itable
situations. He strongly fortified the frontier, especially on the side
of the east, since he foresaw that the Assyrians, who were then
exceedingly powerful, might desire to make themselves masters of his
kingdom. Having found, moreover, in the Sethroite nome, to the east of
the Bubastite branch of the Nile, a city very favourably situated, and
called, on account of an ancient theological tradition, Avaris, he
rebuilt it and strengthened it with walls of great thickness, which he
guarded with a body of two hundred and forty thousand men. Each summer
he visited the place, to see their supplies of corn measured out for his
soldiers and their pay delivered to them, as well as to superintend
their military exercises, in order that foreigners might hold them in
respect."

The king, Timaeus, does not appear either in the lists of Manetho or upon
the monuments, nor is it possible to determine the time of the invasion
more precisely than this--that it fell into the interval between
Manetho's twelfth and his eighteenth dynasties. The invaders are
characterized by the Egyptians as Menti or Sati; but these terms are
used so vaguely that nothing definite can be concluded from them. On the
whole, it is perhaps most probable that the invading army, like that of
Attila, consisted of a vast variety of races--"a collection of all the
nomadic hordes of Syria and Arabia"--who made common cause against a foe
known to be wealthy, and who all equally desired settlements in a land
reputed the most productive in the East. An overwhelming flood of men--a
quarter of a million, if we may believe Manetho--poured into the land,
impetuous, irresistible. All at once, a danger had come beyond all
possible previous calculation--a danger from which there was no escape.
It was as when the northern barbarians swooped down in their countless
thousands on the outlying provinces of the Roman Empire, or as when the
hordes of Jingis Khan overran Kashgar and Kharesm--the contest was too
unequal for anything that can be called a struggle to be made. Egypt
collapsed before the invader. Manetho says that there was no battle; and
we can readily understand that in the divided condition of the country,
with two or three subordinate dynasties ruling in different parts of the
Delta, and another dynasty at Thebes, no army could be levied which
could dare to meet the enemy in the field. The inhabitants fled to their
cities, and endeavoured to defend themselves behi