believe that the sphinxes discovered by Mariette represented Apophis or one of his predecessors.  As a matter of fact, these monuments present all the characteristics of the Mongoloid type of countenance—­the small and slightly oblique eyes, the arched but somewhat flattened nose, the pronounced cheekbones and well-covered jaw, the salient chin and full lips slightly depressed at the corners.** These peculiarities are also observed in the three heads found at Damanhur, in the colossal torso dug up at Mit-Fares in the Fayum, in the twin figures of the Nile removed to the Bulaq Museum from Tanis, and upon the remains of a statue in the collection at the Villa Ludovisi in Rome.  The same foreign type of face is also found to exist among the present inhabitants of the villages scattered over the eastern part of the Delta, particularly on the shores of Lake Menzaleh, and the conclusion was drawn that these people were the direct descendants of the Hyksos.

* Manetho takes them to be Phoenicians, but he adds that certain writers thought them to be Arabs:  Brugsch favours this latter view, but the Arab legend of a conquest of Egypt by Sheddad and the Adites is of recent origin, and was inspired by traditions in regard to the Hyksos current during the Byzantine epoch; we cannot, therefore, allow it to influence us.  We must wait before expressing a definite opinion in regard to the facts which Glaser believes he has obtained from the Minoan inscriptions which date from the time of the Hyksos.

** Mariette, who was the first to describe these curious monuments, recognised in them all the incontestable characteristics of a Semitic type, and the correctness of his view was, at first, universally admitted.  Later on Hamy imagined that he could distinguish traces of Mongolian influences, and Er.  Lenormant, and then Mariette himself came round to this view; it has recently been supported in England by Flower, and in Germany by Virchow.

This theory was abandoned, however, when it was ascertained that the sphinxes of San had been carved, many centuries before the invasion, for Amenemhait III., a king of the XIIth dynasty.  In spite of the facts we possess, the problem therefore still remains unsolved, and the origin of the Hyksos is as mysterious as ever.  We gather, however, that the third millennium before our era was repeatedly disturbed by considerable migratory movements.  The expeditions far afield of Elamite and Chaldaean princes could not have taken place without seriously perturbing the regions over which they passed.  They must have encountered by the way many nomadic or unsettled tribes whom a slight shock would easily displace.  An impulse once given, it needed but little to accelerate or increase the movement:  a collision with one horde reacted on its neighbours, who either displaced or carried others with them, and the whole multitude, gathering momentum as they went, were precipitated in the direction first given.*