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How the Hyksos Became a Race

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How the Hyksos Became a Race Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018) 45–72 brill.com/jeh Entangled in Orientalism: How the Hyksos Became a Race Danielle Candelora* Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles [email protected] Abstract This paper presents a historiographical critique of Hyksos scholarship and the impact of Imperialism and Orientalism on the foundations of such studies. I trace the creation and maintenance of the misconception of the Hyksos as a race through the schol- arship, examining the context and influences behind the research, and discuss the appeal of new scientific techniques for the question of Hyksos origins. Keywords Hyksos – Orientalism – imperialism – race – ethnicity – aDNA – isotopic analysis 1 Introduction In a study of material culture from historical periods, considering the archaeo- logical and textual context is critical for interpretation; without it, information concerning production, use, deposition, social significance and human agency is lost. Yet only recently have scholars of the ancient world begun to consider their own contexts within broader academic disciplines. These disciplines have their own complicated histories, featuring individual actors from specific socio-political environments exerting influence on the direction of scholarship * I would like to thank Thomas Schneider and Juan Carlos Moreno García for the opportunity to contribute to this volume, as well as Willeke Wendrich and Kara Cooney for their input on earlier drafts of this paper. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/18741665-12340042Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 08:25:43PM via free access 46 Candelora and research design. Indeed, the background of individual scholars and the developments in their contemporary world not only impact the discipline, but can structure research questions and give primacy to certain conclusions. Studies performing this type of self-reflexive critique have been done in classical archaeology and other ancient Near Eastern disciplines,1 yet remain at a relatively nascent stage for the history of Egyptology.2 Pioneering works such as Reid’s Whose Pharaohs? have explored the birth of the discipline in the context of European imperialism and Orientalism,3 while Schneider’s inves- tigations of Egyptologists in National Socialist Germany have elucidated the complicated history of the discipline in the Third Reich.4 The following aims to contribute to this effort, focusing on the case study of the Hyksos. I will show that contemporary socio-political trends impacted the direction of Hyksos research and even affected the plausibility of particu- lar deductions. An ideal recipient for the mantle of the Oriental Despot, the Hyksos became entangled in the European imperialist rhetoric of the 19th cen- tury and the racial science of the early 20th. The ongoing search for the origins of western civilization spurred questions of origins and ancestry in ancient ethnic groups, and helped to maintain the misguided notion of the Hyksos as a race for over a century. Even in today’s postcolonial, post-racial climate, new scientific techniques are resurrecting questions of biogeological ancestry and ethnicity. It is especially important, in light of this renewed quest for origins, to understand the motivations behind such research agendas through disciplin- ary self-reflection. As will become clear below, it is crucial for the following study to be extremely clear concerning terminology. Two separate misconceptions per- sist, both in the scholarship and more popular works, surrounding the word “Hyksos.” The first is that this term is the name of a defined and relatively large population group (see below), when in fact it is only a royal title held exclu- sively by individual rulers. Any standalone use of the word “Hyksos” in the 1 For example Holloway, Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible; Cooper, “Sumerian and Aryan”; Bahrani, “Race and Ethnicity in Mesopotamian Antiquity”; Dietler, Archaeologies of Colonial- ism; and famously Bernal, Black Athena. 2 Quirke, Hidden Hands; Bednarski, Holding Egypt and “Egypt and the Modern World”; Em- berling, Pioneers to the Past; Reid, Whose Pharaohs?; Schneider, “ ‘Eine Führernatur, wie Sie der neue Staat braucht!’ ”; Reid, “Egyptology under Khedive Ismail”; Schneider and Raulwing, Egyptology from the First World War to the Third Reich; Hassan, “Egypt in the Memory of the World”; Breger, “Imperialist Fantasy and Displaced Memory.” 3 Reid, Whose Pharaohs? 4 Schneider, “Ägyptologen im Dritten Reich” and “‘Eine Führernatur, wie Sie der neue Staat braucht!’”. Journal of EgyptianDownloaded History from 11 Brill.com09/24/2021 (2018) 45–72 08:25:43PM via free access Entangled in Orientalism 47 following article refers specifically to the foreign kings of the 15th Dynasty.5 The second, often-repeated notion holds that the ancient Egyptians gave the title to these kings and referred to them as ḤḳꜢ ḪꜢswt. However, a thorough examination of all pharaonic examples of this title indicate that the Egyptians never referred to the 15th Dynasty in this way, and the Hyksos more likely purposefully took on the title for themselves.6 This article focuses on the first idea, following the history of Hyksos scholarship and the influence of scholars’ individual socio-political contexts on the evolution and perpetuation of this misconception, exploring how the Hyksos became a race. Following a brief dis- cussion of the concepts of race and ethnicity, I examine the often-overlooked role of Orientalism and Imperialism on studies of the ancient world, then investigate Hyksos studies specifically. Finally, I assess the appeal which new scientific analyses hold for the question of Hyksos origins. 2 Race and Ethnicity The terminology and assumptions informing questions of race and ethnicity warrant consideration, as they have contributed to both advances and stagna- tion in the study of the Hyksos. Barth presented one of the first theoretical treatments exploring ethnicity instead of race, divorcing ethnicity from the categories of biological race, material culture, and languages groups with which it had become entangled. He defined ethnic groups as “categories of ascription and identification by the actors themselves,” and emphasized the boundaries between these groups as more discernable than the composition of the groups themselves.7 Numerous studies have built on Barth’s work, dem- onstrating that ethnicity is a social construct reliant on both self- and external ascription, and is malleable and contextually dependent.8 5 Due to its redundancy, the phrase Hyksos king(s) or ruler(s) will be avoided. The uncritical application of the term to elements of material culture has been correctly criticized before (cf. Van Seters, The Hyksos: A New Investigation, 3), and for the sake of clarity the complete phrase “Hyksos Period” should be used when a chronological descriptor is required. 6 Cf. Candelora, “Defining the Hyksos.” 7 Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. 10–14. 8 See for example Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity; Shennan, Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity, 13; Lucy, “Ethnic and Cultural Identities”; Díaz-Andreu and Lucy, “Introduc- tion,” 11; Bentley, “Ethnicity and Practice.” Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018) 45–72 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 08:25:43PM via free access 48 Candelora Although ethnicity may seem to be a universally defined term, its mean- ing has changed over time9 and indeed changes subtly in each scholarly study in which it is utilized. For example, most scholars consider ethnicity to have an inherent aspect of shared ancestry,10 though some assume that this should be biologically based (in that members of the ethnic group share a common descent and are biologically related), while others deny the biological link on the basis that it is too similar to the category of race, and that this shared ancestry can be fictitious kinship relations.11 Several scholars have noted that the term ancestry is often used without being defined, but usually refers to the geographic region of biological ancestors,12 clarifying that “ancestry” and “origin” are terms that are inherently associated with biological related- ness. Lee, et al., have also commented that this “biogeographical ancestry,” or “the sum of all the geographic locations inhabited by an individual’s biological ancestors,” often differs from their group self-ascription.13 Furthermore, across the humanistic disciplines and the hard sciences, “race” and “ethnicity” have both been defined as biological fact and social construct.14 These neologisms are often introduced with the intent of being distinct from and more scientifically objective than their predecessors. However, the research aims remain unchanged, so these new terms quickly shoulder similar connotations to those they have replaced,15 including inherent assumptions, theoretical underpinnings, and modern cultural baggage. Bahrani observed that in the anti-racial environment just after World War II the study of race was replaced with ethnicity, yet continued to be used for the same Culture History approaches in archaeology.16 Bolnick even stated that although “ancestry has been widely promoted as an objective, scientific alternative to race,”17 the two concepts do not differ greatly in practice. She explains that ancestry can involve socio-political definitions, and is often divided into broader regions 9 See Emberling, “Ethnicity in Complex Societies,” 301–04 for a brief summary of the deriva-
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