 |
|
||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||
 |
B.A.
ANCIENT HISTORY AND EGYPTOLOGY Essay
Question: Evaluate
the sources available for Hyksos control of Egypt. Essay
written by David Rohl (2nd Year Ancient History/Egyptology). Submitted
on the 8th June 1989.
Until
recently much of what had been written on the Second Intermediate Period (SIP)
revolved around attempts to establish its chronology, both in relative and
absolute terms. Little monumental or settlement archaeology had apparently
survived upon which to draw conclusions about the social and cultural history
of the period. Scholars were therefore dependent mainly on later written
sources to reconstruct any sort of history of the SIP. Some of these sources
were near contemporary, such as the Speos Artemidos inscription (mid-18th Dyn)
– in which Hatshepsut proclaims her restoration of monuments neglected by the
Asiatics of an earlier time; the Turin Canon (mid-19th Dyn) – listing the kings
of the 13th to 17th Dynasties; and the Papyrus Sallier tale (late-19th Dyn) of
Sekenenre and Apepi – a folk tale about the machinations of a 17th Dynasty
Theban king and his contemporary, the 'Hyksos' ruler of Avaris. From several
centuries later we also have the Genealogy of the Memphite Priesthood – a large
block from a Sakkaran tomb containing a list of priests of Ptah (and in some
instances the rulers under which they served) extending back to Montuhotep II
and therefore including the SIP. Finally, of course, considerable use had to be
made of the history of Egypt recorded by the Ptolemaic priest, Manetho, as
handed down to us in the writings of Africanus, Eusebius and, for this period
in particular, Josephus [Waddell 1971, pp. 73-99]. The only two primary source
documents considered to be contemporary with the period under discussion are:
the Kamose Stela describing the king's war against Auserre Apophis; and, the
biography from the el-kab tomb of Ahmose, son of Ibana [Lichtheim 1976, II, pp.
12-15], who served in the army of Ahmose I and had participated in the siege
and capture of Avaris, the event which finally resulted in the Hyksos expulsion
from Egypt. Both these documents deal with the end of 'Hyksos' rule and we thus
have no contemporary material which throws light on the events which led up to
the rise of a foreign dynasty in Lower and Middle Egypt. Recently,
within the last 15 years, we have at last begun to receive data from settlement
sites of the period, and the initial results are suggesting that a new approach
is needed to both our understanding of the nature of 'Hyksos' society and to
the historical events related to their occupation of Egypt. The
remainder of this essay will review the corpus of material currently available
to us in the late 1980s (including recent archaeological discoveries in the
eastern Delta) and will, in particular, attempt a new reconstruction of the
famous Turin Canon papyrus fragments – a proposal which has important
consequences for both the length of the SIP and the relative position of the
principal 'Hyksos' dynasty. The
first of our tasks is to attempt to construct a picture of the society which
occupied Egypt (and in particular the Delta) in the years following the 12th
Dynasty and prior to the Hyksos dominance. In other words, we shall be
discussing the archaeological and textual evidence for Manetho's 13th and 14th
Dynasties. Let us start with a new phenomenon which is apparently introduced
for the first time into Egyptian society during the 13th Dynasty. The
Evidence for Slavery in Egypt The
major document which has come to light concerning the Canaanite population of
Egypt during the 13th Dynasty is the Brooklyn Papyrus 35.1446 [Hayes 1955], but
there are also several papyri from the pyramid town of Senuseret II at Kahun,
known collectively as the Illahun Papyri [Griffith 1898]. In the case of the
former, out of a total holding of one Theban estate amounting to 79 domestic
slaves, no less than 45 bore Canaanite names [Kemp 1983, p. 155]. The fact that
the household was located in Upper Egypt suggest that an even higher proportion
might be expected for the eastern Delta where Egypt adjoins Canaan. Thus it
should be quite reasonable to infer that between 50% and 75% of the
slave/servant population during the 13th Dynasty was of Asiatic/Canaanite
origin. Posener
has noted that all the early references to Aamu (i.e. Canaanites) living in
Egypt date to the period from Amenemhat III down to the mid-13th Dynasty,
around the time of Neferhotep I (Turin Canon VI,25) [Posener 1957, pp. 145-63].
The evidence further suggests that they were more numerous in the 13th Dynasty,
in spite of the poverty of archaeological data for this period, compared to the
relatively rich preceding dynasty [Van Seters 1966, p. 90]. In general, they
seem to have assimilated well into the existing culture of Egypt. The surviving Aamu population records of the 13th Dynasty also show a greater number of
female slaves to male [Hayes 1955, p. 99]. A
number of texts have come to light which indicate that certain of these Aamu
managed to reach high positions in the administration during the latter part of
the 12th Dynasty (some also marrying Egyptian women), but that this state of
affairs did not last into the late 13th Dynasty: “The
fact that important persons in the time of Amenemhet III felt free to designate
themselves as Aam or as born of an Aamet means that one can hardly consider
them as slaves in the ordinary sense as in the Brooklyn Papyrus. One must
therefore reckon with a deterioration in the status of Asiatics between the
time of Amenemhet III and that of Neferhotep.” [Van Seters 1966, p. 91] Van
Seters also interestingly compares the Aamu of the Middle Kingdom with the
Habiru, referred-to throughout the Levant from the Middle Kingdom to the
el-Amarna Period [Van Seters 1966, p. 91]. Seth
Worship in the Eastern Delta An
obelisk of a 'king's son' Nehesy ('the Nubian') found at Tanis [Leclant &
Yoyotte 1957, pp. 50-54] has been used to establish the relative date for the
beginning of a 14th Dynasty in the eastern Delta. It has been almost
unanimously agreed that this new dynasty arose sometime during the second half
of the 13th Dynasty, whilst the kings of the latter dynasty apparently still
ruled from the old 12th Dynasty royal residence of Itj-tawy south of Memphis.
The argument goes something on the following lines: as artefacts for the 13th
Dynasty kings succeeding Khaneferra' Sebekhotep IV (Turin Canon VI,27) have not
been found in the Delta, these kings must have lost control of Lower Egypt to a
local dynasty which the archaeological evidence suggests was based at or near
Avaris. In spite of the fact that it is an argument based on negative evidence
from a region which has rarely received the archaeologists' attention until
recently, this understanding of SIP history has remained the popular option.
This is in no small measure due to the chronological restrictions which have
been imposed upon the 13th to 17th Dynasties as a result of two key Sothic
dates. By dating Year 7 of Senusret III (?) to 1830 (Illahun Papyrus) – and
thus the end of the 12th Dynasty to 1759 [1]; and Year 9 of Amenhotep I to 1505
(Ebers Papyrus) – giving a starting date for the 18th Dynasty of 1539, the SIP
is restricted to just 220 years [Kitchen 1987, pp. 43-44]. Given the minimum
lengths attributable to both the 13th and 14th Dynasties, as derived from the
Turin Canon and Manetho, this must force an overlap between the two dynasties
simply on chronological grounds. Returning
to Nehesy, the primary candidate for founder of the 14th Dynasty, we can make
certain tentative assumptions based on eastern Delta archaeology. As obelisks
are associated with temple facades, it would be reasonable to assume that
Nehesy was involved in the construction of a temple, somewhere in the eastern
Delta; this is on the basis of the provenance of other Ramesside obelisks found
at Tanis which have been shown to have originally come from the city of
Pi-Ramesse, built at the site of the earlier city of Avaris. The obelisk is
inscribed with the phrases 'eldest royal son, Nehesy, beloved of Seth, Lord of
r-3ht' and 'beloved of hry-s.f' (Arsaphes). Montet has suggested that perhaps
the origin of the name of the Sethroite (14th) nome is to be identified with
the cult of 'Seth Ra-akhet' [Montet 1957, p. 199]. It has
recently been suggested by Ahmed Osman [Sunday Times, 21st May 1989] that a
newly discovered fortress town of Ramesside date, just east of the Suez Canal,
may be the biblical Per- Van
Seters has persuasively argued that Ra-akhet, which means 'gateway of the
cultivation' is to be located at Sile where cultivation and desert meet [Van
Seters 1966, p. 101]. The phrase 'beloved of Arsaphes' gives us a further clue
as to where the Nehesy obelisk may have been erected. Arsaphes was worshipped
in later times at Heracleopolis Parva, capital of the 14th nome, and this too
has been tentatively located at or near Sile. Thus we may postulate that
Nehesy's obelisk, and therefore the temple which it adorned, was probably
erected at the Kantara fortress site where substantial remains of his time have
been found. What is more, the only stelae recovered so far from el-Hebua are
two bearing the name of Nehesy [2]. The implication of all this is that Nehesy,
as a king's son and heir, was charged with the protection of Egypt's eastern
frontier and that he may have resided at Sile at least for a time. Maksoud's
continuing excavations will no doubt prove to be of considerable importance and
an investigation of the SIP strata at the site may well add much to our
knowledge of 13th and 14th Dynasty history. Soon
after Nehesy became king, he established or enhanced the cult of 'Seth, Lord of
Avaris' (a block of his bearing this epithet was found at Tell Moqdam – one of
the two primary candidates for the biblical Pithom). It has thus been suggested
that Nehesy built a temple to Seth at Avaris which in turn is to be identified
with the Canaanite temple found by Bietak at Tell ed-Daba (Stratum F/E) [Bietak
1986, p. 247]. This, however, should only be taken as a tentative suggestion.
Clearly, a few monuments from the reign of Nehesy prove nothing regarding the
origins of Seth-worship in the eastern Delta, and, with a large part of the
site as yet unexcavated, evidence might still be unearthed to show that a
temple of Seth was already established and functioning at Tell ed-Daba prior to
the reign of this king. It is not even absolutely certain whether the Canaanite
temple was built by the Stratum F population (as seems likely) or those of the
later Stratum E [Bietak 1979, p. 241-42]. Nor is it certain which of the strata
represents the arrival of the main Hyksos dynasty at Avaris – any candidate
from F to D/2 appears to remain a possibility [Bietak 1979, p. 237]. Moreover,
Bietak himself has tentatively postulated that a palace from Area F at ed-Daba
(which is located in the equivalent stratum to Stratum G on the main tell) may
be a royal palace and therefore the residence of Nehesy and his dynasty [Bietak
1986, p. 294]. If this is so, then the temple must be of a later date than the
palace and would clearly have to be that constructed by the Hyksos of the 15th
Dynasty – perhaps the temple of Seth built by Apophis, as related in Papyrus
Sallier. With this scenario, the temple which had previously been suggested as
marking the establishment Seth worship by the founding kings of the 14th
Dynasty must, in fact, still await discovery at Tell ed-Daba. The
Ipuwer Papyrus 'The
Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage', as Gardiner has called the text of Papyrus
Leiden 344 (recto), is a plea to an un-named king of Egypt by one Ipuwer, who
relates to his lord how the land of Egypt has degenerated into chaos. The
papyrus itself was found at Memphis and, according to Gardiner, is to be dated
to the 19th Dynasty at the earliest; however, the palaeography and orthography
suggest that the 19th Dynasty version was a copy of an earlier 18th Dynasty
text, whereas the language is typical of the Middle Kingdom. Gardiner, on
somewhat tenuous grounds, proposed a date at the beginning of the First
Intermediate Period (FIP) for the original story. Because of the authority he
holds in the discipline of the ancient Egyptian language, his view has
generally held sway ever since. On the other hand, Gardiner himself conceded
that a date as late as the early 18th Dynasty could not be excluded [Gardiner
1909, pp. 3 & 18]. Van
Seters has since convincingly argued that the original Ipuwer text belongs
securely in the late Middle Kingdom or Second Intermediate Period [Van Seters
1966, pp. 103-20]. He has shown that the orthography and language are not typical
of Old Kingdom texts and that, if Gardiner's view holds, then 'the many
intimate connections with the Middle Kingdom' would have to be 'considered
merely as anticipations'. There are so many points of language, social
structure and ethnic terminology which favour the later period that our current
view of Egyptian cultural and social history would have to be turned on its
head if a First Intermediate Period date is to be retained. I
shall briefly summarise Van Seter's arguments concerning the Admonitions of
Ipuwer here and rely on the reader to pursue the points in more detail in the
original work. His telling observations include the following: 1. The
md3yw as a pro-Egyptian military force are not attested until the Middle
Kingdom [Van Seters 1966, p. 106], yet they appear in line 14:14 of the Ipuwer
text as a force to be relied upon by the Egyptian authorities during troubled
times [Lichtheim 1973, p. 161]. 2. The term sttyw to designate Asiatics who carry the bow (with an archery target as its determinative) [Admonitions 14:11 & 15:2] is common during the Middle Kingdom but does not occur in this form in the Old Kingdom and rarely in the New Kingdom [Van Seters 1966, p. 107]. 3. Winlock noted that there was a
shortage of coffin wood from Syria and Lebanon near the beginning of the Second
Intermediate Period [Winlock 1947, p. 101]; this is reflected in the
Admonitions [3:6-8]: 'None indeed sail north to Byblos today. What shall we do
for the 's wood (pine?) for the making of coffins?' 4. The
term Keftiu (kftiw) for Crete, found in line 3:9, does not occur in the Old
Kingdom and is even quite rare in the 12th Dynasty [Van Seters 1966, pp.
108-9]. 5.
'The institution of slavery, apart from a type of serfdom associated primarily
with royal land estates, is not attested for the Old Kingdom. Slavery is, at
the earliest, a product of the Middle Kingdom; in this period there is clear
evidence for privately owned household slaves, male and female, who were
considered as transferable, movable property.' The term hm/hmt is used seven
times in the Admonitions in the context of household slaves, exactly as it is
used in the slave list of the Brooklyn Papyrus which is dated to the 13th
Dynasty. In
summation of his findings Van Seters makes the following statement: “One
date seems to fit all the requirements: late Thirteenth Dynasty. The
orthography and the linguistic evidence have always pointed toward this later
date, and our present knowledge of the social and political history of this
period confirms this opinion.” [Van Seters 1966, p. 115] Thus
the Admonitions of Ipuwer should more justifiably be utilised in the
elaboration of SIP history than the FIP. Even if one were to argue that this
type of literature is of the didactic variety (like the predominantly Middle
Kingdom sb3yt 'instruction' texts which often deal with chaos versus order),
there is no reason why it should not reflect, to some degree, the conditions
which Egypt found itself in at the time of the writing of the original text. In
other words, Egypt was suffering from severe distress sometime during the
mid-13th Dynasty/early SIP, at least partly due to the machinations of the
large Asiatic population in the Delta which looms large in the Admonitions. It is
therefore also my own view that Gardiner was quite wrong in his dating of this
important text, and to continue to regard Ipuwer as reflecting the troubles at
the end of the Old Kingdom, as most authoritative reference works still do, is
to perpetuate a serious misconception concerning the nature of the era known as
the First Intermediate Period and deprive the 13th Dynasty of an important
document relating to the troubled conditions that generally pertained at the
time. One may legitimately argue that the Admonitions has no real historical
value, but this would be to ignore the obvious point that pessimistic writings
tend to be born out of periods of political instability and can justifiably be
used to some degree to create a picture of the era which created them. In the
case of Ipuwer it is the continuous references to 'Asiatics', who seem to be at
the focus of the troubles, which can add to information from other sources
pointing to a general decline during the second half of the 13th Dynasty. It
has been suggested that one major element in this scenario of decline was
'Asiatic' expansion in the Delta and this appears to be precisely the sort of
political picture described in the Ipuwer Papyrus. Hyksos
Invasion or Asiatic Infiltration and Internal Coup? Säve-Söderbergh
[Säve-Söderbergh 1951, p. 55] and others [e.g. Alt 1959] have argued that there
was no sudden invasion of Egypt by Asiatic chiefs who subsequently became the
Hyksos 15th Dynasty of Manetho. They point to the 'Asiatic' names of rulers of
Egypt found in the Turin Canon at lines IX:29 & 30 (An[a]ti = Anath (?)
& Bebnem = Bnon (?)), who occur 16 places before the Hyksos kings of the
15th Dynasty (currently residing in column X), according to the accepted
reconstruction of the papyrus. Thus they argue that Asiatic kings were already
ruling in the eastern Delta long before the main group of 6 Hyksos kings. This
then contradicts Josephus' supposed verbatim account of Manetho which tells of
a sudden invasion of oppressive Asiatics 'from Phoenicia' [Waddell, pp. 77-91]. On the
other hand, Helck has strongly supported the invasion story of Josephus and the
Manethonian excerptors [Helck 1962]. He argued (before Bietak's discoveries at
Tell ed-Daba) that, by its very nature, an invasion of a civilised and
established culture by nomadic groups will not necessarily appear in the
stratigraphical record. He sites the Kassite conquerors of Babylonia, who were
completely assimilated into the existing culture of the region and only
identifiable as a new group through the evidence of later written records. He
also cites the Speos Artemidos inscription of Hatshepsut as literary support of
the character of Hyksos rule, less than a century after their expulsion: “Listen
all people, as many as you may be! I have done this according to the wishes of
my heart ... I have restored that which was in ruins, I have raised up that
which was unfinished since the Asiatics were in the midst of Avaris of the
Northland, and the barbarians were in the midst of them, overthrowing that
which had been made, while they ruled without Re.” This
Helk argues is clear evidence for the veracity of the Manethonean tradition,
whereas there are no native Egyptian or Syro-Palestinian sources which can be
seen to contradict the Egyptian priest's version of events – only the apparent
occurrence of kings bearing Asiatic names prior to the main Hyksos dynasty. Alt's
typically sceptical approach to Manetho views the Hyksos invasion tradition as
a symptom of the later military invasions of Assyria and Persia [Alt 1959, pp.
72-98]. Thus, having rightly observed that Josephus's 'verbatim' account is
riddled with later additions, including the mention of Assyrians, who do not
appear on the Egyptian scene until much later in 7th century Egypt, he contends
that the story of a sudden invasion is a reflection of the Esarhaddon and
Ashurbanipal invasions of 671 and 667. But can this approach really be employed
to deny the substance of Manetho's history, simply because there were other
invasions between the Hyksos period and the Ptolemaic historian's own era? The
fact that peoples and places mentioned in the traditions are to be identified
with political and geographical conditions nearer to Manetho's lifetime simply
shows that the writer thought of his country's past in terms of the political
topography of its recent history; but this in itself cannot deny the basic
truth of the original event. The Romans did not build a garrison town at York
but at 'Eboracum', and Julius Caesar did not cross the 'English Channel'. Do
these simple statements mean that we must reject all popular accounts of
historical events simply because modern historians employ 20th-century names to
describe ancient events and places? Surely in this case Alt's reasoning is not
based on a sound methodology. Alt's
somewhat jaundiced view of ancient historical tradition also accounts for the
loss to history of the Conquest narratives of the Old Testament. This sort of
scholarship is partly responsible for the trend towards the so-called 'healthy
scepticism' approach to the study of ancient history, which, in my view, has
tended towards rampant gradualism. Virtually all the great traditions of
invasions and population movements in the ancient world are now apparently seen
as rather insipid infiltrations thanks to the Alt and Noth school of thought. As the
non-invasion view of the Hyksos period is now given prominence in the standard
works on Egyptian history, the reconstruction of the surviving Turin Canon
fragments proposed below, which undermines one of the principal arguments at
the heart of this view, is important for the re-establishment of a
counterweight to this now somewhat unbalanced debate. The
Turin Canon: A New Reconstruction During
one afternoon spent undertaking research in the Edwards Library at University
College London, I chanced to come across the original publication of The Royal
Canon of Turin by Alan Gardiner [Gardiner 1959]. I decided to thumb through the
pages of this large format volume, just to give my brain a rest from the long
and somewhat dry tome that I had been studying. Almost at once I noticed
something on Plate III which struck me as very odd, for in the middle of column
IX of the reconstructed papyrus, Ibscher (who undertook the second restoration)
had placed one of the ancient repair patches which were otherwise consistently
to be found at the top of the Canon's columns. The
most reasonable explanation for these patches would be that, after the 19th
Dynasty tax list on the recto was put into store, the top of the role had been
eaten through by an insect, leaving a hole right through the document, a couple
of centimetres from the top edge. When the papyrus was reused to record a copy
of the kings list (on the blank verso) it was necessary to stick small patches
of papyrus over the holes which had been discovered upon unrolling the papyrus.
The patches thus appear at intervals of 17cms along the upper section of its
length – that is except for the patch which now stands in the middle of column
IX and one which remains in the collection of unplaced fragments. What
appeared quite obvious to me was the simple fact that in three places where one
might have expected to find repair patches there were none: in the gaps at the
top of columns I and IV and the left side of column IX. Why then hadn't someone
suggested that the patch in the middle of column IX, and that assigned to the
fragments, belonged in the gaps at the top of these columns? Surely a closer
scrutiny would reveal why those who had assembled the fragments had not taken
this logical step? Subsequent investigation has, however, convinced me that a
serious error was made in the mounting of the Turin Canon by Ibscher [published
in Farina, 1938] and later retained by Gardiner. This in turn has led to a
number of false assumptions about the length of the SIP and the position of the
Hyksos 15th Dynasty within that period. Looking
in detail at the two patches of concern: the one mounted in column IX bears
names which Gardiner describes as 'wholly fictitious beings' and 'fantastically
named royalties' [Gardiner 1959, p. 17]. They include animals and animal
deities like 'ibis/Thoth?' (IX,17), 'goose/Geb?' (IX,18) and 'Apis' (IX,19) and
the term 'shemsu' – a designation for the semi-divine beings of Predynastic
Egypt. If any location on the papyrus were to suit these strange entries it
must surely be in the space at the top of column I where, at the bottom half of
the column, we find the gods and demi-gods of the prehistoric era. This would
leave the patch from the unplaced fragments (containing only numerals of reign durations)
to occupy either the top of column IV or the left half of the top of column IX. By
removing the patch from column IX we now find ourselves with a large gap in the
middle of that column and an equally large question begging to be answered –
why, in the first place, was the Canon reconstructed into eleven columns when
all the pieces could be mounted in ten columns? The small fragments in column X
could easily fit in the new space now available in column IX and, what is more,
fragments 150 and 152 certainly do not belong at the top of column X where they
currently reside, as neither is a patch (on the arguments already aired above,
a patch would have to stand here). The recto tax list, on the back of the
fragments placed in columns IX to XI, is 'wholly chaotic' (in Gardiner's
words), so is useless in determining any of the positions for the fragments of
the last third of the document. Unfortunately,
it seems that historians in recent years have taken the order and position of
these fragments as established with some degree of certainty, and have failed
to take into consideration Gardiner's salutary remarks found in the notes of
his publication of the Turin Canon: “Down
to IX,10 of the King-list the positions of the fragments as seen in F[arina]
may be regarded as on the whole certain or at least plausible, but the
arrangement of the remaider of col. IX and the whole of col. X must be regarded
with the utmost scepticism. The scanty traces on the rt. are wholly chaotic. In
our Plates the positions given by Farina or Ibscher are retained, but only in
order to avoid relegating to the Unplaced a number of pieces that undoubtedly
belong to this papyrus. ... With the scanty material before us we see no
solution to these problems.” [Gardiner 1959, p. 17] It is
thus difficult to understand why the two great modern works on the chronology
of the Turin Canon, those of von Beckerath [1964] and Malek [1982], have made
use of the existing mounting of columns IX and X to develop their arguments. It is
my contention that Ibscher's column X is superfluous, resulting in an
artificial stretching of the Canon (and therefore the chronology) by one column
of 25 to 30 kings. Column XI, containing some of the 17th Dynasty rulers,
should therefore be renamed as column X and brought into contact with a newly
reconstructed column IX. It is the latter to which we should now turn in order
to relocate the fragment bearing the total for the Hyksos dynasty which
previously resided in the now defunct column X. The
reconstruction of column IX is best explained by reference to the illustration
(Fig. 2). The top two fragments (105 & 108) have been retained in their
original position. Similarly, fragment 112 has been left where Ibscher mounted
it although it must be said that there is no evidence for doing so (but see
below). The patch fragments 41, 41a and 42 have been relocated to column I, and
in their place is positioned the un-numbered fragment bearing the name of the
last Hyksos ruler, Khamudy, followed by the total line: '6 rulers of foreign
lands for 100[+x years]' (this fragment will be designated the number 112a in
order to simplify references to it in the following discussion). Beneath this
is placed the small fragment 22 from the old column X, simply to fill the gap
above fragments 123 and 122 which have been retained in their original
positions. Now let us look at the results of this arrangement to see what
information can be gleaned. The
place to start is with the central fragments 112 and 112a which form the focus
of this new reconstruction. What we now have is the following: Ineb[...] (or Inek[...]) – Line IX,14 I[neb?...] – Line IX,15 Ip[...] – Line IX,16 [.....] – Line IX,17 [.....] – Line IX,18 [...] Khamudy – Line IX,19 6 [heqa]-khasut for 100[+x years] – Line
IX,20 I
would therefore like to tentatively propose that this constitutes the 6 kings
of the 15th Dynasty and that Manetho's list of Hyksos kings may be arranged as
follows: Salites/Saites
= Ibeneb/Ibenek [nomen lost] Bnon/Baion = I[neb?] [nomen lost] Apachnan
= Ip[ep] or Khyan = Khyan [3] Iannas/Staan
= [prenomen & nomen lost] = Ianasi (s. of Khyan) Apophis
= [prenomen & nomen lost] = Auserra` Apophis Assis/Archles
= [prenomen lost] Khamudy = [Sharek] Khamudy One of
the principal arguments against the theory of a sudden Asiatic invasion of
Egypt was that the Turin Canon had kings with Asiatic names residing at the
bottom of column IX, a number of generations before the Hyksos 15th Dynasty
(represented by 112a) standing in the middle of the old column X. Now that we
have relocated the 15th Dynasty before these other Asiatic rulers, they simply
become part of Manetho's '17th Dynasty' group of 'shepherd kings' and no longer
predate the arrival of the Hyksos. Moreover,
the number of kings which follow the first Hyksos ruler (IX,14) accord
perfectly with von Beckerath's excellent suggestion that Manetho's 17th Dynasty
(Africanus version) represents the 6 main Hyksos kings, plus 5 Theban rulers,
plus 32 minor Asiatic rulers – a total of 43 kings ruling for a period of 151
years [von Beckerath 1964, p. ..]. According to this argument, the 17th Dynasty
is therefore a construct which arose from Manetho's misunderstanding of a
summary line in the original kings list giving in reality the total reigns and
years since the foreign occupation of Egypt had begun. The reconstruction
offered here has exactly 43 kings from the first Hyksos (IX,14) to the end of
the new column X – the beginning of the 18th Dynasty (according to the column
line totals calculated by Malek, p. 94). The
new arrangement of the Turin Canon is also compatible with the Genealogy of the
Memphite Priesthood (see diagram) where we have 7 generations between one
'Aken' (perhaps Akenenre Apophis, an early Hyksos ruler not to be identified
with Auserre Apophis – a theory for which there is absolutely no proof and
little precedent) and Ahmose I (at 22 years a generation a total of around 154
years and therefore close to the figure arrived at for the 17th Dynasty).
Before Aken the Genealogy gives the name Iby, and this ruler is attested in the
Canon (VII,14) immediately after a broken entry which reads '[...]mes', almost
certainly the Djedneferre Dudimes of the Gebelain Stela and several other
monuments from this period [Gauthier 1907, pp. 50-51]. Thus again Manetho may
be quite correct when he states (Josephus version) that: “Tutimaeus.
In his reign, for what cause I know not, a blast of God smote us; and
unexpectedly, from the regions of the East, invaders of obscure race marched in
confidence of victory against our land.” [Waddell, p. 79] It is
very likely that this Tutimaeus is our Dudimes of the 13th Dynasty and, given
the overlap already established for the late 13th and early 14th Dynasties it
is not inconceivable that the Hyksos invasion may have taken place during the
reign of the 38th king of the 13th Dynasty and some 9 or 10 rulers into the
parallel 14th. The arrangement of the dynasties of the SIP would then be as
follows: With
this scenario, the new reconstruction of the Turin Canon is consistent and
compatible with both the Memphite Genealogy and Manetho. The latter's history
of this period once again appears to have been vindicated by new research, just
as both Malek and von Beckerath had independently argued that the data derived
from the Ptolemaic priest's dynastic list had a genuine historical basis which
simply required the correct interpretation. By adopting this new proposal, a
number of the riddles which have tended to confuse the chronology of the SIP
have been solved and an opportunity exists to establish a clearer chronological
framework for the history of this fascinating period of Egypt's past. Notes 1. The
dates used here are the low chronology of Krauss [1985]. For the higher
chronology of Parker the reader should date the end of the 12th Dynasty to 1801
and the start of the 18th to 1550, giving an interval of 251 years in which to
place the dynasties of the SIP. Krauss' dates are based on observations of the
heliacal rising of Sirius at Elephantine whereas Parker locates the
observations at Memphis or Itj-tawy. 2.
Disclosed by the excavator at the recent seminar held in the Egyptian Cultural
Centre in London – May 1989. 3.
Personal communication from Dr Bietak – letter of 29/9/86 in which he informed
me that his team had found a stela of 'the eldest son of king Ianasi, son of
king Khyan'. Manfred Gîrg proposed that Ianasi should be identified with Iannas
and that Khyan must therefore be identified with the predecessor of Iannas in
the redactions of Manetho. Bibliography A. Alt
1959: 'Die Herkunft der Hyksos in neuer Sicht' in Kleine Schriften zur
Geschichte des Volkes Israel Vol. 3 (Munich), pp. 72-98. J. von
Beckerath 1964: Untersuchungen zur politischen Geschichte der Zweiten
Zwischenzeit in égypten (Glöckstadt). 1984: Handbuch der Ägyptischen
Königsnamen (Munich). M.
Bietak 1979: Avaris and Piramesse (Oxford) 1984: 'Problems of Middle Bronze Age
Chronology: New Evidence from Egypt' in AJA 88, pp. 471-85. W. G.
Dever 1985: 'Relations Between Syria-Palestine and Egypt in the
"Hyksos" Period' in J. N. Tubb (ed.): Palestine in the Bronze and
Iron Ages: Papers in Honour of Olga Tufnell (London), pp. 69-87. G.
Farina 1938: Il Papiro dei Re Restaurato (Rome). A. H.
Gardiner 1909: Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage (Leipzig), pp. 3 & 18. F. L.
Griffith 1898: Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob 2 vols (London). W. C.
Hayes 1955: A Papyrus of the Late Middle Kingdom in the Brooklyn Museum
(Brooklyn). H. W.
Helk 1962: Die Beziehungen égyptens zu Vorderasien im 3. und 2. Jahrtausend V.
Chr. (Wiesbaden). M.
Ibrahim & D. Rohl 1988: 'Apis and the Serapeum' in JACF 2, pp. 6-26. P. P.
James et.al. 1987: 'Bronze to Iron Age Chronology in the Old World: Time for a
Re-assessment?' in JACF 1, pp. 6-80. B. J.
Kemp 1983: 'The Second Intermediate Period in Egypt' in B. G. Trigger et. al.:
Ancient Egypt: A Social Hystory (Cambridge). K. M.
Kenyon 1983: 'Palestine in the Middle Bronze Age' in CAH II:1, pp. 77-116. K. A.
Kitchen 1987: 'The Basics of Egyptian Chronology in Relation to the Bronze Age'
in High Middle or Low: Acts of an International Colloquium on Absolute
Chronology Held at the University of Gothenburg 20th-22nd August 1987 Part 1,
pp. 37-56. R.
Krauss 1985: Sothis- und Monddaten, Studien zur astronomischen und technischen
Chronologie Altägyptens (Hildesheim). P. H.
Labib 1937: Die Herrschaft der Hyksos in égypten und ihr Sturz (GlÅckstadt). J.
Leclant & J. Yoyotte 1957: 'Les Obelisques de Tanis' in Kemi 14, pp. 50-54. M.
Lichtheim 1973: Ancient Egyptian Literature Vol. I (London), p. 161. J.
Malek 1982: 'The Original Version of the Royal Canon of Turin' in JEA 68, pp.
93-106. P.
Montet 1957: Geographie de l'Egypte ancienne 2 vols (Paris), p. 199. G.
Posener 1957: 'Les Asiatiques en Egypte sous les XIIe et XIIIe dynasties' in
Syria 34, pp. 145-63. D. B.
Redford 1970: 'The Hyksos Invasion in History and Tradition' in Orientalia 39,
pp. 1-51. D.
Rohl & P. James 1983: 'An Alternative to the Velikovskian Chronology of
Ancient Egypt: A Preview of Some Recent Work in the Field of Ancient History'
in SIS Workshop 5:2, pp. 12-22. D.
Rohl & B. Newgrosh 1988: 'The el-Amarna Letters and the New Chronology' in
C & C Review X, pp. 23-42. T.
Säve-Söderbergh 1951: 'The Hyksos Rule in Egypt' in JEA 37. J. Van
Seters 1966: The Hyksos (London). W. G.
Waddell 1971: Manetho (London). W.
Whiston (trans.) 1981: Josephus (Grand Rapids). H. E.
Winlock 1947: The Rise and Fall of the Middle Kingdom in Thebes (New York). |
 |
 |
||
| Site Map |