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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

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.

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.