* The theory that the divisions of Egypt, under the XIVth dynasty, and the discords between its feudatory princes, were one of the main causes of the success of the Shepherds, is now admitted to be correct.
It is possible that they owed this rapid victory to the presence in their armies of a factor hitherto unknown to the African--the war-chariot--and before the horse and his driver the Egyptians gave way in a body.* The invaders appeared as a cloud of locusts on the banks of the Nile. Towns and temples were alike pillaged, burnt, and ruined; they massacred all they could of the male population, reduced to slavery those of the women and children whose lives they spared, and then proclaimed as king Salatis, one of their chiefs.** He established a semblance of regular government, chose Memphis as his capital, and imposed a tax upon the vanquished. Two perils, however, immediately threatened the security of his triumph: in the south the Theban lords, taking matters into their own hands after the downfall of the Xoites, refused the oath of allegiance to Salatis, and organized an obstinate resistance;*** in the north he had to take measures to protect himself against an attack of the Chaldæans or of the Élamites who were oppressing Chaldæa.
* The horse was unknown, or at any rate had not been employed in. Egypt prior to the invasion; we find it, however, in general use immediately after the expulsion of the Shepherds, see the tomb of Pihiri. Moreover, all historians agree in admitting that it was introduced into the country under the rule of the Shepherds. The use of the war-chariot in Chaldæa at an epoch prior to the Hyksôs invasion, is proved by a fragment of the Vulture Stele; it is therefore, natural to suppose that the Hyksôs used the chariot in war, and that the rapidity of their conquest was due to it.
** The name Salatis (var. Saitôs) seems to be derived from a Semitic word, Siialît = the chief, the governor; this was the title which Joseph received when Pharaoh gave him authority over the whole of Egypt (Gen. xli. 43). Salatis may not, therefore, have been the real name of the first Hyksôs king, but his title, which the Egyptians misunderstood, and from which they evolved a proper name: Uhlemann has, indeed, deduced from this that Manetho, being familiar with the passage referring to Joseph, had forged the name of Salatis. Ebers imagined that he could decipher the Egyptian form of this princes name on the Colossus of Tell-Mokdam, where Naville has since read with certainty the name of a Pharaoh of the XIIIth and XIVth dynasties, Nahsiri.