Biblical Hebrew Forum

[MarianneLuban AT aol.com]

In a message dated 8/21/2004 8:41:36 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
mattfeld12 AT charter.net writes:


> Marianne Luban has proposed that 'remnants" of the Hyksos remained in Lower 
> 
> Egypt till the days of Hatshepsut and Thuthmose III, and were expelled ca. 
> 1446 BCE by Thuthmose III to become the Bible's Exodus.

Walter, if you had ever read my book, "The Exodus Chronicles", you would know 
that 
my research has led me to conclude that there is no such thing as a "single" 
exodus from Egypt and that the BOE is a composition that incorporates bits 
(exciting parts) from several exodoi.  I also have never proposed that any 
"remnants" of the Hyksos remained in Lower Egypt until the days of Hatshepsut 
and 
Thutmose III.  For the umpteenth time--there is no such people as "Hyksos".  
The 
name simply means "foreign rulers".  As Manetho indicates, not even the 
Hyksos "dynasty" that ruled until the wars with the Theban princes were all 
the 
same people (so not an actual dynasty) because he alternately claims that 
they 
were of "obscure race", that the first rulers were "brothers from Phoenica" 
and 
"some say they were Arabs".  Also, for the umpteenth time, Egypt was a 
revolving door for the peoples of Canaan.  They came in and went out for 
various 
reasons that had to do with natural causes (like  famines and other natural 
disasters), forcible subjugation (captives of pharaonic campaigns) and their 
own 
military forays into the Delta.  That Minoans were also in Egypt is seen from 
considerable evidence, too, but I will stick for now to the evidence at 
Avaris, 
where a royal habitation is decorated in unmistakable Aegean style, this 
stratum now dated by Bietak to the time of Thutmose III--although why I do 
not know 
because, to the best of my knowledge, he proclaimed this at a symposium but 
has not yet published his revised theory.  At any rate, Avaris was a great 
city, 
fortified and very conveniently located on the river, a branch of the Nile 
(now silted up) and people would have been drawn there.  But that the 
inhabitants would always have been the same people is hardly likely.  Because 
Manetho 
gives a correct date of the interim between the time of his "Tethmosis", the 
one 
he claimed pursuaded a foreign element to leave Avaris, and the end of the 
New Kingdom pharaohs, I am inclined to believe him.  BUT, as I make very 
clear 
in my book, I cannot choose which of those kings named Thutmose was the 
expeller.  There are, however, reasons why I think Thutmose III was the most 
likely 
candidate.  On the other hand, there are indications that his two 
predecessors 
fought to assume control over the Delta, as well.

> 
> My "reading" of Clayton's comments on Pharaohs Ahmose I, Amenhotep I,
> 
> Thuthmosis I and II, leave me with the impression that these were valiant
> 
> "warrior-pharaohs" engaged in campaigns designed to "extend the borders of
> 
> Egypt" in both Nubia and Syria-Palestine. They "brag" of bringing back 
> captured rebels and making slaves of them in Egypt.
> 
> I cannot  -for the life of me-  envision maurading Hyksos, rampaging in
> 
> Lower Egypt to the days of Hatshepsut and Thuthmosis III, while the previous
> 
> pharaohs marched Egyptian armies off into foreign lands, exposing an
> 
> undefended Egypt to the mercies of Marianne's "roving, pillaging Hyksos 
> remnants."
> 
> Walter, you are not quoting me at all.  But you are quoting Hatshepsut.  
> You 
see, in Middle Egyptian, which is the language of the texts at the Speos 
Artemidos, the tenses are not always clear and past, present and future are 
often 
rendered in the same way.  Hatshepsut does not say "foreigners *were* in 
Avaris" (although it has been translated that way by persons who thought as 
you do). 
 The tense can just as well be the present one--*are* in Avaris".  You have 
to admit that BOTH Kamose and his successor, Ahmose, claimed to have emptied 
Avaris.  Which of them is the liar?  Probably neither, IMO.

> 
> Surely no
> 
> king would be so foolish as to leave a dangerous enemy within his borders
> 
> while he marches off to engage Syrians and Nubians ! On this issue, a
> 
> two-front war, "divide and conquer an enemy," (the Hyksos in Lower Egypt and
> 
> the Egyptian army in Nubia and or Syria), I recall that Ka-mose intercepted 
> a
> 
> messenger from the Hyksos king Apophis, asking the Nubians to attack the 
> rear of the
> 
> Kamose's army while Apophis held the army down in the north, that is to say 
> a
> 
> strategy of using "two fronts" would divide and weaken Kamose's forces
> 
> leading to his defeat.
> 
> If Kamose was shrewd enough to anticipate that his Hyksos antagonist, 
> Apophis, would seek a two front war against him, why wouldn't this caution 
> be passed on to future pharaohs ? That is to say, don't allow a situation 
> to 
> 
> arise of a two front war (a two front war Napoleon's undoing in Spain and 
> Russia and later Hitler's undoing- his army split in Russia and in France 
> and in Italy. A two front war was employed against America, Japan in the 
> West, Germany in the East).
> 
> Ka-mose :
> 
> "So your wishes have failed, miserable Asiatic, who had been saying : "I am 
> lord without peer. As far as Hermopolis and the House of Hat-Hor are 
> bringing tribute to Avaris in the two rivers." I shall leave it in 
> desolation, without people therein, after I have destroyed their towns. I 
> shall burn up their places, made into red mounds forever, because of the 
> damage which they did in this (part of) Egypt, they who gave themselves 
> over 
> 
> to serving the Asiatics, after they had abandoned Egypt, their mistress.
> 
> I captured a message of his above the oasis, going south to Cush, upon a 
> letter of papyrus. I found it, in written words from the ruler of Avaris :
> 
> "Aa-user-Re, the son of Re: Apophis, sending greetings to my son, the ruler 
> of Cush. Why do you arise as a ruler without letting me know ? Do you see 
> what Egypt has done to me: the ruler who is in it, Ka-mose the Strong, 
> given 
> 
> life, attacking me on my own soil, (although) I had not assaulted him- just 
> like everything that he has done to you ? He picks out these two lands to 
> persecute them, my land and yours. He has destroyed them. Come north. Do 
> not 
> 
> falter. See, he is here in my hand, and there is no one waiting for you in 
> this part of Egypt. See, I will not give him leave until you have arrived. 
> Then we shall divide the towns of this Egypt, and our [two lands] will be 
> happy in joy." (cf. pp.89-93. Vol. 2. "The War Against the Hyksos." James 
> B. 
> 
> Pritchard. Editor._ The Ancient Near East, A New Anthology of Texts and 
> Pictures_. Princeton University Press. 1975. paperback)
> 
> 
> 
> I thus cannot endorse Marianne's notion that the Hyksos
> 
> were still a threatening power in Lower Egypt to be reckoned and still 
> rampaging in Lower Egypt as late as Hatshepsut and
> 
> Thuthmosis III. Thus, for me, there was "no" Hyksos expulsion ca. 1446 BCE 
> aligning with the Bible (1 Kings 6:1).

Fine!  But don't attribute the "aligning with the Bible" to me.  I wrote a 
book about the theories of others when it came (or comes) to exodus 
matters--and 
I often add my own commentary--but I don't try to pinpoint any date for *the* 
exodus.  We Jews celebrate Passover but we also commemorate Tisha B'Av.  Was 
the Jerusalem Temple destroyed only once?  No.  We also commemorate the 
Holocaust on Yom HaShoah.  In which single year did the Holocaust take place? 
 Well, 
WWII did not even last a decade but the struggles for power over the Delta 
lasted far longer.  Due to a long-standing interest in a certain artefact 
discovered many years ago along the seacoast corridoor between Egypt and the 
Levant, 
I had recently composed an article called "The El Arish Shrine & the Speos 
Artemidos".  However, having been puzzled by a certain (erroneous, as it 
turned 
out) reference by Malcolm Wiener in his contribution to the JNES article 
"Separate Lives: The Ahmose Tempest Stela and the Theran Eruption" to there 
having 
been a mention of "nine days of bad weather" at the Speos Artemidos, I sent 
for a new book by Hans Goedicke, "The Speos Artemidos Inscription of 
Hatshepsut 
and Related Discussions" in hopes of finding clarification.  Upon receipt of 
this work, I at once learned that my idea about the El Arish shrine 
inscription 
being a mythologized version of the political struggles between Hatshepsut 
and her nephew, Thutmose III, was not a novel one.  Thus, I was spared any 
further research into whether the theory belonged a priori to anyone else.  
It 
does.  But, also, a footnote in Goedicke's interesting study caused me to 
continue 
to ponder the Hatshepsut/Thutmose III problem even more.  To make a long 
story short, there is every reason to conclude that Hatshepsut was *never* 
queen 
of all Egypt--but merely a queen of the south.  No inscriptions of hers have 
ever been found past a certain point.  She was not called "the mooring post 
of 
the southerners" for nothing.  Various evidence, plus the El Arish naos text, 
indicate that Thutmose III was in league with the foreign element in the 
Delta 
"his scepter was held by the Dagai" (i.e. the foreigners--he was *their* 
king, 
supported by them) and ruled from Memphis while Hatshepsut was down (or up) 
in Thebes.  He was the rightful king, after all, but evidently the situation 
at 
this time was such that the kingdom was as divided as it had been in the time 
of the Theban princes.  Egyptology has never been able to comprehend how a 
man who eventually became the "Napoleon of Egypt" was content to be under the 
thumb of a woman for so many years.  Well, that is one answer.  He had only 
the 
support of the Delta inhabitants--until Hatshepsut died.  In his Year 22, 
Thutmose III marched into Canaan for the first time--but hardly the last.
How did he raise his great army to fight 300+ rebellious princes? Only 
because he now *could*--being both king of north and south now.  And not one 
year 
previously.
That is the jist of my new paper, to be published shortly.