“‘They fought at Ta-kemt, south of the city. There I took a living prisoner. I plunged into the water—I led him through the water so as to keep away from the road to the town. This was made known to the herald of the king; I received the golden gift once more.
“‘They took Ha-Uar; I carried away from thence one man and three women; his Majesty gave them to me as slaves.’”[b]
Egyptian Infantry
In the time of the Ptolemies, tradition had it that King Aahmes appeared before Avaris with an army of four hundred and eighty thousand men, that there was a long siege, which was finally ended by the king treating with the besieged and permitting them to depart peacefully, with their wives, children, and possessions, into Syria. But the truth is, that Aahmes had a well organised and equipped army of fifteen to twenty thousand men, and that the town was taken on the second attack. The enemy left their last strongholds in haste and retreated into the bordering provinces of Syria. For some reason—they may have threatened him from some new vantage point, or he may have wished to deal a final crushing blow—Aahmes determined to cross the frontier, which he did in the fifth year of his reign. It was the first time in centuries that the king of Egypt had set foot in Asia, and even now he barely crossed the threshold.[a]
Admiral Aahmes continues his narrative:
“They besieged the town of Sharhana [Sherohan], in the year V, and his Majesty took it. I carried off from thence two women and one hand, and the golden collar of valour was given me. And my captives were given me for slaves.”
After the capture of Sherohan, Aahmes went on to the border provinces of Zahi (Phœnicia) and then turned back. The fall of the Palestine town crushed the Hyksos’ last hope of recovering their Egyptian domain. The majority of their race had not fled with the army, but had remained with other tribes that had followed them into Egypt—the Israelites among them—to accept whatever lot was meted out by the new conquerors. The yoke was not imposed equally throughout the land. Those living in the Delta regions were reduced to slavery, and all that part of the country was well fortified to resist the Bedouin.
Aahmes returned to Africa only to find his presence needed in the South. The land of Nubia, tributary to the lords of Thebes, had been somewhat neglected during the long struggle which the Pharaoh had just successfully terminated. The southern races had failed to assimilate the gift of culture and civilisation thrust upon them by the rulers of the XIIth and XIIIth Dynasties, and kept to their own customs while the temples erected by Usertsen and Amenemhat crumbled and vanished. From out this disordered state developed a serious invasion from the Sudan. Hostile tribes—which ones, we know not—descended the Nile, outraging the people and desecrating the sanctuaries. Aahmes hastened to meet them.