RESULTS OP EXCAVATIONS AT BUBASTIS. 11 



of their people was Hyksos, which means shepherd kings ; for 

 Hyk signifies in the sacred language a king, and Sos in the 

 demotic is shepherd and shepherds. Some say they were 

 Arabs . . ." 



Arabs or Phoenicians are the names most frequently applied 

 to them by the ancient authors. Recent researches seem to 

 point as their native place to Mesopotamia, where at that time 

 important events took place. We know that about that 

 epoch, the King of Elam, Khudur Nankhundi, invaded Baby- 

 lonia, plundered the country and carried away from the city of 

 Urukh to his capital Shushan a considerable number of statues 

 of divinities. We cannot affirm that the invasion of Egypt by 

 the Hyksos is connected with this particular war ; but it is 

 probable that the struggles between the Elamites and the* 

 Mesopotamians brought about the invasion of Egypt. I do 

 not suppose that the Elamites went as far as the Nile, but 

 they drove out of their country a mixed multitude belonging 

 to different races, and it overran Egypt, too weak to resist. If, 

 as I believe, the Hyksos were Mesopotamians, they were not 

 barbarians : they belonged to nations which had already 

 reached a high degree of civilization, and which in particular 

 were well skilled in the art of sculpture. There is no doubt 

 that the conquest of Egypt must have been signalized by 

 devastation and ruin ; it never was otherwise in the wars of 

 Eastern nations; but as the invaders were not barbarians, 

 as they came from a civilized country, it explains why they 

 soon submitted to the influence of the more refined Egyptians, 

 and why they easily adopted the principal features of Egyptian 

 civilization, which was not unlike their own. 



The chronographers have preserved the name of several 

 of their kings ; they are called Silites, or Salatis, Beon, 

 Apachnas, Jannas, or Janras, Asseth and Apophis, in 

 Egyptian Apepi. The interesting point to ascertain was 

 whether the Egyptian documents agreed with the statements 

 of the Greek writers as to the barbarity of the Hyksos. 

 Were they the cruel and brutal conquerors described by 

 Manetho ? Very likely they were at first when they attacked 

 the country, but certainly not at the end of their domination. 

 The name of Apepi was known long ago from a papyrus 

 relating his struggle with a Theban prince. To Mariette 

 belongs the honour of having first discovered his name on 

 stone monuments. In his very successful excavations at 

 Tanis he found the name of Apepi written on the arm of a 

 statue, evidently older than the Hyksos king. At the same 

 time he noticed the name on monuments of a special kind, 

 which have since been called Hyksos monuments. They are 



