* It was to the exodus of this race, in the last analysis,
that the invasion of the shepherds may be attributed
** A certain number of commentators are of opinion that the
wars attributed to Indathyrses have been confounded with
what Herodotus tells of the exploits of Madyes, and are
nothing more than a distorted remembrance of the great
Scythian invasion which took place in the latter half of the
VIIth century B.C.
*** At the present time, those scholars who admit the
Turanian origin of the Hyksôs are of opinion that only the
nucleus of the race, the royal tribe, was composed of
Mongols, while the main body consisted of elements of all
kinds—Canaanitish, or, more generally, Semitic.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph by
M. de Mertons.
It is the palette of
a scribe, now in the
Berlin Museum, and
given by King Apôpi II
Âusirrî to a scribe
named Atu.
Both their name and origin were doubtless well known to the Egyptians, but the latter nevertheless disdained to apply to them any term but that of “she-maû,” * strangers, and in referring to them used the same vague appellations which they applied to the Bedouin of the Sinaitic peninsula,—Monâtiû, the shepherds, or Sâtiû, the archers. They succeeded in hiding the original name of their conquerors so thoroughly, that in the end they themselves forgot it, and kept the secret of it from posterity.
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 sliemaû, is applied to
them by Queen Hâtshopsîtu: 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 Aîti, Iaîti, Iadîti, was applied
to the Nubians by the writer of the inscription of Ahmosi-
si-Abîna, 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.”
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.