|
|
|
|
Hyksos
|
| |
|
| |
The Hyksos (Egyptian heqa khasewet, "foreign rulers"; Greek , , Arabic: , ) were an Asiatic people who invaded the eastern Nile Delta, in the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt initiating the Second Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt. The people are shown below wearing the cloaks of many colors associated with the mercenary Mitanni bowmen and cavalry (ha ibrw) of Northern Canaan, Aram, Kadesh, Sidon and Tyre.
The Hyksos first appeared in the Eleventh dynasty of Egypt, began their climb to power in the Thirteenth dynasty of Egypt and came out the other side of the second intermediate period in control of Avaris and the delta.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Hyksos' Start a new discussion about 'Hyksos' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
The Hyksos (Egyptian heqa khasewet, "foreign rulers"; Greek , , Arabic: , ) were an Asiatic people who invaded the eastern Nile Delta, in the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt initiating the Second Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt. The people are shown below wearing the cloaks of many colors associated with the mercenary Mitanni bowmen and cavalry (ha ibrw) of Northern Canaan, Aram, Kadesh, Sidon and Tyre.
The Hyksos first appeared in the Eleventh dynasty of Egypt, began their climb to power in the Thirteenth dynasty of Egypt and came out the other side of the second intermediate period in control of Avaris and the delta. By the Fifteenth dynasty of Egypt they ruled lower Egypt and at the end of the Seventeenth dynasty of Egypt they were expelled. The hiatus in the rule of their own land by the Egyptians extended from the end of the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt to the start of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt and the move of the capital to Thebes.
Traditionally, only the six Fifteenth Dynasty rulers are called Hyksos. The Hyksos had Canaanite names, as seen in those which contain the names of Semitic deities such as Anath or Ba'al. They introduced new tools of warfare into Egypt, most notably the composite bow the horse-drawn chariot and the careful scribe.
| Name | Dates |
|---|
| Sakir-Har | Named as an early Hyksos king on a door jamb found at Avaris. Regnal order uncertain. | | Khyan | c. 1620 BC | | Apophis | c. 1580 BC to 1540 BC | | Khamudi | c. 1540 BC to 1534 BC |
The Hyksos kingdom was centered in the eastern Nile Delta and Middle Egypt and was limited in size, never extending south into Upper Egypt, which was under control by Theban-based rulers. Hyksos relations with the south seem to have been mainly of a commercial nature, although Theban princes appear to have recognized the Hyksos rulers and may possibly have provided them with tribute for a period. The Hyksos Fifteenth Dynasty rulers established their capital and seat of government at Memphis and their summer residence at Avaris.
The rule of these kings overlaps with that of the native Egyptian pharaohs of the 16th and 17th dynasties of Egypt, better known as the Second Intermediate Period. The first pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, Ahmose I, finally expelled the Hyksos from their last holdout at Sharuhen in Gaza by the 16th year of his reign. Scholars have taken the increasing use of scarabs and the adoption of some Egyptian forms of art by the Fifteenth Dynasty Hyksos kings and their wide distribution as an indication of their becoming progressively Egyptianized. The Hyksos used Egyptian titles associated with traditional Egyptian kingship, and took the Egyptian god Seth to represent their own titulary deity. It would appear as though Hyksos administration was accepted in most quarters, if not actually supported by many of their northern Egyptian subjects. The flip side is that in spite of the prosperity that the stable political situation brought to the land, the native Egyptians continued to view the Hyksos as non-Egyptian "invaders." When they eventually were driven out of Egypt, all traces of their occupation were erased. History is written by the victors, and in this case the victors were the rulers of the native Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty, the direct successor of the Theban Seventeenth Dynasty. It was the latter which started and led a sustained war against the Hyksos. These native kings from Thebes had an incentive to demonize the Asiatic rulers in the North, thus accounting for the ruthless destruction of their monuments. This note of warning tells us that the historical situation most probably lay somewhere between these two extreme positions: the Hyksos dynasties represented superficially Egyptianized foreigners who were tolerated, but not truly accepted, by their Egyptian subjects.
The independent native rulers in Thebes do seem, however, to have reached a practical modus vivendi with the later Hyksos rulers. This included transit rights through Hyksos-controlled Middle and Lower Egypt and pasturage rights in the fertile Delta. One text, the Carnarvon Tablet I, relates the misgivings of the Theban ruler’s council of advisors when Kamose proposed moving against the Hyksos, who he claimed were a humiliating stain upon the holy land of Egypt. The councilors clearly did not wish to disturb the status quo:
Was there a Hyksos invasion?
Manetho's account of the appearance of the Hyksos in Egypt describes it as an armed invasion by a horde of foreign barbarians who met little resistance and who subdued the country by military force.
It has been claimed that new revolutionary methods of warfare ensured the Hyksos the ascendancy in their influx into the new emporia being established in Egypts delta and at Thebes in support of the Red Sea trade. Herbert E. Winlock describes new military hardware, such as the composite bow, as well as the improved recurve bow and most importantly the horse-drawn war chariot, as well as improved arrowheads, various kinds of swords and daggers, a new type of shield, mailed shirts, and the metal helmet.
In the last decades the idea of a simple migration, with little or no violence involved, has gained support. Under this theory, the Egyptian rulers of 13th Dynasty were too weak to stop these new migrants from travelling to Egypt from Asia and were preoccupied by struggling to cope with domestic famine and plague. Even before that, Amenemhat III carried out extensive building works and mining and Gae Callender notes that "the large intake of Asiatics, which seems to have occurred partly in order to subsidize the extensive bujilding work, may have encouraged the so-called Hyksos to settle in the Delta, thus leading eventually to the collapse of native Egyptian rule."
By around 1700 BC (just over a hundred years later), Egypt was fragmenting politically with local kingdoms springing up in the northeastern Delta area. One of these was that of King Nehesy, whose capital was at Avaris and he ruled over a population consisting largely of Syro-Palestinians who had settled in the area during the 12th Dynasty and who were probably mainly soldiers, sailors, shipbuildiers and workmen. His dynasty was probably replaced by a West-Semitic speaking Syro-Palestinian dynasty which was the basis of the later Hyksos kingdom which was able to spread southwards because of the unstable political situation, aied by "an army, ships, and foreign connections".
The ceramic evidence in the Memphis-Fayum region of Lower Egypt argues against the presence of new invading foreigners. Janine Bourriau's excavation in Memphis of ceramic material retrieved from Lisht and Dahshur during the Second Intermediate Period shows a continuity of Middle Kingdom ceramic type wares throughout this era. She finds in them no evidence of intrusion of Hyksos-style wares.
Bourriau's evidence argues against the view long ago espoused by Manetho that the Hyksos invaded and sacked the Memphite region and imposed their authority there. Not until the beginning of the Theban wars of liberation during the 17th Dynasty are Theban wares again found in the Fayum-Memphis region. Some texts indicate that while the Hyksos controlled the Delta region administratively the Thebans were too busy mining gold and making money off the Red Sea trade to care. Lower Egypt and Thebes functioned autonomously and shared limited contact with each other.
By the Thirteenth dynasty of Egypt, the foreign warlords had taken the name of Pharaoh for themselves and then began to fight over it. Some argued there was no need to pay tribute homage or obedience to a weak king, and that began to cause problems.
Josephus, quoting from the work of the historian Manetho, described more of an Egyptian assimilation to the corrupt ways of the emporia, followed by rebellion of those who wished to continue to live the life in Ma'at, than any kind of military struggle.
Supporters of the peaceful takeover of Egypt claim that there is little evidence of battles or wars in general in this period. They also maintain that the chariot didn't play any relevant role, e.g. no traces of chariots have been found at the Hyksos capital of Avaris despite extensive excavation.
This puts in doubt claims of technological superiority on the Hyksos side, their real advantage was in the adminstrative skills of the scribe, accounting and bureaucracy. The case for the use of the word invasion, is based on speculation. (a) the traditional Manetho's explanation; (b) the suspicion that the chariot was a new technology spreading from Central Asia and theories of widespread invasions by nomadic or semi-nomadic horsemen and seapeople. Ha ibrw or mounted bowmen not necessarily mounted on chariots in the period 1700–1100 BC, including Hurrian speaking Mitanni.In the Near East in India, Hurrians were active from the fringes of Egypt's northern provinces nown the Euphrates and across Iran to Baluchistan before the Hyksos appeared in Egypt.
As the chariot became an important weapon of the nobels and kings of that period, it became a symbol of power throughout Eurasia, Mycenaean Greece, India, Mesopotamia, Eastern Europe and China. Kings were portrayed on chariots, went to war in chariots and were buried in chariots. Skill in the use of mathematics and well organized competent administration, the real power of the Hyksos, was less quickly appreciated by their rivals.
Theban offensive
Under Seqenenre Tao (II)
The war against the Hyksos began in the closing years of the Seventeenth Dynasty at Thebes. Later New Kingdom literary tradition has brought one of these Theban kings, Seqenenre Tao (II), into contact with his Hyksos contemporary in the north, Auserra Apophis (also known as Apepi or Apophis). The tradition took the form of a tale in which the Hyksos king Apopi sent a messenger to Seqenenre in Thebes to demand that the Theban sport of harpooning hippopotami be done away with, his excuse was that the noise of these beasts was such that he was unable to sleep in far-away Avaris. The real reason was probably that their main god was Seth, who was represented as part man part hippopotamus. Perhaps the only historical information that can be gleaned from the tale is that Egypt was a divided land, the area of direct Hyksos control being in the north, but the whole of Egypt possibly paying tribute to the Hyksos kings.
Seqenenre participated in active diplomatic posturing, which probably consisted of more than simply exchanging insults with the Asiatic ruler in the North. He seems to have led military skirmishes against the Hyksos, and judging by the vicious head wound on his mummy in the Cairo Museum, he may have died during one of them. His son and successor, Wadjkheperra Kamose, the last ruler of the Seventeenth Dynasty at Thebes, is credited with the first significant victories in the Theban-led war against the Hyksos.
Under Kamose
Kamose sailed north from Thebes at the head of his army in his third regnal year. He surprised and overran the southernmost garrison of the Hyksos at Nefrusy, just north of Cusae [near modern Asyut], and Kamose then led his army as far north as the neighborhood of Avaris itself. Though the city was not taken, the fields around it were devastated by the Thebans. A second stele discovered at Thebes continues the account of the war broken off on the Carnarvon Tablet I, and mentions the interception and capture of a courier bearing a message from the Hyksos king Aawoserra Apophis at Avaris to his ally the ruler of Kush (modern Sudan), requesting the latter's urgent support against the threat posed by Kamose's activities against both their kingdoms. Kamose promptly ordered a detachment of his troops to occupy the Bahriya Oasis in the Western Desert to control and block the desert route to the south. Kamose, called "the Strong", then sailed back up the Nile to Thebes for a joyous victory celebration after what was probably not much more than a surprise spoiling raid in force which caught the Hyksos off guard. His Year 3 is the only date attested for Kamose and he may have died shortly after the battle from wounds.
By the end of the reign of Apophis, perhaps the second last Hyksos kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty, the Hyksos had been routed from Middle Egypt and had retreated northward and regrouped in the vicinity of the entrance of the Fayyum at Atfih. This great Hyksos king had outlived his first Egyptian contemporary, Seqenenra Tao II, and was still on the throne (albeit of a much reduced kingdom) at the end of Kamose's reign. The last Hyksos ruler of the Fifteenth Dynasty, Khamudi, undoubtedly had a relatively short reign which fell some time within the first half of the reign of Ahmose, Kamose's successor and the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Under Ahmose
Ahmose, who is regarded as the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty may have been on the Theban throne for some time before he resumed the war against the Hyksos.
The details of his military campaigns are taken from the account on the walls of the tomb of another Ahmose, a soldier from El-Kab, a town in southern Upper Egypt, whose father had served under Seqenenra Tao II, and whose family had long been nomarchs of the districts. It seems that several campaigns against the stronghold at Avaris were needed before the Hyksos were finally dislodged and driven from Lower Egypt. When this occurred is not known with certainty. Some authorities place the expulsion as early as Ahmose's fourth year, while Donald Redford, whose chronological structure has been adopted here, places it as late as the king's fifteenth year. The Ahmose who left the insciption states that he followed on foot as his King Ahmose rode to war in his chariot (the first mention of the use of the horse and chariot by the Egyptians); in the fighting around Avaris he captured prisoners and carried off several hands (as proof of slain enemies), which when reported to the royal herald resulted in his being awarded the "Gold of Valor" on three separate occasions. The actual fall of Avaris is only briefly mentioned:
- "Then Avaris was despoiled. Then I carried off spoil from there: one man, three women, a total of four persons. Then his majesty gave them to me to be slaves."
After the fall of Avaris, the fleeing Hyksos were pursued by the Egyptian army across northern Sinai and into southern Canaan. Here, in the Negev desert between Rafah and Gaza, the fortified town of Sharuhen was reduced after, according to the soldier from El-Kab, a long three-year siege operation. How soon after the sack of Avaris this Asiatic campaign took place is uncertain. One can reasonably conclude that the thrust into southern Canaan probably followed the Hyksos’ eviction from Avaris fairly closely, but, given a period of protracted struggle before Avaris fell and possibly more than one season of campaigning before the Hyksos were shut up in Sharuhen, the chronological sequence must remain uncertain.
Later times
The Hyksos continued to play a role in Egyptian literature as a synonym for "Asiatic" down to Hellenistic times. The term was frequently evoked against such groups as the Semites settled in Aswan or the Delta, and this may have led the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho to identify the coming of the Hyksos with the sojourn in Egypt of Joseph and his brothers, and helped modern historians identify the expulsion of the Hyksos with the Exodus. Significant in this identification is the fact that some Hyksos pharaohs had names familiar from Israelite traditions, such as Jacobaam of the 16th dynasty. It may also indicate that the "expulsion" of the Hyksos reported in the Egyptian records mainly refers to the expulsion of the Semitic rulers and military/political elite and does not indicate a mass expulsion of the lower classes who, in the Ancient World, were traditionally exploited by their conquerors rather than expelled or massacred.
There seems to be slight evidence that the Kings of the 19th Egyptian Dynasty may have had some Hyksos connections:
- Ramesses I had hereditary estates in the vicinity of Avaris.
- Ramesses II:
- Celebrated the 400th anniversary of the worship of Sutekh, in honor of his father, Seti I (Seth was identified by the Hyksos with Baal),
- Adopted a Semitic name for one of his favourite daughters (Bintanath meaning "the daughter of the goddess Anath"),
- Dedicated several of his favourite chariot horses to Anath (naming them accordingly), and
- Pharaoh Ramesses II moved his capital city back to Avaris — and named it after himself (Pi Rameses).
- The early Ramesside kings promoted Asiatics to positions of prominence in the civil administration.
- The anti-Hyksos invectives found during the first part of the 18th dynasty are almost wholly lacking.
With the chaos at the end of the 19th Dynasty, the first pharaohs of the 20th Dynasty in the Elephantine Stele and the Harris Papyrus re-invigorated an anti-Hyksos stance to strengthen their nativist reaction towards the Asiatic settlers of the north, who may again have been expelled from the country. Setnakht, the founder of the 20th Dynasty, records in a Year 2 stela from Elephantine that he defeated and expelled a large force of Asiatics who had invaded Egypt during the chaos between the end Twosret's reign and the beginning of the 20th dynasty and captured much of their stolen gold and silver booty.
The story of the Hyksos was known to the Greeks, who attempted to identify it within their own mythology with the expulsion of Belus (Baal?) and the daughters of Danaos, associated with the origin of the Argive dynasty.
Who were the Hyksos?
There are various hypotheses as to their ethnic identity. Most archaeologists describe the Hyksos as multi-ethnic, to include all of the peoples who occupied the emporia of the delta. Some were warlords seeking employment by the Egyptians as mercenaries. Some were unemployed agricultural workers looking for work helping produce food and resorting to banditry, theft and other crimes when they didn't get it. Some were skilled tradesmen, professionals, doctors, lawyers, scribes, priests, diplomats, accountants. Some were merchants importing raw materials; timber from Byblos, semi precious stones from as far away as Afghanistan, tin, copper, bronze, medicines for the doctors, perfumes for the wigmakers, bitumen, natron, linen, frankencense and myrrh for the mummification industry at Karnak or exporting grain and beer to as far away as Greece.
The origin of the term "Hyksos" derives from the Egyptian expression heka khasewet ("rulers of foreign lands"), used in Egyptian texts such as the Turin King List to describe the rulers of neighbouring lands. This expression begins to appear as early as the late Old Kingdom in Egypt, referring to various Nubian chieftains, and as early as the Middle Kingdom, referring to the Semitic chieftains of Syria and Canaan.
The German Egyptologist Wolfgang Helck once argued that the Hyksos were part of massive and widespread Hurrian and Indo-Aryan migrations into the Near East. According to Helck, the Hyksos were Hurrians and part of a Hurrian empire that, he claimed, extended over much of Western Asia at this period. Most scholars have rejected this theory and Helck himself has now abandoned this hypothesis in a 1993 article.
In his Against Apion, the 1st-century AD historian Josephus Flavius debates the synchronism between the Biblical account of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, and two Exodus-like events that the Egyptian historian Manetho apparently mentions. It is difficult to distinguish between what Manetho himself recounted, and how Josephus or Apion interpret him.
Josephus identifies the Israelite Exodus with the first exodus mentioned by Manetho, when some 480,000 Hyksos "shepherd kings" (also referred to as just 'shepherds', as 'kings' and as 'captive shepherds' in his discussion of Manetho) left Egypt for Jerusalem. The mention of "Hyksos" identifies this first exodus with the Hyksos period (16th century BC).
Apion identifies a second exodus mentioned by Manetho when a renegade Egyptian priest called Osarseph led 80,000 "lepers" to rebel against Egypt. Apparently Manetho conflates events of the Amarna period (in the 14th century) and the events at the end of the 19th Dynasty (12th century). Then Apion additionally conflates these with the Biblical Exodus, and contrary to Manetho, even alleges that this heretic priest changed his name to Moses. Many scholars interpret "lepers" and "leprous priests" non-literally: not as a disease but rather as a strange and unwelcome new belief system.
Josephus records the earliest account of the false but understandable etymology that the Greek phrase Hyksos stood for the Egyptian phrase Hekw Shasu meaning the Bedouin-like "Shepherd Kings", which scholars have only recently shown means "rulers of foreign lands".
Modern scholarship usually assumes that the Hyksos were likely Semites who came from the Levant (ie. Syria or Canaan). Kamose, the last king of the Theban 17th Dynasty, refers to Apophis as a "Chieftain of Retjenu (i.e. Canaan)" in a stela which implies a Canaanite background for this Hyksos king: this is the strongest evidence for a Canaanite background for the Hyksos. Khyan's name "has generally been interpreted as Amorite "Hayanu" (reading h-ya-a-n) which the Egyptian form represents perfectly, and this is in all likelihood the correct interpretation." Ryholt furthermore observes the name Hayanu is recorded in the Assyrian king-lists for a "remote ancestor" of Shamshi-Adad I (c.1800 BC) of Assyria, which suggests that it had been used for centuries prior to Khyan's own reign.
The issue of Sakir-Har's name, one of the three earliest 15th Dynasty kings, also leans towards a West Semitic or Canaanite origin for the Hyksos rulers—if not the Hyksos peoples themselves. As Ryholt notes, the name Sakir-Har:
As to a Hyksos “conquest,” some archaeologists depict the Hyksos as “northern hordes . . . sweeping through Palestine and Egypt in swift chariots.” Yet, others refer to a ‘creeping conquest,’ that is, a gradual infiltration of migrating nomads or seminomads who either slowly took over control of the country piecemeal or by a swift coup d’etat put themselves at the head of the existing government. In The World of the Past (1963, p. 444), archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes states: “It is no longer thought that the Hyksos rulers... represent the invasion of a conquering horde of Asiatics... they were wandering groups of Semites who had long come to Egypt for trade and other peaceful purposes.” However, this view still makes it difficult to explain how “wandering groups” could have gained control of Egypt, especially since the twelfth dynasty, prior to this period, is considered to have brought the country to a peak of power.
Hyksos in popular culture
The invasion and subsequent expulsion of the Hyksos form an integral part in the fictional 'Egypt' novels by Wilbur Smith, notably River God, The Seventh Scroll, Warlock and The Quest ("Egyptian Series"), in the Lords of the Two Lands trilogy by Pauline Gedge which chronicles the campaigns of Seqenenra, Kamose and Ahmose against them, and in Andre Norton's novel "Shadow Hawk".
Naguib Mahfouz wrote about the Theban wars against the Hyksos in his novel Thebes at War.
The expulsion of the Hyksos was also the basis for Christian Jacqs' fictional 'Queen of Freedom' series.
External links
- based on the 1962 book by David J. Gibson
-
-
- January 2008 Master's thesis abstract by Johanna Brönn of Stellenbosch University. Actual PDF paper is 8 MB long
|
| |
|
|
