Nevertheless, with all this outward varnish of Egyptian culture, the Hyksos rule continued to be foreign. Even the names of the kings were not Egyptian, and up to the last the supreme object of their worship was a foreign deity. According to the Sallier Papyrus, the war of independence was occasioned by the demand of Apophis II. that Sutekh, and not Amon, should be acknowledged as the god of Thebes, and a scarab found at Kom Ombos in 1896 bears upon it, in confirmation of the story, the name of Sutekh-Apopi.[31] Moreover, the Hyksos capital was not in any of the old centres of Egyptian government. Zoan, it is true, now Sân, in the north-eastern part of the Delta, was nominally their official residence; but they preferred to dwell in the fortress of Avaris, on the extreme eastern edge of Egypt, and within hail of their Asiatic kinsmen. It was from Avaris that Apophis had sent his insolent message to the terrified Prince of Thebes. The Hebrew visitor to Egypt, therefore, was among friends and not strangers. Moreover, he had only to cross the frontier to find himself in the presence of the Pharaoh’s court. Whether at Zoan or at Avaris, it was alike close at hand to the traveller from Asia. After leaving Egypt, Abram established himself at Hebron. It would seem that the name of Hebron, ‘the Confederacy,’ was not yet in existence, as it was to the ‘terebinth’ of Mamre, and not of Hebron, that Abram ‘removed his tent.’ Indeed, it is more than doubtful whether Mamre and Hebron occupied precisely the same site. It may be that Mamre was the older fortress of the Amorites, whose place was taken in after times by the town which gathered round the adjoining sanctuary of Hebron. In any case, its population was Amorite, though probably we should understand ‘Amorite’ here in its Babylonian sense. ‘Abram the Hebrew,’ it is declared, ‘dwelt under the terebinth of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner; and these were confederate with Abram.’ In other words, the Hebrew settler in Canaan had formed an alliance with the native chiefs.