tion is an inviting one, but, as Professor Breasted himself remarks, such precarious combinations should not be made without a full realization of their hazardous character.'

Of the actual Hyksôs sovereigns, there are relics of Khyan, of at least two Apepas, and of one king whose name reads as Yaqeb-her, or Jacob-her, a title which has obvious resemblance to a familiar Bible name. Though they came in as Semitic conquerors, bringing with them their own civilization and their Semitic god Sutekh, they must have been rapidly Egyptianized by the advanced civilization around them.

Indications of this process are not wanting. They use Pharaonic titles of regular form, and have scarabs like the other Pharaohs; their statues are carved in the familiar royal style, and they dedicate temples much as did their predecessors of the native stock. One of the Apepas records at Bubastis how he had erected 'many columns and a gate of brass to this god,' while of another the First Sallier Papyrus says: 'King Apepa built for Sutekh a temple of goodly and enduring workmanship; King Apepa [appointed] festivals, days for making sacrifice to Sutekh [with all rites] that are performed in the temple of RaHarmakhis.' Sutekh himself became speedily assimilated to the Egyptian god Set. The 'wisdom of the Egyptians' was at least not wholly extinguished during the period of foreign dominance, a well-known mathematical papyrus dating from the reign of the first Apepa.

During this time of Hyksôs rule, the later members of the family of princes which is known as the Seventeenth Dynasty had been maintaining a kind of vassal sovereignty at Thebes. The earlier members of the dynasty are not known, but it emerges into notice with a succession of three kings bearing the name of Seqenen-ra. One of these was the contemporary of a Hyksôs King Apepa; and of their

[BIG80, OR [B.C

relations we have a curious picture in the First Sallier Papyrus. Apepa evidently desires to bully the Theban prince either into abject submission or open rebellion, and to this end he sends a message to him, which, so far as it can be made out, seems to consist of a complaint that the sleep of the Hyksôs king in his Delta capital was broken by the splashing of the hippopotami in the canals at Thebes, 600 miles away. On the receipt of this preposterous complaint, the prince of the south land called to him his great chiefs, his captains, and his prudent generals, and he told unto them all the words about which King Apepa had sent unto him. And behold, they were silent with one accord in great grief, neither knew they to reply good or evil.' The rest of the story is lost, and we are left to imagine how the diplomacy over this original casus belli proceeded. Probably this is more or less fiction, a story invented by some later imagination to account for the outbreak of war. At the same time there may be a germ of fact in it. The Hyksôs king may have felt that the power of the Theban princes was becoming a menace to his own supremacy, and may have used any pretext to pick a quarrel in order to break the strength of the southern dynasty before it was too late. War apparently followed, and was prosecuted during several reigns; for the third Seqenen-ra, whose mummy was found at Deir-el-Bahri, had been slain in battle, most likely during this lengthened contest. Segenen-ra III. was succeeded by Ka-mes, whose spearhead, axe, and dagger, found in the coffin of Queen Aahhotep, suggest a warlike prince who would carry on the struggle in which Seqenen-ra had fallen; but of the incidents of the war in his reign we know nothing.

At last under Aahmes, the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the long conflict reached its close, and the foreign usurpers were finally driven out of the land. For the concluding stage of the war we have, fortunately, an

authority of very high value in an inscription in the tomb of one of the warriors of the Pharaoh Aahmes, the admiral Aahmes, son of Abana, of El-Kab. This 'captain-general of marines,' as he styles himself, details his service under King Aahmes, and the various honours which fell to him for his bravery. After a statement of his earlier days in the service and his promotion for valour, he goes on: 'One sat down before the city of Hat-uart, and I was valorous on foot in presence of His Majesty. I was promoted to the ship called Shining in Memphis. We fought on the water in the Pazedku canal of Hat-uart. Here I captured and carried off a hand, mention of which

FIG. 13.-ASIATIC PRISONERS DRAWING STONE.

was made to the royal reporter, and there was given to me the golden collar of valour. There was fighting a second time at this place, and a second time I captured and carried off a hand, and there was given to me a second time the gold of valour. There was fighting at Ta-Kemt at the south of this city, and I carried away prisoner a live man. . . . Mention of this was made to the royal reporter, and I was presented with gold once more. We took Hat-uart, and I carried off as captives from thence one man and three women, in all four heads; and His Majesty gave them to me for slaves. We sat down before Sharhana in the year five, and His Majesty took it. I carried off from thence captives two women and one hand; and there was given me the gold of valour.'* Thus it appears that under King Aahmes the struggle

*Petrie, ii. 22.

came to a head with the siege of the great Hyksôs stronghold of Avaris, and that after several separate assaults and probably a long siege the city was captured, and the Hyksôs were driven out. The mention of the capture of Sharhana-Sharuhen, in Southern Palestinewould suggest that the expelled usurpers had found a refuge there, and that Aahmes was determined to leave no enemy so near to his borders.

The influence of the Hyksôs upon Egypt must have been very great. To them, no doubt, was due the introduction of the horse and the war-chariot, destined to be of such importance in the future Egyptian wars of conquest; to the strife with them the native race owed that military training which enabled Tahutmes I. and Tahutmes III. to enter upon the career of conquest which established Egypt as mistress over the whole of Syria up to the River Euphrates; and, not least, it was their mingling with the native population that began that Semitizing of the race which was hastened by the conquests of the great soldier-kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty, and culminated in the extraordinary reign of Akhenaten.

Thus, finally, after a long period of misery, of foreign tyranny, and of war, the kingdom stood once more free and united under a king who had proved his strength. Another period of glory, of greatness, and then of decay, lay before the land—a period distinguished above those which had preceded it by the fact that now Egypt began to step forth definitely beyond her eastern boundary, and to take rank as a world-power-the first of the great empires of the East.

CHAPTER VI

THE EMPIRE-BUILDERS

THE task which lay before the earlier rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty was practically the making of a new Egypt. Between the long period of internecine strife which had preceded the coming of the Hyksôs, the devastations wrought during the barbarian rule, and the inevitable wastage of the War of Independence, the whole fabric of the State must have been wrecked, even as the temples of its gods had been ravaged by the foreign conquerors. The task of reconstruction can have been no light one; but Aahmes and his immediate successors had on their side certain factors which had not favoured the earlier reconstruction under the Antefs and Mentuhoteps. The trouble with the great feudal lords no longer existed. Very probably the bulk of them had been killed out in the period of civil strife, or in the Hyksôs War, as the turbulent English nobles were thinned during the Wars of the Roses; at all events, we hear of no further trouble from the aristocracy, with the possible exception of one movement reported during the closing stages of the Hyksôs struggle. The new Egyptian State was a despotism pure and simple, in which the will of the divine Pharaoh, 'the good god,' was law.

Again, the Pharaoh had now at his command a brave and efficient standing army. We have no longer to