Chapter Four

Foreign Occupation of Egypt: An Overview 

 

The Traditional 2nd Intermediate Period

 

 

In the last chapter we documented the fact that there existed in Egypt a century long period of occupation by foreigners between the 11th and 12th dynasties.  We also noted the fact that another prolonged period of foreign domination followed the demise of the 12th dynasty.  In the traditional Egyptian history the first of these intrusive intervals is otherwise unknown.   The second, however, is familiar to all students of ancient history.  It includes the rule of the Hyksos, the shepherd kings.

 

Almost without exception Egyptologists believe that the Middle Kingdom in Egypt ended with the 12th dynasty.   There followed a chaotic period in which Egypt was ruled primarily (though not exclusively) by foreigners, a period which ended when the last foreign ruler, by the name Apophis (Apop), was driven from Egypt by an ambitious native Theban prince named Ahmose.  Ahmose is identified by scholars as the founder of Manetho’s 18th dynasty of Diospolite (Theban) kings.

 

In the traditional history the interval between the 12th and the 18th dynasty is referred to as the “Second Intermediate Period”.  The 18th dynasty is conceived to be the first of a sequence of three powerful dynasties, the 18th, 19th and 20th, collectively termed the Egyptian “New Kingdom”.  

 

Egyptologists are in near unanimous agreement that the 12th dynasty ended in the year 1786 B.C.[1] and that the 18th dynasty began 210 years later, around the year 1575 B.C.  This lengthy “Second Intermediate Period” is often referred to uncritically as the Hyksos period, though the term Hyksos, coined by Manetho, was used by him only in reference to the foreigners who ruled during his 15th, 16th and 17th dynasties.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 18: The 2nd Intermediate Period in the Traditional History

 

 

 

Contrarian scholars, particularly those who dispute the existence of a Sothic period in Egypt (see note 1), have long argued that the 210 years allotted to the 2nd Intermediate Period is insufficient time to accommodate all of the kings cited by Manetho for this sequence of dynasties.   According to Manetho the 13th dynasty consisted of 60 Diospolite (Theban) kings who ruled for a combined 453 years, while the 14th  numbered 76 kings of Xois (in the Nile Delta) who ruled for either 184 or 484 years.  As for dynasties 15-17 the data varies considerably, depending on whose version of Manetho we follow – whether Eusebius, Africanus, or Josephus as reported in his diatribe Against Apion.   Sufficient here to quote Gardiner who follows the Africanus version:

 

For our present purpose the data supplied by Africanus must suffice.  His Fifteenth Dynasty consists of six foreign so-called ‘Shepherd’ or Hyksos kings, whose domination lasted 284 years.  The Sixteenth Dynasty consisted of Shepherd kings again, thirty-two in number totalling 518 years.  Lastly, in the Seventeenth Dynasty Shepherd kings and Theban kings reigned concurrently, forty-three of each line, altogether 151 years. EP147-148

 

Thus Gardiner concludes:

 

Adding these figures, but adopting the lower number of years given for Dyn XIV, we obtain 217 kings covering a stretch of 1590 years, over seven times the duration to which acceptance of the Sothic date in the El-Lahun papyrus has committed us.   EP148

 

As we might suspect, making sense of Manetho’s numbers in the confines of a 210 year time frame has proved difficult for Egyptologists.  The difficulty is compounded by the fact that both the Abydos and Sakkara king lists ignore completely this time of foreign rule.  Instead they name Ahmose and his 18th dynasty successors immediately following their listing of the 12th dynasty kings.  That leaves only two other sources to provide enlightenment regarding Manetho’s data.   A monumental king list at Karnak, heretofore ignored by our revision, and in general ignored by Egyptologists due to its severely damaged condition and otherwise unreliable sequencing of kings, provides some evidence that fewer than 30 kings ruled during the Hyksos period. The Turin Canon, on the other hand, at least as presently construed, seems to be partially in agreement with Manetho.   According to Gardiner the papyrus fragments of the Canon, “as remounted by Ibscher”, distribute the kings “from Dyn XIII until far down in the direction of Dyn XVIII, over no less than six columns, each containing up to thirty entries.” (EP 148)   This would suggest the possibility that upwards of 180 kings ruled during the 2nd Intermediate Period, though we refer the reader to our criticism of the Turin Canon introduced in our last chapter.   With this badly fragmented document the interpreter must always keep in mind the extreme subjectivity involved in positioning the hundreds of disassembled papyrus fragments in the attempt to reconstruct the original document.  This assembly process typically assumes, without question, that the original Canon agreed with the traditional Egyptian history in its ordering of the dynasties.

 

In view of this disparity of evidence the 2nd Intermediate Period remains one of the most controversial segments in the Egyptian historical spectrum.  Did its several hundred kings rule for a combined total of only 210 years; or should the number of years be increased to some more realistic figure?  Alternatively, should we reject the numbers provided by Manetho and the Turin Canon and considerably reduce the number of Hyksos period kings?   What should we make of the fact that the Karnak king list seems to limit the number of 2nd Intermediate Period kings to something less than 30?   That number cannot be rejected out of hand, as has been done by Egyptologists, especially when this broken monument names a priest king Apop immediately preceding Ahmose I, a sequence of names confirmed by multiple pieces of inscriptional evidence, including the genealogy of Ashakhet which is so central to our thesis. 

 

It  is surely noteworthy that the only dynasty for which Manetho provides names also ends with a king named Apop, who may well be the Apop of the monuments, the Karnak king list, and the Ashakhet stele.  Manetho describes his 15th dynasty as one consisting of six foreign kings from Phoenicia, who seized Memphis and founded a town named Avaris in the Sethroite nome, from which base they subdued the whole of Egypt.   He then goes on to list the six kings by name, together with their reign lengths – Saites (19), Bnon (44), Pachnan (61), Staan (50), Archles (49), and Aphophis (61).  There is surely a need to assign some special significance to these 15th dynasty Hyksos kings, according to Manetho the first group of foreign invaders deserving of the name Hyksos.   Momentarily we will argue that the 15th through 17th dynasties ruled at roughly the same time in various parts of Egypt, the 15th dynasty kings being the first among equals.

 

 

The Revised 2nd Intermediate Period

 

What do we make of these disparate figures, particularly in light of the revised Egyptian chronology presented in the earlier chapters of this book?   Three assumptions guide our deliberations -  1) the belief that the absolute dates for the traditional history of this period have been wrongly determined, the error due largely to Egyptologists’ fixation on a hypothetical Sothic cycle which has no basis in fact (see above and note 1);  2) the belief, based largely but not exclusively on the Ashakhet stele,  that the 12th dynasty did not follow the 11th in an  unbroken sequence, and that the length of this dynasty was considerably shorter than the 205 years assigned it in the traditional history;  and 3) the belief that the 12th dynasty ended with the invasion of the 15th dynasty Hyksos, not the advent of the 13th dynasty kings as claimed by the traditional history.  Manetho’s dynasties are not only incorrectly dated, they are also listed out of order.  We examine these three guiding assumptions in turn.

 

 

Errant Dates for the end of Dynasty 12

 

Our first assumption almost goes without saying.  We have filled almost four books with argument proving that the foundational dates in the traditional Egyptian history are grossly in error.  Nothing more need be said at this point, save to note the fact, already several times alluded to, that Egyptologists have developed an elaborate, but errant schema, known as Sothic dating, to anchor Manetho’s 12th dynasty in the 18th century B.C.  We reject the entire edifice of Sothic dating out of hand, and refer the reader to the excellent compendium on the subject published by Immanuel Velikovsky in a Supplement to his Peoples of the Sea. [2]

 

The immediate consequence of our rejection of Sothic dating is to free the 12th dynasty from its errant 1786 B.C. inception date.  This in turn frees the preceding and following dynasties from the artificial constraints which have bound them for centuries, allowing them to assume absolute dates consistent with evidence from the monuments, and in particular with the data preserved on the Berlin stele of Ashakhet.

 

The Berlin stele informs us clearly that the Egyptian 18th dynasty began around the year 1069 B.C., with the advent of its founder Ahmose I.  That same date ended the rule of Apophis, the last of a sequence of foreign rulers known collectively as the Hyksos.  At first glance it would appear that the traditional history has simply been dated 506 years too early.  If this were the case the corrected chronology of dynasties 12-18 would appear as in Figure 19, identical to Figure 18 above but with all dates reduced by 506 years.   Though incorrect, the chart with adjusted dates is worth reproducing.  It is instructive.

 

 

 

Figure 19: The Traditional 2nd Intermediate Period Shifted 506 Years

 

 

This figure represents what might have been our revised history of Egyptian dynasties 12-18, had we not been informed more accurately by the Ashakhet stele and had we some other means of determining that the 18th dynasty began around the middle of the 11th century B.C.   It is noteworthy that in both the repositioned traditional history and in the revised history, the 11th dynasty ended about 400 years before the beginning of the 18th .  This fact may one day be important, since it implies that our repositioning of the Old Kingdom dynasties in chapters two and three would still be valid if reasons were one day found to discount the Ashakhet stele data, assuming of course that the date for the founding of dynasty 18 could, on other grounds, be dated to the mid 11th century B.C.   It is also instructive to note that the 12th dynasty in Figure 19 ends in the year 1280 B.C., not far distant from the year 1253 B.C., when the last named 12th dynasty king (Sesostris III) ended his reign according to the Ashakhet stele.  When we correct the traditional sequencing of dynasties in the following section, by introducing an additional “Intermediate Period” between the 11th and 12th dynasties (following the Ashakhet stele), the Figure 19 timeline will change surprisingly little.  The beginning of the 12th dynasty will move forward in time by a full century, but all other dates will undergo substantially less change.

 

 

Errant Placement and Length of the 12th Dynasty

 

It is time to position the 12th dynasty correctly, based on the oft mentioned stele of Ashakhet.  For reference purposes we reproduce below, from chapter one, the relevant section of our summary of the stele data.

 

 

Position Number

 

High Priest/Prophet Named

 

Name of King Served

 

Approximate Date of Birth

 

Approximate Date of H.P./Prophet

 

3.1

 

Ty

 

not named

 

1048 B.C.

 

1013 B.C.

 

3.2

 

Pa'emrud

 

Djeserkare (Amenhotep 1)
(Amenhotep I)

 

1064 B.C.

 

1029 B.C.

 

3.3

 

Ty

 

not named

 

1080 B.C.

 

1045 B.C.

 

3.4

 

Menet

 

Nebpetire (Ahmose 1)
(Ahmose I)

 

1096 B.C.

 

1061 B.C.

 

3.5

 

 

'Ipp (Apophis)

 

1112 B.C.

 

1077 B.C.

 

3.6

 

 

Srk (Salatis??)

 

1128 B.C.

 

1093 B.C.

 

3.7

 

 

not named

 

1144 B.C.

 

1109 B.C.

 

3.8

 

 

not named

 

1160 B.C.

 

1125 B.C.

 

3.9

 

 

not named

 

1176 B.C.

 

1141 B.C.

 

3.10

 

 

not named

 

1192 B.C.

 

1157 B.C.

 

3.11

 

 

not named

 

1208 B.C.

 

1173 B.C.

 

3.12

 

 

' '-qn

 

1224 B.C.

 

1189 B.C.

 

3.13

 

 

'Iby

 

1240 B.C.

 

1205 B.C.

 

3.14

 

 

not named

 

1256 B.C.

 

1221 B.C.

 

3.15

 

 

not named

 

1272 B.C.

 

1237 B.C.

 

4.1

 

 

H'-k'-R' (Sesostris III)

 

1288 B.C.

 

1253 B.C.

 

4.2

 

 

not named

 

1304 B.C.

 

1269 B.C.

 

4.3

 

 

H'-k'-R' (Sesostris III)

 

1320 B.C.

 

1285 B.C.

 

4.4

 

 

Nwb-k'-w-R') Amenemhet II)

 

1336 B.C.

 

1301 B.C.

 

4.5

 

 

Hpr-k'-R' (Sesostris I)

 

1352 B.C.

 

1317 B.C.

 

4.6

 

 

S-htp-'b-R' (Amenemhet I)

 

1368 B.C.

 

1333 B.C.

 

4.7

 

 

Skr-m-hb

 

1384 B.C.

 

1349 B.C.

 

 

 

Figure 20:  The Ashakhet Stele Data for Dynasties 12 &  18

 

 

Based on this chart we are able to determine that the 18th dynasty began around the year 1069 B.C., when Nebpehtire ‘Ahmose I usurped the throne from the Hyksos king  ‘Aweserre Apop.   Prior to the mention of king Apop (Apophis) there appears a gap of ten “generations” of priests before we come to the reign of the famous 12th dynasty king Sesostris III, in whose  time there served three generations of Ashakhet’s  ancestors.  Based on our assumptions regarding this stele we are able to conclude that Sesostris III was pharaoh in the years 1253, 1269 and 1285 B.C..  Normally we would extrapolate from this data and suggest that Sesostris reigned for around 48 years, from 1293-1245, this on the assumption that each mention of the king represents a span of 16 years.   But Sesostris III is generally believed to have reigned somewhere between 33 and 35 years.   We conclude therefore that his final year must be very close to the time recorded in position 4.1 on the stele, thus around 1253 B.C., and his beginning year very close to the time recorded in position 4.3.   His regnal years, accordingly, were approximately 1285-1253 B.C.   From the data in position 4.6 we conclude that the dynasty began under Amenenhet I around the year 1341 B.C..  Thus the first five kings of the dynasty, four of whom are named on the stele, reigned through the years 1341-1253.   The only other data provided by the Ashakhet stele are the dates 1317 B.C. for Sesostris I and 1301 B.C. for Amenemhet II.  In the next chapter we take these into account and  flesh out the entire sequence of kings for this dynasty.

 

Surprisingly, the sixth king of the dynasty, Nebma’tre Amenemhet III, who reigned for 45 years according to traditional historians, is not named on the Ashakhet stele.  We assume that much of his lengthy reign was spent in joint rule with his father, though admittedly we are unable to confirm this fact.  Scholars do admit, however, that for some time Amenemhet III did reign in association with Sesostris III.   The dynasty ended only a few years after the death of Amenemhet III, following the brief six year reign of his son Amenemhet IV and his surviving wife Sebeknofru.  Since no king is named in position 3.15 on the stele, we assume that by the year 1237 the throne was vacant.  For convenience we will assume that the dynasty ended in 1241 B.C., thus in its 100th year.  At that time foreigners invaded Egypt.   In a moment we will identify them.

 

According to this discussion the 12th dynasty lasted from 1341-1241 B.C., less than half the 205 years allotted these kings by the traditional history.   In due time we will justify this drastic reduction in regnal length.  The time frame prior to the 12th dynasty on the Ashakhet stele has already been discussed, albeit briefly, in the last chapter.  That discussion will not be repeated.   Needless to say we determined at that time, based largely on the single reference to the 11th dynasty king Nebherewre Mentuhotep II in position 4:13 on the Berlin stele, that the 11th dynasty ended in the year 1445 B.C., the year of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, and that for the following century (1445-1341 B.C.) Egypt was overrun and occupied by foreigners.   They also will be identified momentarily.

 

At this point the revised history is confronted with a problem.   Rather than a single 2nd Intermediate period during which foreigners ruled in Egypt prior to the advent of the 18th dynasty, it is forced to admit the existence of two such periods, one between the rule of the 11th and 12th dynasty kings, and one between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 18th dynasties.     The first of these periods was documented briefly in the last chapter, where its existence was confirmed by the Prophecies of Neferti and the Admonitions of Ipuwer.   The second foreign occupation, which concludes with the reign of Apophis (Apop/Apopi), corresponds to the traditional 2nd Intermediate Period.   For convenience we will refer to these two periods as Intermediate Periods A and B.   They are diagrammed below in Figure 21.

 

 

Figure 21: The Revised History of the Time

 Between Dynasties 11 & 18.

 

 

We are now left the task of identifying the foreigners who ruled Egypt in each of these time frames.   And therein lies the problem.   The reader will immediately recognize our dilemma. 

 

 

Errant Placement of Dynasties 13-17

 

It is at once apparent that we cannot simply fill the gap between the 12th and 18th dynasties with the kings listed in Manetho’s 13th through 17th dynasties, as was the case in the traditional history.  Not only has that interval been marginally reduced in length, compounding the problem of accommodating five dynasties of kings in a very restrictive time frame, but such a procedure would effectively exhaust the supply of Egyptian kings, leaving no available candidates to occupy our Intermediate Period 2A.  What should we do?   The answer is transparent, and has already been suggested in our introduction to this discussion.

 

We argue that the first of these time frames, the interval between the end of the 11th and the beginning of the 12th dynasties, was occupied by the kings of Manetho’s dynasties 13 and 14, whose ethnicities were left indeterminate by Manetho.   On the other hand we argue that Manetho’s dynasties 15-17, those foreign intruders to which he specifically assigns the name Hyksos, alone filled the interval between the 12th and 18th dynasties.  It is noteworthy that Manetho himself appears to separate these two phases of foreign rule, both by the use or non-use of the name Hyksos, and by his distinctive treatment of the Dynasty 15 Hyksos kings.   Not only does he provide a listing of these six Hyksos kings, as if to argue for their uniqueness, he specifically identifies them (and thus the occupants of dynasties 16 and 17), as invaders from Phoenicia, quite unlike the occupiers of the country in dynasties 13 and 14.  At minimum these distinctions lend support to our decision to temporally separate the Hyksos.dynasties from their predecessors.   Confirmation that we are correct will be forthcoming in our discussion of the Amalekites which follows.

 

It is also worth mentioning, in passing, that this separation of the Hyksos dynasties from the kings of dynasties 13 and 14 at least partially alleviates the problem of an excessive number of foreign kings occupying a very small time frame.  In the traditional history the several hundred kings of the 2nd Intermediate Period were confined within a 210 year long interval (1786-1575 B.C.).  By separating the 13th/14th dynasty kings from the 15th-17th dynasty Hyksos kings, the 210 years now expands to 276 years (1445-1341 & 1241-1069 B.C.)   The adjustment is admittedly marginal, but it is a step in the right direction.

 

If the reader is troubled by having dynasties numbered 13 and 14 preceding, rather than following a dynasty numbered as 12, he/she should not necessarily fault Manetho, whose original is no longer extant.   The numbering passed down by Africanus and Eusebius may have originated with them, or with some intermediate  source.   Regardless, if Manetho is responsible then he was certainly mistaken.   His sequencing of the dynasties is in this instance incorrect.[3]

 

Thus far we have identified the occupants of our Intermediate Periods 2A and 2B only by their dynastic affiliation, or at minimum, in the case of Period 2B, by the ambiguous term Hyksos.   It is time to be more specific.   We begin with the Hyksos.

 

 

 

 

Velikovsky Identifies the Hyksos with the Biblical Amalekites

 

In his 1952 best seller Ages in Chaos Immanuel Velikovsky documented a series of remarkable parallels between Egyptian descriptions of the end of the Hyksos period,  and biblical accounts of the beginning of the monarchy in Israel.   In particular he compared the conflict between Saul, the first king of Israel, and his antagonist the Amalekite king Agag, with Egyptian records describing the defeat of the Hyksos king Apop/Apophis by Ahmose I.   He concluded from his analysis that Agag and Apop/Apophis were one and the same person.   Hence his identification of the Hyksos with the Amalekites of the Bible.  And since Velikovsky, following Jewish tradition, dated king Saul to the middle of the 11th century B.C., his argument concluded that the Hyksos period ended and the Egyptian 18th dynasty began in that same time frame.   The balance of his groundbreaking book then set about to establish further parallels between Saul’s successors in Israel and the 18th dynasty Egyptian successors of Ahmose I.   We leave it to the reader to read the whole of Ages in Chaos to evaluate the strength of Velikovsky’s argument.   

 

It is not incumbent on this revision to accept Velikovsky’s thesis that the Amalekite Agag and the Hyksos Apop are one and the same person.  We cannot ignore, however, the rather extraordinary fact that the Ashakhet stele does independently date the time of Apophis/Apop to the middle of the 11th century B.C., precisely the time of the emergence of  king Saul in Israel according to the Jewish chronology followed by this revision.   This leaves open the possibility that Velikovsky was essentially correct in his identification.  In our concluding chapter we will investigate the matter further, providing our own modified interpretation of the time in question.

 

But even if we accept Velikovsky’s identification of the biblical Amalekites and the Hyksos occupiers of Egypt, we must reject outright his entire  discussion vis-à-vis the origins of the Hyksos/Amalekites.   It is important that the reader understand why.   Thus the separate treatment of this subject which follows.

 

 

Velikovsky’s Chronology of the Hyksos Period

 

In this revision we have accepted as reliable the Hebrew Bible numbers related to the formation of the kingdom of Israel.   Based on this data we believe that the Exodus took place around the year 1445 B.C., following which, Israel  journeyed through the wilderness region of Sinai for around 40 years, led by Moses (1445-1405 B.C.).  In 1405 B.C. the Israelites crossed the Jordan River and entered their future homeland.  For the next 30 years, under the leadership of Joshua, in stages they conquered the promised land, until the death of Joshua around the year 1376 B.C.   The fledgling nation, for the next 326 years (1376-1050 B.C.), functioned as a feudal theocracy, controlled by tribal leaders, and periodically, in times of trouble, by charismatic national champions known as “judges”.   The period of the judges ended around the year 1050 B.C. with the crowning of Saul as the first sanctioned “king” of the united tribal groups.   Saul “ruled” for 40 years (1050-1010 B.C.), as did his successor David (1010-970 B.C.).  And we cannot be far wrong in the assumption that the reign of Solomon, son of David, also lasted an equal length of time (970-930 B.C.).  

 

Not only does our Displaced Dynasties revision adopt this chronology, it can be fairly argued that the stated numbers also represent the understanding of Immanuel Velikovsky – though the noted revisionist is careful not to be overly specific about dates. 

 

In the last chapter we commented on the fact that Immanuel Velikovsky was the first historian to date the Admonitions of Ipuwer to the time of the biblical plagues, identified by him as a series of natural disasters.  Velikovsky also noted the fact that the Admonitions clearly described the infusion of foreigners (Egyptian Amu) into Egypt in conjunction with these disasters, taking advantage of the weakness and political disruption which resulted.   Then, from the biblical story of the Exodus, he noted that the Israelites, while fleeing from Egypt, encountered tens of thousands of Amalekites on the border of Sinai, whence ensued an armed conflict between the two groups of nationals.   It was Velikovsky’s argument that the Amalekites at the time were on their way to Egypt, where they would soon overrun the country.   It followed that the Amalekites were the Amu mentioned in the Admonitions.   And he had already determined that the Amalekites were the Hyksos.

 

Thus was born the thesis that the Hyksos/Amalekites conquered Egypt at the time of the Exodus, and occupied the country until Apophis was driven from the land almost four hundred years later, at the time of the emergence of the monarchy in Israel (see Figure 22 below). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 22:  Velikovsky’s Chronology of the Hyksos Period

 

 

 

The informed reader will appreciate immediately why this thesis is untenable for our Displaced Dynasties revision.   For the record we list our reasons.   There are at least four.

 

1) While Velikovsky was adamant that Egyptian dynastic dates are grossly in error, he fully accepted the traditional history in its ordering of the dynasties, though unlike most Egyptologists he identified the 13th dynasty as the last of the Middle Kingdom and the 14th as the first of the Hyksos dynasties.   Thus for Velikovsky, alone among scholars, the 2nd Intermediate Period consisted entirely of Hyksos intruders.   He did agree with these same scholars, however, that there was but a single stretch of time during which foreigners ruled in Egypt between the start of the Middle Kingdom and beginning of the 18th dynasty.  For the revisionist Velikovsky, as for all traditional historians, there existed no lengthy occupation by foreigners between the 11th and 12th dynasties.

 

By including the 13th dynasty with the Middle Kingdom, and the 14th with the Hyksos era, Velikovsky managed to maintain the continuity of dynasties, but in doing so he conflicts seriously with the evidence at hand.   The 13th dynasty as described by Manetho is hardly deserving of the name dynasty.   Its 60 kings must have ruled simultaneously in various areas of the country if their combined reigns lasted only the forty or fifty years available to them in the traditional history.   They were nomarchs, not pharaohs in the true sense of that term.   It is surely a stretch to suggest that one of the final rulers of this “dynasty”  was the powerful pharaoh who ruled the Delta at the time of the Exodus, as described in the Hebrew Bible.   Perhaps this is the reason why Velikovsky avoids discussing the subject.   To make matters worse, Manetho identifies the kings of this “dynasty” as Diospolite (Theban), suggestive of the fact that they ruled only in the south of the country.

 

Even more at odds with the evidence is Velikovsky’s claim, made almost in passing, that the 14th dynasty kings were Hyksos.   Manetho goes out of his way to identify the 15th dynasty as the first of the Hyksos intruders.   

 

2) Not only does Velikovsky misrepresent Manetho’s dynasties 13 and 14, he also stands in conflict with both the biblical data and Manetho regarding the origins of the Amalekite/Hyksos.   According to the bible the Amalekites, at the time of the Exodus, were not a national group migrating from the Arabian peninsula toward Egypt, as argued by Velikovsky.   They are described as domiciled in the northern Negeb, in the region between present day Gaza and the wilderness area around Beersheba in southern Palestine.   And according to Manetho the Hyksos originated in Phoenicia, at least 50 to 100 miles further north up the Mediterranean coast.   If the Hyksos are indeed the Amalekites, then they must be Amalekites at a later stage in the development of that nation.   In the next chapter we will outline our own thesis of Hyksos origins. 

 

3) If Velikovsky is correct, and foreign occupation of Egypt took place at the end of, and not prior to, the 13th dynasty, then Velikovsky would be at a loss to explain the text of the Prophecies of Neferti, which describes a time of trouble and of extensive foreign domination prior to the advent of Amenemhet I, the founder of the 12th dynasty.   Needless to say, Velikovsky ignores the text of the Prophecies. 

 

4) By far the most pressing criticism of Velikovsky is forthcoming from the Ashakhet stele, which clearly positions the Exodus at the end of the 11th dynasty, not the 13th, and divides the time of foreign occupation into two separate and distinct phases, one preceding and one following the 12th dynasty.   Velikovsky’s thesis that the Hyksos invaded Egypt at the end of the 13th dynasty is clearly impossible if the Ashakhet chronology is even remotely accurate.  According to our analysis the Berlin stele indicates that the 12th dynasty ended, at the earliest, around 1241 B.C.   If a 13th dynasty followed, consisting of 60 kings, then that dynasty could not have ended before 1200 B.C., leaving  barely 30 years till the death of Apop and the birth of the 18th dynasty.   To fit not three, but four Hyksos dynasties, and hundreds of kings into that span of time is clearly impossible.   Apophis himself is known to have ruled for longer than those 30 years.   We leave the matter there.  Sufficient to know that the Ashakhet chronology alone compels us to reject Velikovsky’s thesis.  

 

The reader must surely be asking by now why we have introduced Velikovsky only to reject his thesis.   The answer is two-fold.   On the one hand it must be clearly stated that we have not rejected Velikovsky’s argument that the Hyksos and the Biblical Amalekites are part of the same national entity.   Instead we have rejected only Velikovsky’s claim that the Hyksos/Amalekites invaded and occupied Egypt immediately following the biblical plagues and the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.   In our concluding chapter we will return to the subject and re-examine the origins of the Hyksos to determine their ethnicity..  

 

We have also introduced Veliko