12 EDOUAED NAVILLE. 



sphinxes with bodies of lions and human faces. The head is 

 surrounded by a very thick mane, and the type of the 

 features is quite different from the Egyptian. The cheek- 

 bones are high and strongly marked, the nose wide and flat 

 and aquiline, the mouth projecting forward with stout lips. 

 At first sight, it is impossible not to be struck by the fact 

 that we have there the image of a foreign race and nob of 

 native Egyptians. Thus there has been an art of the Hyksos, 

 or rather the conquered have made the education of their 

 masters ; for, except the characteristic foreign type, the work- 

 manship, the style, and the attitude are absolutely Egyptian, 

 and these monuments must have been made by Egyptian 

 sculptors. 



Besides the art, the Hyksos adopted also the writing, the 

 language of the Egyptians ; the names of their kings are 

 written like those of the native Pharaohs with two cartouches, 

 the first of which was taken by them on the day of their 

 coronation, and always contained the name of Ra. Never- 

 theless, they remained faithful to the worship of Set, an 

 Asiatic divinity often called also Baal, and worshipped as 

 well by Semites as by nations of another race like the Khetas 

 or Hittites. Thus, under the reign of the last Hyksos rulers, 

 except that the sovereign belonged to a foreign race, Egypt 

 must have presented an appearance very much like what it 

 was before : a well ordered and governed state. 



It has been questioned whether the Hyksos had really 

 attained a high degree of civilization, and whether the monu- 

 ments attributed to them by Marietto were really their own 

 work. Some Egyptologists have suggested that the strange 

 monuments of Tanis were, perhaps, the produce of local art, 

 or that they belonged to a much older period ; in this last 

 case Apepi would only have usurped what had been done 

 before him, and there would be no Hyksos style. I must say 

 that when I went for the first time to Tanis, I very nearly 

 adopted this view ; but the discoveries made in the excava- 

 tions of 1888 have convinced me that Mariette's opinion was 

 the truth. There has been a Hyksos art, and kings of later 

 time have not hesitated in taking possession for themselves 

 of what the so-called barbarians had made. I had the good 

 fortune in 1888 of finding three of the most interesting 

 Hyksos monuments which have been preserved. 



We were working in the eastern part of the temple of 

 Bubastis near the entrance, when the workmen unearthed first 

 the head-dress of a statue, in black granite, wearing the royal 

 asp ; underneath were only the forehead and the eyes, for the 

 head had been broken horizontally at the height of the origin 



