Hyksos: Encyclopedia II - Hyksos - Was There a Hyksos Invasion?

Hyksos - Was There a Hyksos Invasion?

Manetho's account of the appearance of the Hyksos in Egypt calls it 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 invasion. Herbert Winlock in his book The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes describes new military hardware, such as the composite 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. To say that even some of this military hardware had been brought into Egypt by the Hyksos and was not the result of a native Egyptian development does not necessarily point to a violent armed invasion by Asiatic hordes. Simply put, they had superior military hardware, so when military moves were called for, the Hyksos had the preponderance of military might on their side.

Helck supported the idea of an invasion, because it was part of his Hurrian hypothesis. However, the generally accepted view today is reflected as a peaceful infiltration of several different groups of Western Asiatic peoples, mainly Semites, into the eastern Nile Delta during the closing decades of the Middle Kingdom -- in some cases as slaves of the victorious Egyptians. Von Beckerath adds that to suppose any armed invasion of Egypt by Semites from southern Canaan and the Sinai desert is out of the question because the tribes there simply were not strong enough. Furthermore there was no consolidated state in the region from which such a supposed invasion could have been launched. The Hyksos' realm was not the southern extension of a great Hurrian empire, as Helck thought, for the simple reason that there was never any Hurrian empire. Over the years, then, the numbers of these Asiatics in the eastern Delta increased, and gradually they extended their political control over the local Egyptian towns and princedoms there. Finally a point was reached when one group of leaders came to the same conclusion as Pepin the Short did in the Merovingian kingdom so many centuries later when he posed the question whether it was right that one of royal race and who bore the title king but who exercised no effective power in the kingdom should continue to bear the title of king. These Hyksos leaders thereupon took matters into their own hands, attacked and overran the administrative capital at Memphis, and proceeded to make themselves pharaohs.

Nor was there any great Hyksos empire extending over hither Asia, as was once thought. The chief evidence for such a Hyksos empire in Asia consists of a mass of Hyksos scarabs from southwest Canaan, an alabaster jar-lid from Knossos on Crete, and a small granite lion from Baghdad. Scarabs with Hyksos names have even been found as far south as Kerma in the Sudan. All these items have been satisfactorily explained as items of trade, not as indicators of direct political and military control.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Was There a Hyksos Invasion?", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki