Mentu, Kharu, Khita, or Shasu, would have been powerless against a united Egypt, and their undisciplined forces would have dashed themselves in vain against the serried phalanx of the trained Egyptian troops. But when at Thebes pretender rose up against pretender, when disturbance followed disturbance, and scarcely any prince succeeded in maintaining even the semblance of authority for more than two or three years,1 then the failure of vital power at the heart of the nation was not slow in communicating itself to the extremities. Whether the first result was the revolt of the Western Delta, and the second the conquest by foreigners of the more eastern tracts, or whether the order of these two movements was inverted, and foreign invasion produced a domestic revolt, there are no sufficient data to determine; but it would seem that, long before the feeble and multitudinous princes of the thirteenth dynasty had ceased to reign in Thebes, the Western Delta had become independent under a line of native princes who held their court at Xoïs, and the Eastern Delta had been occupied by invaders of nomadic habits and probably of Semitic race. At Xoïs we are told that there were seventy-six kings in a hundred and eighty-four years, which would imply a state of continual disturbance in that locality. Towards the East two Shepherd dynasties bore rule, Manetho's fifteenth and sixteenth, either contemporaneously in two adjacent kingdoms, or consecutively over the whole Eastern Delta. But the main seat of empire was still See the list of kings in Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. p. 188, 1st ed. After Mennefer-ra Ai (the twentyninth king of the dynasty) no monarch is said to have reigned more than three years and a month or two. Lenormant, Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne, vol. i. p. 359. Manetho ap. Syncell. Chronograph. vol. i. p. 61, A. CH. XVIII.] EGYPT INVADED FROM THE EAST. 183 supposed to be Thebes. It was not till a fresh movement took place among the tribes upon the eastern frontier, and a fresh invasion was made in force, that the Old Empire was regarded as destroyed, and a foreign people as established in possession of the entire country. CHAPTER XIX. THE MIDDLE EMPIRE-CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY THE HYKSOS. Certainty of the Hyksos Conquest. Growing Power of the Tribes to the East of the Delta-the Sakti-the Kharu-the Shasu. Temptations offered by Egypt to Invaders. First Lodgments effected in her Territory. Consequent Excitement among the Eastern Tribes. Question of the Nationality of the Hyksos. Circumstances of the Conquest. Character of the Hyksos' Rule. Advantages which it conferred on Egypt. Reigns of the Hyksos Kings. Apepi's Quarrel with RaSekenen. War ensues and ends in the Expulsion of the Hyksos. Supposed Synchronism of Joseph with Apepi. Ξένοι βασιλεῖς, οἱ καὶ Μέμφιν εἷλον, καὶ ἐν τῷ Σεθροίτῃ νομῷ πόλιν ἔκτισαν, ἀφ' ἧς ὁρμώμενοι Αἰγυπτίους ἐχειρώσαντο.-MANETHO ap. SYNCELL. Chronograph. vol. i. p. 61, B. THE Conquest of Egypt by an alien people, who continued to be the dominant power in the country for above two centuries, was asserted by Manetho in the most positive terms,' and, though long misdoubted by modern critics, has become through recent discovery an acknowledged fact. The Middle Empire of Manetho 2 a time of humiliation for the Egyptians, a time of stagnation, barren of art, barren of literature, barren of monuments-is at the present day admitted on all hands, and controversy is shifted to the questions of 1 Ap. Syncell. Chronograph. vol. i. p. 61, B; Joseph. Contr. Apion. i. 14. 2 See Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. ii. pp. 416-18. Birch, Ancient Egypt, pp. 74 77; Lenormant, Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne, vol. i. pp. 359-65; Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. ii. pp. 42496; Wilkinson in the author's Herodotus, vol. ii. pp. 350-2; Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. pp. 227 CH. XIX.] REALITY OF THE MIDDLE EMPIRE.' 185 the nationality of the conquerors, the true character of their domination, and the real length of the time that it lasted. Two native documents, one on stone, the other on papyrus,1 have proved beyond a question the fact of the foreign rule; two names of the alien rulers have been recovered from the inscriptions of the country; and though a deep obscurity still rests upon the period, upon the persons of the conquerors and the circumstances of the conquest-an obscurity which we can scarcely hope to see dispelled-yet the Middle Empire' has at any rate now taken its place in history as a definite reality requiring consideration, inquiry, and, so far as is possible, description. It would seem that a dark cloud had long lain along the north-eastern frontier of Egypt, in that tolerably broad tract which joins Africa to Asia, where alone the land of Mizraim was readily assailable, and which it was impossible to block against a determined enemy. On this side Egypt had had her first wars. To gain and hold the mineral treasures of the Sinaitic peninsula, it had been necessary to reduce to subjection its existing occupants; and so far back as the time of Seneferu, the natives of these parts, called by the Egyptians sometimes Anu, sometimes Pet, sometimes Mentu, had been attacked by the arms of the Pharaohs, 60, 1st ed.; Stuart Poole in Contem- | Rougé, in the Mémoires de l'Institut, porary Review for February 1879, pp. 570-81; &c. The one on stone is the inscription of A ahmes which exists in a rock-tomb at El-Kaab (Eileithyia), and which has been published in extenso by Lepsius (Denkmäler, pt. iii. pl. 11) and translated by M. Le Page Renouf and others. (See Records of the Past, vol. vi. pp. 7-10; Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. pp. 248-51, 1st ed.; De Prem. Série, vol. iii.; &c.) The See above, vol. i. p. 39. despoiled of territory, and forced to make acknowledgment of subjection. At this early date the Asiatics were few and weak, and the Egyptians experienced no difficulty in maintaining their authority over the Sinaitic region and the line of road which led to it. But by the time of the twelfth dynasty population had greatly increased in these parts; and we have found1 Amenem-hat I. compelled to build a wall' or fortress upon his north-eastern frontier, for the purpose of 'keeping off the Sakti,' who had, previously to his reign, occupied the tract directly to the east of the Delta. Subsequently two other races are noticed as making their appearance in the same quarter. These are the Kharu or Khalu, a maritime and commercial people, who seem to have made their way along the coast from Philistia, or perhaps from even further north, and the Shasu, a nation of nomads, whose main habitat was the tract directly south and south-east of the Dead Sea. The word Kharu, 1, is perhaps connected with the Hebrew Cherethite,' but the ethnographic application is wider, and the Kharu may be best regarded as the Syrians generally, or the inhabitants of the maritime tract extending from the mouth of the Orontes to Lake Serbonis. The Shasu, }}~~ 3 were most likely Arabs, and corresponded to the modern Bedouins of this region; they are especially connected with Atuma or Edom, and appear to have roamed over the whole of the desert region between Palestine on the one hand and Egypt upon the other, 1 Supra, p. 144. 2 So Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. p. 221, 1st ed.; Birch in Records of the Past, vol. viii. p. 46. See above, vol. i. p. 111. Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. pp. 215-16, 1st ed. |