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The authors don't say which race the Hyksos have traditionally been associated with. Do they mean the Hebrews? It is interesting that the strontium isotope ana

by wbhart 6y ago

The authors don't say which race the Hyksos have traditionally been associated with. Do they mean the Hebrews? It is interesting that the strontium isotope analysis suggests they did not come from a single homeland, but were from a variety of locations across the near East. I'm not sure I'm identifying the race they are referring to correctly (too many History Channel documentaries maybe). For example, I don't think the Hebrews are supposed to have had a homeland at that point in history. Nonetheless, the evidence that a significant number of them spent their childhood outside the Nile Delta region does indicate that they were not a race of people who were born, grew up and lived in Egypt the whole time. Is someone able to confirm that the authors were referring to the past tentative identification of the Hyksos with the Hebrews? If not, to whom are they referring?

sradman 6y ago
> Do they mean the Hebrews? According to [1]: > The Hyksos... were people of probable Levantine origin, who established the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt (1650–1550 BC) based at the city of Avaris in the Nile delta, from where they ruled the northern part of the country. While the Hellenistic Egyptian historian Manetho portrayed the Hyksos as invaders and oppressors, modern Egyptology no longer believes that the Hyksos conquered Egypt in an invasion. Instead, Hyksos rule had been preceded by groups of Canaanite peoples settled in the eastern delta who probably seceded from central Egyptian control near the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty. So Canaanites [2]. The paper supports the theory that Hykos were settlers rather than invaders. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyksos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyksos [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan
garmaine 6y ago
Archaeologically speaking, the Hebrew people didn’t exist at that time in history.
- wbhart 6y ago
  Right, but one presumes that Josephus (a later Jewish historian) identified the Hyksos with the Hebrews? And he used the priest Manetho's works as source material for that claim? So I'm curious if that is what the authors of this new study claim to be refuting. I think so, but it's unclear since they deliberately decline to mention the race they are referring to. Perhaps I should have quoted the sentence from the paper that I'm referring to (principally), "During this paper, we only refer to the dynastic rulers as the Hyksos, not the elite attendant to the rulers nor that ethnic group with which they are associated." From my History Channel knowledge (not expert in any way), there has been a revival of interest in identifying the Hyksos with the Hebrews due to the location of a signet ring in Avaris by the archaeologist Manfred Bietak with "Ykb Hr" (Jacob?) inscribed on it. There is also a tomb with a statue of a Hyksos ruler who seemed to be almost as important as Pharoah himself, complete with what appears to be a multicoloured raiment painted on the statue. Armed with this dumbed down version of archaelogy my interest in the paper is piqued. But they aren't so clear what they are refuting.
  - garmaine 6y ago
    It depends on what you mean. There is absolutely no historical basis for the biblical exodus from Egypt of Jewish people. That said, when the hill people composed their history into the story that would eventually become Genesis and Exodus, they probably drew from some vague stories about the Hyksos occupation of parts of lower Egypt. The Hyksos were almost certainly Canaanite, or one of the other peoples the hill people (who would become the Jews) displaced when they conquered Israel.
    - wbhart 6y ago
      I'm aware that mainstream archaeologist don't find evidence of an exodus of "Jewish" people from Egypt via the Sinai into Caanan. I personally don't buy their arguments (no dung piles in the desert, no artifacts found, no identification of Mt. Sinai, etc.) But I accept that no evidence is no evidence. There is, as far as I recall, evidence of an "exodus" of sorts of the Hyksos from Egypt, but not any (solid) evidence of it happening in the manner or time described in the Biblical account. I'm not sure I buy the Israel = Hyksos theory anyway. But this gets fairly far from my question, which really related to what the authors of this particular paper allude to, but don't say explicitly. They use some fairly strident language to describe what it is they are not talking about. I was just curious what that was, and why.
      - KMag 6y ago
        > They use some fairly strident language to describe what it is they are not talking about. I was just curious what that was, and why. Have a look at what happened more than a decade ago when a paper came out showing no genetic distinction between Palestinians and Jews. Any discussion of nationalities in the Middle East is a political minefield. Also, ever since The History Channel became the Aliens and Nazis Channel, the authors are probably afraid of being very badly misquoted in some Exodus documentary. The strident language makes it nearly impossible to cherry-pick a quote for a documentary without it sounding like complete gibberish.
netcan 6y ago
>I'm not sure I'm identifying the race they are referring to correctly (too many History Channel documentaries maybe). For example, I don't think the Hebrews are supposed to have had a homeland at that point in history. The relationships between biblical accounts of pre-classical periods is necessarily shaky. The pre-kingdom parts of the bible read very much like mythology, metaphor and heroic ancestor tales. That said, there are various points of intersection or allusion to actual known history. The migration of the Hyksos could relate to the biblical story of Joseph. It's basically an account of migration from Canaan to Egypt because of a famine. Like the article said, there do seem to have been migrations to egypt of various semitic people. The hyksos are the best known of them. Exodus relates to a later period. It's a story of a semitic slave migration out of egypt, becoming an independent nomadic tribe in canaan, midia & sinai. Historically, egypt had just lost these territories and receded to its core territory. Among many chaotic things happening, egypt was in conflict with various barbarian tribes from these regions... It's not that solid historical accounts from egypt confirm the biblical narrative. They make almost no reference to hebrews, escaped slaves, etc. But, the biblical account does make some sort of sense.
- nobleach 6y ago
  I've been fascinated by this argument for a few years. An "ask a historian" thread on Reddit asked an important question: "Would a kingdom, that chased slaves out of Egypt, only to be met with massive defeat, record that history?". I know nothing about Egyptology, so I'd ask, "did Egyptians, as a general rule, record any of their defeats?" From my limited Google searches, they did not. So the question becomes, is there any evidence of semitic people living in Egypt. That seems to be argued a bit more.
  - netcan 6y ago
    There is lots of evidence of semitic people in egypt over various periods. Also egyptian conquests & long lived administrations in these regions. "Semitic," as a language group is pretty big. There are also semitic languages spoken to the south of egypt, who were also interacting a lot with egypt. The Egyptians glorified their history like any political culture does, but massive defeats don't go unrecorded. They just make them seem like wins.^ In the relevant period, egypt (and the whole region) went through extreme instability. Historians don't totally understand it, and people then may not have either. But, there's lots of historical record of chaos and defeat. There are even surviving letters between besieged nobles candidly admitting major losses. I think it's more likely that exodus was just a much bigger deal to the Israelites than it was to Egyptians. To Egypt, it was no big deal. If Pharoah really had witnessed the sea part, and an angry god destroying his army... there would be a relief. Egyptians recorded noteworthy events. That said, it was a declining period and the egyptian record is patchy during these times. ^EG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seev%C3%B6lker.jpg#/media/File:Seevölker.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seev%C3%B6lker.jpg#/...
Kednicma 6y ago
The Hyksos are traditionally not associated with a race, but with the chariot-and-archer techniques that would come to characterize Bronze Age Egyptian military power and conquest. Indeed, it is usually the other way around, with the Hyksos being the race/dynasty to whom the chariot technology is credited. At this point in history, the folks who would become the Hebrews were living in what would become Judea. We know that Ramesses II conquered them and the surrounding area, using Hyksos-style chariots; and we know that at least one of their tribes, who Ramesses III called Peleset and we might call Philistines or Palestinians, were sea-faring and related to the Phoenicians. In general, this all happened in the Bronze Age, but the Hebrew tradition didn't really form until the Iron Age, and there's a minimum of two centuries separating them, with Ramesses III not encountering the Sea Peoples after around ~1150 BCE and Iron Age Hebrew stories not being written down before around ~950 BCE.
- wbhart 6y ago
  I don't completely follow your second paragraph. Are the Philistines now believed to have been Hebrew? That's a development I wasn't aware of. I'm also not clear how the use of Hyksos-style chariots by Ramesses II's is linked. The Hyksos rulers in Egypt were a couple of centuries earlier, right? Anyhow, can you shed any light on the "the elite attendant to the rulers" and the "ethnic group with which they are associated" mentioned in the paper?
  - KMag 6y ago
    I've seen a credible-looking documentary (despite being History Channel, IIRC) on YouTube claiming that there's evidence of large-scale slave/lower class uprisings in many Philistine cities right before the start of archaeological evidence of Israelite settlements in the Judean highlands. The documentary claims that the Israelites were Philistine in origin. The level of hatred of the Philistines may have been out of a need to keep a political distinction between the old and new cultures, to keep them from melting back into Philistine cities during times of hardship. I think it was this same documentary that theorized a small number of escaped slaves from Egypt wandered through Midian and into Canaan. The documentary identified a minor city-state in/near Midian that's documented to have worshipped a god named Yahu, and theorized that these wanderers had some kind of dramatic religious experience there, which later mutated into Yahweh worship. The documentary further theorized that this small group of actual escaped slaves were adopted by, and became the leaders of, the nascent Israelite communities, accounting for the Egyptian slavery narrative. The documentary didn't mention that Canaan was an Egyptian vassal state from the 18th to 13th centuries B.C.E. If the Israelites originated from Philistine slave / lower class uprisings, I wonder if the oral history of the Egyptian vassal state period is the origin for the narrative of being slaves in Egypt despite there being no archaeological evidence of a massive-scale slave escape from Egypt. Being a slave in a state that's essentially a slave of Egypt probably feels like being doubly a slave to Egypt. To me, this sounds more likely than a small number of Egyptian slaves being adopted by local tribes and their narrative becoming the tribal narrative.

by wbhart 6y ago

sradman 6y ago

> Do they mean the Hebrews? According to [1]: > The Hyksos... were people of probable Levantine origin, who established the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt (1650–1550 BC) based at the city of Avaris in the Nile delta, from where they ruled the northern part of the country. While the Hellenistic Egyptian historian Manetho portrayed the Hyksos as invaders and oppressors, modern Egyptology no longer believes that the Hyksos conquered Egypt in an invasion. Instead, Hyksos rule had been preceded by groups of Canaanite peoples settled in the eastern delta who probably seceded from central Egyptian control near the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty. So Canaanites [2]. The paper supports the theory that Hykos were settlers rather than invaders. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyksos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyksos [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan

garmaine 6y ago

Archaeologically speaking, the Hebrew people didn’t exist at that time in history.

wbhart 6y ago
Right, but one presumes that Josephus (a later Jewish historian) identified the Hyksos with the Hebrews? And he used the priest Manetho's works as source material for that claim? So I'm curious if that is what the authors of this new study claim to be refuting. I think so, but it's unclear since they deliberately decline to mention the race they are referring to. Perhaps I should have quoted the sentence from the paper that I'm referring to (principally), "During this paper, we only refer to the dynastic rulers as the Hyksos, not the elite attendant to the rulers nor that ethnic group with which they are associated." From my History Channel knowledge (not expert in any way), there has been a revival of interest in identifying the Hyksos with the Hebrews due to the location of a signet ring in Avaris by the archaeologist Manfred Bietak with "Ykb Hr" (Jacob?) inscribed on it. There is also a tomb with a statue of a Hyksos ruler who seemed to be almost as important as Pharoah himself, complete with what appears to be a multicoloured raiment painted on the statue. Armed with this dumbed down version of archaelogy my interest in the paper is piqued. But they aren't so clear what they are refuting.
- garmaine 6y ago
  It depends on what you mean. There is absolutely no historical basis for the biblical exodus from Egypt of Jewish people. That said, when the hill people composed their history into the story that would eventually become Genesis and Exodus, they probably drew from some vague stories about the Hyksos occupation of parts of lower Egypt. The Hyksos were almost certainly Canaanite, or one of the other peoples the hill people (who would become the Jews) displaced when they conquered Israel.
  - wbhart 6y ago
    I'm aware that mainstream archaeologist don't find evidence of an exodus of "Jewish" people from Egypt via the Sinai into Caanan. I personally don't buy their arguments (no dung piles in the desert, no artifacts found, no identification of Mt. Sinai, etc.) But I accept that no evidence is no evidence. There is, as far as I recall, evidence of an "exodus" of sorts of the Hyksos from Egypt, but not any (solid) evidence of it happening in the manner or time described in the Biblical account. I'm not sure I buy the Israel = Hyksos theory anyway. But this gets fairly far from my question, which really related to what the authors of this particular paper allude to, but don't say explicitly. They use some fairly strident language to describe what it is they are not talking about. I was just curious what that was, and why.
    - KMag 6y ago
      > They use some fairly strident language to describe what it is they are not talking about. I was just curious what that was, and why. Have a look at what happened more than a decade ago when a paper came out showing no genetic distinction between Palestinians and Jews. Any discussion of nationalities in the Middle East is a political minefield. Also, ever since The History Channel became the Aliens and Nazis Channel, the authors are probably afraid of being very badly misquoted in some Exodus documentary. The strident language makes it nearly impossible to cherry-pick a quote for a documentary without it sounding like complete gibberish.

netcan 6y ago

>I'm not sure I'm identifying the race they are referring to correctly (too many History Channel documentaries maybe). For example, I don't think the Hebrews are supposed to have had a homeland at that point in history. The relationships between biblical accounts of pre-classical periods is necessarily shaky. The pre-kingdom parts of the bible read very much like mythology, metaphor and heroic ancestor tales. That said, there are various points of intersection or allusion to actual known history. The migration of the Hyksos could relate to the biblical story of Joseph. It's basically an account of migration from Canaan to Egypt because of a famine. Like the article said, there do seem to have been migrations to egypt of various semitic people. The hyksos are the best known of them. Exodus relates to a later period. It's a story of a semitic slave migration out of egypt, becoming an independent nomadic tribe in canaan, midia & sinai. Historically, egypt had just lost these territories and receded to its core territory. Among many chaotic things happening, egypt was in conflict with various barbarian tribes from these regions... It's not that solid historical accounts from egypt confirm the biblical narrative. They make almost no reference to hebrews, escaped slaves, etc. But, the biblical account does make some sort of sense.

nobleach 6y ago
I've been fascinated by this argument for a few years. An "ask a historian" thread on Reddit asked an important question: "Would a kingdom, that chased slaves out of Egypt, only to be met with massive defeat, record that history?". I know nothing about Egyptology, so I'd ask, "did Egyptians, as a general rule, record any of their defeats?" From my limited Google searches, they did not. So the question becomes, is there any evidence of semitic people living in Egypt. That seems to be argued a bit more.
- netcan 6y ago
  There is lots of evidence of semitic people in egypt over various periods. Also egyptian conquests & long lived administrations in these regions. "Semitic," as a language group is pretty big. There are also semitic languages spoken to the south of egypt, who were also interacting a lot with egypt. The Egyptians glorified their history like any political culture does, but massive defeats don't go unrecorded. They just make them seem like wins.^ In the relevant period, egypt (and the whole region) went through extreme instability. Historians don't totally understand it, and people then may not have either. But, there's lots of historical record of chaos and defeat. There are even surviving letters between besieged nobles candidly admitting major losses. I think it's more likely that exodus was just a much bigger deal to the Israelites than it was to Egyptians. To Egypt, it was no big deal. If Pharoah really had witnessed the sea part, and an angry god destroying his army... there would be a relief. Egyptians recorded noteworthy events. That said, it was a declining period and the egyptian record is patchy during these times. ^EG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seev%C3%B6lker.jpg#/media/File:Seevölker.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seev%C3%B6lker.jpg#/...

Kednicma 6y ago

The Hyksos are traditionally not associated with a race, but with the chariot-and-archer techniques that would come to characterize Bronze Age Egyptian military power and conquest. Indeed, it is usually the other way around, with the Hyksos being the race/dynasty to whom the chariot technology is credited. At this point in history, the folks who would become the Hebrews were living in what would become Judea. We know that Ramesses II conquered them and the surrounding area, using Hyksos-style chariots; and we know that at least one of their tribes, who Ramesses III called Peleset and we might call Philistines or Palestinians, were sea-faring and related to the Phoenicians. In general, this all happened in the Bronze Age, but the Hebrew tradition didn't really form until the Iron Age, and there's a minimum of two centuries separating them, with Ramesses III not encountering the Sea Peoples after around ~1150 BCE and Iron Age Hebrew stories not being written down before around ~950 BCE.

wbhart 6y ago
I don't completely follow your second paragraph. Are the Philistines now believed to have been Hebrew? That's a development I wasn't aware of. I'm also not clear how the use of Hyksos-style chariots by Ramesses II's is linked. The Hyksos rulers in Egypt were a couple of centuries earlier, right? Anyhow, can you shed any light on the "the elite attendant to the rulers" and the "ethnic group with which they are associated" mentioned in the paper?
- KMag 6y ago
  I've seen a credible-looking documentary (despite being History Channel, IIRC) on YouTube claiming that there's evidence of large-scale slave/lower class uprisings in many Philistine cities right before the start of archaeological evidence of Israelite settlements in the Judean highlands. The documentary claims that the Israelites were Philistine in origin. The level of hatred of the Philistines may have been out of a need to keep a political distinction between the old and new cultures, to keep them from melting back into Philistine cities during times of hardship. I think it was this same documentary that theorized a small number of escaped slaves from Egypt wandered through Midian and into Canaan. The documentary identified a minor city-state in/near Midian that's documented to have worshipped a god named Yahu, and theorized that these wanderers had some kind of dramatic religious experience there, which later mutated into Yahweh worship. The documentary further theorized that this small group of actual escaped slaves were adopted by, and became the leaders of, the nascent Israelite communities, accounting for the Egyptian slavery narrative. The documentary didn't mention that Canaan was an Egyptian vassal state from the 18th to 13th centuries B.C.E. If the Israelites originated from Philistine slave / lower class uprisings, I wonder if the oral history of the Egyptian vassal state period is the origin for the narrative of being slaves in Egypt despite there being no archaeological evidence of a massive-scale slave escape from Egypt. Being a slave in a state that's essentially a slave of Egypt probably feels like being doubly a slave to Egypt. To me, this sounds more likely than a small number of Egyptian slaves being adopted by local tribes and their narrative becoming the tribal narrative.