Although most historians have identified the 15th and 16th Dynasties as Hyksos, Danish Egyptologist Kim Ryholt’s recent analysis of kings from this period listed in the Turin Canon places the 16th Dynasty in Thebes. These kings may have been the predecessors of the kings of the 17th Dynasty, who are well attested in Theban inscriptions. At Dra Abu el-Naga in Western Thebes, Daniel Polz of the German Archaeological Institute, Cairo has excavated the small mud-brick pyramid of a 17th-Dynasty king, Intef VII. Two small obelisks of this king that were discovered by Auguste Mariette in 1860 probably came from this pyramid complex.
War with the Hyksos is first known from the reign of (Seqenenra) Taa, whose mummy demonstrates a violent death, with an ax cut on his forehead (in addition to dagger cuts). Texts from the reign of Taa’s successor Kamose, the last king of the 17th Dynasty, place the boundary with the Hyksos kingdom in Middle Egypt at Cusae. This king began the reconquest and reoccupation of Nubia, and two Theban stelae describe his campaign northward against the Hyksos.
In the Wadi el-Hol, an overland Western Desert route between Thebes and Hu in Upper Egypt, and another route to Kharga Oasis, John and Deborah Darnell have found evidence of fortified towers, which can be dated by associated 17th-Dynasty sealings. Both Kerma Ware and C-Group pottery have been excavated at these towers, providing evidence of Nubian soldiers employed there by the Theban kingdom. An earlier script carved on rock in the Wadi el-Hol, which John Darnell dates to the reign of Amenemhat III and the 13th Dynasty, was used to write a West Semitic language. Darnell has proposed that this is the earliest known alphabetic writing (earlier than the Serabit Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions; see 7.9), an invention that may have been the result of interaction between Egyptian scribes and soldiers from southwest Asia who were in the service of the Egyptian army during the late Middle Kingdom.
Ahmose I, Kamose’s successor and the first king of the 18th Dynasty, finally conquered the Hyksos capital at Avaris. He continued campaigning in southwest Asia, and then fought Nubian bowmen below the Second Cataract, which are described in a detailed biographical text at the Elkab tomb of Ahmose, son of Ibana. It was Ahmose I who began the Egyptian palace at Avaris, symbolically built on the site of the earlier Hyksos fortress (see 7.11). Beginning with the reigns of Taa and Kamose, the conquest of the Hyksos was not completed until ca. year 18 of Ahmose’s reign - with the expulsion of the Hyksos rulers taking over 20 years to succeed.
World History
