Hyksos

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The Hyksos (; Egyptian ḥqꜣ(w)-ḫꜣswt, Egyptological pronunciation: heqau khasut, 'ruler(s) of foreign lands'), in modern Egyptology, were the kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt (fl. c. 1650 – c. 1550 BC). Their seat of power was the city of Avaris in the Nile Delta, from where they ruled over Lower Egypt and Middle Egypt up to Cusae. In the Aegyptiaca, a history of Egypt written by the Greco-Egyptian priest and historian Manetho in the 3rd century BC, the term Hyksos is used ethnically to designate people of probable West Semitic, Levantine origin. While Manetho portrayed the Hyksos as invaders and oppressors, this interpretation is questioned in modern Egyptology. Instead, Hyksos rule might have been preceded by groups of Canaanite peoples who gradually settled in the Nile Delta from the end of the Twelfth Dynasty onwards and who may have seceded from the crumbling and unstable Egyptian control at some point during the Thirteenth Dynasty. The Hyksos period marks the first in which...

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