* Jeroboam (1 Kings xi. 40, xii. 2, 3) and Hadad (1 Kings
xi. 17-22) took refuge in this way at the court of Pharaoh.
A certain proportion were descendants of the Hidjsôs, who had been reinforced from time to time by settlements of prisoners captured in battle; they had taken refuge in the marshes as in the times of Abmosis, and there lived in a kind of semi-civilized independence, refusing to pay taxes, boasting of having kept themselves from any alliances with the inhabitants of the Nile valley, while their kinsmen of the older stock betrayed the knowledge of their origin by such disparaging nicknames as Pa-shmûrî, “the stranger,” or Pi-âtnû, “the Asiatic.” The Shardana, who had constituted the body-guard of Ramses II., and whose commanders had, under Ramses III., ranked with the great officers of the crown, had all but disappeared. It had been found difficult to recruit them since the dislodgment of the People of the Sea from the Delta and the Syrian littoral, and their settlement in Italy and the fabulous islands of the Mediterranean; the adventurers from Crete and the Ægean coasts now preferred to serve under the Philistines, where they found those who were akin to their own race, and from thence they passed on to the Hebrews, where, under David and Solomon, they were gladly hired as mercenaries.*
* Carians or Cretans (Chercthites) formed part of David’s
body-guard (2 Sam viii. 18, xv. 18, xx. 23); one again meets
with these Carian or Cretan troops in Judah in the reign of
Athaliah (2 Kings xi. 4, 19).
The Libyans had replaced the Shardana in all the offices they had filled and in all the garrison towns they had occupied. The kingdom of Mâraîû and Kapur had not survived the defeats which it had suffered from Mînephtah and Ramses III., but the Mashaûasha who had founded it still kept an active hegemony over their former subjects; hence it was that the Egyptians became accustomed to look on all the Libyan tribes as branches of the dominant race, and confounded all the immigrants from Libya under the common name of Mashaûasha.* Egypt was thus slowly flooded by Libyans; it was a gradual invasion, which succeeded by pacific means where brute force had failed. A Berber population gradually took possession of the country, occupying the eastern provinces of the Delta, filling its towns—Sais, Damanhur, and Marea—making its way into the Fayum, the suburbs of Heracleopolis, and penetrating as far south as Abydos; at the latter place they were not found in such great numbers, but still considerable enough to leave distinct traces.** The high priests of Amon seem to have been the only personages who neglected to employ this ubiquitous race; but they preferred to use the Nubian tribe of the Mâzaîû,*** who probably from the XIIth dynasty onwards had constituted the police force of Thebes.
* Ramses III. still distinguished between the Qahaka, the
Tihonû, and the Mashaûasha; the monuments of the XXIInd
dynasty only recognise the Mashaiiasha, whose name they
curtail to Ma.
** The presence in those regions of persons bearing Asiatic
names has been remarked, without drawing thence any proof
for the existence of Asiatic colonies in those regions. The
presence of Libyans at Abydos seems to be proved by the
discovery in that town of the little monument reproduced on
the next page, and of many objects in the same style, many
of which are in the Louvre or the British Museum.
*** I have not discovered among the personal attendants of
the descendants of Hrihor any functionary bearing the title
of Chief of the Mashaiuasha ; even those who bore it later
on, under the XXIInd dynasty, were always officers from
the north of Egypt. It seems almost certain that Thebes
always avoided having Libyan troops, and never received a
Mashaûasha settlement.
These Libyan immigrants had adopted the arts of Egypt and the externals of her civilization; they sculptured rude figures on the rocks and engraved scenes on their stone vessels, in which they are represented fully armed,* and taking part in some skirmish or attack, or even a chase in the desert. The hunters are divided into two groups, each of which is preceded by a different ensign—that of the West for the right wing of the troop, and that of the East for the left wing. They carry the spear the boomerang, the club, the double-curved bow, and the dart; a fox’s skin depends from their belts over their thighs, and an ostrich’s feather waves above their curly hair.
* I attribute to the Libyans, whether mercenaries or tribes
hovering on the Egyptian frontier, the figures cut
everywhere on the rocks, which no one up till now has
reproduced or studied. To them I attribute also the tombs
which Mr. Petrie has so successfully explored, and in which
he finds the remains of a New Race which seems to have
conquered Egypt after the VIth dynasty: they appear to be of
different periods, but all belong to the Berber horsemen of
the desert and the outskirts of the Nile valley.
Drawn by Boudier, from the original in the Louvre.