In another respect, too, if he has not misrepresented the rule of the
"Shepherd Kings," he has failed to do it justice. He has painted in
lurid colours the advent of the foreign race, the war of extermination
in which they engaged, the cruel usage to which they subjected the
conquered people; he has represented the invaders as rude, savage,
barbarous, bent on destruction, careless of art, the enemies of progress
and civilization. He has neglected to point out, that, as time went on,
there was a sensible change. The period of constant bitter hostilities
came to an end. Peace succeeded to war. In Lower Egypt the "Shepherds"
reigned over quiet and unresisting subjects; in Upper Egypt they bore
rule over submissive tributaries. Under these circumstances a
perceptible softening of their manners and general character took place.
As the Mongols and the Mandchus in China suffered themselves by degrees
to be conquered by the superior civilization of the people whom they had
overrun and subdued, so the Hyksôs yielded little by little to the
influences which surrounded them, and insensibly assimilated themselves
to their Egyptian subjects. They adopted the Egyptian dress, titles,
official language, art, mode of writing, architecture. In Tanis,
especially, temples were built and sculptures set up under the later
"Shepherd Kings," differing little in their general character from those
of purely Egyptian periods. The foreign monarchs erected their effigies
at this site, which were sculptured by native artists according to the
customary rules of Egyptian glyptic art, and only differ from those of
the earlier native Pharaohs in the head-dress, the expression of the
countenance, and a peculiar arrangement of the beard. A friendly
intercourse took place during this period between the kings of the
North, established at Tanis and Memphis, and those of the South,
resident at Thebes; frequent embassies were interchanged; and blocks of
granite and syenite were continually floated down the Nile, past Thebes,
to be employed by the "Shepherds" in their erections at the southern
capitals.
[Illustration: BUST OF A SHEPHERD KING.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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