Hyksos - Origins of The Hyksos

Origins of The Hyksos

There are various hypotheses as to the Hyksos ethnic identity. Most archeologists describe the Hyksos as multi-ethnic, to include all of the peoples who occupied the emporia of the delta. Some were warlords seeking employment by the Egyptians as mercenaries. Some were unemployed agricultural workers looking for work helping produce food and resorting to banditry, theft and other crimes when they did not get it. Some were skilled tradesmen, professionals, doctors, lawyers, scribes, priests, diplomats, accountants. Some were merchants importing raw materials: timber from Byblos, semi-precious stones from as far away as Afghanistan, tin, copper, bronze, medicines for the doctors, perfumes for the wigmakers, bitumen, natron, linen, frankincense and myrrh for the mummification industry at Karnak or exporting grain and beer to as far away as Greece.

The origin of the term "Hyksos" derives from the Egyptian expression heka khasewet ("rulers of foreign lands"), used in Egyptian texts such as the Turin King List to describe the rulers of neighbouring lands. This expression begins to appear as early as the late Old Kingdom in Egypt, referring to various Nubian chieftains, and as early as the Middle Kingdom, referring to the Semitic chieftains of Syria and Canaan.

The German Egyptologist Wolfgang Helck once argued that the Hyksos were part of massive and widespread Hurrian and Indo-Aryan migrations into the Near East. According to Helck, the Hyksos were Hurrians and part of a Hurrian empire that, he claimed, extended over much of Western Asia at this period. Most scholars have rejected this theory and Helck himself has now abandoned this hypothesis in a 1993 article.

Modern scholarship usually assumes that the Hyksos were likely Semites who came from the Levant. Kamose, the last king of the Theban 17th Dynasty, refers to Apophis as a "Chieftain of Retjenu (i.e., Canaan)" in a stela that implies a Semitic Canaanite background for this Hyksos king: this is the strongest evidence for a Canaanite background for the Hyksos. Khyan's name "has generally been interpreted as Amorite "Hayanu" (reading h-ya-a-n) which the Egyptian form represents perfectly, and this is in all likelihood the correct interpretation." Kim S.B. Ryholt furthermore observes the name Hayanu is recorded in the Assyrian king-lists for a "remote ancestor" of Shamshi-Adad I (c. 1813 BC) of Assyria, which suggests that it had been used for centuries prior to Khyan's own reign.

The issue of Sakir-Har's name, one of the three earliest 15th Dynasty kings, also leans towards a West Semitic or Canaanite origin for the Hyksos rulers—if not the Hyksos peoples themselves. As Ryholt notes, the name Sakir-Har:

As to a Hyksos “conquest”, some archaeologists depict the Hyksos as “northern hordes . . . sweeping through Canaan and Egypt in swift chariots”. Yet, others refer to a ‘creeping conquest’, that is, a gradual infiltration of migrating nomads or seminomads who either slowly took over control of the country piecemeal or by a swift coup d’etat put themselves at the head of the existing government. In The World of the Past (1963, p. 444), archeologist Jacquetta Hawkes states: “It is no longer thought that the Hyksos rulers... represent the invasion of a conquering horde of Asiatics... they were wandering groups of Semites who had long come to Egypt for trade and other peaceful purposes.”