Lincoln Nebraska State Journal from Lincoln, Nebraska • 69

'4' i ii 11 II y-l I i A Ma a II II a i4 Mil I a 1 il JTiOtt- UNCOUV, NEBRASKA, SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 1940 -rc' -re I .1 'V --'v ii fr-Hi ,1. 'if t- 4 ii; i fM. Jw--. 1 r- u- -'VJ Nearly 3700 years ago the world saw lightning war when the Hyksos swept down on Egypt. But today how many remember these invaders? WMAtf EUROPE -'iiy- -T t'iflf ry ft if" AV Secret weapons of the Assyrians armored carta as Illustrated by I laL'fc 1 1 nit tt By EMILY C.

DAVIS BLITZKRIEG conqutst, Nazi-tyle, la nothing new in the world's experience. Nor will it be amazing it blitzkrieged nations, flattened to earth, rise again. Lessons from ancient world struggles, when Egypt and the Near East were richest prizes of conquest, are cited by Dr. John A. Wilson, director of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute.

A horse-and-buggy blitzkrieg swept down on Egypt nearly 1800 years before Christ. Horse-and-buggy may be our idea of the slow and old-fashioned. But In those days, it meant just the reverse. Using horse-drawn chariots as "frightful new engines of speed and power," Asiatic soldiers of adventure terrified and confused the pedestrian Egyptian army, Dr. Wilson points out.

Egyptians had never expected this new and secret weapon. Egyptians had used donkeys, but Egypt was not a country on wheels. Totally unready, Egypt's military leaders had no invention to foil or outwit horse-powered warfare. Wheeling and turning, the flying chariots manned by archers mowed down unprotected Egyptians on foot. When the dust cleared, the lightning conquerors stood as masters in the Nile Delta, and an Asiatic chief presently bore the proud name of Pharaoh.

Sturdy Egypt had collapsed before its first foreign Invaders. It 3 .1 "1 10 83 This warrior sod of the Hiitites providrd inspiration for nrly bliUkriegers sialnst Eiypt. I 1 The inside story of this' news was that the Hyksos respected the Egyptian god Set, to whom the hippopotamus was sacred, while southern, independent Egyptians had long ago lost their veneration of Set and his sacred beast, in favor of other gods. Meekly to stop hunting this big game meant losing face. The young king of the south did not want to fight, but ha fought.

Ultimately, May 12, 1468 B. be- came Egypt's Independence Day. A re-armed nation, says Dr. Wilson, stiffened by a united spiritual force, smashed the Hyksos confederacy in battle. Supposedly Invincible fortresses were battered open, and ths invaders were driven from Egypt.

The liberated Egyptians then turned to empire building on their own account. With better understanding of foreign weather conditions than the British are said to have displayed in Norway this spring when they sent troops burdened with Far Northern clothing the Egyptians astutely timed their advance toward Hyksos-con-trolled Palestine and Syria. The timing was for early May, when Egypt's own harvest was safely in, but more northerly lands were still using manpower in the fields. Unable to abandon their vital food crops in order to fight, people of Palestine and Syria surrendered, swapping Hyksos rule for Egyptian. When idealistic young Pharaoh Akhnaton decided.

to get away from it all, and moved entirely out. of Egypt's capital to build a new capital city and introduce Egyptians to his new idea of worshipping one god the life-giving Sun Egypt was ripe for fifth-column boring. The fifth columnists were the work of Hittites, current challengers for world power, who were eyeing the civilized world from their homeland in what is now Turkey. Hittites, incidentally, ended by fading eut of history as amazingly as the Hyksos, and are just now, in our time, being rediscovered by archaeologists, who patiently excavate Hittite cities and endeavor to decipher Hittite writings. When, fifth columnists had bored thoroughly into Egypt, the Hittites marched down in a new blitzkrieg, featuring probably a new secret weapon.

This time iron lances and swords were the news of military science. ASIA had been using the new mate-rial, iron, for a century or two, judging by archaeological discoveries. A -battle-axe recently unearthed-in Syria is pronounced by French archaeologists to be the oldest of known steel weapons used about 1500 B. C. But still running behind the times, Egyptian soldiers sent to fight Hittites were equipped with old-fashioned bronze.

And the advantage lay with the army that had new and superior weapons. Struggling to hold her empire together, in the Hittite-Egyptian tug of war, Egypt finally gave way, and the Hittites claimed a great part ot -Egypt's outer dominions. li 1 "If. A A WT were "tanks" battering rams on this British Museum photograph. fin.

Doutless earlier horses owned by Egyptians may be found, for in Sen-mut's day the Hyksos had already been driven out of Egypt. The Hyksos held Egypt, their most impressive and valuable conquest, with difficulty. During much of the conquest era, a foreign Shepherd King ruled as Pharaoh in north Egypt, while a native Egyptian determinedly held another throne as Pharaoh in the south. JUST as modern nations have pro-" tested the staging of "incidents" by other nations to further political ends, so Egyptians considered themselves on the spot when a Hyksos Pharaoh in the north sent a demand for southern' Egyptians to cease hippopotamus -hunting, '4 Avi al Ancient cradle of civilization and scene These Asiatics who used Nazi blitzkrieg methods, with similar success, 3700 years ago, are known to history by a Greek name Hyksos. In plain English they are sometimes called Shepherd Kings.

Until a city they occupied was unearthed in recent years by archaeologists, the Hyksos were vaguely supposed to be roving barbarians, with not much more than a tent-city culture. And right there you strike the strangest fact about these ancient-and spectacular blitzkriegers: They have come close to being wiped out of history. Skeleton facts of the rule they imposed over Egypt are known. But how many people today know what a Hyksos was? Ask a few at random, and you soon realize that the Hyksos are on the forgotten list. TF the Nazi state parallels Hyksos fortunes, it may consolidate its gains and hold on for a long time.

Hyksos chiefs ruled Egypt, or parts of it, amid frequent uprisings, to be sure, for nearly 300 Blitzkrieg conquest also put Hyksos officials in power over Babylonia for a time. Controlling channels of trade, the Hyksos enjoyed wealth, but there was not enough to go around, and the conquered went poor and hungry. Impregnable fortresses all over the Near East guarded and proclaimed Hyksos domination, Dr. Wilson has pointed out The corner wall of one Hyksos stronghold appears as incongruous military Information, important nearly 4000 years ago, in a modern French air photograph of a Syrian village. If Nazis parallel Hyksos, they may be overthrown and end by practically vanishing from world consciousness for thousands of years.

Egyptians could not shut out of the record the fact of their rule by the foreigners, but they did wipe out every possible relic of the Hyksos in their country. Archaeologists digging in Egypt have never learned much about the personalities and ways of these Asiatics. A revelation of what the Shepherd "Klnir were like has finally come out y-Courtey Oriental Initltute. of pre-Christian "lightning" wars. of the earth at the Bible city of Gaza, in southern Palestine.

Here, Sir Flin-. ders Petrie, veteran British archaeologist, found ruins of a Hyksos palace. And from the palace rubbish heap he recovered one particularly rare prize what is believed to be a portrait image, showing actual features of one of the forgotten Shepherd Kings. Horses played an important role in the Shepherd Kings' life and economy as well as in battle, the excavations revealed. In palace foundations laid about 2100 B.

Sir Flinders found remains of a horse that was sacrificed and deposited when the new palace was built. A feast of horse meat had been eaten at the ceremony. Special ovens built in this Hyksos city were suitable for roasting horses. When a Hyksos died, his steed might be buried with him, the explorations revealed. From such discoveries at Gaza, the Shepherd Kings have emerged as a people who were at home in cities, as well as in the great open spaces.

Gaza, a Hyksos headquarters town, was a key city on the one route between Egypt and all lands of Asia. In Abraham's day, about 2000 B. the Shepherd Kings had advanced this far in southern Palestine from their homeland in Syria, and earlier they had come aparently from even farther off, in the Caucasus. Their daring dash into mighty Egypt did not materialize for several more centuries. If the Hyksos waged "wars of nerves," as some ancients did, this delay was something of a record.

Springing a secret weapon on an enemy was probably more surprising to the minds of Egyptian soldiers than the latest military surprises can be today. JIKE the evolution of modern tanks, the speedy war chariots of the Hyksos represented a model improved from simpler transport. Mesopotamia, where the Babylonians dwelt, had seen ass-drawn chariots jog off to wars, fully 1000 years before Hyksos "tavaded the many as four The Eryptians re-armed with new weapon, the hone, after defeat by Hittites. This Egyptian stone-engraving dates back to 1300 B. C.

trotting asses were hitched to Meso-potamian war-buggies, and the chariots had non-skid tires in the form of copper studs. Not far from Baghdad, Oriental Institute archaeologists unearthed the tiny model of such a chariot made about 2800 B. C. by Sumerians, who preceded Babylonians as the dominant power in Mesopotamia. Hitching speedy horses to war chariots represented a big advance in mobility.

But the Hyksos could not keep their war chariots secret indefinitely, nor could they keep Egyptians from acquiring them and re-arming. The oldest horse yet found in Egypt has come out of the cemetery at Thebes where a noted Egyptian named Senmut had his valuable steed mummified and buried in i huge cof.