With the Second Intermediate Period, rule in Egypt was once again divided, but for the first time there were non-Egyptians, the Hyksos kings of the 15th Dynasty, ruling a state in the north. Little is known about the 14th Dynasty, which consisted of a number of minor kings
In the Delta, contemporary either with some of the 13th-Dynasty Egyptian kings or with the 15th-dynasty Hyksos kings.
In 1905-1906 Flinders Petrie was the first to recognize that the sloping mound he excavated at Tell el-Yahudiya in the eastern Delta, about 20 kilometers northeast of Cairo, was not Egyptian in design but was similar to Middle Bronze Age (MB) fortifications in Syria-Palestine. Non-Egyptian style burials of MB Palestinian types were also found in or near the site, and black juglets with incised white designs from these burials are called Tell el-Yahudiya Ware. Made locally, the juglets are unlike Egyptian wares of the period, but typical of MB culture in Palestine.
Since 1966 the Austrian Archaeological Institute, Cairo, under the direction of Manfred Bietak and now Irene Forstner-Muller, has been excavating at the Delta site of Tell el-Dab’a, which has been identified as the Hyksos capital of Avaris (Figure 7.12). An Egyptian settlement existed at the site in the First Intermediate Period, and a state town was established there by Amenemhat I. During Senusret Ill’s reign a temple was constructed and an administrative complex was rebuilt at Ezbet Rushdi es-Saghira to the northeast of Tell el-Dab’a. The Middle Kingdom site, which was located near a deviation in the now extinct Pelusiac branch of the Nile, also included a workmen’s town planned on a grid, like other 12th-Dynasty state construction.
Although there are problems dating the excavated strata at these sites in terms of cross-dating artifacts with types known in Syria-Palestine (which may also reflect problems dating sites there), there is good stratigraphic evidence of settlements in use during a critical period of socio-political change in Egypt. Beginning in the late 12th Dynasty, the material
Figure 7.12 Plan of the site of Tell el-Dab’a, dating to the 12th-13th Dynasties and later the 15th-Dynasty Hyksos capital of Avaris. Source: Ian Shaw (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 187.
Culture of Tell el-Dab’a was becoming increasingly non-Egyptian - with in-settlement burials (not in a separate cemetery), MB IIA copper weapons in many male burials, houses of a design known in Syria, and more MB ceramics. Bietak suggests that the Asiatics living there were employed by the Egyptian state, as soldiers and probably also to perform other services such as trading. A 13th-Dynasty palace, built over some of this settlement, was Egyptian in design and similar to the large northern houses at Kahun, but tombs were built within the palace garden (for palace officials?). The burials were in an underground chamber, with a chapel above, one of which may have been in the form of a small mud-brick pyramid. But in front of these tombs were donkey burials, and grave goods included MB weapons. The animal burials, which are very un-Egyptian, strongly suggest (along with the associated grave goods) that the people buried in these tombs were ethnic Asiatics who were employed by Egyptian kings of the 13 th Dynasty, when there is some evidence of continued Egyptian activity/trading abroad, including trade with Byblos.
Sometime later in the 13 th Dynasty, new work on the palace stopped, but the settlement continued to be used. Burials found in mass graves and house middens can probably be explained by an outbreak of plague. With an increasingly MB material culture in the settlement, there is evidence of bronze tool production in open molds. (Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. It was produced in some parts of the Near East from ca. 3000 Bc onward, but did not become common in Egypt until the New Kingdom.)
By about 1700 BC, the settlement can be identified as the capital of Avaris, where the Hyksos kings of the 15th Dynasty resided. The town expanded to cover ca. 2.5 square kilometers and houses of two different sizes were built, with smaller houses in the eastern sector and clustered around the larger ones. Although more than half of the pottery from this phase consisted of Egyptian wares, locally made MB-type pottery was exported from Avaris to Cyprus, and Lower Nubia and Kerma. Imports at Avaris included a North Syrian-style cylinder seal, and pottery and a gold pectoral from crete. Two temples, of typical MB II design, were built in the eastern section (in Stratum F). Burials with Egyptian type chapels were located around the temple precinct, but some of them contained the remains of young females, probably sacrifices, placed before the tomb chamber - a very un-Egyptian burial practice.
In the late Hyksos period a fortified complex was built in the far western part of Avaris, in an area now known as Ezbet Helmy where the remains of two palace complexes have been excavated. A channel 2.5 meters deep, lined and covered in limestone blocks, was built to supply water to the complex. In this part of the site there were also many burials of young males, probably the result of the Egyptian conquest of the city under King Ahmose I, the first king of the 18th Dynasty. Monuments in this area were intentionally destroyed and a layer with the remains of a conflagration was evident. After the conquest an early 18th-Dynasty palace was built in which fragments of wall paintings in Minoan style, subject matter, and color scheme were found. This phase of occupation also marks the beginning of a new pottery corpus of Egyptian wares in use at the site.
The most recent work at Tell el Dab’a (geophysical survey and excavations) has revealed a large palatial building (112 x 95 meters), probably of the middle Hyksos period. According to Bietak, the plan of this palace has no resemblance to Egyptian palaces, and its origins can be found in the Middle and Late Bronze Age palaces in North Syria. From an offering pit in the courtyard of this palace eight sealings of the Hyksos King Khayan have been excavated: he was probably the builder of this palace.
Box 7-C Ceramic analysis
Since potsherds are usually the most common type of artifact excavated at pharaonic sites, ceramics, when classified, provide an important key to (relative) dating and to the use of a site. The “Vienna system,” a classification system for the fabrics of Egyptian pottery, was devised at a workshop in Vienna in 1980, by archaeologists Dorothea Arnold, Manfred Bietak, Janine Bourriau, Helen and Jean Jacquet, and Hans-Ake Nordstrom. The Vienna system is now used by most archaeologists in Egypt to provide a consistent classification system for recording and analyzing excavated ceramic fabrics. Much of the information given here in very abbreviated form is taken from An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Pottery (1993), edited by Arnold and Bourriau, following the classification system for fabrics that was formulated in 1980.
The Vienna system classifies ceramic fabrics, which are the intentional result of mixing clay, a plastic material when worked with water, with temper, inclusions that are added to the clay before it is shaped to prevent it from cracking during firing. Most ancient Egyptian ceramics were made from one of two kinds of clay: Nile alluvial clays and marl clays. When fired, Nile alluvial clays are usually red to brown in color. Marl clays, which are found in deposits of shale and mudstone where there are limestone formations along the edge of the valley, usually fire a light buff/grey color. The Vienna system has established five main groups of Nile alluvial clays (Nile A, B1 and B2, C, D, and E), and five main groups of marl clays (Marl A1, A2, A3, and A4; B; C1, C2, and C compact; D; and E), all of which are differentiated in terms of inclusions.
Temper inclusions can be fine to coarse in size, and consist of inorganic or organic materials. Inorganic tempers include different minerals, sand, limestone, and crushed potsherds (known as grog). Organic tempers include ground shell, animal dung, and chaff/straw, which generally burns away when fired, leaving an impression of its shape in the fired fabric.
In addition to the identification of clay and temper, ceramic fabrics are described in terms of porosity and hardness. Marl clay fabrics are usually harder than those of Nile alluvial clays. Color of the fired fabric taken from a fresh break of a potsherd, which is often an indication of how well fired the pot was, is described with a Munsell Soil Color Chart (used by geologists to systematically identify soil colors).
Surface treatment of potsherds is also recorded. Surface finishing can include burnishing or polishing, which makes the pot’s surface less porous. Frequently the surface of a pot, either inside or outside, or both, is covered with a thin layer of slip, consisting of clay thinned to a liquid with water, which is often polished when dry. Glazed pots, covered with a coating containing minerals which becomes shiny when fired, are not commonly found in Egypt until Byzantine and Islamic times. However the surface of a pot was finished, its interior and exterior colors are also described with a Munsell Chart.
Decorated pottery with painted designs is not common in Egypt, except in the Predynastic Period (Petrie’s White Cross-lined and Decorated classes) and New
Kingdom (“Amarna Ware,” with decorations in blue paint). Sometimes hieratic pot-marks (and more rarely hieroglyphic ones) which recorded information can be identified on potsherds, either incised on the pot before firing, or painted on afterwards.
Classification of fabrics and surface treatment is basically descriptive, but it also touches on some of the choices involved in the technology of ceramic production, which can in turn be informative about relative dating.
In terms of technology, ceramic analysts need to determine how pots were formed: by hand or with a wheel (of different types), which can often be recognized by careful observation. A common method of hand-forming pottery was with coils of fabric, which were smoothed into the desired shape of the pot. The “slow simple wheel” with a fixed center, of a platform with a socket placed on a low pole, was first used in the later old Kingdom. A scene of such a tool is found in the Saqqara tomb of Ti (5th Dynasty; see 6.11). Pots can be made wholly or partly with a wheel. For example, Maidum bowls, a well-known type of old Kingdom pot, had bodies made by hand with sharply angled rims made on a simple wheel. A tall axis-pole on a simple wheel, called a “fast simple wheel,” was used from the later Middle Kingdom onward, a good example being depicted in the deir el-Bersha tomb of djehuty-hotep (12th dynasty). The even faster “kick wheel” was not used until sometime in the first millennium bc.
Shape (in profile) and thickness of potsherds are important criteria to record in terms of the technology of production (as well as changes in form and style through time), and selective/diagnostic sherds (usually rim and base sherds) are drawn in profile. If possible, the shape of an entire vessel is also drawn in profile. Pots are usually better preserved in whole forms in burials than in settlements, and form can often be a general indication of function, such as containers for liquids, large storage jars, and kitchen/serving ceramics, for cooking, eating, and drinking.
Ceramic firing techniques are also investigated, sometimes by experimental archaeologists who try to reproduce pots with the same technology as ancient potters - with the same results. Ethnoarchaeologists also observe modern potters in Egypt in order to extrapolate technological information that may be relevant for ancient ceramic production. There are a number of known tomb scenes of kilns, and real kilns have been excavated at some settlements, with notable examples at the 18th-Dynasty site of Tell el-Amarna.
Ceramics are often grouped in wares of pots of the same fabric and surface treatment, similar forms (which usually change through time), and often some criteria of the technology of production. Excavated potsherds of each ware are then quantified, either by total weight or by number of potsherds (or both). Some excavated ceramics are obviously imported wares, but sometimes Egyptian potters imitated prestigious foreign wares. The most precise way for determining the source of clay used in a pot (and its place of manufacture) is neutron activation analysis, which identifies the elements and percentages of these elements in a pot’s clay. This information can then be compared to samples taken from foreign pots excavated in their places of origin or known sources of foreign clays. The provenance of pottery, of temper and clays, can
Also be analyzed in a laboratory by petrographic microscopy and elemental analysis, to look for major and trace elements. The recording and study of excavated ceramics is thus a highly specialized discipline. Excavation teams often include full-time specialists trained in ceramic analysis.
Contents are sometimes preserved in pots or in the soil found inside of pots. Samples must be taken from pot interiors for microscopic analysis. chemicals from the residues of pot contents may be preserved on the interior surface, requiring laboratory analyses of potsherds.
The excavations at Tell el-Dab’a demonstrate the problems involved in making ethnic identifications of ancient peoples from archaeological and associated textual evidence. Living peoples identify themselves as members of ethnic groups, which can be based on shared political organization, group affiliation, modes of subsistence, spoken language, belief systems, and other criteria. only some of these criteria may be evident in the material culture (such as styles of dress, artifacts, and architecture of houses, temples, palaces, and forts), not all types of which are always well preserved archaeologically. Since membership in an ethnic group consists primarily of individuals’ concepts of affiliation and identity, this is difficult to demonstrate from archaeological and textual evidence.
The Hyksos kings used Egyptian writing systems, recording their un-Egyptian names on scarabs and sealings in Egyptian hieroglyphs, with Egyptian titles of officials. Their personal names were generally West Semitic and not Egyptian. Other historical/textual information about the Hyksos comes only from an Egyptian perspective, which was biased. The textual evidence strongly suggests that the Hyksos who controlled northern Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period were non-Egyptian foreigners who used Egyptian writing and to a certain extent Egyptian modes of administration, and had Egyptians in their service.
But the material culture at Tell el-Dab’a suggests that the situation was more complex. A number of tombs there demonstrate a mixture of cultural traits: Asiatics were buried with their own grave goods and sacrificed animals or humans in tombs that were not in a cemetery outside the settlement; yet some tomb types were adopted from Egyptian ones. A large 13th-Dynasty house at Tell el-Dab’a is similar to the rectangular ones on the north side of Kahun, but there are also Syrian-style houses, and later two MB-style temples. Although MB ceramics increase at the site, Egyptian wares continued to be made or used there, which could represent Egyptians who lived with their Hyksos overlords, and/or Egyptian artisans employed by the Hyksos.
The term Heqau-khasut (Hyksos) was used by the Egyptians for the rulers of this polity, and not as the name of this population as a whole. The “Hyksos” at Tell el-Dab’a could represent influxes of people at different times from different parts of southwest Asia. Although the site became the Hyksos capital of Avaris, its population was probably a mixture of Egyptians, various Asiatic groups, and people of mixed descent. The changing material culture at the site represents changing populations through time, but also a certain amount of foreign trade and exchange.
World History
