ation: 079.jpg PALLATE OF HYKSOS SCRIBE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Mertons.
It is the palette of a scribe, now in the Berlin Museum, and
given by King Apopi II Ausirri to a scribe named Atu.

Both their name and origin were doubtless well known to the Egyptians,
but the latter nevertheless disdained to apply to them any term but that
of "she-mau,"* strangers, and in referring to them used the same
vague appellations which they applied to the Bedouin of the Sinaitic
peninsula,--Monatiu, the shepherds, or Satiu, the archers. They
succeeded in hiding the original name of their conquerors so thoroughly,
that in the end they themselves forgot it, and kept the secret of it
from posterity.

The remembrance of the cruelties with which the invaders sullied their
conquest lived long after them; it still stirred the anger of Manetho
after a lapse of twenty centuries.** The victors were known as the
"Plagues" or "Pests," and every possible crime and impiety was attributed
to them.

* The term _shamamil,_ variant of _sliemau,_ is applied to
them by Queen Hatshopsitu: the same term is employed shortly
afterward by Thutmosis III., to indicate the enemies whom he
had defeated at Megiddo.

** He speaks of them in contemptuous terms as _men of
ignoble race_. The epithet _Aiti, Iaiti, Iaditi_, was applied
to the Nubians by the writer of the inscription of Ahmosi-
si-Abina, and to the Shepherds of the Delta by the author of
the _Sallier Papyrus_. Brugsch explained it as "the rebels,"
or "disturbers," and Goodwin translated it "invaders";
Chabas rendered it by "plague-stricken," an interpretation
which was in closer conformity with its etymological
meaning, and Groff pointed out that the malady called Ait,
or Adit in Egyptian, is the malignant fever still frequently
to be met with at the present day in the marshy cantons of
the Delta, and furnished the proper rendering, which is "The
Fever-stricken."

[Illustration: 080.jpg A HYKSOS PRISONER GUIDING THE PLOUGH, AT EL-KAB]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

But the brutalities attending the invasion once past, the invaders
soon lost their barbarity and became rapidly civilized. Those of them
stationed in the encampment at Avaris retained the military qualities
and characteristic energy of their race; the remainder became
assimilat