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The Hyksos (name derived from the Egyptian Heqa-Kasut, which means “sovereigns of foreign countries”) belonged to those Asian populations that slowly settled in Egypt during the end of the Middle Reign. Their ethnic composition included Semitics, Canaan, and also those who would later become the Jews. The arrival of these people had been characterized by a slow infiltration, that brought in the Egyptian territory always more foreign people without worrying the pharaohs, who initially, didn’t see in this migratory wave a threat. These Asian populations who settled in the North of Egypt formed a community which soon occupied the Delta region. When the central power of the XII dynasty decreased, the Hyksos took advantage of the moment of fragility of the country to impose their own supremacy. These foreign people followed the eastern line of the Delta and leaving from Avaris they went toward Memphis, using a power that didn’t overwhelm Middle Egypt. The precise dates of these events are not known, but the taking of Avaris by the Hyksos can be stated thanks to a stele that goes back ”to the year 400, fourth day of the fourth month of the flood, of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Seth, of great value, Ra’s son, his beloved, loved by Ra. Horakhty”. It’s a text from Ramses’s II epoch, that reports the date of the foundation of the god Seth’s temple, built by the Hyksos in Avaris around the 1720 BC. The Hyksos, in fact, adopted as a dynastic god Osiride’s enemy and they also worshipped two warrior divinities of Syrian-Palestinian origin: Anat and Astarte. The first goddess was armed with a shield and an axle while the second was represented on horseback, completely naked, with her head decorated with an Atef crown, which was god Ra’s gift. The Hyksos reigned over Egypt for two dynasties: the XV and the XVI, that were contemporary and of which the second was the vassallo branch of the first. There are only a few testimonies about the Asian domination because the pharaohs who reigned successively, tried to cancel every trace of the foreign sovereigns. The following dynasties offered a distorted vision of this period, describing it as an evil epoch for the Egyptians. Actually the Hyksos’s domination wasn’t so harmful for the country. During their government they kept the same administrative structure of the Egyptian pharaohs, they also respected the same artistic canons and they gave an impulse to the diffusion of literature. The Asian kings carried on the typical Egyptian tradition of engraving their names on the scarabss, the sacred insects considered creating divinities, that, in the shape of an amulet, were put among the mummy’s bandages. The scarabss represented the source of light and warmth that accompanied the dead person toward resurrection and they had a symbolic meaning of resurrection . Moreover, the Hyksos kings, presented themselves as real pharaohs, although they kept their own culture and their own Semitic names. From their high position as sovereigns, they dedicated themselves to the construction of monuments as the pharaohs who had preceded them in the guide of the country. The foreign invasion had a positive aspect because it gave the submitted population some advantages. Concerning the military ambit, the Hyksos introduced in Egypt the use of the horse as a towing animal and the war cart, besides the curved spade, the helmets and the armors. Their presence in Egypt is documented also in Tell el Mackhuta and in Tell el Yahwdiya, localities in the region of the Delta and in Sharuhen in Palestine, where the Hyksos had a fortress of great military importance. Their reign is marked also by important commercial relations (and maybe also ethnic) established during the years with the inhabitants of the East. The Hyksos had contacts with Crete, Egeo, Anatolia and some places in the near Orient and they also collaborated with Nubian, to which they were allied to contrast the teban power. The expansion of these people lasted around half a century before they were able to dominate Egypt. The founder of the first Hyksos dynasty is Salitis who probably reigned for twenty years, from the Delta region to Gebelin. But in Egypt the Asians were not the only ones who were powerful. In fact in Tebe there was a new dynasty of sovereigns, the XVII one, that derived from a branch of the XIII one in the period when at the head of the Hyksos there was the sovereign Yaqub-har, Salitis’s successor. The teban kings reigned from Elefantna to Abydos for sixty-five years. Antef V, Nebiryerau I and others, followed them. But the most famous king of this dynasty is Sobekemsaf II who governed from Tebe for sixteen years and built monuments in Karnak and in Abydos. Concerning the Hyksos instead, to Yaqub-has succeded Khyan, who with Apopis I is the most famous of thee foreign sovereigns. This king is famous because he has a supremacy: he is, among the monarchs of the pharaoh epoch, the one who has left most traces of himself in a wide area of action. The archaeologists have discovered objects with the royal name engraved in Crete, Gebelein, Bubastis, Cnosso and in Palestine, discoveries that prove an intense commercial activity. In all this fervor Nubian continued to be pacific.
The Nubian king Negeh seized the power.- probably with the Egyptian officers’ help, in the Kush reign and established the capital in the Buhen city, extending his reign from Elefantina to, maybe, the fourth cataract. After the Hyksos king Khyan’s reign, of which we don’t know the end, in Egypt two great personalities governed: King Antef VII for the city Tebe and Apopis I for the Hyksos, in Avaris. Antef VII was a king who guided himself the army in the battles. At his death he wanted to bring with himself in the othe r world the warrior’s funeral outfit and in his sarcophagus two bows and six arrows were found. During his reign in the Tebe city he was able to keep good relations with Apopis’s I subjects to the point that even relationships have been found among Asians and the Teban royal family. The open battles between the two reigns began at Antef’s VII death, when Ta’o I ascended to the throne, and the relations deteriorated definitely with the successive king, Seqenenra ta’o Ii, called “the valorous”. This sovereign is one of the protagonists of the novel titled “The quarrel between Apopis and Seqenenra”, that has reached thanks to a copy of the XIX dynasty. The city of Avaris and of Tebe around the end of the Second Intermediate Period reached the clash.
The mummy of the unlucky Seqnenra Ta’o II has wounds probably inflicted on the battle field. Other testimonies of this war between North and South derive from three important documents: an incomplete stele, another note with the name of the stele in Karnak and the Carnavon Tablet, named by the English Lord who collected it, and which completes the other two. The text of the steles and the tablet describe the hostilities between Teban and Hyksos and the battle for the liberation begun by Kamose, Seqenenra Ta’o’s II son or brother, against the Asians.
The king ascended to the throne around 1550 after the predecessor’s death, taking the place of the legitimate heir to the throne, Ahmose ì, who was still to young to hold the power.
This new king’s main concern was to eliminate the Hyksos from Egypt. Kamose, in fact, didn’t accept the idea of sharing the country with the Asians and he used all his energies to free it.