Thus the results of recent excavation and research, both in Egypt and Babylonia, have tended to diminish rather than to increase the evidence of any close connection between the early cultures of the two countries. Apart from any Babylonian influence, there is, however, ample proof of a Semitic element, not only in the language, but also in the religion of ancient Egypt. The Egyptian sun-worship, which forms so striking a contrast to the indigenous animal-cults and worship of the dead, was probably of Semitic origin, and may either have reached Upper Egypt from Southern Arabia,[17] or have entered Lower Egypt by the eastern Delta. The latter region has always formed an open door to Egypt, and the invasion of the Hyksos may well have had its prototype in predynastic times. The enemies, whose conquest is commemorated on several of the early dynastic slate-carvings, are of non-Egyptian type; they may possibly have been descendants of such Semitic immigrants, unless they were Libyan settlers from the west. In the historic period we have evidence of direct contact between Syria and Egypt at the time of the Third Dynasty, for the Palermo Stele records the arrival in Egypt of forty ships laden with cedar-wood in Sneferu's reign. These evidently formed an expedition sent by sea to the Lebanon, and we may assume that Sneferu's predecessors had already extended their influence along the Syrian coast.[18] It is in Syria that we may also set the first contact between the civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia in historic times. The early Sumerian ruler Lugal-zaggisi boasts that he reached the Mediterranean coast, and his expedition merely formed the prelude to the conquest of Syria by Shar-Gani-sharri of Akkad.[19] It has indeed been suggested that evidence of Egyptian influence, following on the latter's Syrian campaign, is to be seen in the deification of early Babylonian kings.[20] And although this practice may now be traced with greater probability to a Sumerian source,[21] there can be little doubt that from Shar-Gani-sharri's reign onwards Syria formed a connecting-link between the two great civilizations on the Euphrates and the Nile.