The remembrance of the cruelties with which the invaders sullied their conquest lived long after them; it still stirred the anger of Manetho after a lapse of twenty centuries.** The victors were known as the “Plagues” or “Pests,” and every possible crime and impiety was attributed to them.

* The term shamamil, variant of sliemau, is applied to them by Queen Hatshopsitu:  the same term is employed shortly afterward by Thutmosis III., to indicate the enemies whom he had defeated at Megiddo.

** He speaks of them in contemptuous terms as men of ignoble race.  The epithet Aiti, Iaiti, Iaditi, was applied to the Nubians by the writer of the inscription of Ahmosi- si-Abina, and to the Shepherds of the Delta by the author of the Sallier Papyrus.  Brugsch explained it as “the rebels,” or “disturbers,” and Goodwin translated it “invaders”; Chabas rendered it by “plague-stricken,” an interpretation which was in closer conformity with its etymological meaning, and Groff pointed out that the malady called Ait, or Adit in Egyptian, is the malignant fever still frequently to be met with at the present day in the marshy cantons of the Delta, and furnished the proper rendering, which is “The Fever-stricken.”

[Illustration:  080.jpg A HYKSOS PRISONER GUIDING THE PLOUGH, AT EL-KAB]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

But the brutalities attending the invasion once past, the invaders soon lost their barbarity and became rapidly civilized.  Those of them stationed in the encampment at Avaris retained the military qualities and characteristic energy of their race; the remainder became assimilated to their new compatriots, and were soon recognisable merely by their long hair, thick beard, and marked features.  Their sovereigns seemed to have realised from the first that it was more to their interest to exploit the country than to pillage it; as, however, none of them was competent to understand the intricacies of the treasury, they were forced to retain the services of the majority of the scribes, who had managed the public accounts under the native kings.* Once schooled to the new state of affairs, they readily adopted the refinements of civilized life.

* The same thing took place on every occasion when Egypt was conquered by an alien race:  the Persian Achaemenians and Greeks made use of the native employes, as did the Romans after them; and lastly, the Mussulmans, Arabs, and Turks.

The court of the Pharaohs, with its pomp and its usual assemblage of officials, both great and small, was revived around the person of the new sovereign;* the titles of the Amenemhaits and the Usirtasens, adapted to these “princes of foreign lands,"** legitimatised them as descendants of Horus and sons of the Sun.*** They respected the local religions, and went so far as to favour those of the gods whose attributes appeared to connect them with some of their own barbarous divinities.  The chief deity of their worship was Baal, the lord of all,**** a cruel and savage warrior; his resemblance to Sit, the brother and enemy of Osiris, was so marked, that he was identified with the Egyptian deity, with the emphatic additional title of Sutkhu, the Great Sit.^