In the concluding paragraphs of the first volume of this book we saw how, early in the seventeenth century before the Christian Era, the control of most of Egypt slipped from the feeble grasp of the kings of the late Middle Kingdom and rested for more than a hundred years in the hands of a succession of Asiatic chieftains known to their Egyptian contemporaries as Hikau-khoswet, "rulers of foreign countries," and to the Ptolemaic historian Manetho and his successors as the "Hyksos." Since both the title Hik-khoswet and the other expressions--Amu, Setetyu, Mentyu Sete--by which the Egyptians referred to the new ruling element had been used by them for centuries to describe the sheikhs of the Eastern Desert and the tribesmen of southwestern Asia, it would appear that the Hyksos, far from being a novelty on Egypt's horizon, were the same groups of princes and peoples who from time immemorial had raided her northeastern border and during periods of internal weakness had swarmed into the Delta in formidable numbers. [This book was originally published in 1978 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]