Egypt Exploration Society New Renderings of Egyptian Texts: II. The Expulsion of the Hyksos Author(s): Battiscombe Gunn and Alan H. Gardiner Source: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jan., 1918), pp. 36-56 Published by: Egypt Exploration Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3853549 . Accessed: 05/07/2014 16:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Egypt Exploration Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.43.195.66 on Sat, 5 Jul 2014 16:29:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 36 NEW RENDERINGS OF EGYPTIAN TEXTS BY BATTISCOMBE GUNN AND ALAN H. GARDINER II. THE EXPULSION OF THE HYKSOS. ONE of the most obscure and at the same time most interesting chapters in Egyptian history is that which recounts the domination of the country by the Hyksos, or " Shepherd Kings" as late tradition called them, and their subsequent expulsion by the native kings, when these, after about a century of oppression at the hands of the invading race, suc- ceeded in throwing off the yoke and in re-establishing their sovereignty over the whole land. Little indeed is known of the time when the alien overlords were at the height of their power; its remains are scanty, and give hardly any information beyond a number of names; but of its sequel, the struggle from which Egypt emerged victorious, somewhat more is known. New light has been thrown upon the Hyksos by the researches and discoveries of the last few years, and the present moment seems a not unseasonable one to translate anew and annotate such native records as have anything to tell us of the events which marked the close of that troublous and critical timel. Before giving these records, it will not be amiss to devote a page or so to sum- marizing the views at present held on the Hyksos and their relations with Egypt. It must be pointed out that these views are in great part hardly more than conjecture, owing to the paucity of the data upon which they rest, and that historians are at variance on mlany important points; hence much of what follows lies rather in the realm of the probable or possible than in that of the certain. Towards the close of the eighteenth century2 before our era Egypt had for long been 1 We shall confine ourselves to such native writings as recount, or allude to, the sojourn of the Hyksos in Egypt and their expulsion therefrom, gladly leaving to others the criticism of the Greek sources and the study of the royal names of the period. The Manethonian tradition has been brilliantly treated by ED. MEYER,Aegyptische Chronologie,pp. 80foll., but on this topic assured conclusions are unobtainable. The lesser monuments have been collected with the utmost diligence by R. WEILL, Les Hyksos et la Restauration nationale in Journal Asiatique, 1910-3, with further articles on the same subject, ibid., 1917. M. Weill holds the entire story of the Hyksos to be a legendary construction, and the his- torical nucleus which he extracts is very different from that usually accepted; a very severe criticism is to be found in ED. MEYER,Geschichte des Altertums3, ? 303, where most recent literature bearing on the question is quoted. 2 The total of 511 years for the length of the Hyksos domination (JOSEPHUS, Contra Apionem, I, 84, as from Manetho) is now generally discredited. Ed. Meyer considers a century to be ample; HALL, Ancient History of the iVear East, p. 217, thinks this too extreme a view, and proposes 1800 B.C. as a possible date for the invasion. PETRIE, Historical Studies, vol. ii, pp. 13 foll., makes an elaborate but un- successful attempt to vindicate the figures of Manetho. The one early piece of native evidehce for the This content downloaded from 62.43.195.66 on Sat, 5 Jul 2014 16:29:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE EXPULSION OF THE HYKSOS 37 in a condition of anarchy and general disorganisation, brought about by the degradation of the strong and beneficent rule of the Middle Kingdom Pharaohs into a continuous series of dynastic struggles, faction striving with faction for the control of the country, and king succeeding king almost annually. This period of weakness synchronised with an era of unrest and displacements in the adjacent Asiatic countries, whose populations were being pressed upon or even displaced by invaders coming possibly from more than one quarter. As the result of Egypt's distraught condition and of the upheavals abroad she was overrun, on her Asiatic frontier, by a horde of foreigners against whom she was powerless to defend herself. These foreigners are now generally thought to have been Semites, a view sup- ported by the fact that such personal names of members of the Hyksos as Egyptian inscriptions and scarabs have preserved to us are for the most part West-Semitic1. Pro- fessor King has advanced the plausible theory that the Hyksos invasion was due to the diversion south-westwards of a wave of migrating nomads driven northwards out of Arabia by the increasing aridity of their country; the same cause has been a constant factor in the history of these parts, and has in successive ages brought about the semitization of Babylonia, the establishment of the Aramaean kingdom, and the political expansion of Islam2. With this hypothesis agrees the fact that the Egyptians themselves designated the Hyksos by the name CA'amu, literally "users of the boomerang," a common name applied to the desert Arabs, if not necessarily confined to them3. Another view, however, is held by Eduard Meyer, who connects the emergence of the Hyksos with movements from the north, known to have taken place at about this period; the Mitanni race, coming from Asia Minor and speaking a language related to the Caucasian and Hittite idioms, had already founded a kingdom in northern Mesopotamia and Syria, and there were also novements in progress of Aryan peoples who eventually gained the ascendancy in the Mitanni kingdom and elsewhere in Syria. We have seen that the Hyksos themselves were probably Semites; hence we are unable to accept the view, from which Professor Meyer is not averse, that they may themselves have been of Mitanni or Aryan race4. But it must be admitted that the theory which would explain the invasion of Egypt as due to pressure from the north has no less to be said for it than the opposing view advocated by Professor King. Possibly both factors coincided. Manetho, the Egyptian priest who wrote a history of his country in Greek in the reign of Ptolemy I, gives an account of this period that is too well known to need much length of the Hyksos domination which we possess is the stele from Tanis carved in the reign of Ramesses II (first half of thirteenth century B.C.) and dated in year 400 of Seth Nubti; the most acces- sible reproduction is BUDGE, History, vol. in, p. 157. Seth Nubti is here doubtless the god, and the reference is very possibly to the renewal of his cult in Tanis during the Hyksos period, i.e. about 1670 B.c.; but this interpretation is not quite certain, and in any case proves but little. See ED. MEYER, Aegyptische Chronologie, pp. 65-7. 1 See especially BURCHARDT, Zur Rassengehorigkeit der Hylksos, in Zeitschrift fiir agyptische Sprache, vol. L (1912), pp. 6 foll. 2 KING, IIistory of Babylon, pp. 119 foll., 132. 3 For the term ?A'amu as applied to the Hyksos see the Carnarvon Tablet and the Speos Artemidos inscription translated below; probably also the Sallier papyrus. The genuine Manetho knows nothing of their race but calls them ro yevos a'ro-oLt " obscure of birth" (Jos., op. cit., I, 75); neither the tradition that they were Arabs (ibid., I, 82) nor the statement that they were Phoenicians (the Epitome according to both Africanus and Eusebius) emanates from Manetho himself. 4 Reich und Kultur der Chetiter, p. 58, note 1; also Geschichte des Altertums3, I, ? 304. This content downloaded from 62.43.195.66 on Sat, 5 Jul 2014 16:29:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 38 BATTISCOMBE GUNN AND ALAN H. GARDINER discussion in this article. He there tells us that the invaders were called Hyksos, that is "Herdsman Kings "-popularly rendered in English "Shepherd Kings "-from hyk, a word for "king" in the sacred language, i.e. the language of the hieroglyphs, and from sos, meaning in the vulgar tongue "herdsman'." The derivation is specious, for the two words do exist in Egyptian with the meanings which Manetho gives: 1 hk?, possibly to be vocalised hyk, signifies "ruler" or "chieftain" in early times, and the Coptic shos "herdsman," which could only be rendered sos in Greek writing, is probably derived from ?-Ty a hieroglyphic term ~ f2 , ssw, for the nomads of northern Arabia and the outskirts of Palestine2. However, it is generally believed to-day that this is a false "popular etymology," and that the origin of the word is to be seen in the Egyptian term , hklw-h?swvt(perhaps pronounced something like holk'-shose in the New Kingdom), "rulers of foreign countries," which is occasionally found from the Sixth Dynasty to Ptolemaic times as a general term for foreign tribal chiefs, whether from the north of Egypt or from the south.