  There is no fact in history more familiar than the rule of the Hykshos or shepherd kings in Egypt. The word Hykshos is the same as we have seen (p. 38,) both in the Egyptian and Berber or Libyan tongues, and signified a shepherd or a wanderer. It was applied to all those foreigners who at different times displaced the native dynasties,—Scythians, Hellenic tribes, Phenicians, and others. Reserving some remarks for a future part of this memoir, we shall briefly observe that there is no monumental record of more than one of these sovereignties, namely, that which was expelled by Amunoph the First of the eighteenth dynasty, about eighteen centuries before Christ. These people, whose name was held in execration by the Egyptians, are said by Herodotus and other historians to have possessed a fair complexion, blue eyes, and reddish hair. That they were of the Caucasian race there is no question; but the preceding traits apply equally to the Scythians, the Phenicians, and the Edomim or Edomites, and it is probable that the shepherd dynasties of Manetho embraced kings from all these sources. The portraits of these intrusive kings, as recently discovered in various parts of Egypt, not only present a physiognomy entirely different from that of the legitimate monarchs, but the symbol of their religion is also different, being “the sun, whose rays terminate in human hands,” while the accompanying hieroglyphic legends make no allusion to the Egyptian deities. “Their features,” observes Mr. Perring, from whom I derive these facts, “do not at all resemble the Egyptian; and, though much defaced, are evidently the same as those found on the propyla of Karnak, where we may recognise a similarity with the tall, white, slender, blue-eyed, and red-haired race, painted on the soles of the Egyptian sandals, and appearing also on the monuments, where they are emphatically called the wicked race of Scheto.” The three following heads are copied from Mr. Perring’s very interesting memoir. No. 1, the portrait of a king whose name is read Skai by Champollion, copied from his tomb in the western valley near Thebes. The bold, heavy features, and harsh expression are very remarkable, and Mr. Perring observes that this personage is represented of a much lighter red than is usual with the Egyptians. No. 2. Head of another king of this exotic dynasty, with long sharp features, whose name reads Atenre-Backhan on the monuments, copied from a stone in the second propylon of Karnak. No. 3. Another effigy of the same king, from the grottoes of El Tell, of which Mr. Perring remarks, that having been copied in haste it is somewhat in caricature. El Tell, or Tel-el-Amarna, appears to have been the stronghold of these “foreign marauders,” respecting whom Mr. Gliddon, after suggesting the probability that the sovereigns may have been of Arabian origin, inquires—“whether the present inhabitants, whose village occupies the once warlike camp or city of Atenre, have in their views and in their physical conformation, some vestiges of that early tribe of heterodox conquerors? And may not then the cause of the almost instinctive terror with which the natives of other parts of Egypt regard this vicinity, proceed from vague traditions of ancient predatory habits,—some fitful legend that has outlived thirty-five centuries?” There are many effigies of the same general character of the age of the fourth Rameses. One of them, a captive, is figured in the margin. Wilkinson reads their name Tochari on the monuments; Rosellini translates it Fekkaro. To my view they have the lined and hardy features of the Celts or Gauls, of whom, however, we have little knowledge at that remote date, (B.C. 1400,) although even then they occupied a large part of southern Europe. They perhaps rather pertain to the Phenician branch of the Caucasian race. There are other paintings, especially some at Abousimbel of the age of Rameses III., which correspond in every particular with the Scythian physiognomy as recorded in history; The researches of Lord Lindsay seem to prove that the Assyrians were also among the Hykshos conquerors of Egypt; and the shepherds who invaded Egypt before the time of Abraham are called Cushim by the ancients, which means Ethiopians or Babylonians; for the country on both sides of the Persian Gulf was called Cush. Plutarch, quoting Manetho, asserts that Tiphonean or red-haired men were sacrificed in the temples of Eletheias, and their ashes scattered to the winds. Was this done in commemoration of the hatred which the Egyptians bore to the red-haired Hykshos? |
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