360 LAW AND FREEDOM IN HISTORY

of architecture that is recorded visually in the contrast between the
Ayfa Sophfa and the Olympieum; and in this Helleno-Byzantine
illustration of the rapidity of the pace of cultural change during the
social interregnum intervening between the histories of an antecedent
civilization and its successor we have the answer to H. R. Hall's conun-
drum; for in Egyptiac history the interval between the end of the
Twelfth Dynasty and the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty was
likewise a social interregnum that can be recognized, on close inspection,
as being the historical lesion that it is, in spite of the solidity with which
a parted steel cable's frayed and flying ends have been posthumously
spliced and welded together in the white heat of an explosion of cultural
fanaticism.

In previous contexts1 we have seen reasons for believing that, after the
expiry of the mandate of a Middle Empire which had served as a dis-
integrating Egyptiac Society's universal state, the disintegration-process
was heading towards the dissolution of the time-expired civilization and
the eventual emergence of a new society affiliated to it, when this normal
course of events was arrested and reversed by the abnormal effects of a
fanatical hatred that had been aroused in Egyptiac souls by Hyksos
barbarian invaders who had committed the, in Egyptiac eyes, unpardon-
able offence of acquiring a tincture of an alien culture before setting foot
on Egyptian soil. The consequent anti-Hyksos union sacrte between an
Egyptiac dominant minority and internal proletariat resulted in a resur-
rection of the Egyptiac universal state in the shape of the New Empire
and in the consequent substitution of an Epimethean epilogue to
Egyptiac history for the new civilization, distinct from the Egyptiac
though affiliated to it, that was showing signs of coming to birth when
the normal course of historical development was given a peculiar twist
in this Egyptiac case. The social interregnum insulating a moribund
Egyptiac Civilization that refused to die from an embryonic affiliated
civilization that was denied the opportunity of being born was to that
extent abortive; yet the breach of cultural continuity at this point, which
was afterwards so studiously patched up and plastered over by the hands
of archaistic-minded Egyptian Zealots under the regime of a post-
Hyksos restoration, was nevertheless sharp enough to account for the
empirically verifiable fact that the two centuries between the end of the
Twelfth Dynasty and the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty wit-
nessed a notably greater change of style in Egyptiac art than the imme-
diately preceding two centuries during which the Twelfth Dynasty had
been continuously in the saddle. So far from its being incredible that
'the changes observable during its [the Twelfth Dynasty's] continuance'
should not be *in any way comparable to those which had come about
between its termination and the rise of the Eighteenth,'2 it would be
inexplicable if the second of these two periods of equal chronological
length should not have witnessed a notably greater change of style than
the first, considering that during the first the Egyptiac Civilization was
in Its universal state, whereas the second period was occupied by one of

1 See I. i. 136-45; IV. iv, 85, 412; V. v. 2-3, 152, and 331-3.
* H. R. Hall, quoted on pp. 350-1, above.