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Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

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Re: Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

#21

Post by garmaine »

wbhart wrote: post #14
garmaine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archaeologically speaking, the Hebrew people didn’t exist at that time in history.

Right, but one presumes that Josephus (a later Jewish historian) identified the Hyksos with the Hebrews? And he used the priest Manetho's works as source material for that claim? So I'm curious if that is what the authors of this new study claim to be refuting. I think so, but it's unclear since they deliberately decline to mention the race they are referring to. Perhaps I should have quoted the sentence from the pap…

It depends on what you mean. There is absolutely no historical basis for the biblical exodus from Egypt of Jewish people. That said, when the hill people composed their history into the story that would eventually become Genesis and Exodus, they probably drew from some vague stories about the Hyksos occupation of parts of lower Egypt. The Hyksos were almost certainly Canaanite, or one of the other peoples the hill people (who would become the Jews) displaced when they conquered Israel.

Re: Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

#22

Post by ncmncm »

eternalban wrote: post #20
netcan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. I didn't mean to draw a hard line. The monarchic period, even David and Solomon, reads a lot more political writing. The region enters into a historical period. The biblical stories start to relate more definitely to known historical events. David and Solomon are kind of transitional, it's really just gradual. It gets more mythical as you go back. Immediately following from the solomon period, the bible is refe…

Actually, as a student of Iranian history, those "Babylonian" era records are rather intriguing, to say the least. It seems to me Judaism (and associated myths) are a product of an aborted imperial social engineering project of the aborted first Persian Empire. Even the historic divide of religious Jews and "Greek Jews" reflects the sudden collapse of the first Persian Empire and its replacement by the Greeks. A read…

I have seen suggestions that the early Hebrew kings are re-branded pharaohs: Akhenaten and Nefertiti as (sequence-displaced) mono-theistic Adam and Eve, Solomon's gold as southern Egyptian tribute, Song of Solomon cribbed from an Egyptian prayer, maybe even a pyramid as Ararat. Nothing conclusive that I know of, but intriguing hints.

Re: Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

#23

Post by eternalban »

ncmncm wrote: post #22
eternalban wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, as a student of Iranian history, those "Babylonian" era records are rather intriguing, to say the least. It seems to me Judaism (and associated myths) are a product of an aborted imperial social engineering project of the aborted first Persian Empire. Even the historic divide of religious Jews and "Greek Jews" reflects the sudden collapse of the first Persian Empire and its replacement by the Greeks. A read…

I have seen suggestions that the early Hebrew kings are re-branded pharaohs: Akhenaten and Nefertiti as (sequence-displaced) mono-theistic Adam and Eve, Solomon's gold as southern Egyptian tribute, Song of Solomon cribbed from an Egyptian prayer, maybe even a pyramid as Ararat. Nothing conclusive that I know of, but intriguing hints.

I'm entirely off the current mainstream interpretation of Akhenaten. Akhenaten, to me, was hardly a "monotheist". In fact, if I were asked to name a historic figure that was the famous pharoah of biblical lore (the anti-Moses) I would unhesitatingly point to Akhenaten. I suggest considering his treatment of 'temple' with the pre-existing Egyptian norm. His temple has no roof. The original Egyptian model reflected the canonical Macro-Micro duality and was in fact a 'closed' space. Akhenaten, per my reading, claimed that he was the incarnate 'one god'. No wonder the Egyptians erased all traces of his reign after his demise. They totally erased him from Egyptian records. Something to think about. (Egyptians were certainly 'godly'. Just review the Egyptian prayers of the dead.)

   O sole god, like whom there is no other!   
   Thou didst create the world according to thy desire
That is a prayer from ancient Egypt.

That said, the idea that Hebrew mythological kings are in fact borrowings of Egyptian glory makes a lot of sense. Some of the imagery -- tributes being brought from far away lands to Solomon -- however is distinctly reminiscent of Persepolis.

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/relief-depicting-procession-...

Re: Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

#24

Post by throwawayexodus »

eternalban wrote: post #17
netcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not sure I'm identifying the race they are referring to correctly (too many History Channel documentaries maybe). For example, I don't think the Hebrews are supposed to have had a homeland at that point in history. The relationships between biblical accounts of pre-classical periods is necessarily shaky. The pre-kingdom parts of the bible read very much like mythology, metaphor and heroic ancestor tales. That sa…

Pre-Kingdom? David and Solomon are larger than life figures in bible but afaik no contemporary neighbor recorded their existence. They are historic ghosts. Pure fiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_stele https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Yahudu_Tablets

This comes up so often in these debates! I think there's way too much archaeological evidence on the ground to deny the reality of the Davidic Monarchy.

Re: Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

#25

Post by netcan »

eternalban wrote: post #20
netcan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. I didn't mean to draw a hard line. The monarchic period, even David and Solomon, reads a lot more political writing. The region enters into a historical period. The biblical stories start to relate more definitely to known historical events. David and Solomon are kind of transitional, it's really just gradual. It gets more mythical as you go back. Immediately following from the solomon period, the bible is refe…

Actually, as a student of Iranian history, those "Babylonian" era records are rather intriguing, to say the least. It seems to me Judaism (and associated myths) are a product of an aborted imperial social engineering project of the aborted first Persian Empire. Even the historic divide of religious Jews and "Greek Jews" reflects the sudden collapse of the first Persian Empire and its replacement by the Greeks. A read…

If you are interested in this subject, look into samaritans.

They are a closely related group to jews, but probably had less Babylonian & Persian influence. Their version of the Torah ends with Solomon. To this day, they maintain a religion similar to old temple judaism. High priest, sacrifice, etc. Their Torah is written in the native hebrew script. Jews switched to an assyrian script at some point.

Nehemiah (book in the bible) was the first pacha, persian governor of jerusalem. Religious & conservative fanatic, persecuting samaritans and annulling mixed marriages.

In any case, the samaritan torah has the same account of abraham as the jewish bible. It's still possible that Persian or Babylonian beliefs & characters were adopted, especially abraham. But, that would have had to happen long before cyrus. Samaritans also have abraham and the divine land grant.

I assume you mean the "nile to euphrates" boundary. It's actually very hard to tell what those parts are about. First, it's not actually clear those are the rivers... especially the nile. Second, there are no other passages that relate to this territory. Nehemia doesn't mention or pursue them.

Re: Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

#26

Post by netcan »

eternalban wrote: post #23
ncmncm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen suggestions that the early Hebrew kings are re-branded pharaohs: Akhenaten and Nefertiti as (sequence-displaced) mono-theistic Adam and Eve, Solomon's gold as southern Egyptian tribute, Song of Solomon cribbed from an Egyptian prayer, maybe even a pyramid as Ararat. Nothing conclusive that I know of, but intriguing hints.

I'm entirely off the current mainstream interpretation of Akhenaten. Akhenaten, to me, was hardly a "monotheist". In fact, if I were asked to name a historic figure that was the famous pharoah of biblical lore (the anti-Moses) I would unhesitatingly point to Akhenaten. I suggest considering his treatment of 'temple' with the pre-existing Egyptian norm. His temple has no roof. The original Egyptian model reflected the…

My interpretation is more banal.

The borrowings are more superficial. We know that language and style used to describe kings, emperors, and gods are very similar. The "I am Sargon, King of Kings" style occurs in political and religious writings all throughout the region... with roots going deep into the bronze age.

Recurring imagery, writing style, motifs, titles, etc. are the norm. Lots of cultural elements are broadly found throughout the greater region. It's not surprising that they'd exist in any two traditions. All these traditions affected eachother.

Take the Sphinx motif, Seraphim in temple judaism. It's a motif found very widely, over a very long period of time. The imagery is reused. The symbolism is reused. It's impossible to draw a clear path of progression though.

On monotheism... I don't think monotheism is all that significant, per se. Whatever the origins of this were, canaanite cities and kings were clearly being closely associated to single deities. One king, one god. Maybe one temple. That was a typical mode. Is that monotheism? Why care, outside of theology?

What is significant about monotheism is not monotheism. It's the "jealous god," the strict prohibitions on "foreign worship." This exclusionism is what made the religion so successful in the long term. We see this even in modern times. Religions that tolerate multiple belief systems give way to monotheism.

Re: Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

#27

Post by ncmncm »

eternalban wrote: post #23
ncmncm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen suggestions that the early Hebrew kings are re-branded pharaohs: Akhenaten and Nefertiti as (sequence-displaced) mono-theistic Adam and Eve, Solomon's gold as southern Egyptian tribute, Song of Solomon cribbed from an Egyptian prayer, maybe even a pyramid as Ararat. Nothing conclusive that I know of, but intriguing hints.

I'm entirely off the current mainstream interpretation of Akhenaten. Akhenaten, to me, was hardly a "monotheist". In fact, if I were asked to name a historic figure that was the famous pharoah of biblical lore (the anti-Moses) I would unhesitatingly point to Akhenaten. I suggest considering his treatment of 'temple' with the pre-existing Egyptian norm. His temple has no roof. The original Egyptian model reflected the…

What I have seen of Akhenaten has him representing Aten, the Sun god.

We have a great deal of material on him (or rather on what he chose to have carved) despite erasure from records, because his capital was abandoned immediately after his death.

Re: Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

#28

Post by wbhart »

garmaine wrote: post #21
wbhart wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but one presumes that Josephus (a later Jewish historian) identified the Hyksos with the Hebrews? And he used the priest Manetho's works as source material for that claim? So I'm curious if that is what the authors of this new study claim to be refuting. I think so, but it's unclear since they deliberately decline to mention the race they are referring to. Perhaps I should have quoted the sentence from the pap…

It depends on what you mean. There is absolutely no historical basis for the biblical exodus from Egypt of Jewish people. That said, when the hill people composed their history into the story that would eventually become Genesis and Exodus, they probably drew from some vague stories about the Hyksos occupation of parts of lower Egypt. The Hyksos were almost certainly Canaanite, or one of the other peoples the hill pe…

I'm aware that mainstream archaeologist don't find evidence of an exodus of "Jewish" people from Egypt via the Sinai into Caanan. I personally don't buy their arguments (no dung piles in the desert, no artifacts found, no identification of Mt. Sinai, etc.) But I accept that no evidence is no evidence.

There is, as far as I recall, evidence of an "exodus" of sorts of the Hyksos from Egypt, but not any (solid) evidence of it happening in the manner or time described in the Biblical account.

I'm not sure I buy the Israel = Hyksos theory anyway. But this gets fairly far from my question, which really related to what the authors of this particular paper allude to, but don't say explicitly. They use some fairly strident language to describe what it is they are not talking about. I was just curious what that was, and why.

Re: Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

#29

Post by KMag »

wbhart wrote: post #16
Kednicma wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Hyksos are traditionally not associated with a race, but with the chariot-and-archer techniques that would come to characterize Bronze Age Egyptian military power and conquest. Indeed, it is usually the other way around, with the Hyksos being the race/dynasty to whom the chariot technology is credited. At this point in history, the folks who would become the Hebrews were living in what would become Judea. We know…

I don't completely follow your second paragraph. Are the Philistines now believed to have been Hebrew? That's a development I wasn't aware of. I'm also not clear how the use of Hyksos-style chariots by Ramesses II's is linked. The Hyksos rulers in Egypt were a couple of centuries earlier, right? Anyhow, can you shed any light on the "the elite attendant to the rulers" and the "ethnic group with which they are associa…

I've seen a credible-looking documentary (despite being History Channel, IIRC) on YouTube claiming that there's evidence of large-scale slave/lower class uprisings in many Philistine cities right before the start of archaeological evidence of Israelite settlements in the Judean highlands. The documentary claims that the Israelites were Philistine in origin. The level of hatred of the Philistines may have been out of a need to keep a political distinction between the old and new cultures, to keep them from melting back into Philistine cities during times of hardship.

I think it was this same documentary that theorized a small number of escaped slaves from Egypt wandered through Midian and into Canaan. The documentary identified a minor city-state in/near Midian that's documented to have worshipped a god named Yahu, and theorized that these wanderers had some kind of dramatic religious experience there, which later mutated into Yahweh worship. The documentary further theorized that this small group of actual escaped slaves were adopted by, and became the leaders of, the nascent Israelite communities, accounting for the Egyptian slavery narrative.

The documentary didn't mention that Canaan was an Egyptian vassal state from the 18th to 13th centuries B.C.E. If the Israelites originated from Philistine slave / lower class uprisings, I wonder if the oral history of the Egyptian vassal state period is the origin for the narrative of being slaves in Egypt despite there being no archaeological evidence of a massive-scale slave escape from Egypt. Being a slave in a state that's essentially a slave of Egypt probably feels like being doubly a slave to Egypt. To me, this sounds more likely than a small number of Egyptian slaves being adopted by local tribes and their narrative becoming the tribal narrative.

Re: Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt

#30

Post by KMag »

netcan wrote: post #15
nobleach wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been fascinated by this argument for a few years. An "ask a historian" thread on Reddit asked an important question: "Would a kingdom, that chased slaves out of Egypt, only to be met with massive defeat, record that history?". I know nothing about Egyptology, so I'd ask, "did Egyptians, as a general rule, record any of their defeats?" From my limited Google searches, they did not. So the question becomes, is the…

There is lots of evidence of semitic people in egypt over various periods. Also egyptian conquests & long lived administrations in these regions. "Semitic," as a language group is pretty big. There are also semitic languages spoken to the south of egypt, who were also interacting a lot with egypt. The Egyptians glorified their history like any political culture does, but massive defeats don't go unrecorded. They just…

By "there would be a relief", I presume you mean "they would have created a relief sculpture", rather than "they would have felt emotional relief". As written the sentence is ambiguous, and right at the point where you pivot from evidence supporting the slave escape narrative to evidence contradicting the slave escape narrative, so I can't be certain my reading is correct despite it fitting much better with the following sentence.
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