from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

The impenetrable marshes of Menzaleh on the north, and the desert of the
Red Sea on the south, completely covered both their wings; the shifting
network of the branches of the Nile, together with the artificial
canals, protected them as by a series of moats in front, while Syria in
their rear offered them inexhaustible resources for revictualling their
troops, or levying recruits among tribes of kindred race. As long as
they could hold their ground there, a re-invasion was always possible;
one victory would bring them to Memphis, and the whole valley would
again fall under then-suzerainty. Ahmosis, by driving them from their
last stronghold, averted this danger. It is, therefore, not without
reason that the official chroniclers of later times separated him from
his ancestors and made him the head of a new dynasty.

[Illustration: 114.jpg Page Image]

His predecessors had in reality been merely Pharaohs on sufferance,
ruling in the south within the confines of their Theban principality,
gaining in power, it is true, with every generation, but never able to
attain to the suzerainty of the whole country. They were reckoned in
the XVIIth dynasty together with the Hyksos sovereigns of uncontested
legitimacy, while their successors were chosen to constitute
the XVIIIth, comprising Pharaohs with full powers, tolerating no
competitors, and uniting under their firm rule the two regions of
which Egypt was composed--the possessions of Sit and the possessions of
Horus.*

* Manetho, or his abridgers, call the king who drove out the
Shepherds Amosis or Tethmosis. Lepsius thought he saw
grounds for preferring the second reading, and identified
this Tethmosis with Thutmosi Manakhpirri, the ihutmosis III.
of our lists; Ahmosis could only have driven out the greater
part of the nation. This theory, to which Naville still
adheres, as also does Stindorff, was disputed nearly fifty
years ago by E. de Rouge; nowadays we are obliged to admit
that, subsequent to the Vth year of Ahmosis, there were no
longer Shepherd-kings in Egypt, even though a part of the
conquering race may have remained in the country in a state
of slavery, as we shall soon have occasion to observe.

The war of deliverance broke out on the accession of Ahmosis, and
continued during the first five years of his reign.* One of his
lieutenants, the king's namesake--Ahmosi-