CHAPTER V.
THE HYKSOS AND THE RESTORATION OF THE EGYPTIAN KINGDOM

In spite of the union of Upper and Lower Egypt, and the extension of the Egyptian dominion up the Nile as far as Semne and Kumne, the kingdom of the pyramids, of the lake of Moeris, and the labyrinth succumbed to the attack of a foreign enemy. According to Josephus, Manetho, in the second book of his Egyptian History, gave the following account: "There was a king Amyntimaeus. In his reign the divine power, I know not why, was ungracious. From the East came an unexpected swarm of men belonging to a tribe of no great reputation, with a bold resolution of taking the country. This they succeeded in doing without much trouble. They made themselves masters of the ruling princes, ruthlessly set fire to the cities, and destroyed the shrines of the gods. Towards the inhabitants they behaved in a most hostile manner; some they put to the sword, from others they carried away their wives and children into slavery. At last they made one of their own number, by name Salatis, their king. He took up his abode at Memphis, collected tribute from the Upper and Lower country, and placed garrisons in the most suitable places. The eastern districts were fortified most strongly, since he foresaw that the Assyrians, who were then growing in power, would be seized with the desire of invading his country. In the Saitic (Sethroitic) province he found a city excellently adapted for his purpose, lying eastwards of the river from Bubastis, and called Avaris, from some old legend or another. This he surrounded with the strongest walls, filled it with inhabitants, and placed there the bulk of his armed soldiers, 240,000 men, as a garrison. In the summer he visited this stronghold to measure the corn, pay his soldiers, and exercise his troops in order to strike fear in those who dwelt beyond the fortress. After a reign of nineteen years Salatis died. After him reigned a king of the name of Beon, for forty-four years, then Apachnas for thirty-six years and seven months, then Apophis for sixty-one years, and Annas for fifty years and one month, and finally Assis for forty-nine years and two months. These six were their first rulers, and they sought more and more to destroy Egypt to the very root. The whole tribe was called Hyksos, i. e. shepherd kings. For in the sacred language hyk means 'king,' and sos in the ordinary dialect is 'a shepherd,' and from composition of the two comes the word Hyksos. Some authorities say that they were Arabs." "The shepherd kings named above and their descendants are supposed by Manetho to have ruled over Egypt for 511 years. Yet he afterwards tells us that kings arose in the district of Thebes and the rest of Egypt, between whom and the shepherds there was a long and severe struggle. In the reign of a king named Misphragmuthosis the shepherds were defeated by the king, driven out of Egypt, and confined in one place, 10,000 arouræ in extent, the name of which was Avaris. This space, as Manetho tells us, the shepherds surrounded with a great and strong wall, in order to preserve their possessions and their booty in security. But Tuthmosis, the son of Misphragmuthosis, attempted to take Avaris by force, and led out 480,000 men before the walls. When he found that the investment made but little way, he came to terms with the shepherds, permitting them to leave Egypt uninjured and go whither they would. On these terms they departed from Egypt with their families, and goods, not less than 240,000 strong, and went into the Syrian desert, and through fear of the Assyrians, who were then the great power in Asia, they built a city in the land now called Judæa, large enough to contain their numbers, and named it Jerusalem."

The short excerpts made by Africanus and Eusebius from the Egyptian History of Manetho only tell that "there were certain foreign kings, Phenicians, who took Memphis, and built a city in the Sethroitic province, from which they went forth and subdued the Egyptians." Africanus gives six, Eusebius four, names of these foreign kings, which are somewhat the same in sound as those in Josephus, only in Africanus Apophis is the last in the list, not last but two.¹⁷⁹

If Josephus has transcribed and reproduced Manetho correctly there is an obvious contradiction in his narrative. The first shepherd king, Salatis, fortified and peopled Avaris, and placed there a garrison of 240,000 men, for protection against the Assyrians. Then after a lapse of 511 (or according to the excerpt of Africanus of 953) years, when the shepherds had lost Egypt they were shut up in a place containing 10,000 arouræ, i. e. a square of twenty-five miles, of the name of Avaris, which they surrounded with a strong wall in order to keep their possessions and booty in security. At last they were compelled to retire even from this, and march out in just the same strength as the garrison which Salatis had placed so long before at Avaris, towards Judæa, and here they founded a second city of Jerusalem, also for protection against the Assyrians.

We may leave the Assyrians out of the question, and assume that the reference to them has been transferred by Manetho from the later position which Assyria took up towards Syria and Egypt in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. to those earlier times; we may also regard the turn of the narrative, which makes the shepherds the ancestors of the Jews and builders of Jerusalem, as a combination invented by Manetho, for in the tradition of the Hebrews there is no hint that their ancestors had once ruled over Egypt for centuries, and Jerusalem down to the time of David was merely the stronghold of a small tribe, the Jebusites. Still it remains inexplicable that these shepherds, who, after they had taken Egypt, or, in order to take it, fortified Avaris, and garrisoned it with 240,000 men, should fortify Avaris a second time centuries later, in order to maintain their last possession in Egypt, and at last march out of Avaris in exactly the same numbers as the garrison originally settled there. Shepherds, i. e. nomads, do not make war by building fortresses as a base of operations for extending their conquests; they had nothing to gain by conquering Egypt for the mere purpose of shutting up the whole or the greater part of their numbers with their flocks in a fortified place. On the other hand, it might have seemed advisable to them, when they had subjugated Egypt, to possess a fortified place on the eastern border, in order to keep up a connection with their tribe; and it was natural that the shepherds, when the Egyptians had risen against them with success, and they were no longer able to hold the Delta, should attempt to maintain themselves in the flats and swamps of the Eastern Delta; and when forced to act on the defensive should fortify their camp at Avaris in this district.

In the narrative of Manetho we can accept no more than the facts that Egypt succumbed to the attack of the shepherds, and that they, to take the lower estimate, ruled over Egypt for five centuries. Herodotus also learnt in Egypt that the shepherd Philitis had once pastured his flocks at Memphis. There is nothing wonderful in such an occurrence. Nomad tribes dwelt in the deserts on the east and west of Egypt, to whose poverty and scanty means of subsistence the abundance and cultivation of Egypt must have presented a continual temptation. That temptation would increase in force when the tribes became more numerous, when unusual heat diminished the springs in the oases, and robbed these shepherds of the produce of their scanty agriculture. The tradition of the Hebrews tells us that their ancestor Abraham went to Egypt when "there was a famine in the land," and the sons of Jacob bought corn in Egypt.

According to Manetho's account, the tribes from whom the attack proceeded were not famous, and he regarded the invaders as coming from the east. The peninsula of Sinai, Northern Arabia, and the Syrian desert sheltered in the Amalekites, Horites, Edomites, and Midianites, tribes who were rendered hardy and warlike by life in the desert, tribal feuds, and raids for plunder; and these may very well have united in considerable number under some leader of military genius, and attempted the invasion of the rich river-valley in their neighbourhood. According to Manetho, the invaders were Phenicians or Arabians. The name of the shepherd Philitis, given by Herodotus, points to a Semitic tribe, and one immediately bordering on Egypt on the Syrian coast – the Philistines (Pelischtim), from whom the whole Syrian coast was called by the Greeks Palæstina. The name of the stronghold of the shepherds, Avaris, or Abaris, recurs in Hauara, a town of Arabia on the shore of the Red Sea.¹⁸⁰ If the shepherds who conquered Egypt had not been Semitic, and closely related to the Hebrews, Manetho would not have made them the ancestors of the Hebrews and founders of Jerusalem after their expulsion from Egypt.

After the conquest, the chiefs of the shepherds ruled over Egypt. The inscriptions on the monuments repeatedly denote certain tribes in the east of Egypt by the name Schasu, which in the later language is contracted into Sôs. Schasu means shepherds. Moreover, in old Egyptian, the head of a family, a tribe, and a province is called hak, and Hyksos thus can be explained by Haku-schasu, chiefs of the shepherds, shepherd kings, as Josephus, Eusebius, and Africanus render it.¹⁸¹ What Manetho tells us of the destruction of the cities and shrines, the slaughter and enslaving of the Egyptians may be correct for the time of the war and conquest. But this hostility and destruction cannot, as he intimates, have gone on for centuries, for, on the restoration of the Pharaohs, we find ancient Egypt unimpaired in population, unchanged in language, customs, and manners, in civilisation and art. If the national development was interrupted and repressed by the Hyksos, it still remained uninjured at the core, so far as we have the means of judging.

When at a subsequent period the kings of Ethiopia subjugated Egypt, the warrior caste, the soldiers settled in the country by the Pharaohs, were deprived of their lands. The same thing may have taken place on the irruption of the shepherds. The warriors of the Pharaohs fell in battle, were carried away as prisoners, or deprived of their weapons; and in their place came the victorious army of the shepherds. Of these many would soon return home laden with the booty of Egypt, others pitched their tents in the conquered land, and settled in the greenest meadows, more especially in the eastern provinces of the Delta, nearest their own home, on the Tanitic and Pelusiac arms of the Nile, and Lake Menzaleh. The chief of the immigrants became the head of the conquerors and the conquered. The latter would render the same abject homage to their new masters as they rendered before and after to their native kings; and the power which the conquered willingly acknowledged in the chief would exalt his position even among the conquerors. As time went on, the culture and civilisation of Egypt had their natural effect on the barbarous invaders, and when the storm of conquest was over, we may assume that Egypt was no worse off under the rule of the shepherd kings than at later periods under the rule of the Persians, the Ptolemies, and the Romans.

That the new princes, soon after the conquest, attempted to approximate their position as much as possible to that of the ancient Pharaohs may be concluded from the mere fact that Manetho was in a position to give a catalogue of their reigns by years and months. But this is proved more definitely still by certain monuments. In the neighbourhood of Lake Menzaleh, among the ruins of the ancient Tanis, the modern San, two old statues have been discovered, the forms and lineaments of which exhibit a physique different from the Egyptian. In the heads of four sphinxes, discovered in the same place, it is thought that we may recognise the portraits of four shepherd kings, and a colossus discovered at Tel Mokdam is said to bear the following inscription: – "The good god, the star of both worlds, the child of the sun, Sel Salati, beloved by Sutech, the lord of Hauar.¹⁸²"

The six shepherd kings enumerated by Josephus from the Egyptian History of Manetho reigned, according to the dates given by the latter, for 260 years, i. e. from the year 2101 B.C., in which, on Lepsius's arrangement, the irruption of the shepherds took place, till the year 1842 B.C. Their successors must therefore have ruled over Egypt for 251 years more, i. e., down to the year 1591 B.C. But in the time of the later shepherd kings, native princes again arose in Upper Egypt, although subject to tribute. A papyrus of the British Museum tells us: "It so happened that the land of Egypt became the possession of her enemies, and when this took place there was no king. And behold Raskenen became king of the country in the south. The enemy were in possession of the fortress of Aamu (p. 120), and their chief, Ra Apepi was at Hauar. The whole land paid tribute to him, and rendered service of all kinds, and brought to him the produce of Lower Egypt. King Apepi chose Sutech as his lord, and served no other god, and built him a temple of firm and lasting structure."¹⁸³

The power of the native princes at Thebes must have been gradually strengthened till the successors of Raskenen were in a position to press forward towards Lower Egypt, and place limits on the sway of the shepherd kings, and finally to drive them entirely out of Egypt. Josephus has already told us from Manetho that the princes of Thebes and the rest of Egypt rose up against the shepherds, and in consequence a long and severe struggle took place between them. In Manetho's list the series of shepherd kings is followed by Amosis of Thebes (1684-1659 B.C.). Hence we may assume that it was under this prince that the kingdom of Thebes got the upper hand, and the power of the shepherd kings was restricted to the Eastern Delta.

This conclusion is established by the evidence of monuments. There Amosis is again mentioned as king of Upper and Lower Egypt, and two inscriptions of the twenty-second year of Amosis (1662 B.C.), in the quarries of Massara, inform us that these quarries were opened to restore the temples at Memphis and the temple of Ammon at Thebes.¹⁸⁴