The “Shepherds” brought with them into Egypt the worship of a deity, whom they called Sut or Sutekh, and apparently identified with the sun.  He was described as “the great ruler of heaven,” and identified with Baal in later times.  The kings regarded themselves as especially under his protection.  At the time of the invasion, they do not seem to have considered this deity as having any special connection with any of the Egyptian gods, and they consequently made war indiscriminately against the entire Egyptian Pantheon, plundering and demolishing all the temples alike.  But when the first burst of savage hostility was gone by, when more settled times followed, and the manners and temper of the conquerors grew softened by pacific intercourse with their subjects, a likeness came to be seen between Sutekh, their own ancestral god, and the “Set” of the Egyptians.  Set in the old Egyptian mythology was recognized as “the patron of foreigners, the power which swept the children of the desert like a sand-storm over the fertile land.”  He was a representative of physical, but not of moral, evil; a strong and powerful deity, worthy of reverence and worship, but less an object of love than of fear.  The “Shepherds” acknowledged in this god their Sutekh; and as they acquired settled habits, and assimilated themselves to their subjects, they began to build temples to him, after the Egyptian model, in their principal towns.  After the dynasty had borne rule for five reigns, covering the space perhaps of one hundred and fifty years, a king came to the throne named Apepi, who has left several monuments, and is the only one of the “Shepherds” that stands out for us in definite historical consistency as a living and breathing person.  Apepi built a great temple to Sutekh at Zoan, or Tanis, his principal capital, composed of blocks of red granite, and adorned it with obelisks and sphinxes.  The obelisks are said to have been fourteen in number, and must have been dispersed about the courts, and not, as usual, placed only at the entrance.  The sphinxes, which differed from the ordinary Egyptian sphinx in having a mane like a lion and also wings, seem to have formed an avenue or vista leading up to the temple from the town.  They are in diorite, and have the name of Apepi engraved upon them.

The pacific rule of Apepi and his predecessors allowed Thebes to increase in power, and her monuments now recommence.  Three kings who bore the family name of Taa, and the throne name of Ra-Sekenen, bore rule in succession at the southern capital.  The third of these, Taa-ken, or “Taa the Victorious,” was contemporary with Apepi, and paid his tribute punctually, year by year, to his lawful suzerain.  He does not seem to have had any desire to provoke war; but Apepi probably thought that he was becoming too powerful, and would, if unmolested, shortly make an effort to throw off the Hyksos yoke.  He therefore determined to pick a quarrel with him, and proceeded to send to Thebes a succession of embassies with continually