Hyksos: Encyclopedia II - Hyksos - The Thebean Offensive

Hyksos - The Thebean Offensive

Hyksos - Under Sekenenra 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, Seqenenra Tao (II), into contact with his Hyksos contemporary in the north, Aauserra Apopi. Seqenenra is the father of the ruler above whose advisors counselled against disturbing the accommodation that had been reached with the Asiatics. The tradition took the form of a tale in which the Hyksos king Apopi sent a messenger to Seqenenra in Thebes to demand that the Theban hippopotamus pool be done away with, for the noise of these beasts was such that he was unable to sleep in far-away Avaris. 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.

Seqenenra participated in active diplomatic posturing, which probably consisted of more than simply exchanging of insults with the Asiatic ruler in the North. He seems to have led military skirmishes against the Hyksos, and judging from 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 opening campaigns of the Theban war against the Hyksos.

It should be noted that Seqenera Tao has been proposed as the legendary Hiram Abif by the authors of the book The Hiram Key. Per the authors Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, Hiram Abif (the master mason of King Solomon's Temple in masonic lore) can be traced to the historical personage of Seqenenra.

Hyksos - Under Kamose

There is little evidence to support Montet's assertion in his book Eternal Egypt (1964) that Kamose's war of liberation was sponsored by the priesthood of Amun as an attack against the Seth-worshipers in the north (i.e. a religious motive). The Carnarvon Tablet I, does state that Kamose went north to attack the Asiatics by the command of Amun, the titulary deity of his dynasty, but this may be simple hyperbole common to virtually all Egyptian royal inscriptions at all periods and should not be understood as the god’s having specifically commanded the attack for specifically religious reasons. Kamose's reason for launching his attack on the Hyksos was nationalistic pride, for in this same text he complains that he is sandwiched at Thebes between the Asiatics in the north and the Nubians (Sudanese) in the south, each holding “his slice of Egypt, dividing up the land with me…My wish is to save Egypt and to smite the Asiatics!” So it was that in his 3rd year on the throne Kamose, he embarked and sailed north from Thebes at the head of his army.

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 stele discovered at Thebes continues the account of the war broken off on the Carnarvon Tablet I, telling of the interception and capturing of a courier bearing a message from the Hyksos king Aa-woser-ra Apopi at Avaris to his ally the ruler of Kush (modern Sudan), requesting his urgent support. Kamose promptly ordered a detachment of his troops to occupy the Bahriya Oasis in the Western Desert, controlling and blocking 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. This Year 3 is the only one attested for Kamose.

By the end of the reign of Aawoserra Apopi, one of the last Hyksos kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty, Hyksos forces had been routed from Middle Egypt and had been pulled back northward and regrouped in the vicinity of the entrance of the Fayyum at Atfih. This great Hyksos king had outlived his first Egyptian contemporary, Sekenenra 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(s) of the Fifteenth Dynasty undoubtedly had (a) relatively short reign(s) falling sometime within the first half of that of Ahmose, Kamose's successor and the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

Hyksos - Under Ahmose

Ahmose, 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 district. 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 soldier Ahmose specifically states that he followed on foot as King Ahmose rode to war in his chariot. This is the first mention of the use of the horse and chariot by the Egyptians. In the repeated fighting around Avaris, the soldier captured prisoners and carried off several hands, 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" (ANET, pp.233f).

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 Raphia 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Thebean Offensive", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki