Art. 3.-RELIGION AND EMPIRE IN ANCIENT EGYPT. 1. A History of Egypt from the earliest times to the Persian Conquest. By J. H. Breasted. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1906.

2. Ancient Records: Egypt. By J. H. Breasted. Five vols. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1906.

3. Hyksos and Israelite Cities. By W. M. Flinders Petrie. London: Quaritch, 1906.

4. The Tomb of Iouiya and Touiyou. By Theodore M. Davis. London: Constable, 1907.

5. The Rock Tombs of El Amarna. By N. de G. Davies. Five vols. Egypt Exploration Fund, 1902–7.

IN Egypt archæological discoveries follow so rapidly one upon another that it is difficult for the archæologists themselves, and quite impossible for the ordinary reader and traveller, to keep abreast of the times. In the following article we shall make no attempt to cover the whole ground of these advances, but shall confine ourselves to two periods of Egypt's long life. So much of importance has been learnt during the last two or three years with regard to the rule of the Hyksos, or 'Shepherd Kings,' that some account of the evidence relating to these most interesting heroes of a forgotten tale may here be given; and secondly, we may pass in review the recent discoveries which have thrown so much fresh light on the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

At the fall of the Twelfth Dynasty (B.c. 1788) Egypt lay open to the invader. When the kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean were beginning to feel their power, and when a combination of circumstances was causing vast changes in the racial and political conditions of Syria, the Nile valley found itself shaken by revolutions and impoverished by civil wars. The country was divided into numerous small kingdoms; and, as in the eight and ninth centuries A.D., when Egypt was ruled by 77 viceroys in the space of 118 years, or in the second and third centuries when 80 Roman emperors governed the Nile in 90 years, so here the historian is confronted with the names of about 118 kings whose reigns cannot have occupied a period of more than 150 years. But, whereas the viceroys and the emperors followed one another in a long sequence,

these petty Pharaohs held sway over small districts; and three or four of them were often contemporaneous. The date of the fall of the Twelfth Dynasty is now astronomically fixed beyond question at about the year 1788 B.C. ; and the accession of the Eighteenth Dynasty and the expulsion of the Hyksos is also fixed astronomically at a date not later than 1580 B.C. We must allow some fifty years for the reigns of the important kings at the beginning of the Thirteenth Dynasty, who rose from among the local dynasts to the position of overlords; and this brings us to about the year 1740 as the earliest possible date for the entrance into Egypt of the conquering Hyksos hordes.

According to the ancient historians, the Hyksos kings were six in number; and their united reigns covered the almost inconceivably long period of 260 years. Of these kings only the last three are known to us on contemporary Egyptian monuments. Jonias is certainly to be identified with the Khyan of hieroglyphs; Apophis is the Apepa whose remains are not rare; and Assis seems to be either the well-known Shesha or else the Asu whose name was found recently on the rocks near Silwa in Upper Egypt. Of the three earlier kings nothing is known in Egypt. Now the reigns of Apophis, Assis, and Jonias occupied a period of 160 years; thus Jonias came to the throne about the year 1740 B.C., which, as has been said, is the earliest possible date for the beginning of the Hyksos rule on the Nile. Instead, however, of discarding the historians' statements as rubbish on this account, it may be suggested that the three earlier kings, Salatis, Beon, and Apachnas, governed the Hyksos previous to their entry into Egypt, Salatis ruling in Syria as the contemporary of the Pharaoh Amenemhat III of the Twelfth Dynasty. In this case we must suppose that the various kings of this age, whose names are found upon scarabs and sometimes upon monuments, as for example, Setaapehti-Nubti, Jacobher, and Khenzer, who are generally called Hyksos kings, were in reality vassal princes of the three great Syrian Pharaohs.

It is only of recent years that Egyptologists have grasped the extent of the power of the Hyksos. It was difficult to understand why the rulers of this line did not live on the Nile, but placed their capital at a point in the

eastern Delta from which both Egypt and Syria could be commanded; and how it was that, when driven from Egypt, they maintained themselves in Palestine for so many years. But when monuments of Jonias were found on the one hand at Cnossos in Crete, and on the other hand at Baghdad, it began to be perceived that the titles which these kings gave themselves, such as 'Encompasser of the Lands' and 'Ruler of the Countries,' were not merely Oriental exaggerations. These kings were lords of Syria as well as of Egypt; and there must have been many other kingdoms which were tributary to them.

Meagre as the data are' (says Prof. Breasted in his new 'History of Egypt'), 'one cannot contemplate them without seeing conjured up before him the vision of a vanished empire which once stretched from the Euphrates to the First Cataract of the Nile, an empire of which all other evidence has perished, for the reason that Avaris, the capital of its rulers, was in the Delta, where, like so many other Delta cities, it suffered a destruction so complete that we cannot even locate the spot on which it once stood.'

There is something peculiarly interesting in the study of this forgotten people, whose kings created the first world-empire that history records. Their nationality still remains a mystery; and it is uncertain whether they were a Syrian or an Arabian race. Such evidence as exists leads one to picture them as a barbaric, uncultured horde of semi-nomadic warriors, expert in the use of the bow and arrow, and not unacquainted with the chariot. Their rulers must have been hard-living, dexterous generals, whose powers of organisation were of the highest order. Their armies terrorised Egypt and Syria; and the fear of them was felt even in the Greek Islands. Having no culture of their own, it was as Pharaohs of a conquered Egypt that they announced themselves to the world, their names written in hieroglyphs, their titles for the most part those of the old kings of the Nile valley, and their splendour that of the Egyptian court. Mighty with the vigour of a savage and healthy life, they drove the degenerate races of the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean like chaff before them; they towered for awhile over the palaces and temples of Egypt, over the citadels of Syria and Palestine, and over the kingdoms of

the sea; but soon they took to themselves the wealth and the luxury of their vassals; and finally, losing their energy, they were hurled back whence they came by the renovated Egyptians, and the world knew them no more.

If we accept the early historians' record of this line of kings, and regard as accurate the years attributed to them, Jonias must be considered as the chieftain by whom Egypt was conquered, and Apophis as the king by whom it was lost. The widespread remains left by Jonias or Khyan indicate that he was the great general of his line under whom the Hyksos first became a world-power; and ancient Egyptian folk-tales are agreed that Apophis was the ruler against whom the Egyptians successfully revolted. It may be hoped that further excavations in Egypt and Syria will bring to light more relics of this great line of kings; for that they were, as scourges of the civilised world, the largest factors in the history of these centuries, cannot now be doubted. We are grateful to Prof. Breasted for the short but masterly chapter in his history which deals with this fascinating period; but before the historian can further interpret the tale of battle and adventure, splendour and power, of which we now can hear such faint echoes, the spade of the excavator will have to be busy in many lands.

Very welcome, therefore, is Professor Petrie's memoir which gives an account of the excavation of a Hyksos camp at Tell-el-Yehudiyeh in the eastern Delta. At last an actual work of this obscure race has been bared before us; and some idea may now be obtained of the methods of warfare employed by the invaders ere their feet had been firmly placed upon the soil of Egypt. The camp consists of an area of open ground, 1500 feet across, enclosed by an embankment 200 feet thick at the base, and faced with a slope of white stucco.

'The makers' (says Prof. Petrie) 'knew nothing of brickwork, or even of timber-construction; and a gateway did not enter into their defensive system. They had formed their tactics entirely on earthwork alone, defending themselves by archery over long slopes of approach; and the only way into their camp was by a sloping road over 200 feet long, which rose up to the top of the bank. Within a year or two they borrowed the walling from the Egyptians, and threw out flanking walls to defend the entrance gangway more completely. And in a

generation or two they finally gave up the long slopes and archery defence, and made the skilled masons of Egypt build a great stone wall with about 80,000 tons of the finest limestone in large blocks.'

This camp Prof. Petrie believes to be the great Avaris itself, though he allows that the identification cannot be regarded as certain. There are, indeed, several objections to be offered to this conclusion. Where, one may ask, are the remains of the great Hyksos kings, if this is the site of their capital? Great temples were built by these monarchs; but not a fragment of any such buildings was brought to light in these excavations. Though strategically Tell-el-Yehudiyeh would have been a favourable site for a capital, documentary evidence does not place Avaris in this neighbourhood, nor does it permit one to regard its area as being so small as that of the newly-found camp. Be this as it may, the first Hyksos ruin has been discovered; and this fact gives room for hope that ere long the tale of these lords of the earth may be told.

The

While the Hyksos kings ruled Egypt from their Delta capital, a line of purely Egyptian Pharaohs managed the affairs of Thebes and its neighbourhood. The third king of this line was named Sekenenra Ta-aa-Ken; and it was under him that the revolt against the Hyksos began. But the first attempt at emancipation failed. An ancient legend tells how the Hyksos monarch and the vassal king came to blows, the actual casus belli being some trivial matter connected with a pool of hippopotami at Thebes which the foreign king wished for some unknown reason to abolish, and the Egyptian king wished to retain. result of the quarrel is to be traced on the mummy of Sekenenra, which is now preserved in the Cairo Museum. The body is covered with wounds; the head is terribly battered; and the tongue is bitten between the teeth in the agony of death. We may conjecture that the king fell in the rebellion; and for a time, no doubt, the Hyksos were again masters of the situation. But the dynasty continued; and a son of Sekenenra, King Kames, seems to have extended his power southwards, for his name has lately been found on the rocks near Abu Simbel. Kames was married, according to Egyptian custom, to his sister, Aah-Hotep; and their son Aahmes expelled the Hyksos and founded the Eighteenth Dynasty.