Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

ZOAN.

73

war; but the common iolk remained, and Zoan and the
country round became a foreign city and land to the
Egyptians.

The Hebrews thus changed masters, and from sub-
jects of the Shepherds, became slaves of the Egyptians.
They had been invited to settle by a Shepherd king,
either Apepi or another like him, who, though he took
the style of the Pharaohs, had his sympathies in the East,
and would people his new country with races, if not akin
to his own, yet nearer to it than the Egyptians in their
ways of life. The Hebrews were welcomed as settlers,
and planted in the fertile land of Goshen. Suddenly,
instead of favoured subjects, they became part of a body
ot serfs, hated and dreaded by their masters; for to the
Shepherd name clung the memory of past rule, embit-
tered by the sense of oppression, and awaking the fear
that the olden condition might come back with a single
change of fickle fortune. So began the great Hebrew
servitude.

Aahmes, the king who conquered and expelled the
strangers, was head of the Eighteenth Dynasty, which
began about b.c. 1600. That family ruled during the
first period of the Egyptian Empire, a time of two