The inscription is found in a mutilated condition on the wall of the tomb, but the three monuments which have come down to us are sufficiently complementary to one another to enable us to restore nearly the whole of the original text.

The expedition having accomplished its purpose, the Egyptians returned home with their spoil, and did not revisit Asia for a long period.  If the Hyksos generals had fostered in their minds the idea that they could recover their lost ground, and easily re-enter upon the possession of their African domain, this reverse must have cruelly disillusioned them.  They must have been forced to acknowledge that their power was at an end, and to renounce all hope of returning to the country which had so summarily ejected them.  The majority of their own people did not follow them into exile, but remained attached to the soil on which they lived, and the tribes which had successively settled down beside them—­including the Beni-Israel themselves—­no longer dreamed of a return to their fatherland.  The condition of these people varied according to their locality.  Those who had taken up a position in the plain of the Delta were subjected to actual slavery.  Ahmosis destroyed the camp at Avails, quartered his officers in the towns, and constructed forts at strategic points, or rebuilt the ancient citadels to resist the incursions of the Bedouin.  The vanquished people in the Delta, hemmed in as they were by a network of fortresses, were thus reduced to a rabble of serfs, to be taxed and subjected to the corvee without mercy.  But further north, the fluctuating population which roamed between the Sebennytic and Pelusiac branches of the Nile were not exposed to such rough treatment.  The marshes of the coast-line afforded them a safe retreat, in which they could take refuge at the first threat of exactions on the part of the royal emissaries.  Secure within dense thickets, upon islands approached by interminable causeways, often covered with water, or by long tortuous canals concealed in the thick growth of reeds, they were able to defy with impunity the efforts of the most disciplined troops, and treason alone could put them at the mercy of their foes.  Most of the Pharaohs felt that the advantages to be gained by conquering them would be outweighed by the difficulty of the enterprise; all that could result from a campaign would be the destruction of one or two villages, the acquisition of a few hundred refractory captives, of some ill-favoured cattle, and a trophy of nets and worm-eaten boats.  The kings, therefore, preferred to keep a close watch over these undisciplined hordes, and as long as their depredations were kept within reasonable limits, they were left unmolested to their wild and precarious life.