, they broke out again in some frontier disturbance, at times speedily suppressed, but at others entailing violent consequences and ending in a regular war. No document furnishes us with any detailed account of these outbreaks, but it would appear that the balance of power was maintained on the whole with tolerable regularity, both kingdoms at the close of each generation finding themselves in much the same position as they had occupied at its commencement. The two empires were separated from south to north by the sea and the Tigris, the frontier leaving the river near the present village of Amara and running in the direction of the mountains. Durilu probably fell ordinarily under Chaldaean jurisdiction. Umliyash was included in the original domain of Kham-murabi, and there is no reason to believe that it was evacuated by his descendants. There is every probability that they possessed the plain east of the Tigris, comprising Nineveh and Arbela, and that the majority of the civilized peoples scattered over the lower slopes of the Kurdish mountains rendered them homage. They kept the Mesopotamian table-land under their suzerainty, and we may affirm, without exaggeration, that their power extended northwards as far as Mount Masios, and westwards to the middle course of the Euphrates.

At what period the Chaldaeans first crossed that river is as yet unknown. Many of their rulers in their inscriptions claim the title of suzerains over Syria, and we have no evidence for denying their pretensions. Kudur-mabug proclaims himself "adda" of Martu, Lord of the countries of the West, and we are in the possession of several facts which suggest the idea of a great Blamite empire, with a dominion extending for some period over Western Asia, the existence of which was vaguely hinted at by the Greeks, who attributed its glory to the fabulous Memnon.* Contemporary records are still wanting which might show whether Kudur-mabug inherited these distant possessions from one of his predecessors—such as Kudur-nakhunta, for instance—or whether he won them himself at the point of the sword; but a fragment of an old chronicle, inserted in the Hebrew Scriptures, speaks distinctly of another Elamite, who made war in person almost up to the Egyptian frontier.** This is the Kudur-lagamar (Chedorlaomer) who helped Eimsin against Hammurabi, but was unable to prevent his overthrow.

* We know that to Herodotus (v. 55) Susa was the city of Memnon, and that Strabo attributes its foundation to Tithonus, father of Memnon. According to Oppert, the word Memnon is the equivalent of the Susian Umman-anin, "the house of the king:" Weissbach declares that "anin" does not mean king, and contradicts Oppert's view, though he does not venture to suggest a new explanation of the name.

** Gen. xiv. Prom the outset Assyriologists have never doubted the historical accuracy of this chapter, and they have connected the facts which it contains with those which seem to be revealed by the Assyrian monuments. The two Rawlinsons intercalate Kudur-lagamar between Kudur-nakhunta and Kudur-mabug, and Oppert places him about the same period. Fr. Lenormant regards him as one of the successors of Kudur-mabug, possibly his immediate successor. G. Smith does not hesitate to declare positively that the Kudur-mabug and Kudur-nakhunta of the inscriptions are one and the same with the Kudur-lagamar (Chedor-laomer) of the Bible. Finally, Schrader, while he repudiates Smith's view, agrees in the main fact with the other Assyriologists. On the other hand, the majority of modern Biblical critics have absolutely refused to credit the story in Genesis. Sayce thinks that the Bible story rests on an historic basis, and his view is strongly confirmed by Pinches'discovery of a Chaldaean document which mentions Kudur-lagamar and two of his allies. The Hebrew historiographer reproduced an authentic fact from the chronicles of Babylon, and connected it with one of the events in the life of Abraham. The very late date generally assigned to Gen. xiv. in no way diminishes the intrinsic probability of the facts narrated by the Chaldaean document which is preserved to us in the pages of the Hebrew book.

In the thirteenth year of his reign over the East, the cities of the Dead Sea—Sodom, Gomorrah, Adamah, Zeboim, and Bela—revolted against him: he immediately convoked his great vassals, Amraphel of Chaldaea, Arioch of Ellasar,* Tida'lo the Guti, and marched with them to the confines of his dominions. Tradition has invested many of the tribes then inhabiting Southern Syria with semi-mythical names and attributes. They are represented as being giants—Rephalm; men of prodigious strength—Zuzim; as having a buzzing and indistinct manner of speech—Zamzummim; as formidable monsters**—Emim or Anakim, before whom other nations appeared as grasshoppers;*** as the Horim who were encamped on the confines of the Sinaitic desert, and as the Amalekites who ranged over the mountains to the west of the Dead Sea. Kudur-lagamar defeated them one after another—the Rephaim near to Ashtaroth-Karnaim, the Zuzim near Ham,**** the Amim at Shaveh-Kiriathaim, and the Horim on the spurs of Mount Seir as far as El-Paran; then retracing his footsteps, he entered the country of the Amalekites by way of En-mishpat, and pillaged the Amorites of Hazazon-Tamar.

* Ellasar has been identified with Larsa since the researches of Rawlin-son and Norris; the Goim, over whom Tidal was king, with the Guti.

** Sayce considers Zuzim and Zamzummim to be two readings of the same word Zamzum, written in cuneiform characters on the original document. The sounds represented, in the Hebrew alphabet, by the letters m and w, are expressed in the Chaldaean syllabary by the same character, and a Hebrew or Babylonian scribe, who had no other means of telling the true pronunciation of a race-name mentioned in the story of this campaign, would have been quite as much at a loss as any modern scholar to say whether he ought to transcribe the word as Z-m-z-m or as Z-w-z-vo; some scribes read it Zuzim, others preferred Zamzummim.

*** Numb. xiii. 33.

**** In Deut. ii. 20 it is stated that the Zamzummim lived in the country of Ammon. Sayce points out that we often find the variant Am for the character usually read Ham or Kham—the name Khammurabi, for instance, is often found written Ammurabi; the Ham in the narrative of Genesis would, therefore, be identical with the land of Ammon in Deuteronomy, and the difference between the spelling of the two would be due to the fact that the document reproduced in the XIVIIth chapter of Genesis had been originally copied from a cuneiform tablet in which the name of the place was expressed by the sign Ham-Am.

In the mean time, the kings of the five towns had concentrated their troops in the vale of Siddim, and were there resolutely awaiting Kudur-lagamar. They were, however, completely routed, some of the fugitives being swallowed up in the pits of bitumen with which the soil abounded, while others with difficulty reached the mountains. Kudur-lagamar sacked Sodom and Gomorrah, re-established his dominion on all sides, and returned laden with booty, Hebrew tradition adding that he was overtaken near the sources of the Jordan by the patriarch Abraham.*

* An attempt has been made to identify the three vassals of Kudur-lagamar with kings mentioned on the Chaldaean monuments. Tidcal, or, if we adopt the Septuagint variant, Thorgal, has been considered by some as the bearer of a Sumorian name, Turgal= "great chief," "great son," while others put him on one side as not having been a Babylonian; Pinches, Sayce, and Hommel identify him with Tudkhula, an ally of Kudur-lagamar against Khammurabi. Schrader was the first to suggest that Amraphel was really Khammurabi, and emended the Amraphel of the biblical text into Amraphi or Amrabi, in order to support this identification. Halevy, while on the whole accepting this theory, derives the name from the pronunciation Kimtarapashtum or Kimtarapaltum, which he attributes to the name generally read Khammurabi, and in this he is partly supported by Hommel, who reads "Khammurapaltu."

After his victory over Kudur-lagamar, Khammurabi assumed the title of King of Martu,* which we find still borne by Ammisatana sixty years later.** We see repeated here almost exactly what took place in Ethiopia at the time of its conquest by Egypt: merchants had prepared the way for military occupation, and the civilization of Babylon had taken hold on the people long before its kings had become sufficiently powerful to claim them as vassals. The empire may be said to have been virtually established from the day when the states of the Middle and Lower Euphrates formed but one kingdom in the hands of a single ruler. We must not, however, imagine it to have been a compact territory, divided into provinces under military occupation, ruled by a uniform code of laws and statutes, and administered throughout by functionaries of various grades, who received their orders from Babylon or Susa, according as the chances of war favoured the ascendency of Chaldaea or Elam. It was in reality a motley assemblage of tribes and principalities, whose sole bond of union was subjection to a common yoke.

* It is, indeed, the sole title which he attributes to himself on a stone tablet now in the British Museum.

** In an inscription by this prince, copied probably about the time of Nabonidus by the scribe Belushallim, he is called "king of the vast land of Martu."

They were under obligation to pay tribute, and furnish military contingents and show other external marks of obedience, but their particular constitution, customs, and religion were alike respected: they had to purchase, at the cost of a periodical ransom, the right to live in their own country after their own fashion, and the head of the empire forbore all interference in their affairs, except in cases where the internecine quarrels and dissensions threatened the security of his suzerainty. Their subordination lasted as best it could, sometimes for a year or for ten years, at the end of which period they would neglect the obligations of their vassalage, or openly refuse to fulfil them: a revolt would then break out at one point or another, and it was necessary to suppress it without delay to prevent the bad example from spreading far and wide. The empire was maintained by perpetual re-conquests, and its extent varied with the energy shown by its chiefs, or with the resources which were for the moment available.

Separated from the confines of the empire by only a narrow isthmus, Egypt loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival. Her natural fertility, the industry of her inhabitants, the stores of gold and perfumes which she received from the heart of Ethiopia, were well known by the passage to and fro of her caravans, and the recollection of her treasures must have frequently provoked the envy of Asiatic courts. Egypt had, however, strangely declined from her former greatness, and the line of princes who governed her had little in common with the Pharaohs who had rendered her name so formidable under the XIIth dynasty. She was now under the rule of the Xoites, whose influence was probably confined to the Delta, and extended merely in name over the Said and Nubia. The feudal lords, ever ready to reassert their independence as soon as the central power waned, shared between them the possession of the Nile valley below Memphis: the princes of Thebes, who were probably descendants of Usirtasen, owned the largest fiefdom, and though some slight scruple may have prevented them from donning the pschent or placing their names within a cartouche, they assumed notwithstanding the plenitude of royal power. A favourable opportunity was therefore offered to an invader, and the Chaldaeans might have attacked with impunity a people thus divided among themselves.* They stopped short, however, at the southern frontier of Syria, or if they pushed further forward, it was without any important result: distance from head-quarters, or possibly reiterated attacks of the Elamites, prevented them from placing in the field an adequate force for such a momentous undertaking. What they had not dared to venture, others more audacious were to accomplish. At this juncture, so runs the Egyptian record, "there came to us a king named Timaios. Under this king, then, I know not wherefore, the god caused to blow upon us a baleful wind, and in the face of all probability bands from the East, people of ignoble race, came upon us unawares, attacked the country, and subdued it easily and without fighting."

* The theory that the divisions of Egypt, under the XIVth dynasty, and the discords between its feudatory princes, were one of the main causes of the success of the Shepherds, is now admitted to be correct.

It is possible that they owed this rapid victory to the presence in their armies of a factor hitherto unknown to the African—the war-chariot—and before the horse and his driver the Egyptians gave way in a body.* The invaders appeared as a cloud of locusts on the banks of the Nile. Towns and temples were alike pillaged, burnt, and ruined; they massacred all they could of the male population, reduced to slavery those of the women and children whose lives they spared, and then proclaimed as king Salatis, one of their chiefs.** He established a semblance of regular government, chose Memphis as his capital, and imposed a tax upon the vanquished. Two perils, however, immediately threatened the security of his triumph: in the south the Theban lords, taking matters into their own hands after the downfall of the Xoites, refused the oath of allegiance to Salatis, and organized an obstinate resistance;*** in the north he had to take measures to protect himself against an attack of the Chaldaeans or of the Elamites who were oppressing Chaldaea.****

* The horse was unknown, or at any rate had not been employed in. Egypt prior to the invasion; we find it, however, in general use immediately after the expulsion of the Shepherds, see the tomb of Pihiri. Moreover, all historians agree in admitting that it was introduced into the country under the rule of the Shepherds. The use of the war-chariot in Chaldaea at an epoch prior to the Hyksos invasion, is proved by a fragment of the Vulture Stele; it is therefore, natural to suppose that the Hyksos used the chariot in war, and that the rapidity of their conquest was due to it.

** The name Salatis (var. Saitos) seems to be derived from a Semitic word, Siialit = "the chief," "the governor;" this was the title which Joseph received when Pharaoh gave him authority over the whole of Egypt (Gen. xli. 43). Salatis may not, therefore, have been the real name of the first Hyksos king, but his title, which the Egyptians misunderstood, and from which they evolved a proper name: Uhlemann has, indeed, deduced from this that Manetho, being familiar with the passage referring to Joseph, had forged the name of Salatis. Ebers imagined that he could decipher the Egyptian form of this prince's name on the Colossus of Tell-Mokdam, where Naville has since read with certainty the name of a Pharaoh of the XIIIth and XIVth dynasties, Nahsiri.

*** The text of Manetho speaks of taxes which he imposed on the high and low lands, which would seem to include the Thebaid in the kingdom; it is, however, stated in the next few pages that the successors of Salatis waged an incessant war against the Egyptians, which can only refer to hostilities against the Thebans. We are forced, therefore, to admit, either that Manetho took the title of lord of the high and low lands which belonged to Salatis, literally, or that the Thebans, after submitting at first, subsequently refused to pay tribute, thus provoking a war.

**** Manetho here speaks of Assyrians; this is an error which is to be explained by the imperfect state of historical knowledge in Greece at the time of the Macedonian supremacy. We need not for this reason be led to cast doubt upon the historic value of the narrative: we must remember the suzerainty which the kings of Babylon exercised over Syria, and read Chaldaeans where Manetho has written Assyrians. In Herodotus "Assyria" is the regular term for "Babylonia," and Babylonia is called "the land of the Assyrians."

From the natives of the Delta, who were temporarily paralysed by their reverses, he had, for the moment, little to fear: restricting himself, therefore, to establishing forts at the strategic points in the Nile valley in order to keep the Thebans in check, he led the main body of his troops to the frontier on the isthmus. Pacific immigrations had already introduced Asiatic settlers into the Delta, and thus prepared the way for securing the supremacy of the new rulers; in the midst of these strangers, and on the ruins of the ancient town of Hawarit-Avaris, in the Sethro'ifce nome—a place connected by tradition with the myth of Osiris and Typhon—Salatis constructed an immense entrenched camp, capable of sheltering two hundred and forty thousand men. He visited it yearly to witness the military manoeuvres, to pay his soldiers, and to preside over the distribution of rations. This permanent garrison protected him from a Chaldaean invasion, a not unlikely event as long as Syria remained under the supremacy of the Babylonian kings; it furnished his successors also with an inexhaustible supply of trained soldiers, thus enabling them to complete the conquest of Lower Egypt. Years elapsed before the princes of the south would declare themselves vanquished, and five kings—Anon, Apachnas, Apophis I., Iannas, and Asses—passed their lifetime "in a perpetual warfare, desirous of tearing up Egypt to the very root." These Theban kings, who were continually under arms against the barbarians, were subsequently classed in a dynasty by themselves, the XVth of Manetho, but they at last succumbed to the invader, and Asses became master of the entire country. His successors in their turn formed a dynasty, the XVIth, the few remaining monuments of which are found scattered over the length and breadth of the valley from the shores of the Mediterranean to the rocks of the first cataract.

The Egyptians who witnessed the advent of this Asiatic people called them by the general term Amuu, Asiatics, or Monatiu, the men of the desert.* They had already given the Bedouin the opprobrious epithet of Shausu—pillagers or robbers—which aptly described them;** and they subsequently applied the same name to the intruders—Hiq Shausu—from which the Greeks derived their word Hyksos, or Hykoussos, for this people.***

* The meaning of the term Moniti was discovered by E. de Rouge, who translated it Shepherd, and applied it to the Hyksos; from thence it passed into the works of all the Egyptologists who concerned themselves with this question, but Shepherd has not been universally accepted as the meaning of the word. It is generally agreed that it was a generic term, indicating the races with which their conquerors were supposed to be connected, and not the particular term of which Manetho's word Hoiveves would be the literal translation.

** The name seems, in fact, to be derived from a word which meant "to rob," "to pillage." The name Shausu, Shosu, was not used by the Egyptians to indicate a particular race. It was used of all Bedouins, and in general of all the marauding tribes who infested the desert or the mountains. The Shausu most frequently referred to on the monuments are those from the desert between Egypt and Syria, but there is a reference, in the time of Ramses II., to those from the Lebanon and the valley of Orontes. Krall finds an allusion to them in a word (Shosim) in Judges ii. 14, which is generally translated by a generic expression, "the spoilers."

*** Manetho declares that the people were called Hyksos, from Syk, which means "king" in the sacred language, and sos, which means "shepherd" in the popular language. As a matter of fact, the word Hyku means "prince "in the classical language of Egypt, or, as Manetho styles it, the sacred language, i.e. in the idiom of the old religious, historical, and literary texts, which in later ages the populace no longer understood. Shos, on the contrary, belongs to the spoken language of the later time, and does not occur in the ancient inscriptions, so that Manetho's explanation is valueless; there is but one material fact to be retained from his evidence, and that is the name Hyk- Shos or Hyku-Shos given by its inventors to the alien kings. Cham-pollion and Rosellini were the first to identify these Shos with the Shausu whom they found represented on the monuments, and their opinion, adopted by some, seems to me an extremely plausible one: the Egyptians, at a given moment, bestowed the generic name of Shausu on these strangers, just as they had given those of Amuu and Manatiu. The texts or writers from whom Manetho drew his information evidently mentioned certain kings hyku-Shausu; other passages, or, the same passages wrongly interpreted, were applied to the race, and were rendered hyku-Shausu = "the prisoners taken from the Shausu," a substantive derived from the root haka = "to take" being substituted for the noun hyqu = "prince." Josephus declares, on the authority of Manetho, that some manuscripts actually suggested this derivation—a fact which is easily explained by the custom of the Egyptian record offices. I may mention, in passing, that Mariette recognised in the element "Sos" an Egyptian word shos = "soldiers," and in the name of King Mirmashau, which he read Mirshosu, an equivalent of the title Hyq- Shosu.

But we are without any clue as to their real name, language, or origin. The writers of classical times were unable to come to an agreement on these questions: some confounded the Hyksos with the Phoenicians, others regarded them as Arabs.* Modern scholars have put forward at least a dozen contradictory hypotheses on the matter. The Hyksos have been asserted to have been Canaanites, Elamites, Hittites, Accadians, Scythians. The last opinion found great favour with the learned, as long as they could believe that the sphinxes discovered by Mariette represented Apophis or one of his predecessors. As a matter of fact, these monuments present all the characteristics of the Mongoloid type of countenance—the small and slightly oblique eyes, the arched but somewhat flattened nose, the pronounced cheekbones and well-covered jaw, the salient chin and full lips slightly depressed at the corners.** These peculiarities are also observed in the three heads found at Damanhur, in the colossal torso dug up at Mit-Fares in the Fayum, in the twin figures of the Nile removed to the Bulaq Museum from Tanis, and upon the remains of a statue in the collection at the Villa Ludovisi in Rome. The same foreign type of face is also found to exist among the present inhabitants of the villages scattered over the eastern part of the Delta, particularly on the shores of Lake Menzaleh, and the conclusion was drawn that these people were the direct descendants of the Hyksos.

* Manetho takes them to be Phoenicians, but he adds that certain writers thought them to be Arabs: Brugsch favours this latter view, but the Arab legend of a conquest of Egypt by Sheddad and the Adites is of recent origin, and was inspired by traditions in regard to the Hyksos current during the Byzantine epoch; we cannot, therefore, allow it to influence us. We must wait before expressing a definite opinion in regard to the facts which Glaser believes he has obtained from the Minoan inscriptions which date from the time of the Hyksos.

** Mariette, who was the first to describe these curious monuments, recognised in them all the incontestable characteristics of a Semitic type, and the correctness of his view was, at first, universally admitted. Later on Hamy imagined that he could distinguish traces of Mongolian influences, and Er. Lenormant, and then Mariette himself came round to this view; it has recently been supported in England by Flower, and in Germany by Virchow.

This theory was abandoned, however, when it was ascertained that the sphinxes of San had been carved, many centuries before the invasion, for Amenemhait III., a king of the XIIth dynasty. In spite of the facts we possess, the problem therefore still remains unsolved, and the origin of the Hyksos is as mysterious as ever. We gather, however, that the third millennium before our era was repeatedly disturbed by considerable migratory movements. The expeditions far afield of Elamite and Chaldaean princes could not have taken place without seriously perturbing the regions over which they passed. They must have encountered by the way many nomadic or unsettled tribes whom a slight shock would easily displace. An impulse once given, it needed but little to accelerate or increase the movement: a collision with one horde reacted on its neighbours, who either displaced or carried others with them, and the whole multitude, gathering momentum as they went, were precipitated in the direction first given.*

* The Hyksos invasion has been regarded as a natural result of the Elamite conquest.

A tradition, picked up by Herodotus on his travels, relates that the Phoenicians had originally peopled the eastern and southern shores of the Persian Gulf;* it was also said that Indathyrses, a Scythian king, had victoriously scoured the whole of Asia, and had penetrated as far as Egypt.** Either of these invasions may have been the cause of the Syrian migration. In. comparison with the meagre information which has come down to us under the form of legends, it is provoking to think how much actual fact has been lost, a tithe of which would explain the cause of the movement and the mode of its execution. The least improbable hypothesis is that which attributes the appearance of the Shepherds about the XXIIIrd century B.C., to the arrival in Naharaim of those Khati who subsequently fought so obstinately against the armies both of the Pharaohs and the Ninevite kings. They descended from the mountain region in which the Halys and the Euphrates take their rise, and if the bulk of them proceeded no further than the valleys of the Taurus and the Amanos, some at least must have pushed forward as far as the provinces on the western shores of the Dead Sea. The most adventurous among them, reinforced by the Canaanites and other tribes who had joined them on their southward course, crossed the isthmus of Suez, and finding a people weakened by discord, experienced no difficulty in replacing the native dynasties by their own barbarian chiefs.***

* It was to the exodus of this race, in the last analysis, that the invasion of the shepherds may be attributed

** A certain number of commentators are of opinion that the wars attributed to Indathyrses have been confounded with what Herodotus tells of the exploits of Madyes, and are nothing more than a distorted remembrance of the great Scythian invasion which took place in the latter half of the VIIth century B.C.

*** At the present time, those scholars who admit the Turanian origin of the Hyksos are of opinion that only the nucleus of the race, the royal tribe, was composed of Mongols, while the main body consisted of elements of all kinds—Canaanitish, or, more generally, Semitic.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Mertons. It is the palette of a scribe, now in the Berlin Museum, and given by King Apopi II Ausirri to a scribe named Atu.

Both their name and origin were doubtless well known to the Egyptians, but the latter nevertheless disdained to apply to them any term but that of "she-mau,"* strangers, and in referring to them used the same vague appellations which they applied to the Bedouin of the Sinaitic peninsula,—Monatiu, the shepherds, or Satiu, the archers. They succeeded in hiding the original name of their conquerors so thoroughly, that in the end they themselves forgot it, and kept the secret of it from posterity.

The remembrance of the cruelties with which the invaders sullied their conquest lived long after them; it still stirred the anger of Manetho after a lapse of twenty centuries.** The victors were known as the "Plagues" or "Pests," and every possible crime and impiety was attributed to them.

* The term shamamil, variant of sliemau, is applied to them by Queen Hatshopsitu: the same term is employed shortly afterward by Thutmosis III., to indicate the enemies whom he had defeated at Megiddo.

** He speaks of them in contemptuous terms as men of ignoble race. The epithet Aiti, Iaiti, Iaditi, was applied to the Nubians by the writer of the inscription of Ahmosi- si-Abina, and to the Shepherds of the Delta by the author of the Sallier Papyrus. Brugsch explained it as "the rebels," or "disturbers," and Goodwin translated it "invaders"; Chabas rendered it by "plague-stricken," an interpretation which was in closer conformity with its etymological meaning, and Groff pointed out that the malady called Ait, or Adit in Egyptian, is the malignant fever still frequently to be met with at the present day in the marshy cantons of the Delta, and furnished the proper rendering, which is "The Fever-stricken."



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

But the brutalities attending the invasion once past, the invaders soon lost their barbarity and became rapidly civilized. Those of them stationed in the encampment at Avaris retained the military qualities and characteristic energy of their race; the remainder became assimilated to their new compatriots, and were soon recognisable merely by their long hair, thick beard, and marked features. Their sovereigns seemed to have realised from the first that it was more to their interest to exploit the country than to pillage it; as, however, none of them was competent to understand the intricacies of the treasury, they were forced to retain the services of the majority of the scribes, who had managed the public accounts under the native kings.* Once schooled to the new state of affairs, they readily adopted the refinements of civilized life.

* The same thing took place on every occasion when Egypt was conquered by an alien race: the Persian Achaemenians and Greeks made use of the native employes, as did the Romans after them; and lastly, the Mussulmans, Arabs, and Turks.

The court of the Pharaohs, with its pomp and its usual assemblage of officials, both great and small, was revived around the person of the new sovereign;* the titles of the Amenemhaits and the Usirtasens, adapted to these "princes of foreign lands,"** legitimatised them as descendants of Horus and sons of the Sun.*** They respected the local religions, and went so far as to favour those of the gods whose attributes appeared to connect them with some of their own barbarous divinities. The chief deity of their worship was Baal, the lord of all,**** a cruel and savage warrior; his resemblance to Sit, the brother and enemy of Osiris, was so marked, that he was identified with the Egyptian deity, with the emphatic additional title of Sutkhu, the Great Sit.^

* The narrative of the Sallier Papyrus, No. 1, shows us the civil and military chiefs collected round the Shepherd- king Apopi, and escorting him in the solemn processions in honour of the gods. They are followed by the scribes and magicians, who give him advice on important occasions.

** Hiqu Situ: this is the title of Abisha at Beni-Hassan, which is also assumed by Khiani on several small monuments; Steindorff has attempted to connect it with the name of the Hyksos.

*** The preamble of the two or three Shepherd-kings of whom we know anything, contains the two cartouches, the special titles, and the names of Horus, which formed part of the title of the kings of pure Egyptian race; thus Apophis IL is proclaimed to be the living Horus, who joins the two earths in peace, the good god, Aqnunri, son of the Sun, Apopi, who lives for ever, on the statues of Mirmashau, which he had appropriated, and on the pink granite table of offerings in the Gizeh Museum.

**** The name of Baal, transcribed Baalu, is found on that of a certain Petebaalu, "the Gift of Baal," who must have flourished in the time of the last shepherd-kings, or rather under the Theban kings of the XVIIth dynasty, who were their contemporaries, whose conclusions have been adopted by Brugsch.

^ Sutikhu, Sutkhu, are lengthened forms of Sutu, or Situ; and Chabas, who had at first denied the existence of the final Jehu, afterwards himself supplied the philological arguments which proved the correctness of the reading: he rightly refused, however, to recognise in Sutikhu or Sutkhu —the name of the conquerors' god—a transliteration of the Phoenician Sydyk, and would only see in it that of the nearest Egyptian deity. This view is now accepted as the right one, and Sutkhu is regarded as the indigenous equivalent of the great Asiatic god, elsewhere called Baal, or supreme lord. [Professor Petrie found a scarab bearing the cartouche of "Sutekh" Apepi I. at Koptos.—Te.]

He was usually represented as a fully armed warrior, wearing a helmet of circular form, ornamented with two plumes; but he also borrowed the emblematic animal of Sit, the fennec, and the winged griffin which haunted the deserts of the Thebaid. His temples were erected in the cities of the Delta, side by side with the sanctuaries of the feudal gods, both at Bubastis and at Tanis. Tanis, now made the capital, reopened its palaces, and acquired a fresh impetus from the royal presence within its walls. Apophis Aq-nunri, one of its kings, dedicated several tables of offerings in that city, and engraved his cartouches upon the sphinxes and standing colossi of the Pharaohs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by E. Brugsch.



He was, however, honest enough to leave the inscriptions of his predecessors intact, and not to appropriate to himself the credit of works belonging to the Amenemhaits or to Mirmashau. Khiani, who is possibly the Iannas of Manetho, was not, however, so easily satisfied.* The statue bearing his inscription, of which the lower part was discovered by Naville at Bubastis, appears to have been really carved for himself or for one of his contemporaries. It is a work possessing no originality, though of very commendable execution, such as would render it acceptable to any museum; the artist who conceived it took 'his inspiration with considerable cleverness from the best examples turned out by the schools of the Delta under the Sovkhotpfts and the Nofirhotpus. But a small grey granite lion, also of the reign of Khiani, which by a strange fate had found its way to Bagdad, does not raise our estimation of the modelling of animals in the Hyksos period.

* Naville, who reads the name Rayan or Yanra, thinks that this prince must be the Annas or Iannas mentioned by Manetho as being one of the six shepherd-kings of the XVth dynasty. Mr. Petrie proposed to read Khian, Khiani, and the fragment discovered at Gebelein confirms this reading, as well as a certain number of cylinders and scarabs. Mr. Petrie prefers to place this Pharaoh in the VIIIth dynasty, and makes him one of the leaders in the foreign occupation to which he supposes Egypt to have submitted at that time; but it is almost certain that he ought to be placed among the Hyksos of the XVIth dynasty. The name Khiani, more correctly Khiyani or Kheyani, is connected by Tomkins, and Hilprecht with that of a certain Khayanu or Khayan, son of Gabbar, who reigned in Amanos in the time of Salmanasar II., King of Assyria.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Naville.

It is heavy in form, and the muzzle in no way recalls the fine profile of the lions executed by the sculptors of earlier times. The pursuit of science and the culture of learning appear to have been more successfully perpetuated than the fine arts; a treatise on mathematics, of which a copy has come down to us, would seem to have been recopied, if not remodelled, in the twenty-second year of Apophis IL Ausirri. If we only possessed more monuments or documents treating of this period, we should doubtless perceive that their sojourn on the banks of the Nile was instrumental in causing a speedy change in the appearance and character of the Hyksos. The strangers retained to a certain extent their coarse countenances and rude manners: they showed no aptitude for tilling the soil or sowing grain, but delighted in the marshy expanses of the Delta, where they gave themselves up to a semi-savage life of hunting and of tending cattle. The nobles among them, clothed and schooled after the Egyptian fashion, and holding fiefs, or positions at court, differed but little from the native feudal chiefs. We see here a case of what generally happens when a horde of barbarians settles down in a highly organised country which by a stroke of fortune they may have conquered; as soon as the Hyksos had taken complete possession of Egypt, Egypt in her turn took possession of them, and those who survived the enervating effect of her civilization were all but transformed into Egyptians.

If, in the time of the native Pharaohs, Asiatic tribes had been drawn towards Egypt, where they were treated as subjects or almost as slaves, the attraction which she possessed for them must have increased in intensity under the shepherds. They would now find the country in the hands of men of the same races as themselves—Egyptianised, it is true, but not to such an extent as to have completely lost their own language and the knowledge of their own extraction. Such immigrants were the more readily welcomed, since there lurked a feeling among the Hyksos that it was necessary to strengthen themselves against the slumbering hostility of the indigenous population. The royal palace must have more than once opened its gates to Asiatic counsellors and favourites. Canaanites and Bedouin must often have been enlisted for the camp at Avaris. Invasions, famines, civil wars, all seem to have conspired to drive into Egypt not only isolated individuals, but whole families and tribes. That of the Beni-Israel, or Israelites, who entered the country about this time, has since acquired a unique position in the world's history. They belonged to that family of Semitic extraction which we know by the monuments and tradition to have been scattered in ancient times along the western shores of the Persian Gulf and on the banks of the Euphrates. Those situated nearest to Chaldaea and to the sea probably led a settled existence; they cultivated the soil, they employed themselves in commerce and industries, their vessels—from Dilmun, from Magan, and from Milukhkha—coasted from one place to another, and made their way to the cities of Sumer and Accad. They had been civilized from very early times, and some of their towns were situated on islands, so as to be protected from sudden incursions. Other tribes of the same family occupied the interior of the continent; they lived in tents, and delighted in the unsettled life of nomads. There appeared to be in this distant corner of Arabia an inexhaustible reserve of population, which periodically overflowed its borders and spread over the world. It was from this very region that we see the Kashdim, the true Chaldaeans, issuing ready armed for combat,—a people whose name was subsequently used to denote several tribes settled between the lower waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates. It was there, among the marshes on either side of these rivers, that the Aramoans established their first settlements after quitting the desert. There also the oldest legends of the race placed the cradle of the Phoenicians; it was even believed, about the time of Alexander, that the earliest ruins attributable to this people had been discovered on the Bahrein Islands, the largest of which, Tylos and Arados, bore names resembling the two great ports of Tyre and Arvad. We are indebted to tradition for the cause of their emigration and the route by which they reached the Mediterranean. The occurrence of violent earthquakes forced them to leave their home; they travelled as far as the Lake of Syria, where they halted for some time; then resuming their march, did not rest till they had reached the sea, where they founded Sidon. The question arises as to the position of the Lake of Syria on whose shores they rested, some believing it to be the Bahr-i-Nedjif and the environs of Babylon; others, the Lake of Bambykes near the Euphrates, the emigrants doubtless having followed up the course of that river, and having approached the country of their destination on its north-eastern frontier. Another theory would seek to identify the lake with the waters of Merom, the Lake of Galilee, or the Dead Sea; in this case the horde must have crossed the neck of the Arabian peninsula, from the Euphrates to the Jordan, through one of those long valleys, sprinkled with oases, which afforded an occasional route for caravans.* Several writers assure us that the Phoenician tradition of this exodus was misunderstood by Herodotus, and that the sea which they remembered on reaching Tyre was not the Persian Gulf, but the Dead Sea. If this had been the case, they need not have hesitated to assign their departure to causes mentioned in other documents. The Bible tells us that, soon after the invasion of Kudur-lagamar, the anger of God being kindled by the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, He resolved to destroy the five cities situated in the valley of Siddim. A cloud of burning brimstone broke over them and consumed them; when the fumes and smoke, as "of a furnace," had passed away, the very site of the towns had disappeared.** Previous to their destruction, the lake into which the Jordan empties itself had had but a restricted area: the subsidence of the southern plain, which had been occupied by the impious cities, doubled the size of the lake, and enlarged it to its present dimensions. The earthquake which caused the Phoenicians to leave their ancestral home may have been the result of this cataclysm, and the sea on whose shores they sojourned would thus be our Dead Sea.

* They would thus have arrived at the shores of Lake Merom, or at the shores either of the Dead Sea or of the Lake of Gennesareth; the Arab traditions speak of an itinerary which would have led the emigrants across the desert, but they possess no historic value is so far as these early epochs are concerned.

** Gen. xix. 24-29; the whole of this episode belongs to the Jehovistic narrative.

One fact, however, appears to be certain in the midst of many hypotheses, and that is that the Phoenicians had their origin in the regions bordering on the Persian Gulf. It is useless to attempt, with the inadequate materials as yet in our possession, to determine by what route they reached the Syrian coast, though we may perhaps conjecture the period of their arrival. Herodotus asserts that the Tyrians placed the date of the foundation of their principal temple two thousand three hundred years before the time of his visit, and the erection of a sanctuary for their national deity would probably take place very soon after their settlement at Tyre: this would bring their arrival there to about the XXVIIIth century before our era. The Elamite and Babylonian conquests would therefore have found the Phoenicians already established in the country, and would have had appreciable effect upon them.

The question now arises whether the Beni-Israel belonged to the group of tribes which included the Phoenicians, or whether they were of Chaldaean race. Their national traditions leave no doubt upon that point. They are regarded as belonging to an important race, which we find dispersed over the country of Padan-Aram, in Northern Mesopotamia, near the base of Mount Masios, and extending on both sides of the Euphrates.*

* The country of Padan-Aram is situated between the Euphrates and the upper reaches of the Khabur, on both sides of the Balikh, and is usually explained as the "plain" or "table-land" of Aram, though the etymology is not certain; the word seems to be preserved in that of Tell-Faddan, near Harran.

Their earliest chiefs bore the names of towns or of peoples,—N akhor, Peleg, and Serug:* all were descendants of Arphaxad,** and it was related that Terakh, the direct ancestor of the Israelites, had dwelt in Ur-Kashdim, the Ur or Uru of the Chaldaeans.*** He is said to have had three sons—Abraham, Nakhor, and Haran. Haran begat Lot, but died before his father in Ur-Kashdim, his own country; Abraham and Nakhor both took wives, but Abraham's wife remained a long time barren. Then Terakh, with his son Abraham, his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarah,**** went forth from Ur-Kashdim (Ur of the Chaldees) to go into the land of Canaan.

* Nakhor has been associated with the ancient village of Khaura, or with the ancient village of Haditha-en-Naura, to the south of Anah; Peleg probably corresponds with Phalga or Phaliga, which was situated at the mouth of the Khabur; Serug with the present Sarudj in the neighbourhood of Edessa, and the other names in the genealogy were probably borrowed from as many different localities.

** The site of Arphaxad is doubtful, as is also its meaning: its second element is undoubtedly the name of the Chaldaeans, but the first is interpreted in several ways—"frontier of the Chaldaeans," "domain of the Chaldaeans." The similarity of sound was the cause of its being for a long time associated with the Arrapakhitis of classical times; the tendency is now to recognise in it the country nearest to the ancient domain of the Chaldaeans, i.e. Babylonia proper.

*** Ur-Kashdim has long been sought for in the north, either at Orfa, in accordance with the tradition of the Syrian Churches still existing in the East, or in a certain Ur of Mesopotamia, placed by Ammianus Marcellinus between Nisibis and the Tigris; at the present day Halevy still looks for it on the Syrian bank of the Euphrates, to the south-east of Thapsacus. Rawlin-son's proposal to identify it with the town of Uru has been successively accepted by nearly all Assyriologists. Sayce remarks that the worship of Sin, which was common to both towns, established a natural link between them, and that an inhabitant of Uru would have felt more at home in Harran than in any other town.

**** The names of Sarah and Abraham, or rather the earlier form, Abram, have been found, the latter under the form Abiramu, in the contracts of the first Chaldaean empire.

And they came unto Kharan, and dwelt there, and Terakh died in Kharan.* It is a question whether Kharan is to be identified with Harran in Mesopotamia, the city of the god Sin; or, which is more probable, with the Syrian town of Hauran, in the neighbourhood of Damascus. The tribes who crossed the Euphrates became subsequently a somewhat important people. They called themselves, or were known by others, as the 'Ibrim, or Hebrews, the people from beyond the river;** and this appellation, which we are accustomed to apply to the children of Israel only, embraced also, at the time when the term was most extended, the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Ishmaelites, Midianites, and many other tribes settled on the borders of the desert to the east and south of the Dead Sea.

* Gen. xi. 27-32. In the opinion of most critics, verses 27, 31 32 form part of the document which was the basis of the various narratives still traceable in the Bible; it is thought that the remaining verses bear the marks of a later redaction, or that they may be additions of a later date. The most important part of the text, that relating the migration from Ur-Kashdim to Kharan, belongs, therefore, to the very oldest part of the national tradition, and may be regarded as expressing the knowledge which the Hebrews of the times of the Kings possessed concerning the origin of their race.

** The most ancient interpretation identified this nameless river with the Euphrates; an identification still admitted by most critics; others prefer to recognise it as being the Jordan. Halevy prefers to identify it with one of the rivers of Damascus, probably the Abana.

These peoples all traced their descent from Abraham, the son of Terakh, but the children of Israel claimed the privilege of being the only legitimate issue of his marriage with Sarah, giving naive or derogatory accounts of the relations which connected the others with their common ancestor; Ammon and Moab were, for instance, the issue of the incestuous union of Lot and his daughters. Midian and his sons were descended from Keturah, who was merely a concubine, Ishmael was the son of an Egyptian slave, while the "hairy" Esau had sold his birthright and the primacy of the Edomites to his brother Jacob, and consequently to the Israelites, for a dish of lentils. Abraham left Kharan at the command of Jahveh, his God, receiving from Him a promise that his posterity should be blessed above all others. Abraham pursued his way into the heart of Canaan till he reached Shechem, and there, under the oaks of Moreh, Jahveh, appearing to him a second time, announced to him that He would give the whole land to his posterity as an inheritance. Abraham virtually took possession of it, and wandered over it with his flocks, building altars at Shechem, Bethel, and Mamre, the places where God had revealed Himself to him, treating as his equals the native chiefs, Abimelech of Gerar and Melchizedek of Jerusalem,* and granting the valley of the Jordan as a place of pasturage to his nephew Lot, whose flocks had increased immensely.** His nomadic instinct having led him into Egypt, he was here robbed of his wife by Pharaoh.***

* Cf. the meeting with Melchizedek after the victory over the Elamites (Gen. xiv. 18-20) and the agreement with Abimelech about the well (Gen. xxi. 22-34). The mention of the covenant of Abraham with Abimelech belongs to the oldest part of the national tradition, and is given to us in the Jehovistic narrative. Many critics have questioned the historical existence of Melchizedek, and believed that the passage in which he is mentioned is merely a kind of parable intended to show the head of the race paying tithe of the spoil to the priest of the supreme God residing at Jerusalem; the information, however, furnished by the Tel- el-Amarna tablets about the ancient city of Jerusalem and the character of its early kings have determined Sayce to pronounce Melchizedek to be an historical personage.

** Gen. xiii. 1-13. Lot has been sometimes connected of late with the people called on the Egyptian monuments Rotanu, or Lotanu, whom we shall have occasion to mention frequently further on: he is supposed to have been their eponymous hero. Lotan, which is the name of an Edomite clan, (Gen. xxxvi. 20, 29), is a racial adjective, derived from Lot.

*** Gen. xii. 9-20, xiii. 1. Abraham's visit to Egypt reproduces the principal events of that of Jacob.



Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph brought home by Lortet.

On his return he purchased the field of Ephron, near Kirjath-Arba, and the cave of Machpelah, of which he made a burying-place for his family* Kirjath-Arba, the Hebron of subsequent times, became from henceforward his favourite dwelling-place, and he was residing there when the Elamites invaded the valley of Siddim, and carried off Lot among their prisoners.

* Gen. xiii. 18, xxiii. (Elohistic narrative). The tombs of the patriarchs are believed by the Mohammedans to exist to the present day in the cave which is situated within the enclosure of the mosque at Hebron, and the tradition on which this belief is based goes back to early Christian times.

Abraham set out in pursuit of them, and succeeded in delivering his nephew.* God (Jahveh) not only favoured him on every occasion, but expressed His will to extend over Abraham's descendants His sheltering protection. He made a covenant with him, enjoining the use on the occasion of the mysterious rites employed among the nations when effecting a treaty of peace. Abraham offered up as victims a heifer, a goat, and a three-year-old ram, together with a turtle-dove and a young pigeon; he cut the animals into pieces, and piling them in two heaps, waited till the evening. "And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham; and lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him," and a voice from on high said to him: "Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.... And it came to pass, that when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces." Jahveh sealed the covenant by consuming the offering.

* Gen. xiv. 12-24. 2 Gen. xv., Jehovistic narrative.

Two less important figures fill the interval between the Divine prediction of servitude and its accomplishment. The birth of one of them, Isaac, was ascribed to the Divine intervention at a period when Sarah had given up all hope of becoming a mother. Abraham was sitting at his tent door in the heat of the day, when three men presented themselves before him, whom he invited to repose under the oak while he prepared to offer them hospitality. After their meal, he who seemed to be the chief of the three promised to return within a year, when Sarah should be blessed with the possession of a son. The announcement came from Jahveh, but Sarah was ignorant of the fact, and laughed to herself within the tent on hearing this amazing prediction; for she said, "After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?" The child was born, however, and was called Isaac, "the laugher," in remembrance of Sarah's mocking laugh.* There is a remarkable resemblance between his life and that of his father.** Like Abraham he dwelt near Hebron,*** and departing thence wandered with his household round the wells of Beersheba. Like him he was threatened with the loss of his wife.

* Gen. xviii. 1-16, according to the Jehovistic narrative. Gen. xvii. 15-22 gives another account, in which the Elohistic writer predicts the birth of Isaac in a different way. The name of Isaac, "the laugher," possibly abridged from Isaak-el, "he on whom God smiles," is explained in three different ways: first, by the laugh of Abraham (ch. xvii. 17); secondly, by that of Sarah (xviii. 12) when her son's birth was foretold to her; and lastly, by the laughter of those who made sport of the delayed maternity of Sarah (xxi. 6).

** Many critics see in the life of Isaac a colourless copy of that of Abraham, while others, on the contrary, consider that the primitive episodes belonged to the former, and that the parallel portions of the two lives were borrowed from the biography of the son to augment that of his father.

*** Gen. xxxv. 27, Elohistic narrative.

Like him, also, he renewed relations with Abimelech of Gerar.* He married his relative Rebecca, the granddaughter of Nakhor and the sister of Laban.** After twenty years of barrenness, his wife gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob, who contended with each other from their mother's womb, and whose descendants kept up a perpetual feud. We know how Esau, under the influence of his appetite, deprived himself of the privileges of his birthright, and subsequently went forth to become the founder of the Edomites. Jacob spent a portion of his youth in Padan-Aram; here he served Laban for the hands of his cousins Rachel and Leah; then, owing to the bad faith of his uncle, he left him secretly, after twenty years' service, taking with him his wives and innumerable flocks. At first he wandered aimlessly along the eastern bank of the Jordan, where Jahveh revealed Himself to him in his troubles. Laban pursued and overtook him, and, acknowledging his own injustice, pardoned him for having taken flight. Jacob raised a heap of stones on the site of their encounter, known at Mizpah to after-ages as the "Stone of Witness "—G-al-Ed (Galeed).*** This having been accomplished, his difficulties began with his brother Esau, who bore him no good will.

* Gen. xxvi. 1—31, Jehovistic narrative. In Gen. xxv. 11 an Elohistic interpolation makes Isaac also dwell in the south, near to the "Well of the Living One Who seeth me."

** Gen. xxiv., where two narratives appear to have been amalgamated; in the second of these, Abraham seems to have played no part, and Eliezer apparently conducted Rebecca direct to her husband Isaac (vers. 61-67).

*** Gen. xxxi. 45-54, where the writer evidently traces the origin of the word Gilead to Gal-Ed. We gather from the context that the narrative was connected with the cairn at Mizpah which separated the Hebrew from the Aramaean speaking peoples.

One night, at the ford of the Jabbok, when he had fallen behind his companions, "there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day," without prevailing against him. The stranger endeavoured to escape before daybreak, but only succeeded in doing so at the cost of giving Jacob his blessing. "What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for thou hast striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed." Jacob called the place Peniel, "for," said he, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." The hollow of his thigh was "strained as he wrestled with him," and he became permanently lame.* Immediately after the struggle he met Esau, and endeavoured to appease him by his humility, building a house for him, and providing booths for his cattle, so as to secure for his descendants the possession of the land. From this circumstance the place received the name of Succoth—the "Booths "—by which appellation it was henceforth known. Another locality where Jahveh had met Jacob while he was pitching his tents, derived from this fact the designation of the "Two Hosts"—Mahanaim.** On the other side of the river, at Shechem,*** at Bethel,**** and at Hebron, near to the burial-place of his family, traces of him are everywhere to be found blent with those of Abraham.

* Gen. xxxii. 22-32. This is the account of the Jehovistic writer. The Elohist gives a different version of the circumstances which led to the change of name from Jacob to Israel; he places the scene at Bethel, and suggests no precise etymology for the name Israel (Gen. xxxv. 9-15).

** Gen. xxxii. 2, 3, where the theophany is indicated rather than directly stated.

*** Gen. xxxiii. 18-20. Here should be placed the episode of Dinah seduced by an Amorite prince, and the consequent massacre of the inhabitants by Simeon and Levi (Gen. xxxiv.). The almost complete dispersion of the two tribes of Simeon and Levi is attributed to this massacre: cf. Gen. xlix. 5-7.

**** Gen. xxxv. 1-15, where is found the Elohistic version (9-15) of the circumstances which led to the change of name from Jacob to Israel.

By his two wives and their maids he had twelve sons. Leah was the mother of Keuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zabulon; Gad. and Asher were the children of his slave Zilpah; while Joseph and Benjamin were the only sons of Rachel—Dan and Naphtali being the offspring of her servant Bilhah. The preference which his father showed to him caused Joseph to be hated by his brothers; they sold him to a caravan of Midianites on their way to Egypt, and persuaded Jacob that a wild beast had devoured him. Jahveh was, however, with Joseph, and "made all that he did to prosper in his hand." He was bought by Potiphar, a great Egyptian lord and captain of Pharaoh's guard, who made him his overseer; his master's wife, however, "cast her eyes upon Joseph," but finding that he rejected her shameless advances, she accused him of having offered violence to her person. Being cast into prison, he astonished his companions in misfortune by his skill in reading dreams, and was summoned to Court to interpret to the king his dream of the seven lean kine who had devoured the seven fat kine, which he did by representing the latter as seven years of abundance, of which the crops should be swallowed up by seven years of famine. Joseph was thereupon raised by Pharaoh to the rank of prime minister. He stored up the surplus of the abundant harvests, and as soon as the famine broke out, distributed the corn to the hunger-stricken people in exchange for their silver and gold, and for their flocks and fields. Hence it was,that the whole of the Nile valley, with the exception of the lands belonging to the priests, gradually passed into the possession of the royal treasury. Meanwhile his brethren, who also suffered from the famine, came down into Egypt to buy corn. Joseph revealed himself to them, pardoned the wrong they had done him, and presented them to the Pharaoh. "And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan: and take your father and your household, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land." Jacob thereupon raised his camp and came to Beersheba, where he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac; and Jahveh commanded him to go down into Egypt, saying, "I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt: and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes." The whole family were installed by Pharaoh in the province of Goshen, as far as possible from the centres of the native population, "for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians."

In the midst of these stern yet touching narratives in which the Hebrews of the times of the Kings delighted to trace the history of their remote ancestors, one important fact arrests our attention: the Beni-Israel quitted Southern Syria and settled on the banks of the Nile. They had remained for a considerable time in what was known later as the mountains of Judah. Hebron had served as their rallying-point; the broad but scantily watered wadys separating the cultivated lands from the desert, were to them a patrimony, which they shared with the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns. Every year, in the spring, they led their flocks to browse on the thin herbage growing in the bottoms of the valleys, removing them to another district only when the supply of fodder was exhausted. The women span, wove, fashioned garments, baked bread, cooked the viands, and devoted themselves to the care of the younger children, whom they suckled beyond the usual period. The men lived like the Bedouin—periods of activity alternating regularly with times of idleness, and the daily routine, with its simple duties and casual work, often gave place to quarrels for the possession of some rich pasturage or some never-failing well.

A comparatively ancient tradition relates that the Hebrews arrived in Egypt during the reign of Aphobis, a Hyksos king, doubtless one of the Apopi, and possibly the monarch who restored the monuments of the Theban Pharaohs, and engraved his name on the sphinxes of Amenemhait III. and on the colossi of Mirmashau.* The land which the Hebrews obtained is that which, down to the present day, is most frequently visited by nomads, who find there an uncertain hospitality.

* The year XVII. of Apophis has been pointed out as the date of their arrival, and this combination, probably proposed by some learned Jew of Alexandria, was adopted by Christian chroniclers. It is unsupported by any fact of Egyptian history, but it rests on a series of calculations founded on the information contained in the Bible. Starting from the assumption that the Exodus must have taken place under Ahmosis, and that the children of Israel had been four hundred and thirty years on the banks of the Nile, it was found that the beginning of their sojourn fell under the reign of the Apophis mentioned by Josephus, and, to be still more correct, in the XVIIth year of that prince.

The tribes of the isthmus of Suez are now, in fact, constantly shifting from one continent to another, and their encampments in any place are merely temporary. The lord of the soil must, if he desire to keep them within his borders, treat them with the greatest prudence and tact. Should the government displease them in any way, or appear to curtail their liberty, they pack up their tents and take flight into the desert. The district occupied by them one day is on the next vacated and left to desolation. Probably the same state of things existed in ancient times, and the border nomes on the east of the Delta were in turn inhabited or deserted by the Bedouin of the period. The towns were few in number, but a series of forts protected the frontier. These were mere village-strongholds perched on the summit of some eminence, and surrounded by a strip of cornland. Beyond the frontier extended a region of bare rock, or a wide plain saturated with the ill-regulated surplus water of the inundation. The land of Goshen was bounded by the cities of Heliopolis on the south, Bubastis on the west, and Tanis and Mendes on the north: the garrison at Avaris could easily keep watch over it and maintain order within it, while they could at the same time defend it from the incursions of the Monatiu and the Hiru-Shaitu.*

* Goshen comprised the provinces situated on the borders of the cultivable cornland, and watered by the infiltration of the Nile, which caused the growth of a vegetation sufficient to support the flocks during a few weeks; and it may also have included the imperfectly irrigated provinces which were covered with pools and reedy swamps after each inundation.

The Beni-Israel throve in these surroundings so well adapted to their traditional tastes. Even if their subsequent importance as a nation has been over-estimated, they did not at least share the fate of many foreign tribes, who, when transplanted into Egypt, waned and died out, or, at the end of two or three generations, became merged in the native population.* In pursuing their calling as shepherds, almost within sight of the rich cities of the Nile valley, they never forsook the God of their fathers to bow down before the Enneads or Triads of Egypt; whether He was already known to them as Jahveh, or was worshipped under the collective name of Elohim, they served Him with almost unbroken fidelity even in the presence of Ra and Osiris, of Phtah and Sutkhu.

* We are told that when the Hebrews left Ramses, they were "about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks and herds, even very much cattle" (Exod. xii. 37, 38).

The Hyksos conquest had not in any way modified the feudal system of the country. The Shepherd-kings must have inherited the royal domain just as they found it at the close of the XIVth dynasty, but doubtless the whole Delta, from Avaris to Sais, and from Memphis to Buto, was their personal appanage. Their direct authority probably extended no further south than the pyramids, and their supremacy over the fiefs of the Said was at best precarious. The turbulent lords who shared among them the possession of the valley had never lost their proud or rebellious spirit, and under the foreign as under the native Pharaohs regulated their obedience to their ruler by the energy he displayed, or by their regard for the resources at his disposal. Thebes had never completely lost the ascendency which it obtained over them at the fall of the Memphite dynasty. The accession of the Xoite dynasty, and the arrival of the Shepherd-kings, in relegating Thebes unceremoniously to a second rank, had not discouraged it, or lowered its royal prestige in its own eyes or in those of others: the lords of the south instinctively rallied around it, as around their natural citadel, and their resources, combined with its own, rendered it as formidable a power as that of the masters of the Delta. If we had fuller information as to the history of this period, we should doubtless see that the various Theban princes took occasion, as in the Heracleopolitan epoch, to pick a quarrel with their sovereign lord, and did not allow themselves to be discouraged by any check.*

* The length of time during which Egypt was subject to Asiatic rule is not fully known. Historians are agreed in recognizing the three epochs referred to in the narrative of Manetho as corresponding with (1) the conquest and the six first Hyksos kings, including the XVth Theban dynasty; (2) the complete submission of Egypt to the XVIth foreign dynasty; (3) the war of independence during the XVIIth dynasty, which consisted of two parallel series of kings, the one Shepherds (Pharaohs), the other Thebans. There has been considerable discussion as to the duration of the oppression. The best solution is still that given by Erman, according to whom the XVth dynasty lasted 284, the XVIth 234, and the XVIIth 143 years, or, in all, 661 years. The invasion must, therefore, have taken place about 2346 B.C., or about the time when the Elamite power was at its highest. The advent of the XVIth dynasty would fall about 2062 B.C., and the commencement of the war of independence between 1730 and 1720 B.C.

The period of hegemony attributed by the chronicles to the Hyksos of the XVIth dynasty was not probably, as far as they were concerned, years of perfect tranquillity, or of undisputed authority. In inscribing their sole names on the lists, the compilers denoted merely the shorter or longer period during which their Theban vassals failed in their rebellious efforts, and did not dare to assume openly the title or ensigns of royalty. A certain Apophis, probably the same who took the prsenomen of Aqnunri, was reigning at Tanis when the decisive revolt broke out, and Saqnunri Tiuaa I., who was the leader on the occasion, had no other title of authority over the provinces of the south than that of hiqu, or regent. We are unacquainted with the cause of the outbreak or with its sequel, and the Egyptians themselves seem to have been not much better informed on the subject than ourselves. They gave free flight to their fancy, and accommodated the details to their taste, not shrinking from the introduction of daring fictions into the account. A romance, which was very popular with the literati four or five hundred years later, asserted that the real cause of the war was a kind of religious quarrel. "It happened that the land of Egypt belonged to the Fever-stricken, and, as there was no supreme king at that time, it happened then that King Saqnunri was regent of the city of the south, and that the Fever-stricken of the city of Ra were under the rule of Ra-Apopi in Avaris. The Whole Land tribute to the latter in manufactured products, and the north did the same in all the good things of the Delta. Now, the King Ra-Apopi took to himself Sutkhu for lord, and he did not serve any other god in the Whole Land except Sutkhu, and he built a temple of excellent and everlasting work at the gate of the King Ra-Apopi, and he arose every morning to sacrifice the daily victims, and the chief vassals were there with garlands of flowers, as it was accustomed to be done for the temple of Phra-Harmakhis." Having finished the temple, he thought of imposing upon the Thebans the cult of his god, but as he shrank from employing force in such a delicate matter, he had recourse to stratagem. He took counsel with his princes and generals, but they were unable to propose any plan. The college of diviners and scribes was more complaisant: "Let a messenger go to the regent of the city of the South to tell him: The King Ra-Apopi commands thee: 'That the hippopotami which are in the pool of the town are to be exterminated in the pool, in order that slumber may come to me by day and by night.' He will not be able to reply good or bad, and thou shalt send him another messenger: The King Ra-Apopi commands thee: 'If the chief of the South does not reply to my message, let him serve no longer any god but Sutkhu. But if he replies to it, and will do that which I tell him to do, then I will impose nothing further upon him, and I will not in future bow before any other god of the Whole Land than Amonra, king of the gods!'" Another Pharaoh of popular romance, Nectanebo, possessed, at a much later date, mares which conceived at the neighing of the stallions of Babylon, and his friend Lycerus had a cat which went forth every night to wring the necks of the cocks of Memphis:* the hippopotami of the Theban lake, which troubled the rest of the King of Tanis, were evidently of close kin to these extraordinary animals.

* Found in a popular story, which came in later times to be associated with the traditions connected with AEsop.

The sequel is unfortunately lost. We may assume, however, without much risk of error, that Saqnunri came forth safe and sound from the ordeal; that Apopi was taken in his own trap, and saw himself driven to the dire extremity of giving up Sutkhu for Amonra or of declaring war. He was likely to adopt the latter alternative, and the end of the manuscript would probably have related his defeat.



Drawn from the original by Faucher-Gudin.

Hostilities continued for a century and a half from the time when Saqnunri Tiuaa declared himself son of the Sun and king of the two Egypts. From the moment in which he surrounded his name with a cartouche, the princes of the Said threw in their lot with him, and the XVIIth dynasty had its beginning on the day of his proclamation. The strife at first was undecisive and without marked advantage to either side: at length the Pharaoh whom the Greek copyists of Manetho call Alisphragmouthosis, defeated the barbarians, drove them away from Memphis and from the western plains of the Delta, and shut them up in their entrenched camp at Avaris, between the Sebennytic branch of the Nile and the Wady Tumilat. The monuments bearing on this period of strife and misery are few in number, and it is a fortunate circumstance if some insignificant object tarns up which would elsewhere be passed over as unworthy of notice. One of the officials of Tiuaa I. has left us his writing palette, on which the cartouches of his master are incised with a rudeness baffling description.

We have also information of a prince of the blood, a king's son, Tuau, who accompanied this same Pharaoh in his expeditions; and the Gizeh Museum is proud of having in its possession the i wooden sabre which this individual placed on the mummy of a certain Aqhoru, to enable him to defend himself against the monsters of the lower world. A second Saqnunri Tiuaa succeeded the first, and like him was buried in a little brick pyramid on the border of the Theban necropolis. At his death the series of rulers was broken, and we meet with several names which are difficult to classify—Sakhontinibri, Sanakhtu-niri, Hotpuri, Manhotpuri, Eahotpu.*

* Hotpuri and Manhotpuri are both mentioned in the fragments of a fantastic story (copied during the XXth dynasty), bits of which are found in most European museums. In one of these fragments, preserved in the Louvre, mention is made of Hotpuri's tomb, certainly situated at Thebes; we possess scarabs of this king, and Petrie discovered at Coptos a fragment of a stele bearing his name and titles, and describing the works which he executed in the temples of the town. The XIVth year of Manhotpuri is mentioned in a passage of the story as being the date of the death of a personage born under Hotpuri. These two kings belong, as far as we are able to judge, to the middle of the XVIIth dynasty; I am inclined to place beside them the Pharaoh Nubhotpuri, of whom we possess a few rather coarse scarabs.

As we proceed, however, information becomes more plentiful, and the list of reigns almost complete. The part which the princesses of older times played in the transmission of power had, from the XIIth dynasty downward, considerably increased in importance, and threatened to overshadow that of the princes. The question presents itself whether, during these centuries of perpetual warfare, there had not been a moment when, all the males of the family having perished, the women alone were left to perpetuate the solar race on the earth and to keep the succession unbroken. As soon as the veil over this period of history begins to be lifted, we distinguish among the personages emerging from the obscurity as many queens as kings presiding over the destinies of Egypt. The sons took precedence of the daughters when both were the offspring of a brother and sister born of the same parents, and when, consequently, they were of equal rank; but, on the other hand, the sons forfeited this equality when there was any inferiority in origin on the maternal side, and their prospect of succession to the throne diminished in proportion to their mother's remoteness from the line of Ra. In the latter case all their sisters, born of marriages which to us appear incestuous, took precedence of them, and the eldest daughter became the legitimate Pharaoh, who sat in the seat of Horus on the death of her father, or even occasionally during his lifetime. The prince whom she married governed for her, and discharged those royal duties which could be legally performed by a man only,—such as offering worship to the supreme gods, commanding the army, and administering justice; but his wife never ceased to be sovereign, and however small the intelligence or firmness of which she might be possessed, her husband was obliged to leave to her, at all events on certain occasions, the direction of affairs.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Plinders Petrie.

At her death her children inherited the crown: their father had formally to invest the eldest of them with royal, authority in the room of the deceased, and with him he shared the externals, if not the reality, of power.* It is doubtful whether the third Saq-nunri Tiuaa known to us—he who added an epithet to his name, and was commonly known as Tiuaqni, "Tiuaa the brave"** —united in his person all the requisites of a Pharaoh qualified to reign in his own right. However this may have been, at all events his wife, Queen Ahhotpu, possessed them.

* Thus we find Thutmosis I. formally enthroning his daughter Hat-shopsitu, towards the close of his reign.

** It would seem that the epithet Qeni ( = the brave, the robust) did not form an indispensable part of his name, any more than Ahmosi did of the names of members of the family of Ahmosis, the conqueror of the Shepherds. It is to him that the Tiuaa cartouche refers, which is to be found on the statue mentioned by Daninos-Pasha, published by Bouriant, and on which we find Ahmosis, a princess of the same name, together with Queen Ahhotpu I.

His eldest son Ahmosu died prematurely; the two younger brothers, Kamosu and a second Ahmosu, the Amosis of the Greeks, assumed the crown after him. It is possible, as frequently happened, that their young sister Ahmasi-Nofritari entered the harem of both brothers consecutively.



Drawn by Bouclier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

We cannot be sure that she was united to Kamosu, but at all events she became the wife of Ahmosis, and the rights which she possessed, together with those which her husband had inherited from their mother Ahhotpu, gave him a legal claim such as was seldom enjoyed by the Pharaohs of that period, so many of them being sovereigns merely de facto, while he was doubly king by right.

Tiuaqni, Kamosu,* and Ahmosis** quickly succeeded each other. Tiuaqni very probably waged war against the Shepherds, and it is not known whether he fell upon the field of battle or was the victim of some plot; the appearance of his mummy proves that he died a violent death when about forty years of age. Two or three men, whether assassins or soldiers, must have surrounded and despatched him before help was available. A blow from an axe must have severed part of his left cheek, exposed the teeth, fractured the jaw, and sent him senseless to the ground; another blow must have seriously injured the skull, and a dagger or javelin has cut open the forehead on the right side, a little above the eye. His body must have remained lying where it fell for some time: when found, decomposition had set in, and the embalming had to be hastily performed as best it might. The hair is thick, rough, and matted; the face had been shaved on the morning of his death, but by touching the cheek we can ascertain how harsh and abundant the hair must have been. The mummy is that of a fine, vigorous man, who might have lived to a hundred years, and he must have defended himself resolutely against his assailants; his features bear even now an expression of fury. A flattened patch of exuded brain appears above one eye, the forehead is wrinkled, and the lips, which are drawn back in a circle about the gums, reveal the teeth still biting into the tongue. Kamosu did not reign long;'we know nothing of the events of his life, but we owe to him one of the prettiest examples of the Egyptian goldsmith's art—the gold boat mounted on a carriage of wood and bronze, which was to convey his double on its journeys through Hades. This boat was afterwards appropriated by his mother Ahhotpu.

* With regard to Kamosu, we possess, in addition to the miniature bark which was discovered on the sarcophagus of Queen Ahhotpu, and which is now in the museum at Gizeh, a few scattered references to his worship existing on the monuments, on a stele at Gizeh, on a table of offerings in the Marseilles Museum, and in the list of princes worshipped by the "servants of the Necropolis." His pyramid was at Drah- Abu'l-Neggah, beside those of Iluaa and Amenothes I.

** The name Amosu or Ahmosi is usually translated "Child of the Moon-god" the real meaning is, "the Moon-god has brought forth," "him" or "her" (referring to the person who bears the name) being understood.

Ahmosisa must have been about twenty-five years of age when he ascended the throne; he was of medium height, as his body when mummied measured only 5 feet 6 inches in length, but the development of the neck and chest indicates extraordinary strength. The head is small in proportion to the bust, the forehead low and narrow, the cheek-bones project, and the hair is thick and wavy. The face exactly resembles that of Tiuacrai, and the likeness alone would proclaim the affinity, even if we were ignorant of the close relationship which united these two Pharaohs.* Ahmosis seems to have been a strong, active, warlike man; he was successful in all the wars in which we know him to have been engaged, and he ousted the Shepherds from the last towns occupied by them. It is possible that modern writers have exaggerated the credit due to Ahmosis for expelling the Hyksos. He found the task already half accomplished, and the warfare of his forefathers for at least a century must have prepared the way for his success; if he appears to have played the most important role in the history of the deliverance, it is owing to our ignorance of the work of others, and he thus benefits by the oblivion into which their deeds have passed. Taking this into consideration, we must still admit that the Shepherds, even when driven into Avaris, were not adversaries to be despised. Forced by the continual pressure of the Egyptian armies into this corner of the Delta, they were as a compact body the more able to make a protracted resistance against very superior forces.

* Here again my description is taken from the present appearance of the mummy, which is now in the Gizeh Museum. It is evident, from the inspection which I have made, that Ahmosis was about fifty years old at the time of his death, and, allowing him to have reigned twenty-five years, he must have been twenty-five or twenty-six when he came to the throne.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

The impenetrable marshes of Menzaleh on the north, and the desert of the Red Sea on the south, completely covered both their wings; the shifting network of the branches of the Nile, together with the artificial canals, protected them as by a series of moats in front, while Syria in their rear offered them inexhaustible resources for revictualling their troops, or levying recruits among tribes of kindred race. As long as they could hold their ground there, a re-invasion was always possible; one victory would bring them to Memphis, and the whole valley would again fall under then-suzerainty. Ahmosis, by driving them from their last stronghold, averted this danger. It is, therefore, not without reason that the official chroniclers of later times separated him from his ancestors and made him the head of a new dynasty.



His predecessors had in reality been merely Pharaohs on sufferance, ruling in the south within the confines of their Theban principality, gaining in power, it is true, with every generation, but never able to attain to the suzerainty of the whole country. They were reckoned in the XVIIth dynasty together with the Hyksos sovereigns of uncontested legitimacy, while their successors were chosen to constitute the XVIIIth, comprising Pharaohs with full powers, tolerating no competitors, and uniting under their firm rule the two regions of which Egypt was composed—the possessions of Sit and the possessions of Horus.*

* Manetho, or his abridgers, call the king who drove out the Shepherds Amosis or Tethmosis. Lepsius thought he saw grounds for preferring the second reading, and identified this Tethmosis with Thutmosi Manakhpirri, the ihutmosis III. of our lists; Ahmosis could only have driven out the greater part of the nation. This theory, to which Naville still adheres, as also does Stindorff, was disputed nearly fifty years ago by E. de Rouge; nowadays we are obliged to admit that, subsequent to the Vth year of Ahmosis, there were no longer Shepherd-kings in Egypt, even though a part of the conquering race may have remained in the country in a state of slavery, as we shall soon have occasion to observe.

The war of deliverance broke out on the accession of Ahmosis, and continued during the first five years of his reign.* One of his lieutenants, the king's namesake—Ahmosi-si-Abina—who belonged to the family of the lords of Nekhabit, has left us an account, in one of the inscriptions in his tomb, of the numerous exploits in which he took part side by side with his royal master, and thus, thanks to this fortunate record of his vanity, we are not left in complete ignorance of the events which took place during this crucial struggle between the Asiatic settlers and their former subjects. Nekhabit had enjoyed considerable prosperity in the earlier ages of Egyptian history, marking as it did the extreme southern limit of the kingdom, and forming an outpost against the barbarous tribes of Nubia. As soon as the progress of conquest had pushed the frontier as far south as the first cataract, it declined in importance, and the remembrance of its former greatness found an echo only in proverbial expressions or in titles used at the Pharaonic court.* The nomes situated to the south of Thebes, unlike those of Middle Egypt, did not comprise any extensive fertile or well-watered territory calculated to enrich its possessors or to afford sufficient support for a large population: they consisted of long strips of alluvial soil, shut in between the river and the mountain range, but above the level of the inundation, and consequently difficult to irrigate.

* This is evident from passage in the biography of Ahmosi- si-Abina, where it is stated that, after the taking of Avaris, the king passed into Asia in the year VI. The first few lines of the Great Inscription of El-Kab seem to refer to four successive campaigns, i.e. four years of warfare up to the taking of Avaris, and to a fifth year spent in pursuing the Shepherds into Syria.

** The vulture of Nekhabit is used to indicate the south, while the urseus of Buto denotes the extreme north; the title Ra-Nekhnit, "Chief of Nekhnit," which is, hypothetically, supposed to refer to a judicial function, is none the less associated with the expression, "Nekhabit- Tekhnit," as an indication of the south, and, therefore, can be traced to the prehistoric epoch when Nekhabit was the primary designation of the south.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

MODELLED AND PAINTED IN THE GRAND TEMPLE. PHILAE ISLAND.

These nomes were cultivated, moreover, by a poor and sparse population. It needed a fortuitous combination of circumstances to relieve them from their poverty-stricken condition—either a war, which would bring into prominence their strategic positions; or the establishment of markets, such as those of Syene and Elephantine, where the commerce of neighbouring regions would naturally centre; or the erection, as at Ombos or Adfu, of a temple which would periodically attract a crowd of pilgrims. The principality of the Two Feathers comprised, besides Nekhabit, at least two such towns—Anit, on its northern boundary, and Nekhnit almost facing Nekhabit on the left bank of the river.* These three towns sometimes formed separate estates for as many independent lords:** even when united they constituted a fiefdom of but restricted area and of slender revenues, its chiefs ranking below those of the great feudal princes of Middle Egypt. The rulers of this fiefdom led an obscure existence during the whole period of the Memphite empire, and when at length Thebes gained the ascendency, they rallied to the latter and acknowledged her suzerainty. One of them, Sovkunakhiti, gained the favour of Sovkhotpu III. Sakhemuaztauiri, who granted him lands which made the fortune of his house; another of them, Ai, married Khonsu, one of the daughters of Sovkumsauf I. and his Queen Nubkhas, and it is possible that the misshapen pyramid of Qulah, the most southern in Egypt proper, was built for one of these royally connected personages.

* Nekhnit is the Hieraconpolis of Greek and Roman times, Hait-Bauku, the modern name of which is Kom-el-Ahmar.

** Pihiri was, therefore, prince of Nekhabit and of Anit at one and the same time, whereas the town of Nekhnit had its own special rulers, several of whom are known to us from the tombs at Kom-el-Ahmar.

The descendants of Ai attached themselves faithfully to the Pharaohs of the XVIIth dynasty, and helped them to the utmost in their struggle against the invaders. Their capital, Nekhabit, was situated between the Nile and the Arabian chain, at the entrance to a valley which penetrates some distance into the desert, and leads to the gold-mines on the Red Sea. The town profited considerably from the precious metals brought into it by the caravans, and also from the extraction of natron, which from prehistoric times was largely employed in embalming. It had been a fortified place from the outset, and its walls, carefully repaired by successive ages, were still intact at the beginning of this century. They described at this time a rough quadrilateral, the two longer sides of which measured some 1900 feet in length, the two shorter being about one-fourth less. The southern face was constructed in a fashion common in brick buildings in Egypt, being divided into alternate panels of horizontally laid courses, and those in which the courses were concave; on the north and west facades the bricks were so laid as to present an undulating arrangement running uninterruptedly from one end to the other. The walls are 33 feet thick, and their average height 27 feet; broad and easy steps lead to the foot-walk on the top. The gates are unsymmetrically placed, there being one on the north, east, and west sides respectively; while the southern side is left without an opening. These walls afforded protection to a dense but unequally distributed population, the bulk of which was housed towards the north and west sides, where the remains of an immense number of dwellings may still be seen. The temples were crowded together in a small square enclosure, concentric with the walls of the enceinte, and the principal sanctuary was dedicated to Nekhabit, the vulture goddess, who gave her name to the city.* This enclosure formed a kind of citadel, where the garrison could hold out when the outer part had fallen into the enemy's hands. The times were troublous; the open country was repeatedly wasted by war, and the peasantry had more than once to seek shelter behind the protecting ramparts of the town, leaving their lands to lie fallow.