Page 160 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

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during the long exercise marches, while Memphis seemed to be
full of them when—infrequently—the Egyptian recruits were al­
lowed leave to visit the city. Clearly a campaign was under

preparation against the rebel south.
But something went wrong. Very wrong indeed. In the be­
ginning of winter, according to plan, the Egyptian army moved
out of barracks towards the south. And they had marched for
three days when messengers overtook them from the rear. The next

day they received no order to break camp and they spent the day
around the tents, while wild rumors flew from man to man and
the generals conferred with pharaoh all day long in the hunting

lodge where he had taken up his quarters. And the next morning
the troops were summoned to general assembly and told the
news. It was serious enough, in all conscience. Two days after the
army had marched, the Hyksos troops had broken camp and, in­
stead of following them according to plan, had occupied Mem­

phis and the other nearby cities and proclaimed the Canaanite
king monarch of the whole of Egypt. The spokesman of pharaoh
called on the troops to march north and expel the treacherous al­

lies from the occupied towns—and added that envoys had been
sent to the king of the south proposing an alliance of all Egypt
against the common danger. With apprehension in their hearts
for their families in the towns and villages now in the power of

the new enemy, the troops set off back along the road they had
come. They forced their pace, and on the afternoon of the next
day they could already see the smoke of burning Memphis on the

horizon. Between them and the city, drawn up with its right flank
on the river, was the army of the Hyksos. For an apprehensive
night they rested, with patrols in contact, and next morning they
attacked and were defeated. It was an utter defeat. The. recruits,
whose first battle it was, were stationed in the second line, be­

hind pharaoh’s seasoned troops, and they never really got into
the battle at all. For the Hurrian chariots on the enemy left
enveloped their right wing, at the same time as the Amorite

swordsmen broke their center. And the army of the Egyptians
disintegrated.
For the next weeks the villages around were full of refugees
from the battle, weaponless and often wounded, and hidden by