Sharuhen (
Tell el-AjjulTall al-Ajjul is an ancient site in southern Palestine, with remains dating back to as early as 2100 B.C. The exact location of Tall al-Ajjul is located at the mouth of the Ghazzah Wadi just south of the town of Gaza...
) was an ancient town in the Negev Desert, between
RafahRafah is a Palestinian city in the southern Gaza Strip, but also extends into the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Located south of Gaza, Rafah's population of 71,000 is overwhelmingly made up of Palestinian refugees. It serves as the district capital of the Rafah Governorate...
and
GazaGaza is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 410,000, making it the largest city under the control of the Palestinian National Authority....
. Following the expulsion of the
HyksosbfThe Hyksos were an Asiatic people who invaded the eastern Nile Delta, in the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt initiating the Second Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt...
from
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
in the early 1500s BCE, they fled to Sharuhen and fortified it. The armies of
PharaohPharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. In antiquity this title began to be used for the ruler who was the religious and political leader of united ancient Egypt. This was true only during the New Kingdom, specifically during the middle of...
Ahmose IAhmose I was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the founder of the Eighteenth dynasty. He was a member of the Theban royal house, the son of pharaoh Tao II Seqenenre and brother of the last pharaoh of the Seventeenth dynasty, King Kamose...
seized and razed the town after a three-year siege.
The destruction of Sharuhen was merely the first stage of a new policy of pre-emptive warfare waged by the Egyptians.
Sharuhen (
Tell el-AjjulTall al-Ajjul is an ancient site in southern Palestine, with remains dating back to as early as 2100 B.C. The exact location of Tall al-Ajjul is located at the mouth of the Ghazzah Wadi just south of the town of Gaza...
) was an ancient town in the Negev Desert, between
RafahRafah is a Palestinian city in the southern Gaza Strip, but also extends into the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Located south of Gaza, Rafah's population of 71,000 is overwhelmingly made up of Palestinian refugees. It serves as the district capital of the Rafah Governorate...
and
GazaGaza is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 410,000, making it the largest city under the control of the Palestinian National Authority....
. Following the expulsion of the
HyksosbfThe Hyksos were an Asiatic people who invaded the eastern Nile Delta, in the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt initiating the Second Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt...
from
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
in the early 1500s BCE, they fled to Sharuhen and fortified it. The armies of
PharaohPharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. In antiquity this title began to be used for the ruler who was the religious and political leader of united ancient Egypt. This was true only during the New Kingdom, specifically during the middle of...
Ahmose IAhmose I was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the founder of the Eighteenth dynasty. He was a member of the Theban royal house, the son of pharaoh Tao II Seqenenre and brother of the last pharaoh of the Seventeenth dynasty, King Kamose...
seized and razed the town after a three-year siege.
The destruction of Sharuhen was merely the first stage of a new policy of pre-emptive warfare waged by the Egyptians. Because the
EgyptiansEgyptians is the name of the nationality and Mediterranean North African ethnic group native to Egypt....
of the 17th Dynasty felt deeply humiliated by the 15th and 16th Dynasty rule of the Hyksos (ca. 1655 BCE-ca. 1580 BCE), the Theban dynasty launched an ambitious war, led by
Seqenenre Ta'a IISeqenenre Tao II, , called The Brave, ruled over the last of the local kingdoms of the Theban region of Egypt in the Seventeenth Dynasty during the Second Intermediate Period. He probably was the son and successor to Senaktenre Tao I the Elder and Queen Tetisheri...
, against the foreign king, Apepi, to reclaim lost territory. Though his own campaign to expel the Hyksos from Egypt failed, and he himself was killed in battle, his son,
KamoseKamose was the last king of the Theban Seventeenth Dynasty. He was probably the son of Sekenenra Tao II and Ahhotep I and the full brother of Ahmose I, founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty. His reign fell at the very end of the Second Intermediate Period...
, launched an attack on the Hyksos capital of
AvarisAvaris , was located near modern Tell el-Dab'a in the northeastern region of the Nile Delta. As the main course of the Nile migrated eastward and the delta sedimented up and moved with the river, its position at the hub of Egypt's delta emporia made it a major administrative capital of the Hyksos...
. It was his much younger brother,
Ahmose IAhmose I was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the founder of the Eighteenth dynasty. He was a member of the Theban royal house, the son of pharaoh Tao II Seqenenre and brother of the last pharaoh of the Seventeenth dynasty, King Kamose...
, however, who finally succeeded in recapturing Avaris, razing it, and expelling the Hyksos rulers from Egypt altogether. The profound insult of the foreign rule to the honour and integrity of Egypt could be corrected, and its recurrence prevented, only by extending Egypt's hegemony over the Asiatics to the north and east of Egypt. Ahmose I engaged in a retaliative three-year siege of the Southern Palestine citadel of Sharuhen, thereby launching an aggressive policy of pre-emptive warfare. His success was continued by his successor but one,
Thutmose IThutmose I was the third Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty of Egypt. He was given the throne after the death of the previous king Amenhotep I. During his reign, he campaigned deep into the Levant and Nubia, pushing the borders of Egypt further than ever before...
, who extended Egyptian influence as far as the Mitanni kingdom in the north and Mesopotamia in the east, thereby creating what was to become the most extensive empire in the ancient world.