A mysterious dynasty of foreigners may not have invaded and taken control of ancient Egypt as was long thought. Rather, the ethnic group known as the Hyksos seems to have seized power from within Egypt.
The Hyksos ruled Egypt from 1638 B.C. to 1530 B.C. But the new study, which involved chemical analyses of teeth collected from Hyksos cemeteries, suggests that this ethnic group thrived in Egypt for generations.
Though the Hyksos were the first foreigners to rule ancient Egypt, written records of their reign are scant. For hundreds of years, the only known mention of the Hyksos was in the Greek tome "Aegyptiaca," or "History of Egypt," written by a Ptolemaic priest named Manetho who lived in the early third century B.C. and who chronicled the rule of the pharaohs.
According to Manetho, the Hyksos made their move after the end of Egypt's Middle Kingdom, which crumbled around 1650 B.C. During a time when Egypt was in turmoil, Hyksos leaders purportedly led an invading army "sweeping in from the northeast and conquering the northeastern Nile Delta," researchers wrote in a new study, published online today (July 15) in the journal PLOS One.
Deciphered hieroglyphics later provided historians with a little more detail about the alleged Hyksos coup, but accounts of this dynasty remained biased and incomplete. Egyptian rulers frequently destroyed records or spread propaganda about their predecessors, and the Hyksos people were linked to "disorder and chaos" by the dynasties that succeeded them, according to the study.
A seal amulet with the name of the Hyksos pharaoh Apophis. (Image credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Non-Egyptian customs
In 1885, archaeologists uncovered ruins of the Hyksos capital, the city of Avaris, at a site on the Nile Delta called Tell el-Dab'a, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Cairo. Decades of excavation followed; architectural details and cultural artifacts found in cemeteries, temples and residences hinted that the Hyksos originated in the Near East, said lead study author Chris Stantis, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Bournemouth University in Poole, England.
"The tombs with non-Egyptian burial customs were especially intriguing — typically males buried with bronze weaponry in constructed tombs, without scarabs or other protective amulets like Egyptians would have been buried with," Stantis told Live Science in an email.
"The most elite had equids of some sort (potentially donkeys) buried outside the tombs, often in pairs as though ready to pull a chariot. This is both a foreign characteristic of burial style, but also suggestive of someone [with] very high status," Stantis said.
But long before the Hyksos emerged as a ruling dynasty in 1638 B.C., waves of migration brought this ethnic group into Egypt's delta region, the scientists reported in the study.
Migration of women
Stantis and her co-authors collected enamel samples from the teeth of 75 ancient people in three locations at Tell el-Dab'a. They scrutinized the enamel for strontium isotopes (variations of an element), and then compared the ratios with isotopes preserved in other remains and artifacts from the region and along the Nile, to determine whether the people living in Tell el-Dab'a were "local."
"Strontium enters our bodies primarily through the food we eat," Stantis said. "It readily replaces calcium, as it's a similar atomic radius. This is the same way lead enters our skeletal system; although, while lead is dangerous, strontium is not."
Because strontium reflects the underlying geology of a region, and because dental enamel geochemistry takes shape early in life, individuals with enamel values that match local values are thereby considered to be local to the region, Stantis explained.
The scientists also used geochemical analysis to determine the sex of the individuals, to better understand the male-to-female ratio in the Hyksos capital.
Isotopes in the majority of the teeth — belonging to 36 individuals — identified them as settling in Egypt prior to the start of the Hyskos dynasty, contradicting the narrative that the Hyksos first appeared as an invasive army. Intriguingly, the wide range of isotope values hinted that immigrants "did not come from one unified homeland," representing "an extensive variety of origins," according to the study.
Chemical analysis of the teeth also revealed that 30 of the individuals were female, while only 20 were found to be male. If the Hyksos had appeared in Egypt as invaders, the first wave of Hyksos would likely be all male, because men were typicallythe fighters in ancient societies. By comparison, the large number of women "immigrants" pre-dating the Hyksos dynasty suggests that women were at the forefront of the Hyksos migration to Egypt, the researchers reported.
"Some previous research talked about men moving into Egypt: shipbuilders, merchants, mercenaries. The concept of women moving, as a family or possibly alone, hasn't really been discussed," Stantis explained.
"We need to look more into who these women were and why they moved, but the fact that there's more women than men changes a lot of interpretations."
With a clearer picture of when the Hyksos arrived and how they settled in Egypt, the next steps will involve piecing together how the Hyksos adapted to the customs of their new home and how they blended new practices with their own cultural traditions, Stantis said.
"Are the individuals buried in the Near Eastern styles first-generation immigrants, or are they continuing their ancestral funerary customs despite being born and raised in the Delta?" she said. "Dietary isotopes would also let us think about whether nonlocals were eating significantly different foods from locals, or if they shifted quickly to Egyptian food customs."
-waves of Near East migration predate the rule of the Hyksos by generations (as many of us said).
-In many unearthed burial sites, women were more common than men, suggesting against an external invasion.I wonder if this could also mean that its more likely to find greater sums of NE DNA beyond a certain point (and in certain areas of Egypt) when researching AE maternal DNA especially.
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This supports my research that the Hyksos were Kusites of Lower Egypt--not outsiders.
The Hyksos: Kushites of Temeh/ Lower Egypt .
. Temeh or Lower Egypt was the homeland of the Northern Kushites. In this essay we will show that the Hyksos were Kushites. And that the term "heqa ḫ3st , means Kushite—not "Rulers of foreign lands". Researchers have made it clear that the Hyksos included many different nationalities. The Hyksos according to John Bright, A History of Israel, Westminster John Knox Press ( p.60 ); and Robert Drews, "The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East"( Princeton University Press [p.254] ) included Hurrians/Hattians, in addition to Canaanites. This means that the name Aamw, was a generic name for ‘Asians’, and did not denote a specific Asian tribe.
The Hyksos were called heqa khasut see: The World in Ancient Times: The ancient Egyptian world, by Oup Book. , not Habiruor Shepherd Kings. Most researchers accept the contemporary meaning of Gardiner's N25 symbol as "Rulers of foreign lands" not Kush”. But this was not the first meaning assigned this sign. Breasted translated N25, as "heqa ḫ3st ".
In my book the Kushites, Who, What, When, Where, I explain that the Hyksos were Blacks native to Lower Egypt.
If Gardiner's N25 symbol meant "Rulers of foreign lands" we would read the Weni inscription as the following “His majesty made war on the Asiatic Sand-dwellers and his majesty made an army of many ten thousands; in the entire South, southward to Elephantine, and northward to Aphroditopolis [Busiris]; in the Northland on both sides entire in the [stronghold], and in the midst of the [strongholds], among the Irthet Rulers of foreign lands , the Mazoi Rulers of foreign lands , the Yam Rulers of foreign lands , among the Wawat Rulers of foreign lands, among the Kau Rulers of foreign lands , and in the land of Temeh.”
Semantically reading N25 as "Rulers of foreign land" is unintelligent, for example “Wawat Rulers of foreign lands” , is incorrect, because Wawat was the name of a nation, not a king. As a result, ḫ3st, was used to identify the nationality of the Wawat, Kau and other Kushite = ḫ3st.
Thusly, the inscription of Weni line 46 : “His majesty made war on the Asiatic Sand-dwellers and his majesty made an army of many ten thousands; in the entire South, southward to Elephantine, and northward to Aphroditopolis [Busiris]; in the Northland on both sides entire in the [stronghold], and in the midst of the [strongholds], among the Irthet "heqa ḫ3st [Kusites], the Mazoi "heqa ḫ3st [Kushites], the Yam "heqa ḫ3st [Kushites], among the Wawat "heqa ḫ3st [Kushites], among the Kau "heqa ḫ3st [Kushites], and in the land of Temeh.” Nesmenser in https://www.temehu.com , noted that Sir Alan Gardiner said that Temeh'w means “Lower Egypt” as well as the “Delta”, indicates that Kushites lived in Lower Egypt.
Francis Llewellyn Griffith translated the Inscription of Una . Griffith translated thw word Nehesy as “negro”. Una listed the Kushite dynasties in the Weni inscription, as follows, “ When his Majesty chastised the Aamu-Herusha 6 and his Majesty made an army of many tens of thousands out of the whole of the Upper Country, from Abu 7 in the south to Aphroditopolis [?] in the north, and out of the Lower Country, from the whole of the two sides, 8 out of Sezer and Khen-sezeru, 9 negroes from Arertet, 10 negroes from Meza, negroes from [Y]Aam, negroes from Wawat, negroes from Kaau, and foreigners from the land of Temeh “. In relation to Temeh, the term “foreigner” would have been ḫ3st or Kushite just like the name ḫ3stused in relation to the other Kushite nations mentioned by Una. Thusly, the term Khasut or Hyksos should be read: Kushite.
If Temeh was a name for Lower Egypt, in addition to Libya makes it clear that Kushites lived not only in Nubia, but also Lower Egypt and Libya. New research from Lower Egypt indicates that the Hyksos were native to Lower Egypt or Temeh.
Research by C. Stantis & H. Schutkowski in a paper presented at the 88th Annual Meeting of the American Association Physical Anthropologists (2019) in their paper “Migration into Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period”, observed that the ruling class may have been “foreign , the local people were native to the Lower Egypt during the Hyksos period at Tell el Dab’a (Avaris), Tell el-Rotaba (Rotaba), and Tell el-Maskhuta and other parts of the Delta or Temeh.
The latest research on the Hyksos indicate that there was no invasion of Lower Egypt, the Hyksos were already living in Lower Egypt. Bruce Bower (2019), admits that there are no places in Lower Egypt that indicates any battles being fought in the region before and during the Hyksos period. Moreover, the archaeological evidence makes it clear that the Lower Egyptians and people in Libya and the Middle East practiced the same culture (Curry,2018). They also had strong relations with the Kushites in Nubia. This is not surprising because Lower Egypt , Libya and the Levant made up Temeh, which since the Una inscription dating to the Old Kingdom was ḫ3st or Khasut/ Kush.
The Hyksos ruled from 1650-1550. The New Kingdom lasted from 1549-1292. During the New Kingdom Egyptians used the name Aamw, as a generic name for the Asian, the term : Habiru, was ethnonym for one of the Asian tribes. It is clear that if the Habiru and Heqa Khasut were the same people, they would have had the same name given the fact the New Kingdom, began at the end of the Heqa Khasut Dynasty.
The Hyksos door jamb signs reads “King of the Kushites. Fraser (1900) and Newberry (1906) have published many of the Hyksos scarabs. These scarabs often begin with the title Heqa ḫ3st and the plural marker III, and should read “King of the Kushites”.
. . Although the Hyksos scarabs have three lines under heqa ḫЗst , it does not read 'King of the mountains' as translated by Newberry it means “King of the Kushites”.
This is obvious when we look at the Khnumhotep II, inscription. Here we see above a Nubian ibis heqa ḫЗst, under the ibis is the name Abisharie. This inscription reads: "The Kushite King Abisharie".
Whereas on the Semqen scarab we read heqa ḫЗst+ plural marker III, and we read it as : "King of the Kushites Semqen".
The meaning of Khas, has to be Kush, because why would Hyksos kings refer to themselves as ‘foreign kings’, when they were native to the land they ruled. There are Egyptian text where the Hyksos called themselves Khas= Kushite. The Egyptian textual evidence include The primary evidence includes the Turin Royal Canon where the Hyksos were styled : heqa khasut, the same name they called the other Kushites in Nubia, during the Old Kingdom. During the New Kingdom, the Kushites were still being called Kash, the same name the Hattians called themselves i.e., Kashka.
The first four rulers of the Hyksos called themselves heqa khasut on their seals and a monumental doorjamb from Avaris. This is primary contemporaneous AEL literature epigraphic documentation evidence indicating that they called themselves Khas. The Hyksos worshiped Ra and Seth. They also continued to worship Near Eastern gods and the culture of the Kushites in Temeh .
Hyksos Kings were proud of their Kushite origin. in the Hyksos seals, the Kings wrote their names followed by the "Heqa Khasut", i.e. “King of the Kushites”. These sealings are primary contemporaneous AEL literature documentation ,indicating that the Hyksos used this name to illustrate their Kushite ancestry and relationship to the Nubian Kushites. See; A History of Ancient Egypt by Marc Van De Mieroop.It would appear that the Egyptians hated the Hyksos, not because they were foreigners, they hated them because they dared to acknowledge their Kushite ḫ3st(Khasut) origin. In summary , the meaning of ḫ3st(Khast) is Kushite). My interpretation of N25 ḫ3st, is supported by the Classical scholars, line 46 of the Weni or Una inscription and Sahure, and the use of the term ḫ3st, on the Hyksos sealings and inscriptions generally. .
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References: Bower,B. (2019). Foreigners may have conquered ancient Egypt without invading it. ScienceNews , 2 April (2019). Bright, J . A History of Israel, Westminster John Knox Press . Curry, A. (2018). The Rulers of Foreign Lands, Archaeoloy Magazine, September/ October . Drews,R. The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East, Princeton University Press. Winters.C (2018). The Kushites, Who, What, When, Where .
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A 12th Dynasty (1981–1802 B.C.) fresco from the tomb of Khnumhotep III in Beni Hassan shows a group of Semitic people, possibly Canaanite merchants, arriving in Egypt. They are thought to be related culturally to the dynasty that called itself the Hyksos.
Middle Egypt, Beni Hasan, the tomb of Khnumhotep II (Egyptian at right) _____________________________________
It's not certain that these are Hyksos
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Translation: Definitive evidence of a population called "the Hyksos" still has yet to be found and therefore they are only speculating based on the presence of strontium isotopes in remains of teeth. The biggest problem they are having is that they have not found many human remains from the time period of the Hyksos so at this point they can only speculate. The concept of the Hyksos has been labeled an "enigma" since many years ago.
While I don't fully agree with Clyde, the evidence available does show a strong presence of Southern groups from the far South in the Avaris excavations. That data combined with all the other data shows that there was also a strong southern presence throughout the Nile Valley from farther south as attested by many sources of information: tomb art (ie, archers from further south found in middle kingdom tombs), the rise of the 18th dynasty, rulers naamed Nehesy(Southerner) documented at Avaris from the same time period and so on. So I would not see this as evidence of Levantines or "Eurasians" overrunning the Nile Valley in this era. In fact, I would see it as somewhat the opposite, where Southerners continued to move in and have important influence on the culture. Case in point the rise of Amun as a southern deity came in this era and the tradition of southern Queens also arose in the role Mistress/Wife of Amun.
quote: Besides Egyptians and people from Western Asia from dierent periods of immigration, Avaris proves more and more to have been a multi-ethnical town. Ceramic remains from dierent parts of Nubia can be taken as evidence that also various ethnicities of Nubians lived here. As their pottery has open forms, not suitable as containers of imports, and as the roughly produced cooking pots are not attractive as imports it is likely that Nubians lived in Avaris over a long period. Some of the cooking pots even seem to have been produced of local clays. This would speak indeed for the physical presence of Nubians.
The names of the rulers of Dynasties 14 and 15 were based in Avaris. Nehesy was an important 14th-century Nubian or Egyptian who ruled from Avaris. Aauserra Apepi ruled c.1555 B.C. Scribal tradition flourished under him and the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus was copied. Two Theban kings led campaigns against him. Cusae and Kerma
Cusae is about 40 km (almost 25 miles) south of the Middle Kingdom's administrative center at Hermopolis. During the 2nd Intermediate Period, travelers from the south had to pay a tax to Avaris to travel the Nile north of Cusae. However, the King of Avaris was allied with the King of Kush, so Lower Egypt and Nubia maintained trade and contact via an alternate oasis route.
Kerma was the capital of Kush, which was at its most powerful in this period. They also traded with Thebes and some Kerma Nubians fought in Kamose's army.
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Hyksos are a catch-all phrase for foreign rulers. There isn't really a need for a single population or cultural identity to explain the Hyksos anymore than the the term gaijin needs to explain a single ethnicity. They could be a Kushite, they could be Canaanite. All leadership from these groups could be "Hyksos" in Egypt, with the only thing in common being that they aren't of native origin. It seems to be more of a term that Egyptians used to describe a relationship they had to persons/groups that were foreign to the native culture/people of Egypt. Most people who came from outside of Egypt from the NE came in from the north to live and eventually assumed the highest positions in the country. They are saying the strontium isotopes of the people they found do not match those of native Egyptians. They also said that this data existed within a broader archeological context:
quote: In 1885, archaeologists uncovered ruins of the Hyksos capital, the city of Avaris, at a site on the Nile Delta called Tell el-Dab'a, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Cairo. Decades of excavation followed; architectural details and cultural artifacts found in cemeteries, temples and residences hinted that the Hyksos originated in the Near East, said lead study author Chris Stantis, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Bournemouth University in Poole, England.
"The tombs with non-Egyptian burial customs were especially intriguing — typically males buried with bronze weaponry in constructed tombs, without scarabs or other protective amulets like Egyptians would have been buried with," Stantis told Live Science in an email.
"The most elite had equids of some sort (potentially donkeys) buried outside the tombs, often in pairs as though ready to pull a chariot. This is both a foreign characteristic of burial style, but also suggestive of someone [with] very high status,," Stantis said.
....So foreigners migrating to Egypt was "only" something they found by strontium? No.
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quote:Originally posted by Ase: Hyksos are a catch-all phrase for foreign rulers. There isn't really a need for a single population or cultural identity to explain the Hyksos anymore than the the term gaijin needs to explain a single ethnicity. It's not disclosing ethnicity, but the relationship a person/group has to the native culture/people of Egypt. People who came from outside of Egypt came in from the north to live and eventually assumed the highest positions in the country. They are saying the strontium isotopes of the people they found do not match those of native Egyptians. They also said that this data existed within a broader archeological context:
quote: In 1885, archaeologists uncovered ruins of the Hyksos capital, the city of Avaris, at a site on the Nile Delta called Tell el-Dab'a, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Cairo. Decades of excavation followed; architectural details and cultural artifacts found in cemeteries, temples and residences hinted that the Hyksos originated in the Near East, said lead study author Chris Stantis, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Bournemouth University in Poole, England.
"The tombs with non-Egyptian burial customs were especially intriguing — typically males buried with bronze weaponry in constructed tombs, without scarabs or other protective amulets like Egyptians would have been buried with," Stantis told Live Science in an email.
"The most elite had equids of some sort (potentially donkeys) buried outside the tombs, often in pairs as though ready to pull a chariot. This is both a foreign characteristic of burial style, but also suggestive of someone [with] very high status,," Stantis said.
....So foreigners migrating to Egypt was "only" something they found by strontium? No.
So the whole issue goes back to Manetho and others who labeled the Hyksos as a destinct ethnicity and population. And every since then scholars have called them an enigma. And it has been the subject of much speculation and debate every since then. And the point I am making is that they still don't know where these populations came from so they are just generalizing and saying they are "migrants" from some previous period and they cannot even identify where they came from or when they arrived. So it is speculation. They don't have enough evidence to identify some foreign entity or culture that conquered Northern Egypt because the evidence isn't available. Which means they are only admitting what many scholars have been saying for a while now that there is no such evidence of a "Hyksos" as a distinct culture or ethnic group in Northern Egypt.
quote: If you study “fake news” from ancient Egypt, you would consider the Hyksos a band of nasty, marauding outsiders who invaded and then brutally ruled the Nile Delta until heroic kings expelled them. In fact, the Hyksos had a more diplomatic impact, contributing to progress in culture, language, military affairs and even the introduction of the iconic horse and chariot. The story of these two competing explanations reveals much about ancient Egypt and this mysterious group.
As a word, Hyksos is simply the Greek version of an Egyptian title, Heka Khasut, meaning “rulers of foreign lands/hill countries.” While much is misunderstood, we know the Hyksos comprised a small group of West Asian individuals who ruled Northern Egypt, especially the Delta, during the Second Intermediate Period. These rulers were recorded as Egypt’s 15th dynasty in the Turin Royal Canon, the only known king’s list that documents their existence.
For decades, the writings of the Ptolemaic Egyptian historian, Manetho, influenced the popular and scholarly interpretations of the Hyksos. Preserved in Josephus’s Contra Apionem I, Manetho presented the Hyksos as a barbaric horde, “invaders of an obscure race” who conquered Egypt by force, causing destruction and murdering or enslaving Egyptians. This account continued in Egyptian texts from the Second Intermediate Period and New Kingdom. As Egyptology developed, years of debate over the extent of destruction and the ethnicity of the “Hyksos people” transpired. Only in more recent decades have the Hyksos been revealed as a small group of rulers (we know of six) and not a population or ethnic group.
So it just says that the Nile Valley was not overrun by foreigners of Levantine or Eurasian descent in this era. And the evidence suggests a relatively small number of settlers who assimilated into the AE culture but not enough to overwhelm the population or demographics of the country as a whole either through conquest or intermarriage.
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quote:Originally posted by Ase: [QB] Hyksos are a catch-all phrase for foreign rulers. There isn't really a need for a single population or cultural identity to explain the Hyksos anymore than the the term gaijin needs to explain a single ethnicity. They could be a Kushite, they could be Canaanite. All leadership from these groups could be "Hyksos" in Egypt, with the only thing in common being that they aren't of native origin.
There are some earlier usages of the word Hyksos
However when Hyksos are most commonly mentioned with a capital in Avaris at Tell el-Dab’ in the 12th through the 13th dynasty then it is not that broader definition, Egyptian text in reference to this period calls them Asiatic. The tomb styles and methods used to bury the dead in Tell el-Dab’a were Canaanite.
In 1987, thousands of fragments of Minoan wall paintings were discovered in the ancient gardens that adjoin the palace complex of Tell el-Dab’a. The Minoan wall paintings from Tell el-Dab’a therefore show that the early 18th dynasty rulers were open to works and themes from the eastern Mediterranean. The Hyksos and Minoan societies were in contact, potentially through itinerant artists who transferred Minoan technology to Tell el-Dab’a. The population of Tell el-Dab’a may have also included Aegean families, resulting in direct connections between Aegean and Egyptian art.
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Given that the Nile River is the main water source for drinking and watering crops through ancient Nubia and Egypt, the strontium values for the majority of these ancient populations would fit close to the local range of Tell el-Dabca. Individuals who grew up along the Nile, where alluvium creates a corridor of homogenous 87Sr/86Sr values, likely show values too similar to differentiate between, for example, Upper and Lower Egypt [52]. As such, non-locals south of the northeastern Nile Delta would show the same strontium values as locals to the region of study; individuals from major centers such as Memphis, Thebes, and even further south into Upper Egypt and Nubia might be present in this assemblage but unidentifiable using strontium isotope analysis.
The Hyksos-era women clustering higher and lower than the local biospheric values on Fig 4 are interred at different tombs across the site. It is possible that women hailed from the same origins in this time, but this might be an issue of equifinality and they have childhood residences in different parts of the world with similar underlying geologies [64–66]. Oxygen stable isotope (δ18O) analysis is an additional tool for investigating paleomobility in a bioarchaeological context [67] and has been used in previous Egyptian and Sudanese studies [45, 68–72]. Future research utilizing δ18O analysis on the Tell el-Dab’a assemblage might hold promise for identifying these non-locals with local 87Sr/86Sr values.
Despite a reasonable expectation of isotopic homogeneity, the majority of individuals in the larger assemblage irrespective of time period show non-local 87Sr/86Sr values, which is compelling. Chronological patterns of movement can be observed using 87Sr/86Sr analysis on human remains from the site of Tell el-Dabca, with more immigrants previous to the Hyksos Dynasty. On a local scale, this reflects in some way the international characteristic of the city as a harbor in the northeastern Nile Delta. In combination with previous archaeological evidence [15], this research supports the concept that the Hyksos were not an invading force occupying this city and the upper Nile Delta, but an internal group of people who gained power in a system with which they were already familiar.
Contrary to the model of the Hyksos coming to power from a foreign invasion, we did not find more males moving into the region. Gender parity would have been expected with families moving as economic opportunities arose, but instead we find a sex bias towards females. The greater proportion of non-local females compared to males could fit with patrilocality in Egypt and the Near East [73], but this rather high proportion of 77% of females as non-local deserves more careful contextual consideration.
The excavated cemeteries and domestic burials are assumed to be more representative of the elites of the city rather than the ‘common’ population [13], and it is possible that these women are coming to the region for marriages cementing alliances with powerful families from beyond the Nile. During the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period, there is more documentation of men with Egyptian names marrying women with non-Egyptian names than vice versa [74]. This attitude towards marriage to foreign families continues into the 18th Dynasty [75]: foreign women could marry into high status Egyptian families, but Egyptian women would not marry foreign kings. It would be interesting if the technological and cultural transmission of the Hyksos dynasty on later Egyptian culture could be viewed through the lens of gender theory to explore this potential contribution from the influx of immigrant women, if the collection analyzed in this paper is indeed representative of the larger migration patterns.
Note that they don't identify where these individuals came from, they just say they had "non local" isotopes. They also did not publish any DNA from these burials so we really do not know for sure if any of these individuals are Levantine or from elsewhere. They then go on to state that the predominance of women indicates large number of Egyptian men marrying non Egyptian women as in to say "Asiatic" women, but surely there is no substantial evidence for that outside this paper.
And the most suspect part of this paper is that it provides no reference values for other populations in or outside the Nile Valley to compare against. So these strontium values don't tell you much about where these individuals came from and the only "evidence" they provide is that this was a port city which doesn't "prove" anything about origins. There are no cranial studies, burial studies, burial artifacts or anything else to provide more specifics about the individuals in question. If this was a port city you would expect that we would have various populations present from along the Nile and elsewhere and nowhere in this paper have they identified any "locals" from the Nile Valley.
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quote:Originally posted by Ase:
quote:
Heqa.khast Ab-sha and party bringing eye makeup for trade in Egypt. The chief/sheikh name is usually rendered Abisha. I wonder if that's really his name. Is the scribe being funny and calling this leader "Marsh Daddy"?
register 3 in the above
The scribe holds a sheet. First it says Aamw have come. Then it say there's 37 of these Aamw. The scribe used a bound decapitated foreigner as the determinative for Aamw.
This scene uses Aamw in the plural three times. Heqa:khast a singular is used one time, only for the individual Abisha.
Abisha is even darker than the other Levantines. They all wear East Mediterranean style clothes. The men grow beards over their jaws and chin like the Shasu.
The tomb painting's from the 12th Dynasty (see the 12TH DYNASTY A 'NUBIAN' DYNASTY thread). The Hyksos(heqa:khaswt) dynasties are 400 years later, after the delta is sprinkled with en masse resettled Aamu.
Here's what I could work out about the overhead glyphs and the note in the scribe's hand. There you have it from the prime document.
Ab-sha, sheykh (heqa) over 37 foreign (khast) Aamu from Shu in possession of declarable amounts of mesdemet (galena used in making various eye cosmetics.
They're intercepted by a customs official who's the son of the mayor Khnumhotep.
Khnumhotep's job included "receiving" border crossing desert wanderers so he put a scene of that in his very well illustrated tomb.
Khast means hill country and by extension lands beyond the hills. Egypt is valley. So the idea of hill country meaning foreign land. Khast is singular. Khaswt is plural. There're more than a dozen different khast words applying the concept of foreign.
I can see a possibility the sha part of the name Abisha could refer to Sha su.
Shasu means Bedouin.
If Abisha isn't a Semitic name it could be Egyptic. heqa:khast ib sha could be sheikh hostile marshland since sha means marshland. A little more speculation can make sha an abbreviation for Shasu.
If so then heqa:khast ib sha simply means a beduin sheikh.
And what the tomb shows is 15 poor though well armed beduin, women, children, a lyre player, their humble sheikh, and his son paying two desert bovids in fees for permission to enter Egypt as an immigrant family of quality item traders.
Who were the Hyksos? Challenging traditional narratives using strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analysis of human remains from ancient Egypt
Chris Stantis ,Arwa Kharobi ,Nina Maaranen ,Geoff M. Nowell,Manfred Bietak,Silvia Prell,Holger Schutkowski † Published: July 15, 2020https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235414
Abstract A foreign dynasty, known as the Hyksos, ruled parts of Egypt between c. 1638–1530 BCE. Their origins are thought to be rooted in the Near East, which is supported by architectural features and grave accoutrements of Tell el-Dabca. In this former Hyksos capital in the Eastern Nile Delta, burial culture is characterized by a blend of Egyptian and Near Eastern elements. However, investigations are still ongoing as to where the Hyksos came from and how they rose to power. The aim of this study is to elucidate the question of possible provenience. We present the results of strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) ratios of human tooth enamel (n = 75) from Tell el-Dabca, focusing on comparing pre- and during Hyksos rule and sex-based differences. An influx of non-locals can be observed in the pre-Hyksos period (12th and 13th Dynasties, c. 1991–1649 BCE) during the constitution of this important harbor town, while the number of individuals already born in the Delta is larger during the Hyksos period. This is consistent with the supposition that, while the ruling class had Near Eastern origins, the Hyksos’ rise to power was not the result of an invasion, as popularly theorized, but an internal dominance and takeover of foreign elite. There is a preponderance of non-local females suggesting patrilocal residence. We discuss our findings against the current evidence of material culture and historiography, but more investigation in Near Eastern comparative sites has to be conducted to narrow our future search for the actual origins of the Hyksos.
Conclusions Isotope analysis is a powerful tool for exploring past mobility and identifying non-locals. However, exploring the origin of non-locals using this method is much more difficult. The wide range of values in the Tell el-Dabca assemblage suggests that non-locals, either before or during Hyksos rule, did not come from one unified homeland, but an extensive variety of origins. This in itself is interesting, as although those who would become Hyksos rulers might have an ancestral connection with a single homeland, the northeastern Nile Delta represented a multicultural hub long before the Hyksos rule.
Utilizing the extensive burial areas to contribute one of the largest isotopic studies of ancient Egypt to date, this study is the first to use archaeological chemistry to directly address the origins of the enigmatic Hyksos Dynasty, the first instance in which Egypt is ruled by those of foreign origin. Although the Levantine origin of these rulers is not in question due to their rulers’ names, architecture, and material culture, these results challenge the classic narrative of the Hyksos as an invading force. Instead, this research supports the theory that the Hyksos rulers were not from a unified place of origin, but Western Asiatics whose ancestors moved into Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, lived there for centuries, and then rose to rule the north of Egypt
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Heqa.khast Ab-sha and party bringing eye makeup for trade in Egypt. The chief/sheikh name is usually rendered Abisha. I wonder if that's really his name. Is the scribe being funny and calling this leader "Marsh Daddy"? register 3 in the above
The scribe holds a sheet. First it says Aamw have come. Then it say there's 37 of these Aamw. The scribe used a bound decapitated foreigner as the determinative for Aamw.
This scene uses Aamw in the plural three times. Heqa:khast a singular is used one time, only for the individual Abisha.
Abisha is even darker than the other Levantines. They all wear East Mediterranean style clothes. The men grow beards over their jaws and chin like the Shasu.
The tomb painting's from the 12th Dynasty (see the 12TH DYNASTY A 'NUBIAN' DYNASTY thread). The Hyksos(heqa:khaswt) dynasties are 400 years later, after the delta is sprinkled with en masse resettled Aamu.
Here's what I could work out about the overhead glyphs and the note in the scribe's hand. There you have it from the prime document.
Ab-sha, sheykh (heqa) over 37 foreign (khast) Aamu from Shu in possession of declarable amounts of mesdemet (galena used in making various eye cosmetics.
They're intercepted by a customs official who's the son of the mayor Khnumhotep.
Khnumhotep's job included "receiving" border crossing desert wanderers so he put a scene of that in his very well illustrated tomb.
Khast means hill country and by extension lands beyond the hills. Egypt is valley. So the idea of hill country meaning foreign land. Khast is singular. Khaswt is plural. There're more than a dozen different khast words applying the concept of foreign.
I can see a possibility the sha part of the name Abisha could refer to Sha su.
Shasu means Bedouin.
If Abisha isn't a Semitic name it could be Egyptic. heqa:khast ib sha could be sheikh hostile marshland since sha means marshland. A little more speculation can make sha an abbreviation for Shasu.
If so then heqa:khast ib sha simply means a beduin sheikh.
And what the tomb shows is 15 poor though well armed beduin, women, children, a lyre player, their humble sheikh, and his son paying two desert bovids in fees for permission to enter Egypt as an immigrant family of quality item traders.
Tukuler You are indeed slick. The passage clearly says Abisha King of the Kushites. You know perfectly well that Heqa means King, not sheikh. In fact, Heqa was only used to refer to Egyptian Kings. Non Egyptian kings were called 'wr'.
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
You have your view AND I HAVE MINE
I think this is the first AEL doc of Nehesi heqa khasut
By use of sheykh I was translating Abisha's obvious status re his paltry 37 Aamu tribesmen from Shu
Nuance is part of the job of translating you well know. Nehesi had states. Each state confederated various chieftainciess thus these heads of state were kings.
The referenced Nehesi heqa khasut are all from north of Kesh and south of Ta Meri.
Nehesu appears in lines 15 and 16 but HqA:xAst is not there.
In those lines each polity • Irtet • Medja • Yam • Wawat • Kau have the following determinative set xAst:nHs:
In that plural glyph three sitting potentates are dapper their in feather and streaming fillet headgear. Unfortunately, Merenre's Inscription carving of the five Nehesi rulers facing him in ceremonial greeting is lost.
First use of HqA:xAst describes the rulers of • Irtet • Wawat • Yam • Medja as shipyard contractors and granite suppliers for Merenre's pyramid, Weni being their client under order of that pharaoh. These Nehesu were happy to assist Egypt. Merenre's 1st cataract canals eased Ta-Seti northbound trade making these rulers richer.
But no one translates Weni's bio lower line 46 "Hyksos of Irtet:khast, Wawat:khast, Yam:khast, Medja:khast" nor is the word Nehesu in line 46 or 47.
Clyde, why do they look so different?
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
Those blacks are not people from Kesh though Keshli men likewise went beardless.
Anyway to the best of my recollection off the top of my head Dyn 15 and 16 of the 2nd Intermediate Period Egypt ultimately if not immediately people of East Mediterranean origins.
The Middle Kingdom's collapse left power and organization vacuums. It saw increasing numbers of migrants intent on living in a 1st World economy.
Aamu stock people residing in Ta Meri probably aided by tribesmen relatives outside Ta Tamehh in the Sinai and Levant seized rulership of over third of Egypt in the northmost part of the country. One of these kings was named Yaqob Har(SP) assuredly a Semitic language personal noun.
One of the Nehesi kingdoms ruled over the southern nomes of Ta Wy at the time.
An Egyptian monarch of the times laments his lack of complete national sovereignty as an Aamu on one side a Nehesi on the other each with him holding a slice of Egypt lambajin.
quote:Originally posted by Ase: [QUOTE]
In summary:
-waves of Near East migration predate the rule of the Hyksos by generations (as many of us said).
-In many unearthed burial sites, women were more common than men, suggesting against an external invasion.I wonder if this could also mean that its more likely to find greater sums of NE DNA beyond a certain point (and in certain areas of Egypt) when researching AE maternal DNA especially.
One of the reasons they look different is that the people in the representation you posted has pointed noses instead of the rounded noses of the original.
. The migrants were not a monolithic group. This is obvious when you look at the phenotypical features associated with the migrants.
. It would appear that we can identify these people as "city" folk, in the case of the migrants on the left; and "herding" people in relation to the migrants on the right.
We also see varying facial features among the herding people.
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Looking at the facial features of these migrants from left to right show each person has different features and even the hair styles are different.
-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: One of the reasons they look different is that the people in the representation you posted has pointed noses instead of the rounded noses of the original.
I did post an original. I'm just posting clearer photo and you are posting amateur blurry ones, poorly lit by flash where the features can't be made out. The originals are not in great shape either. It doesn't matter what source you use they dont' look like Kushites as depicted in Egyptian art
A group of West Asiatic foreigners visiting the Egyptian official Khnumhotep II circa 1900 BC. The leader is labelled a "Hyksos". Tomb of 12th-dynasty official Khnumhotep II, at Beni Hasan
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Out of the mists of the alphabet - Redrawing the "brother of the ruler of Retenu"
An armed boy is a repetitive motif among the “identity signifiers”23 of the Canaanite universe, as represented in the Egyptian decorum. He appears in the Beni Hassan caravan and in all other repre-sentations of the donkey riders in Sinai
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Out of the mists of the alphabet - Redrawing the "brother of the ruler of Retenu"
An armed boy is a repetitive motif among the “identity signifiers”23 of the Canaanite universe, as represented in the Egyptian decorum. He appears in the Beni Hassan caravan and in all other repre-sentations of the donkey riders in Sinai
I figured it was a mule (donkey). Interesting considering the timeframe.
There was no need to repost those images.
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posted
There was a need for a better quality image of the donkey as well as a second donkey in another location of the scene
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: There was a need for a better quality image of the donkey as well as a second donkey in another location of the scene
I see it perfectly.
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quote: Tomb 3 Asiatic scene. Carl Richard Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, Leipzig, 1913
The scene also depicts several animals—two donkeys, an ibex, and a gazelle. The donkeys carry various bundles and other items, including a spear and two objects that have often been (mis)-identified as bellows associated with metalworking. Some of the men also hold weapons, including one traditionally identified as a “duckbilled” axe. Two of the men are carrying musical instruments.
quote: This chapter discusses the timing of the first domestication of donkeys (Equus asinus) in the southern Levant (southern Syria-Israel Palestine-/Jordan) with reference to the region’s archaeozoological record. It further examines their subsequent utilization in local exchange systems based on iconographic records (miniature, artistic-cultic representations) found in archaeological sites. More specifically, this chapter reviews data concerning the role of these beasts of burden and the possible existence of a dedicated social stratum or group of persons specializing in their use in the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3700/3600–2400 BC). These data are bolstered by additional ancient Near Eastern sources and by ethnographic examples from the New World thought to possibly represent analogous situations.
posted
"Foreign dynasty's rise to power in ancient Egypt was an inside job"
Didn't I make this very claim before in another thread??
The texts from Manetho make it clear that the so-called invasion by the Hyksos was NOT military and there was no resistance from the native Delta people.
This makes me think that not only was this a peaceful migration but one that may have even been sponsored by natives, probably elite ones of influence.
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posted
In my book: Kushites, Who, What When,Where I discuss the fact that the Hyksos were not Asians. I explain that they were the Kushites of Lower Egypt.
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. Ancient Egypt was founded by Kushites--but they rejected identification as Kushites. This is supported by the fact that the first sepat of Egypt: Ta-Seti was a Nehesy or Kushite nation. This would also explain why the Hyksos, and pharoah Seti, worshiped the god S3t.
Hyksos Kings were proud of their Kushite origin. in the Hyksos seals, the Kings wrote their names followed by the "Heqa Khasut", i.e. “King of the Kushites”. These sealings are primary contemporaneous AEL literature documentation ,indicating that the Hyksos used this name to illustrate their Kushite ancestry and relationship to the Nubian Kushites. See; A History of Ancient Egypt by Marc Van De Mieroop.
It would appear that the Egyptians hated the Hyksos, not because they were foreigners, they hated them because they dared to acknowledge their Kushite ḫ3st(Khasut) origin.
In summary , the meaning of ḫ3st(Khast) is Kushite). Click on the video below to learn about the African origin of the Hyksos.
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They also do not mention that the earliest donkey burials are found in early dynastic sites in Upper Egypt (and presumably older sites further south).....
posted
White Supremacist are always trying to separate North Africa from the rest of Africa and pretend the 'light' and 'white' skinned people of North Africa are aboriginal, when they are recent inhabitants of the land circa 1400BC
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M: Also, note that the paper talks about Donkey burials as being "foreign" while omitting that Donkeys came from Africa. https://www.pnas.org/content/105/10/3715
So? That could mean that at some point there was NE contact with Africa to trade donkeys, not that the people in this situation were African.
quote: They also do not mention that the earliest donkey burials are found in early dynastic sites in Upper Egypt (and presumably older sites further south).....
"The most elite had equids of some sort (potentially donkeys) buried outside the tombs, often in pairs as though ready to pull a chariot. This is a foreign characteristic of burial style, but also suggestive of someone [with] very high status," Stantis said.
They weren't saying the mere presence of donkey burials suggested they were NE foreigners. Rather the donkeys were said to be buried in a particular style that was practiced by NE foreigners.
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