It would perhaps be more correct to say that it had fallen a prey to the Libyans only.  The Asiatics and Europeans whom the Theban Pharaohs had called in to fight for them had become merged in the bulk of the nation, or had died out for lack of renewal.  Semites abounded, it is true, in the eastern nomes of the Delta, but their presence had no effect on the military strength of the country.  Some had settled in the towns and villages, and were engaged in commerce or industry; these included Phoenician, Canaanite, Edomite, and even Hebrew merchants and artisans, who had been forced to flee from their own countries owing to political disturbances.*

     * Jeroboam (1 Kings xi. 40, xii. 2, 3) and Hadad (1 Kings
     xi. 17-22) took refuge in this way at the court of Pharaoh.

A certain proportion were descendants of the Hidjsos, who had been reinforced from time to time by settlements of prisoners captured in battle; they had taken refuge in the marshes as in the times of Abmosis, and there lived in a kind of semi-civilized independence, refusing to pay taxes, boasting of having kept themselves from any alliances with the inhabitants of the Nile valley, while their kinsmen of the older stock betrayed the knowledge of their origin by such disparaging nicknames as Pa-shmuri, “the stranger,” or Pi-atnu, “the Asiatic.”  The Shardana, who had constituted the body-guard of Ramses II., and whose commanders had, under Ramses III., ranked with the great officers of the crown, had all but disappeared.  It had been found difficult to recruit them since the dislodgment of the People of the Sea from the Delta and the Syrian littoral, and their settlement in Italy and the fabulous islands of the Mediterranean; the adventurers from Crete and the AEgean coasts now preferred to serve under the Philistines, where they found those who were akin to their own race, and from thence they passed on to the Hebrews, where, under David and Solomon, they were gladly hired as mercenaries.*

* Carians or Cretans (Chercthites) formed part of David’s body-guard (2 Sam viii. 18, xv. 18, xx. 23); one again meets with these Carian or Cretan troops in Judah in the reign of Athaliah (2 Kings xi. 4, 19).

The Libyans had replaced the Shardana in all the offices they had filled and in all the garrison towns they had occupied.  The kingdom of Maraiu and Kapur had not survived the defeats which it had suffered from Minephtah and Ramses III., but the Mashauasha who had founded it still kept an active hegemony over their former subjects; hence it was that the Egyptians became accustomed to look on all the Libyan tribes as branches of the dominant race, and confounded all the immigrants from Libya under the common name of Mashauasha.* Egypt was thus slowly flooded by Libyans; it was a gradual invasion, which succeeded by pacific means where brute force had failed.  A Berber population gradually took possession of the country, occupying