The Historians' History of the World 01

The above-named Neferhotep, who reigned eleven years, seems to have been the most powerful ruler of the period; this great ruler appears with his family in inscriptions in the district of the First Cataract (Assuan, Konosso, Sehel) and in the temple of Karnak, also in a large and very interesting inscription at Abydos, and the museum of Bologna has a statue of him, as well as of his second son, Sebekhotep V (Kha-nefer-Ra). The elder, Sehathor, died after a reign of a few months. There was a colossal granite statue of Sebekhotep V found at Tanis, another far in the Nubian country on the island of Arqo, far above the Second Cataract, and the Louvre has two more. There is frequent mention of him at Karnak. The three last rulers of this house are of no great importance. Far less is known of the next rulers than of the above. Their names, probably about a hundred, are divided into dynasties and fill nearly five divisions of the Turin papyrus. Where we have dates, there are, on the whole, about twenty-two, more or less recognisable; they show that the reigns were of short duration, a few months, one or two years, and, far more rarely, three or four years. There is only one case of a longer reign, and that was in the case of the first ruler of the new house, Mer-nefer-Ra Ai, who reigned thirteen years, eight months, and eighteen days.

It follows that only a very few of these kings are known to us through the monuments, and the majority only by insignificant memorials. Their names appear only occasionally in the stone quarries at Hammamat, or in Karnak and Abydos, or they have statues, which are far inferior to those of the preceding epoch.

And yet we have from this, as well as from the preceding epoch, a line of graves and tomb steles in Abydos, as well as numerous rock tombs in El-Kab (Eleithyia), and probably also the great rock graves of Assiut (Lycopolis), which attest the position and power of the high priests of Anubis and the governors of the nome. They are as important for this period as the graves of Beni-Hasan are for the XIIth Dynasty, but unfortunately they are in a much worse condition, and much poorer in historical information.

THE FOREIGN RULE

The facts above mentioned clearly show that the Egypt of this period was governed under conditions similar to those existing in the Roman Empire in the third century after Christ.

In fact, as a fuller light is thrown upon Egyptian history, there seems to have been a whole line of dynasties, evidently local, coexistent with the chief king at Thebes. If Neferhotep and Sebekhotep V still reigned over Egypt from Nubia to Tanis, the Delta was lost under their successors. It is not an improbable theory of Stern’s that Manetho’s XIVth Dynasty of seventy-six kings from Xoïs (Sakha), in the western Delta, included Libyan foreign rulers who occupied the Delta.

But the chief invaders of this time were an Asiatic race who made a violent attack on the power of the Pharaohs at Thebes. They were the Mentu, or, as they are now called, the Mentu of Satet, that is “the barbarous Asiatic country.” They were called the Shepherds or Hyksos by their contemporaries and by Manetho.

Of what race the Hyksos were, is not known. Some points in the account show that we have here to do with an invasion of Bedouin races, one of those frequent raids upon cultivated land by nomads of the desert.

Among the latest opinions on the subject is one that ascribes to the Hyksos a partly Semitic and partly Turanian origin, and accounts for their settling in Egypt by their being crowded out of western Asia in the numerous race conflicts of which that part of the world was the arena. The expelled people could find no resting-place among the wild hordes of Syria, and moved on to the peaceful and fertile valley of the Nile.

It is certain that Semitic and Canaanitish, not Arabic, elements penetrated to Egypt under the Hyksos. The Egyptian language was subsequently sprinkled with Canaanitish words; the specifically Canaanitish divinities Baal Astarte (in the feminine form), Anit, Reshpu, etc., were afterwards extensively worshipped in the eastern Delta, and in the whole of Egypt. In the next centuries we find Canaanitish proper names everywhere.

More accurate information on the invasion of the Hyksos is wanting. It is certain that they settled in Lower Egypt, where they founded a state which they ruled according to the Egyptian fashion. Their chief seats were Avaris (Ha-Uar), the border fortress built or enlarged by them, which is Pelusium, or a place a little to the south; and Tanis, the powerful capital of the eastern Delta, ornamented by numerous buildings of the XIIth Dynasty and the real residence of the Hyksos kings.