Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/759

735 SHEPHEKD KINGS.] EGYPT 735 years of his reign. His great enterprise, the most successful of its kind ever carried out in Egypt, was the construction of a vast artificial reservoir, Lake Moeris, in the province now called the Feiyoom, which received the waters of the Nile by a canal, and after the inundation spread them over the country. Its fisheries were also very valuable. Through the neglect of ages the site of Lake Mceris was forgotten until, in our time, M. Linant traced it. Near the lake, Amenemhat III. built the famous Labyrinth, of which the remains were discovered by Dr Lepsius during the Prussian Expedition to Egypt, and there raised a pyramid. The use of the Labyrinth is unknown ; the pyramid was no doubt *he royal tomb. Its moderate dimensions and 1he vast size of the lake show a remarkable contrast to the earlier great pyramids, with apparently no corresponding work of public usefulness. At the time which produced the Lake Moeris civilization had reached a point far above that of the age of Khufu, perhaps the highest Egypt has ever known. Of the short reigns of Amenemhat IV. and Queen Sebek-nefru-ra we know nothing, but that with the latter the dynasty came to a close. With the accession of Dynasty XIII. we reach the third chasm in the Egyptian monumental records. This line, Theban like its predecessor, but with a special favour for Middle Egypt (&amp;lt;f. Brugsch, Hist., 2c} ed. 115), seems to have ruled all Egypt. Its power, however, was evidently weakened, either by external war or by internal dissension. Many monuments may have been lost or may yet lie hid in the mounds of towns of Middle Egypt, but the scantiness of records of public works is a proof of its weakness. Where are its tablets in the quarries &amp;lt; In the Turin Papyrus are preserved the lengths of several of the reigns of its kings, who generally bore the names Sebek-hotep or Nefer-hotep. The longest reign is 13 years, and but one other reaches 1 0, the total of 1 3 reigns being but 48 years 22 days, and 6 sums of months and 7 of days effaced. Putting the total at 50 years, the allowance for each reign is under 4 years. This must have been a time of disturb ance, but not necessarily of disastrous wars ; for if we com pare the rule of the second line of Memlook sultans we obtain an average reign of 5 years each. This we know to have been the consequence of domestic disturbance, and not of great public disasters at home or abroad. Dynasty XIV., of Xoites, the next in Manetho s list, is the first which had certainly its capital in the Delta. Beyond this fact we can only conjecture its importance and chrono logical place. The invasion and conquest, at least in part, of Egypt by the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, is undoubtedly the chief cause of the obscurity of this age. The event did not happen until at least some time after the beginning of Dynasty XIII., for the eighteenth king of that line in the Turin Papyrus, who bears the significant name Mer-mesha, &quot; the general,&quot; has left a record at Tanis near the eastern frontier, which was probably the chief city of at least one dynasty of the invaders. Manetho, as cited by Josephus, allows for the stay of the foreigners in Egypt a period of 511 years, which has been supposed to be about the interval beween Dynasty XII. and Dynasty XVIII., by which they were expelled. This number, however, rests upon the single evidence of Josephus, and is moreover probably made up of sums of dynasties, which would render its evidence doubtful. A better means of measuring the period would be afforded by the monumental evidence that a Shepherd king ruled 400 yeai s before Ramses II. could we place this foreign sovereign. All that can be said as to the chronology is that Dynasty XV. and XVL were probably of Shepherds, and Dynasty XVII. was certainly Theban. Judging from the numbering, it is probable that there was a break in the Theban succession, and that the two Shepherd dynasties were successive, the Xoites perhaps being but a provincial line. 1 The story of the Hyksos is thus told by Manetho. Under a king called Timaios, or Timaos (not recognized in the list or on the monuments), certain invaders from the East conquered Egypt without a battle, destroying the temples and slaying or enslaving the people. At length they made one of themselves, Salatis by name, king, who ruled at Memphis, and made all Egypt tributary. For the better protection of the eastern border he rebuilt and fortified the city Avaris, in the Sethroite nome in Lower Egypt, where he kept a great force of soldiers. He was succeeded by other kings mentioned by name, who, and their descendants, held Egypt for 511 years. After this the kings of the Thebai s and of the rest of Egypt rose against the Shepherd rule, and a great and long war was waged, until Misphrag- muthosis drove the Shepherds out of all Egypt except Avaris, where his son Tuthmosis besieged them, and failing to take the place agreed to a capitulation, on the condition that they should be allowed to leave the country. Accordingly they went through the desert to Judaea and founded Jerusalem. They -were called Hyksos, or Shepherd kings, and, according to some, they were Arabs. This narrative, notwithstanding a general confirmation from the monuments, is evidently not wholly correct. In particular it is inconsistent with all other evidence in attributing the foundation of Jerusalem to the Shepherds, which is evidently the result of an endeavour to connect their departure with the Exodus. Manetho seems to have preserved two Egyptian theories of the Exodus, which both explained that event as the retreat of eastern invaders. M. Mariette s researches in the ruins of Tanis have brought ts light monuments of the Shepherds, and led to the dis covery of others elsewhere, while M. de Rouge 1 and other scholars have explained Egyptian documents connected with the war of independence. From these different sources we learn that the foreigners were of the Shemite or a kindred type, resembling the modern inhabitants of the north-east of Lower Egypt, who still retains the peculiarities already noticed by Greek writers. Though their conquest may have been marked by violence, we find them in their own monuments using and cultivating the manners and civilization of Egypt, and even giving a new and characteristic development to its art in their costly monoliths of granite, which show from their material that their rule extended to the southern boundary of Egypt. The war of independence arose between Apepee, one of their later kings, who is described as worshipping Seth only, and one of the three Theban kings called on the monuments Ra-skenen Taa, at this time apparently a tributary prince. The war, contrary to Manetho s statement, does not seem to have been of long continuance, having been brought to a successful end by Aahmes, first king of Dynasty XVIII., between whom and Ra-skenen Taa no great length of time can have elapsed. Manetho s text is again erroneous in making the conqueror Tuthmosis (Thothmes IV.), son (grandson) of Misphragmuthosis (Thothmes III.), sixth 1 The Tablet of 400 Years states that this period elapsed from some point in the reign of the Shepherd king Set-aa-pehti Nub to some point in that of Ramses II., and again Apepee, whose name corresponds to the Apophis of Manetho, almost immediately preceded Dynasty XVIII. Apophis is mentioned among the only Shepherd kings Manetho names. In the passage preserved by Josephus these are called the firt Shep herd rulers, who very properly compose the first Shepherd dynasty, the XVth, in the epitome of Africanus ; though Eusebius transfers them to Dynasty XVII., perhaps knowing they immediately preceded Dynasty XVIII. In Africanus, Dynasty XVI. is of Shepherds and XVII. of Shepherds and Thebans. If the identification of Apepee with the Apophis of Dynasty XV. were certain we might have a rough measure of the time of the Shepherd rule, but this is not proved.