A second point of contact of Egypt and Palestine is in the painting and sculptures of hostile and conquered nations in Egyptian temples and tombs. These were evidently intended to be portraits, and an admirable series of them has been published by Mr. Petrie under a commission from the British Association for the Advancement of Science. By means of these excellent photographs, now before me, we can see for ourselves the physiognomy and form of head of the Amorite, Philistine, Hittite, and many other peoples previously known to us only by name and a few historical facts; and thus with their correspondence, as preserved in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, and their pictures as given by Petrie, we have them before us much as we have the speeches and portraits of our contemporaries in the illustrated newspapers, and can venture to express some opinion as to their ethnic affinities and appearance, and can judge more accurately as to the familiar statements of the Bible respecting them.[76] Lastly, Maspero and Tomkins have, with the aid of the names fixed by the survey of Western Palestine, revised the lists given by Thothmes III., in the temple of Karnak, of the places which this Egyptian Alexander had conquered; and they have thus verified the Hebrew geography of the Books of Joshua and Judges. [76] Sayce, _Races of the Old Testament_, Religious Tract Society. Another unexpected acquisition is the solution of the mystery which has enshrouded that mysterious people known as Hyksos or shepherd kings, who invaded Egypt about the time of the Hebrew patriarchs, and, after keeping the Egyptians in subjection for centuries, were finally expelled by the predecessors of the Amunoph already referred to. They constitute a great feature in early Egyptian history, but disappear mysteriously, leaving no trace but a few sculptured heads, Turanian in aspect and markedly contrasting with those of the native Egyptians. It now appears that a people of Northern Syria and Mesopotamia, known to the Egyptians at a later time as Mitanni, and who were neighbours of and associated with the Northern Hittites, have the features of the Hyksos. It also seems from a letter in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets that they spoke a non-Semitic or Turanian language akin to that of the Hittites. Thus we have traced the shepherd kings to their origin, and, curiously enough, Cushanrish-athaim, who oppressed the Israelites in the days of Othniel, seems to represent a later inroad of the same people. Such 'restitutions of decayed intelligence' now meet us on every hand as the results of modern exploration, and are enabling us to bridge over the gaps which have separated the geological ages from the prehistoric and historic human periods in those ancient countries where civilisation seems to have originated. CHAPTER XII THE NEANTHROPIC DISPERSION AND ALLIED TOPICS