The court of the Pharaoh drew to the city numerous provincials, who, coming thither to seek their fortune, took up their abode there, planting in the capital of Southern Egypt types from the north and the centre of the country, as well as from Nubia and the Oases; such a continuous infusion of foreign material into the ancient Theban stock gave rise to families of a highly mixed character, in which all the various races of Egypt were blended in the most capricious fashion. In every twenty officers, and in the same number of ordinary officials, about half would be either Syrians, or recently naturalised Nubians, or the descendants of both, and among the citizens such names as Pakhari the Syrian, Palamnani the native of the Lebanon, Pinahsi the negro, Palasiai the Alasian, preserved the indications of foreign origin.* A similar mixture of races was found in other cities, and Memphis, Bubastis, Tanis, and Siut must have presented as striking an aspect in this respect as Thebes.** At Memphis there were regular colonies of Phoenician, Canaanite, and Amorite merchants sufficiently prosperous to have temples there to their national gods, and influential enough to gain adherents to their religion from the indigenous inhabitants. They worshipped Baal, Aniti. Baal-Zaphuna, and Ashtoreth, side by side with Phtah, Nofirtumu, and Sokhit,*** and this condition of things at Memphis was possibly paralleled elsewhere--as at Tanis and Bubastis. * Among the forty-three individuals compromised in the conspiracy against Ramses III. whose names have been examined by Deveria, nine are foreigners, chiefly Semites, and were so recognised by the Egyptians themselves--Adiram, Balmahara, Garapusa, lunini the Libyan, Paiarisalama, possibly the Jerusalemite, Nanaiu, possibly the Ninevite, Palulca the Lycian, Qadendena, and Uarana or Naramu. ** An examination of the stelae of Abydos shows the extent of foreign influence in this city in the middle of the XVIIIth dynasty. *** These gods are mentioned in the preamble of a letter written on the _verso_ of the _Sallier Papyrus_. From the mode in which they are introduced we may rightly infer that they had, like the Egyptian gods who are mentioned with them, their chapels at Memphis. A place in Memphis is called "the district called the district of the Khatiu" is an inscription of the IIIth year of Ai, and shows that Hittites were there by the side of Canaanites. This blending of races was probably not so extensive in the country districts, except in places where mercenaries were employed as garrisons; but Sudanese or Hittite slaves, brought back by the soldiers of the ranks, had introduced Ethiopian and Asiatic elements into many a family of the fellahin.* * One of the letters in the Great Bologna Papyrus treats of a Syrian slave, employed as a cultivator at Hermopolis, who had run away from his master.