Captives before the Pharaoh
The modern historian is brought face to face with the fact that for the period of the XIIIth to the XVIIIth Dynasties there is even less material and information than for that other “dark age” extending from the VIIth to the XIth. The main facts of our knowledge concerning the XIIIth Dynasty have been given in the preceding chapter. The Hyksos were settled in the land but had not yet come to power. The Pharaohs were still in full possession of Upper and Lower Egypt.
This cannot have been the case with the XIVth, which Manetho tells us had its capital at Xoïs (Sakha, a town on the western side of the central Delta), from which it would seem probable that the invaders drove the ruling house to the west instead of southward, up the Nile, perhaps because the broad river and its wide marsh-land were found to be the best means of defence against a people acquainted hitherto with only small and insignificant streams. The Turin papyrus gives eighty-five names for this dynasty; Manetho’s figure is seventy-six, and of only two of them are there even the slightest remains. For the 184 years this dynasty is said to have ruled, the average length of reign is therefore only 2½ years. How may we explain this? There seems to be little doubt that the untrammelled rule of this dynasty lasted but a few years, perhaps less than twenty. By degrees the Hyksos chiefs attained influence and power, until, as Professor Petrie says, the native kings “were merely the puppets of the Hyksos power, the heads of the native administration which was maintained for taxing purposes; like the last emperors of Rome, whose reigns also average two years and a half, or like the Coptic administration of Egypt, maintained during the supremacy of Islam in Egypt as being the only practical way of working the country. Later on, when the Hyksos had established a firm hold on all the land and had a strong rule of their own, these native viceroys were permitted a longer tenure of power, and formed the XVIth Dynasty contemporary with the great Hyksos kings.”
Costume of a Soldier of Pharaoh
The first Hyksos kings seem, from the very beginning, to have appreciated fully that it was better to exploit the country than to devastate it, and to this end they retained the temple scribes and other officials of the native rulers. The influence of the organised government soon bore effect.
All the pomp and circumstance of Pharaoh’s court were revived; the new sovereigns had become civilised, and they managed, by adopting the titles of the Amenemhats and Usertsens, to legitimise themselves as descendants of Horus and “sons of Ra.” The local religions were not interfered with, but the chief object of their worship was Baal, “the lord of all, a cruel and savage warrior,” and from his great similarity to Set, “the brother and enemy of Osiris,” Baal and Set soon became identified, and Set was now called Sutekh, “the Great Set.”
The six great Hyksos kings—those mentioned in the Josephus-Manetho account—may be considered as composing the XVth Dynasty. Their rule of nearly 260 years marked the zenith of Hyksos power. There was as yet no sign of rebellion amongst the conquered people.
But when we come to the so-called XVIIth Dynasty the years are no longer tranquil and authority undisputed. As stated in the preceding chapter, it is the better plan to regard this dynasty as a joint one of Shepherds and Egyptians, for its rise is wholly lost to sight under the Hyksos power. We know that the Hyksos Apophis (Apepa I) ruled the whole land, for his name is found far in the south; but in the days of his namesake Apophis (Apepa II), some three hundred years later, Thebes was practically independent. The compilers of the lists make mention of unsuccessful attempts at rebellion on the part of the Theban vassals, for some time before Apepa II, but this ruler had to meet a decisive revolt under Seqenen-Ra-Taa I, who was haq (prince or regent) over the South. There is no information as to the cause of the outbreak or its consequences, but the tale of “Apepa and Seqenen-Ra,” so popular with readers five hundred years later, asserts that the cause of the quarrel was a religious one, since Thebes refused to worship no other gods but Sutekh. Seqenen-Ra would seem to have been the descendant of a branch of the royal Egyptian line, settled in the far south to escape the Hyksos oppression, and which, intermarrying with Ethiopian blood, had become possessed of the characteristics of the dark Berber race. With the decay of the Hyksos power, these people gradually worked their way northward from Nubia, and began the re-winning of the land for the ancient line of Pharaohs. For eighty years after the death of Assis we have no names of these Berbers, but finally Seqenen-Ra I, in the days of Apepa II, declared himself “Son of the Sun and King of the Two Egypts,” and the princes of the Saïd made common cause with him. Now the native rulers of the XVIIth Dynasty free themselves from any confusion with the Hyksos, and the strife has become a serious one. A second Seqenen-Ra, bearing the same family name Taa, followed the first, and then a third, whose wife Aah-hotep is one of the great queens of Egyptian history, further celebrated as the mother of the honoured Nefert-ari. Aah-hotep in all probability was married before, to an Egyptian and not a Berber husband, and by him was the mother of an elder Aahmes, who died prematurely, and his three brothers, Kames, Sekhent-neb-Ra, and a second Aahmes, the Amasis of the Greeks, who founded the XVIIIth Dynasty.