2111 AM · ≈ 1650 BCE · world history
The Hyksos in the Nile Delta
Newcomers from the north-east seize power in Lower Egypt and rule from Avaris.
The name means rulers of foreign lands. Semitic settlers had been coming into the delta for centuries and gradually became the majority there; then their chiefs proclaimed themselves pharaohs and made their capital at Avaris. For the first time Egypt was under foreign rule: the south, with Thebes, paid tribute, while the north traded with Canaan and Cyprus. The Hyksos brought the chariot, the composite bow and bronze of a new quality—the very arms with which Egypt itself would later fight. The memory of them remained bitter, and later texts wrote of the time when foreigners ruled.
Sources
Documents of the period
- Egyptian royal inscriptions and king lists — the Kamose stelae on the war against Avaris; Manetho on the “rulers of foreign lands”
Scholarship
- archaeology of the Nile valley — the excavations of Avaris (Tell el-Dab‘a): a Semitic population in the delta
Basis: documents and evidence.