But the chief invaders of this time were an Asiatic race who made a violent attack on the power of the Pharaohs at Thebes. They were the Mentu, or, as they are now called, the Mentu of Satet, that is “the barbarous Asiatic country.” They were called the Shepherds or Hyksos by their contemporaries and by Manetho.
Of what race the Hyksos were, is not known. Some points in the account show that we have here to do with an invasion of Bedouin races, one of those frequent raids upon cultivated land by nomads of the desert.
Among the latest opinions on the subject is one that ascribes to the Hyksos a partly Semitic and partly Turanian origin, and accounts for their settling in Egypt by their being crowded out of western Asia in the numerous race conflicts of which that part of the world was the arena. The expelled people could find no resting-place among the wild hordes of Syria, and moved on to the peaceful and fertile valley of the Nile.
It is certain that Semitic and Canaanitish, not Arabic, elements penetrated to Egypt under the Hyksos. The Egyptian language was subsequently sprinkled with Canaanitish words; the specifically Canaanitish divinities Baal Astarte (in the feminine form), Anit, Reshpu, etc., were afterwards extensively worshipped in the eastern Delta, and in the whole of Egypt. In the next centuries we find Canaanitish proper names everywhere.
More accurate information on the invasion of the Hyksos is wanting. It is certain that they settled in Lower Egypt, where they founded a state which they ruled according to the Egyptian fashion. Their chief seats were Avaris (Ha-Uar), the border fortress built or enlarged by them, which is Pelusium, or a place a little to the south; and Tanis, the powerful capital of the eastern Delta, ornamented by numerous buildings of the XIIth Dynasty and the real residence of the Hyksos kings.
It seems, moreover, certain that Memphis, and even the Fayum, remained in their hands; but Upper Egypt was at most conquered only temporarily. Here ruled, during this epoch, the kings mentioned in the five divisions of the Turin papyrus, and their successors, perhaps as tributary vassals, since they occasionally bear the title of Haq, that is, Prince.
King Meneptah, the son of the great Ramses, speaks of this time as “the epoch of the kings of Lower Egypt, since this land Qem was in their (power), and the accursed foe (Aad, the Plague) ruled at the time when the kings of Upper Egypt (were powerless).”
It is very possible that the Hyksos pillaged Egypt in their conquests, but Manetho’s assertion that they systematically destroyed the temples and monuments is contradicted by the following facts. The chief god they worshipped was Sutekh, or Set with the surname of “the Golden,” by which the Sun-Baal is understood. They built him a great temple in Tanis, and his cult was followed in the eastern Delta until later times. He was also called “Lord of Avaris” at this time.
The Egyptian gods were, however, retained; the kings called themselves “sons of Ra” and, like the Egyptian rulers, they chiefly begin their throne names with “Ra.” Egyptian culture was generally adopted by the foreigners.
The fact that we have a mathematical handbook under the rule of a Hyksos king, written “according to old copies,” and that we have a scribe’s palette, presented by the same king to the scribe Atu, shows that writing was in vogue under their rule. The monuments ascribed to them, particularly the sphinxes with kings’ heads, found at Tanis, a group of two men before an altar with fish, the piece of a statue from Mit-Fares in the Fayum, differ widely from the Egyptian type in features and apparel, but the work is evidently that of Egyptian artists, and most carefully executed.