Hyksos

Hyksos, dynasty of Palestinian origin that ruled northern Egypt as the 15th dynasty (c. 1630–c. 1530 bce; see ancient Egypt: The Second Intermediate period). The name Hyksos was used by the Egyptian historian Manetho (flourished c. 300 bce), who, according to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (flourished 1st century ce), translated the word as “king-shepherds” or “captive shepherds.” Josephus himself wished to demonstrate the great antiquity of the Jews and thus identified the Hyksos with the Hebrews of the Bible. Hyksos was in fact probably an Egyptian term for “rulers of foreign lands” (heqa-khase), and it almost certainly designated the foreign dynasts rather than an ethnic group. Modern scholarship has identified most of the Hyksos kings’ names as Semitic.

The rise of the Hyksos kings in Egypt was made possible by an influx of immigrants from Palestine into Egypt beginning about the 18th century bce. The immigrants brought with them new technologies, including the horse and chariot, the compound bow, and improved metal weapons. Most of them settled in the eastern portion of the Nile Delta, where they achieved a dominant role in trade with western Asia. Archaeological excavations in that area have revealed a Canaanite-style temple, Palestinian-type burials (including horse burials), Palestinian types of pottery, quantities of their superior weapons, and a series of Minoan frescoes that demonstrate stylistic parallels to those of Knossos and Thera. The most-prominent settlement was Avaris (modern Tall al-Dabʿa), a fortified camp over the remains of a Middle Kingdom town in the northeastern delta. Their chief deity was the Egyptian storm and desert god, Seth, whom they identified with a Syrian storm god, Hadad.

The sequence of events that brought the Hyksos kings to power in Lower Egypt is not entirely clear. The 13th and 14th dynasties, which had existed concurrently in Lower Egypt, weakened and disappeared about the middle of the 17th century. Some scholars have suggested that a famine in the Delta region contributed to their decline and opened the way for the emergence of the Hyksos dynasty. From Avaris the Hyksos 15th dynasty ruled most of Lower Egypt and the Nile valley as far south as Cusae (near present-day Asyūṭ). The contemporaneous 16th-dynasty rulers—minor Hyksos kings who ruled in Upper Egypt simultaneously with those of the 15th dynasty—were probably vassals of the latter group.

When, under Seqenenre and Kamose, the Thebans began to rebel, the Hyksos pharaoh Apopis tried unsuccessfully to make an alliance with the rulers of Kush, who had overrun Lower Nubia in the later years of the 13th dynasty (c. 1650 bce).

The Theban revolt spread northward under Kamose, and about 1521 Avaris fell to his successor, Ahmose, founder of the 18th dynasty, thereby ending 108 years of Hyksos rule over Egypt. Although vilified in some Egyptian texts, the Hyksos had ruled as pharaohs and were listed as legitimate kings in the Turin Papyrus. At least superficially they were Egyptianized, and they did not interfere with Egyptian culture beyond the political sphere.