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Hyksos Research in Egyptology and Egypt's Public Imagination

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Hyksos Research in Egyptology and Egypt's Public Imagination Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018) 73–86 brill.com/jeh Hyksos Research in Egyptology and Egypt’s Public Imagination: A Brief Assessment of Fifty Years of Assessments Thomas Schneider University of British Columbia [email protected] Abstract This contribution will look at the impact that the discovery of the site of Tell el-Dabʿa (Avaris), the capital of the Hyksos, has had on the discipline of Egyptology—in other words, to assess in what ways the disciplinary and public narrative about the Hyksos Period has (or has not) changed as a consequence of the discovery of Avaris.1 It will become clear that the cultural specifics of Avaris and its historical place have had a varied reception, and that the diverging representations that can be encountered pay tribute to different strategies of acceptance or denial that perpetuate certain traditions of scholarly and public engagement with ancient Egypt. Keywords Avaris – Tell el-Dabʿa – ethnicity – Hyksos Period 1 Introduction In his introduction to the recent volume “Histories of Egyptology. Inter- disciplinary measures,” William Carruthers has pointed to the inherent instability of Egyptology—the instability of modern knowledge about ancient 1 The following ideas were first presented at the symposium “50 Years at Tell el-Dabʿa and a Kick-off for the ERC Advanced Grant ‘The Hyksos Enigma’ ” during the 10th ICAANE, Vienna, 25th–29th April, 2016. I am grateful to Manfred Bietak for the ability to publish the contribu- tion within this thematic issue of the Journal of Egyptian History. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/18741665-12340043Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:12:04AM via free access 74 Schneider Egypt.2 He has emphasized how we can infer from the manners in which disciplined knowledge about ancient Egypt has been made, represented, con- tested, and circulated, how socially and historically contingent this knowledge has been not on actual evidence from Egypt, but modern contexts.3 In this regard, the fact that the culture excavated at Avaris did not easily fall in line with existing categories conventionally used for Egyptian civilization, but rather questioned those categories, seems to have made its reception in the field more complex, or in positive terms, prevented a reception within the dis- cipline that in other cases continues to be obligated to Egyptomania and not Egyptology. Moreno Garcia has recently criticized the “reactionary utopia” of an “Eternal Egypt” implicitly espoused in much scholarship.4 This myth has also buttressed the modern colonial control of Egypt, from Western colonial- ism to the informal colonialism in modern Egypt, as Langer has demonstrated.5 In this context, it is noteworthy that when the French archaeological mission at Saqqara celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013, it appeared fitting to refer to it as “50 years of eternity,” as is the title chosen for the volume of proceedings published in 2015—50 ans d’éternité. Jubilé de la Mission archéologique fran- çaise de Saqqâra (1963–2013).6 Fifty years of work are here tagged as partaking in the ancient Egyptian project of eternalization and at the same time, bolster too readily the “reactionary utopia” of eternal Egypt. At the same time, the French example points to the blatant uneasiness that a site like the Hyksos capital of Avaris created for its academic and public recipients; a site whose 50 year jubilee could not have been labeled as “50 years of eternity”: with no clear-cut Egyptian culture, no monumental architecture evoking eternalization, no devotion to the funerary realm.7 It is a site that has challenged the modern historiography of ancient Egypt precisely because it opposed the reproduction of preconceived narratives. In what follows I will look at how knowledge about the Hyksos has been represented and circu- lated; for the sake of demonstration, I will confine myself to a select number of recent academic textbooks for a wider audience and examples of a more public dissemination. In his new history of ancient Egypt published in 2011, Van De Mieroop, by training not a historian of Egypt but of Mesopotamia, states that 2 Carruthers, “Introduction: Thinking about Histories of Egyptology,” 8. 3 Carruthers, “Introduction: Thinking about Histories of Egyptology,” 9. 4 Moreno García, “The Cursed Discipline?,” 53. 5 Langer, “The Informal Colonialism of Egyptology.” 6 Legros, 50 ans d’éternité. 7 For a recent assessment of some of its cultural features, see Bader, “Cultural Mixing in Egyp- tian Archaeology.” Journal of EgyptianDownloaded History from 11 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2018) 73–86 04:12:04AM via free access Hyksos Research in Egyptology and Egypt’s Public Imagination 75 Sir Isaac Newton’s 18th-century depiction of the Hyksos as cannibals is typical for the view that dominated until recently. Opinions on the Second Intermediate Period have changed in the last few decades, and today more scholars believe that the Hyksos made up part of a political aned cultural complexity in which both Egyptians and foreigners played important parts.8 Similarly, another Near Eastern historian, Kuhrt, clearly distinguished in her 1995 history of the ancient Near East between a situation of historical co- existence and accommodation and the triumphalist later “rhetoric that reviled the rule of the Hyksos as irreligious and destructive.”9 An early example of such a balanced reassessment of the Hyksos is Kemp’s treatment.10 Another is Grimal in his 1988 Histoire de l’Egypte Ancienne. While he still makes reference to nationalist agendas in his chapter title (“The inva- sion”) and some of his terminology (the “liberation” of Egypt in Ahmose’s 25th year reign11), he describes the Hyksos’ seizure of power as a gradual, and widely accepted process: The final stage of the Hyksos rise to power may have been violent, but their gradual infiltration seems to have been much more widely accepted by the Egyptian population at the time than the later nationalistic texts of the New Kingdom suggest (…) The Hyksos Kings themselves were great builders and artisans, leaving behind them temples, statues, reliefs and scarabs, and even encouraging the continued dissemination of Egyptian literature.12 He credits the Hyksos with achieving a successful balance between their own indigenous and Egyptian culture, showing respect fort the host culture and instituting a successful method of government that consisted of an immer- sion in the existing political system.13 Grimal also emphasized that the Hyksos 8 Van de Mieroop, A History of Ancient Egypt, 126 f. 9 Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East c. 3000–330 BCE, 173. 10 Kemp, “Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period.” 11 Grimal, Histoire de l’Egypte ancienne, 226, 240; Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, 182, 195. See also Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, 41, who questions whether the Theban war would have been regarded as a “liberation” by the Egyptians. 12 Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, 186 (for the original French version: Grimal, Histoire de l’Egypte ancienne, 230). 13 Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, 186 (for the original French version: Grimal, Histoire de l’Egypte ancienne, 231). Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018) 73–86 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 04:12:04AM via free access 76 Schneider presence in Egypt was evidently less damaging than portrayed later, and that the Hyksos left a legacy not only in the technological field, particularly warfare innovation, but also in religion, culture, and philosophy from which the New Kingdom pharaohs would draw inspiration.14 Similarly balanced presenta- tions of the evidence can be found in Bourriau’s chapter for the Oxford History of Ancient Egypt,15 or Stiebing’s textbook, Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture. Bard’s work, Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, provides a sober and objective account of the complex, hybrid material evidence and also speaks explicitly about the inherently biased Egyptian perspective.16 Within the German book market, Bommas’ introduction to ancient Egypt is a similar call for revision of one-sided earlier views.17 While these well-informed, multi-faceted assessments have certainly become more regular in recent years, it is striking to notice that very differ- ent treatments have not diminished much. This is in spite of the fact that Tell el-Dabʿa has become one of the best-published sites of Egypt, and that over- views of the state of knowledge (e.g., the catalogue Pharaonen und Fremde; Bietak’s volume Avaris. The Capital of the Hyksos) have always been easily accessible. The continuous existence of treatments of the Hyksos Period where it is denied historical relevance, or that it should be seen in negative terms, is indicative of the prevalence of alternative concepts and agendas. Assmann’s Ägypten: Eine Sinngeschichte proposes an “approach that is dis- tinct from both cultural history and the historiography of events. It sets out to explore a third dimension: the history of Egypt as a chapter in the history of meaning,” and looks more specifically at “fabrications, with which the Egyptians organized their memories and experiences.”18 While the book’s second chapter of 35 pages is devoted to the First Intermediate Period and propels the view that the period’s chaos lived on in literary fabrications that remained “alive and memorially operative,”19 and while the book’s fifth chapter of 80 pages deals with religious, political and cultural core structures of the 14 Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, 186 f. (for the original French version: Grimal, Histoire de l’Egypte ancienne, 231 f.). 15 Bourriau, “The Second Intermediate Period.” 16 Bard, An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, 195–99; 2nd edition, 211–16. 17 Bommas, Das Alte Ägypten, 70–77. 18 Assmann, The Mind of Egypt, 8 (German: Assmann, Ägypten.
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