Many nomadic peoples had the habit of following water and grasslands, such as the Hyksos. When they invaded Egypt, Thebes was in the period of north-south division between the Thirteenth Dynasty and the Fourteenth Dynasty established by the Nubians.
Although there was no evidence that the two sides had ever clashed militarily, such political division inevitably weakened Egypt. The Hyksos, driving advanced chariots, seized the chance to enter this fertile land and at one point extended their influence as far as Memphis. By comparison, the old forces of the Thirteenth Dynasty could only struggle on in Thebes, striving to keep the dying embers of an independent Egyptian regime from being extinguished. To that end, they also erected a statue of a male warrior representing Thebes, Waset.
It was impossible to know how much fighting spirit this statue inspired in the egyptians. Ahhotep, her husband, and her sons led from the front and fought bravely. Ahhotep's husband and Kamose I both died on the battlefield. Between an imaginary statue of a warrior and a living, breathing warrior, which could inspire greater morale?
Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty no longer built pyramids. This meant that the original social order had been shattered. People no longer capped pyramids with granite; those solid stones were used to build urban fortifications, where living people would dwell. Women's jewelry was no longer merely decorative either. They needed to trade with allies in the Aegean Sea to obtain glass.
Though glass was cheap in the twentieth century, it was a luxury in ancient times. Venice, too, became famous during the Renaissance as a "glass artist" because of its skill in glassmaking.
Galileo was widely recognized as the first person to invent the astronomical telescope, but the first to discover that combining a concave mirror with a convex lens could