hands, being too humble to attract his attention or too massive to yield to the means of destruction known to him.  Thus the pyramids scarcely suffered, though it is possible that at this time their sanctity was first violated and their contents rifled.  The great obelisk of Usurtasen I., which still stands at Heliopolis, was not overthrown.  The humbler tombs at Ghizeh, so precious to the antiquary, were for the most part untouched.  Amenemhat’s buildings in the Fayoum may have been damaged, but they were not demolished.  Though Egyptian civilization received a rude shock from the invasion, it was not altogether swallowed up or destroyed; and when the deluge had passed it emerged once more, and soon reached, and even surpassed, its ancient glories.

The Hyksos king who led the invasion, or who, at any rate, was brought to the front in its course, bore, we are told, either the name of Salatis, or that of Saites.  Of these two forms the second is undoubtedly to be preferred, since the first has in its favour only the single authority of Josephus, while the second is supported by Africanus, Eusebius, George the Syncellus, and to a certain extent by the monuments.  The “tablet of four hundred years” contains the name of Sut-Aapehti as that of a king of Egypt who must have belonged to the Middle Empire, and this name may fairly be regarded as represented in an abbreviated form by the Greek “Saites.”  Saites, having made himself absolute master of the Lower Country, and forced the king of the Upper Country to become his tributary, fixed his residence at Memphis, at the same time strongly fortifying and garrisoning various other towns in important positions.  Of these the most considerable was the city, called Auaris, or Avaris, in the Sethroite nome, which lay east of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, and was probably not far from Pelusium itself, if indeed it was not identical with that city.  Another strong fort, by means of which the Delta was held and overawed, seems to have been Zan or Tanis, now San, situated on what was called the Tanitic branch of the Nile, the next most easterly branch to the Pelusiac.  A third was in the Fayoum, on the site now called Mit-Fares.  A large body of troops must also have been maintained at Memphis, if the king, as we are told, ordinarily held his court there.

How long the Egyptians groaned under the tyranny of the “Shepherds,” it is difficult to say.  The epitomists of Manetho are hopelessly at variance on the subject, and the monuments are silent, or nearly so.  Moderns vary in the time, which they assign to the period between two centuries and five.  On the whole, criticism seems to incline towards the shorter term, though why Manetho, or his epitomists, should have enlarged it, remains an insoluble problem.  There is but one dynasty of “Shepherd Kings” that has any distinct historical substance, or to which we can assign any names.  This is a dynasty of six kings only, whose united reigns are not likely