always fear that at the moment in which danger seems least likely to threaten them, the torrent, taking its origin some twenty leagues off, may be on its headlong way to surprise them.  And, indeed, it comes so suddenly and so violently that nothing in its course can escape it:  men and beasts, before there is time to fly, often even before they are aware of its approach, are swept away and pitilessly destroyed.  The Egyptians applied to the entire country the characteristic epithet of To-Shuit, the land of Emptiness, the land of Aridity.

[Illustration:  154.jpg MAP SINAITIC PENINSULAR, TIME OF MEMPHITE EMPIRE]

They divided it into various districts—­the upper and lower Tonu, Aia, Kaduma.  They called its inhabitants Hiru-Shaitu, the lords of the Sands; Nomiu-Shaitu, the rovers of the Sands; and they associated them with the Amu—­that is to say, with a race which we recognize as Semitic.  The type of these barbarians, indeed, reminds one of the Semitic massive head, aquiline nose, retreating forehead, long beard, thick and not infrequently crisp hair.  They went barefoot, and the monuments represent them as girt with a short kilt, though they also wore the abayah.  Their arms were those commonly used by the Egyptians—­the bow, lance, club, knife, battle-axe, and shield.  They possessed great flocks of goats or sheep, but the horse and camel were unknown to them, as well as to their African neighbours.  They lived chiefly upon the milk of their flocks, and the fruit of the date-palm.  A section of them tilled the soil:  settled around springs or wells, they managed by industrious labour to cultivate moderately sized but fertile fields, flourishing orchards, groups of palms, fig and olive trees, and vines.  In spite of all this their resources were insufficient, and their position would have been precarious if they had not been able to supplement their stock of provisions from Egypt or Southern Syria.  They bartered at the frontier markets their honey, wool, gums, manna, and small quantities of charcoal, for the products of local manufacture, but especially for wheat, or the cereals of which they stood in need.  The sight of the riches gathered together in the eastern plain, from Tanis to Bubastis, excited their pillaging instincts, and awoke in them an irrepressible covetousness.  The Egyptian annals make mention of their incursions at the very commencement of history, and they maintained that even the gods had to take steps to protect themselves from them.  The Gulf of Suez and the mountainous rampart of Gebel Geneffeh in the south, and the marshes of Pelusium on the north, protected almost completely the eastern boundary of the Delta; but the Wady Tumilat laid open the heart of the country to the invaders.  The Pharaohs of the divine dynasties in the first place, and then those of the human dynasties, had fortified this natural opening, some say by a continuous wall, others by a line of military posts, flanked on the one side by the waters of the gulf.*