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 Achæmenians and
Greeks made use of the native employés, 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 Amenemhâîts 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 Sutkhû, the Great Sit.^
* The narrative of the Sallier Papyrus, No. 1, shows us
the civil and military chiefs collected round the Shepherd-
king Apôpi, and escorting him in the solemn processions in
honour of the gods. They are followed by the scribes and
magicians, who give him advice on important occasions.
** Hiqu Situ: this is the title of Abîsha at Beni-Hassan,
which is also assumed by Khiani on several small monuments;
Steindorff has attempted to connect it with the name of the
Hyksôs.
*** The preamble of the two or three Shepherd-kings of whom
we know anything, contains the two cartouches, the special
titles, and the names of Horus, which formed part of the
title of the kings of pure Egyptian race; thus Apôphis IL is
proclaimed to be the living Horus, who joins the two earths
in peace, the good god, Aqnunrî, son of the Sun, Apôpi, who
lives for ever, on the statues of Mîrmâshâu, which he had
appropriated, and on the pink granite table of offerings in
the Gizeh Museum.
**** The name of Baal, transcribed Baâlu, is found on that
of a certain Petebaâlû, “the Gift of Baal,” who must have
flourished in the time of the last shepherd-kings, or rather
under the Theban kings of the XVIIth dynasty, who were their
contemporaries, whose conclusions have been adopted by
Brugsch.
^ Sutikhû, Sutkhû, are lengthened forms of Sûtû, or Sîtû;
and Chabas, who had at first denied the existence of the
final Jehû, afterwards himself supplied the philological
arguments which proved the correctness of the reading: he
rightly refused, however, to recognise in Sutikhû or Sutkhû
—the name of the conquerors’ god—a transliteration of the
Phoenician Sydyk, and would only see in it that of the
nearest Egyptian deity. This view is now accepted as the
right one, and Sutkhû is regarded as the indigenous
equivalent of the great Asiatic god, elsewhere called Baal,
or supreme lord. [Professor Pétrie found a scarab bearing
the cartouche of “Sutekh” Apepi I. at Koptos.—Te.]
He was usually represented as a fully armed warrior, wearing a helmet of circular form, ornamented with two plumes; but he also borrowed the emblematic animal of Sît, the fennec, and the winged griffin which haunted the deserts of the Thebaid. His temples were erected in the cities of the Delta, side by side with the sanctuaries of the feudal gods, both at Bubastis and at Tanis. Tanis, now made the capital, reopened its palaces, and acquired a fresh impetus from the royal presence within its walls. Apôphis Aq-nûnrî, one of its kings, dedicated several tables of offerings in that city, and engraved his cartouches upon the sphinxes and standing colossi of the Pharaohs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties.
He was, however, honest enough to leave the inscriptions of his predecessors intact, and not to appropriate to himself the credit of works belonging to the Amenemhâîts or to Mirmâshâû. Khianî, who is possibly the Iannas of Manetho, was not, however, so easily satisfied.* The statue bearing his inscription, of which the lower part was discovered by Naville at Bubastis, appears to have been really carved for himself or for one of his contemporaries. It is a work possessing no originality, though of very commendable execution, such as would render it acceptable to any museum; the artist who conceived it took ‘his inspiration with considerable cleverness from the best examples turned out by the schools of the Delta under the Sovkhotpfts and the Nofirhotpûs. But a small grey granite lion, also of the reign of Khianî, which by a strange fate had found its way to Bagdad, does not raise our estimation of the modelling of animals in the Hyksôs period.
* Naville, who reads the name Râyan or Yanrâ, thinks that
this prince must be the Annas or Iannas mentioned by Manetho
as being one of the six shepherd-kings of the XVth dynasty.
Mr. Pétrie proposed to read Khian, Khianî, and the fragment
discovered at Gebeleîn confirms this reading, as well as a
certain number of cylinders and scarabs. Mr. Pétrie prefers
to place this Pharaoh in the VIIIth dynasty, and makes him
one of the leaders in the foreign occupation to which he
supposes Egypt to have submitted at that time; but it is
almost certain that he ought to be placed among the Hyksôs
of the XVIth dynasty. The name Khianî, more correctly
Khiyanî or Kheyanî, is connected by Tomkins, and Hilprecht
with that of a certain Khayanû or Khayan, son of Gabbar, who
reigned in Amanos in the time of Salmanasar II., King of
Assyria.