Assaults were made day after day with only partial success; but at last the defenders were wearied out—­a panic seized them, and, hastily evacuating the place, they retired towards Syria, the quarter from which they had originally come.  Aahmes may have been willing that they should escape:  since, if they had been completely blocked in and driven to bay, they might have made a desperate resistance, and caused the Egyptians an enormous loss.  He followed, however, upon their footsteps, to make sure that they did not settle anywhere in his neighbourhood, and was not content till they had crossed the desert and entered the hill country of Palestine.  Even then he still hung upon their rear, harassing them and cutting off their stragglers; finally, when they made a stand at Sharuhen in Southern Palestine, he laid siege to the town, took it, and made a great slaughter of the hapless defenders.

The war did not terminate until the fifth year of Aahmes’ reign.  Its result was the complete defeat of the invading hordes which had held Lower and Middle Egypt for so long, and their expulsion from Egypt with such ignominy and loss that they made no effort to retaliate or to recover themselves.  Vast numbers must have been slain in the battles, or have perished amid the hardships of the retreat; and many thousands were, no doubt, made prisoners and carried back into Egypt as slaves.  It is thought that these captives were so numerous as to become an important element in the population of the eastern Delta, and even to modify the character of the Egyptian race in that quarter.  The lively imagination of M. Francois Lenormant sees their descendants in the “strange people, with robust limbs, an elongated face, and a severe expression, which to this day inhabits the tract bordering on Lake Menzaleh."[16]

It is probable that Aahmes had for allies in his war with the “Shepherds” the great nation which adjoined Egypt on the south, and which was continually growing in power—­the Kashi, Cushites, or Ethiopians.  His wife appears by her features and complexion to have been a Cushite princess, and the marriage is likely to have been less one of inclination than of policy.  The Egyptians admired fair women rather than dark ones, as is plain from the unduly light complexions which the artists, in their desire to flatter, ordinarily assign to women, as well as from the attractiveness of Sarah, even in advanced age.  When a Theban king contracted marriage with an Ethiopian of ebon blackness, we are entitled to assume a political motive; and the most probable political motive under the circumstances of the time was the desire for military assistance.  Though in the early wars between the Kashi and the Egyptians the prowess of the former is not represented as great, and the designation of “miserable Cushites” is evidently used in depreciation of their warlike qualities, yet the very use of the epithet implies a feeling of hostility which could scarcely have been