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Abi, a large man, very dark of skin, for his mother was one of the hated Hyksos barbarians who once had usurped the throne of Egypt, sat upon the deck of his ship and stared at the setting sun which for a few moments seemed to rest, a round ball of fire, upon the bare and rugged mountains, that ring round the Tombs of the Kings.
We now have to retrace our steps to the point where we left Egyptian history and resume the thread of our Egyptian narrative. The Hyksos conquest and the rise of Thebes are practically contemporaneous.
Egypt was passing through the dark period between the Thirteenth and Seventeenth Dynasties, which includes the domination of the Hyksos; but the civilization of Crete, on the contrary, was continually and steadily advancing. To this age belong many of the most interesting and precious relics of the Minoan culture.
A third hall was discovered, which had been built in the time of Osorkon I., of red granite inlaid with sculptured slabs. There were also many other monuments and remains of the monarchs, together with much valuable evidence relating to the rule of the Hyksôs.
Conquered by the Hyksos, the old kings retreated to their other capital, Thebes, and were probably made tributary to the conquerors. It was by the earlier and later dynasties that the magnificent temples and palaces were built, whose ruins have so long been the wonder of travellers.
Maspero in this work gives us the second volume of his great historical trilogy. He shows in parallel views the part played in the history of the ancient world by the first Chaldæan Empire, by Syria, by the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, of Egypt, and by the first Cossæan kings who established the greatness of Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire.
The only monarchy existing under conditions at all similar to Assyria, whereto an equally long or rather a still longer duration has been assigned with some show of reason, is Egypt. But there it is admitted that the continuity was interrupted by the long foreign domination of the Hyksos, and by at least one other foreign conquest that of the Ethiopian Sabacos or Shebeks.
They removed to the seat of the dominion of those whom they had supplanted, and they settled in the neighbourhood of Herakleopolis, near the fertile province of the Fayyûm, and between it and Memphis. Where the kings of the XIIIth Dynasty and the Hyksos or "Shepherds" were buried, we do not know. The kings of the restored Theban empire were all interred at Thebes.
But he died before the work was completed by half, and his fourteenth son and successor, Meneptah, took it up and pushed it with the nomad bond-people that dwelt in the Delta. The city was laid out near the center of Goshen, a long strip of fertile country given over to the Israelites since the days of the Hyksos king, Apepa, near the year 1800 B. C.
The king has become a supreme autocrat, by the side of whom the priests alone retain any power. The land has passed out of the hands of the people; high and low alike are dependent for what they have on the favour of the king. The Hyksos dynasties were allied in race and sympathies with the settlers from Asia.
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