The Libyans had replaced the Shardana in all the offices they had filled and in all the garrison towns they had occupied. The kingdom of Mâraîû and Kapur had not survived the defeats which it had suffered from Mînephtah and Ramses III., but the Mashaûasha who had founded it still kept an active hegemony over their former subjects; hence it was that the Egyptians became accustomed to look on all the Libyan tribes as branches of the dominant race, and confounded all the immigrants from Libya under the common name of Mashaûasha.* Egypt was thus slowly flooded by Libyans; it was a gradual invasion, which succeeded by pacific means where brute force had failed. A Berber population gradually took possession of the country, occupying the eastern provinces of the Delta, filling its towns--Sais, Damanhur, and Marea--making its way into the Fayum, the suburbs of Heracleopolis, and penetrating as far south as Abydos; at the latter place they were not found in such great numbers, but still considerable enough to leave distinct traces.** The high priests of Amon seem to have been the only personages who neglected to employ this ubiquitous race; but they preferred to use the Nubian tribe of the Mâzaîû,*** who probably from the XIIth dynasty onwards had constituted the police force of Thebes. * Ramses III. still distinguished between the Qahaka, the Tihonû, and the Mashaûasha; the monuments of the XXIInd dynasty only recognise the Mashaiiasha, whose name they curtail to Ma. ** The presence in those regions of persons bearing Asiatic names has been remarked, without drawing thence any proof for the existence of Asiatic colonies in those regions. The presence of Libyans at Abydos seems to be proved by the discovery in that town of the little monument reproduced on the next page, and of many objects in the same style, many of which are in the Louvre or the British Museum. *** I have not discovered among the personal attendants of the descendants of Hrihor any functionary bearing the title of _Chief of the Mashaiuasha _; even those who bore it later on, under the XXIInd dynasty, were always officers from the north of Egypt. It seems almost certain that Thebes always avoided having Libyan troops, and never received a Mashaûasha settlement.