we call Semitic culture is
fundamentally non-Semitic.

In the earliest days, then, Egypt received elements of Sumerian culture
through a Semitic medium, which introduced Semitic elements into the
language of the people, and a Semitic racial strain. It is possible.
that both theories as to the routes of these primeval conquerors are
true, and that two waves of Semites entered the Nile valley towards
the close of the Neolithic period, one by way of the Upper Nile or Wadi
Hammamat, the other by way of Heliopolis.

After the reconsolidation of the Egyptian people, with perhaps an
autocratic class of Semitic origin and a populace of indigenous Nilotic
race, we have no trace of further connection with the far-away centre of
Semitic culture in Babylonia till the time of the Theban hegemony.
Under the XIIth Dynasty we see Egyptians in friendly relations with the
Bedawin of Idumsea and Southern Palestine. Thus Sanehat, the younger son
of Amenemhat I, when the death of his royal father was announced, fled
from the new king Usertsen (Senusret) into Palestine, and there married
the daughter of the chief Ammuanshi and became a Syrian chief himself,
only finally returning to Egypt as an old man on the assurance of the
royal pardon and favour. We have in the reign of Usertsen (Senusret) II
the famous visit of the Arab chief Abisha (Abeshu') with his following
to the court of Khnumhetep, the prince of the Oryx nome in Middle Egypt,
as we see it depicted on the walls of Khnumhetep's tomb at Beni Hasan.
We see Usertsen (Senusret) III invading Palestine to chastise the land
of Sekmem and the vile Syrians.*

* We know of this campaign from the interesting historical
stele of the general Sebek-khu (who took part in it), which
was found during Mr. Garstang's excavations at Abydos, not
previously referred to above. They were carried out in 1900,
and resulted in the complete clearance of a part of the
great cemetery which had been created during the XIIth
Dynasty. The group of objects from the tombs of this
cemetery, and those of XVIIIth Dynasty tombs also found, is
especially valuable as showing the styles of objects in use
at these two periods (see Garstang, el-Ardbah, 1901).

The arm of Egypt was growing longer, and its weight was being felt in
regions where it had previously been entirely unknown. Eventually the
collision came. Egypt collided with an Asiatic power, and got the worst
o