Separated from the confines of the empire by only a narrow isthmus, Egypt loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival.  Her natural fertility, the industry of her inhabitants, the stores of gold and perfumes which she received from the heart of Ethiopia, were well known by the passage to and fro of her caravans, and the recollection of her treasures must have frequently provoked the envy of Asiatic courts.  Egypt had, however, strangely declined from her former greatness, and the line of princes who governed her had little in common with the Pharaohs who had rendered her name so formidable under the XIIth dynasty.  She was now under the rule of the Xoites, whose influence was probably confined to the Delta, and extended merely in name over the Said and Nubia.  The feudal lords, ever ready to reassert their independence as soon as the central power waned, shared between them the possession of the Nile valley below Memphis:  the princes of Thebes, who were probably descendants of Usirtasen, owned the largest fiefdom, and though some slight scruple may have prevented them from donning the pschent or placing their names within a cartouche, they assumed notwithstanding the plenitude of royal power.  A favourable opportunity was therefore offered to an invader, and the Chaldaeans might have attacked with impunity a people thus divided among themselves.* They stopped short, however, at the southern frontier of Syria, or if they pushed further forward, it was without any important result:  distance from head-quarters, or possibly reiterated attacks of the Elamites, prevented them from placing in the field an adequate force for such a momentous undertaking.  What they had not dared to venture, others more audacious were to accomplish.  At this juncture, so runs the Egyptian record, “there came to us a king named Timaios.  Under this king, then, I know not wherefore, the god caused to blow upon us a baleful wind, and in the face of all probability bands from the East, people of ignoble race, came upon us unawares, attacked the country, and subdued it easily and without fighting.”

* The theory that the divisions of Egypt, under the XIVth dynasty, and the discords between its feudatory princes, were one of the main causes of the success of the Shepherds, is now admitted to be correct.

It is possible that they owed this rapid victory to the presence in their armies of a factor hitherto unknown to the African—­the war-chariot—­and before the horse and his driver the Egyptians gave way in a body.* The invaders appeared as a cloud of locusts on the banks of the Nile.  Towns and temples were alike pillaged, burnt, and ruined; they massacred all they could of the male population, reduced to slavery those of the women and children whose lives they spared, and then proclaimed as king Salatis, one of their chiefs.** He established a semblance of regular government, chose Memphis as his capital, and imposed a tax upon