In Egypt there was, further, this peculiarity—­the conquered people occupied two entirely distinct positions.  In the Delta, the Fayoum, and the northern Nile valley, they were completely reduced, and lived intermixed with their conquerors, a despised class, suffering more or less of oppression.  In Upper Egypt the case was different.  There the people had submitted in a certain sense, acknowledged the Hyksos monarchs as their suzerains, and indicated their subjection by the payment of an annual tribute; but they retained their own native princes, their own administration and government, their own religion, their own laws; they did not live intermixed with the new comers; they were not subject to daily insult or ill-treatment; the fact that they paid a tribute did not hinder their preserving their self-respect, and consequently they suffered neither moral nor physical deterioration.  Further, it would seem to have been possible for them to engage in wars on their own account with the races living further up the Nile, or with the wild tribes of the desert, and thus to maintain warlike habits among themselves, while the Hyksos were becoming unaccustomed to them.  The Ra-Sekenens of Thebes, who called themselves “great” and “very great,” had probably built up a considerable power in Upper Egypt during the reigns of the later “Shepherd Kings;” had improved their military system by the adoption of the horse and the chariot, which the Hyksos had introduced; had practised their people in arms, and acquired a reputation as warriors.

More particularly must this have been the case with Ra-Sekenen III., the contemporary of Apepi.  Ra-Sekenen the Third called himself “the great victorious Taa.”  He surrounded himself with a council of “mighty chiefs, captains, and expert leaders.”  He acquired so much repute, that he provoked Apepi’s jealousy before he had in any way transgressed the duties which he owed him as a feudatory.  In the long negotiation between the two, of which the “First Sallier Papyrus” gives an account, it is evident that, while Ra-Sekenen has committed no act whereof Apepi has any right to complain, he has awoke in him feelings of such hostility, that Apepi will be content with nothing less than either unqualified submission to every demand that he chooses to make, or war a outrance.  Never was a subject monarch more goaded and driven into rebellion against his inclination by over-bearing conduct on the part of his suzerain than was Ra-Sekenen by the last “Shepherd King.”  The disinclination of himself and his court to fight is almost ludicrous:  they “are silent and in great dismay; they know not how to answer the messenger sent to them, good of ill.”  Ra-Sekenen, powerful as he had become, “victorious” as he may have been against Libyans and negroes, and even Cushites, dreaded exceedingly to engage in a struggle with the redoubted people which, two centuries previously, had shown itself so irresistible.