Have read up some acticles regarding the Hyksos & in some of them they are referred to as the Hebrews of the Exodus (the argument being that during the likely period of the Exodus, there are no large movement of people except the expulsion of the Hyksos by the Egyptians).
So can anyone tell me or point me to any articles to confirm whether the Hyksos are really the Hebrews.

What was your souce for the Hyksos being the Hebrews?

Most of what I have read seems to indicate that the Hyksos invaded Egypt and Israel from the sea. No one really knows exactly who they were or where they came from. These people apparently became the Philistines of the OT, settling into the part of land they invaded.

Ish

I've heard arguments that the Hyksos were: the Hittites, the Hebrews, people from Canaan but not the Hebrews, & the Minoans, who knows maybe they were from Toledo. I'd rule out the Minoans, when San Torini (there Island) blew up around 1500 BCE they moved into Canan & became known as the Phillistines I'd call them the least likely suspects. The PBS show 'Egypt The Age of gold' has some info on this but it's been a while since I've seen it. They indicated that Egypt had an awkward alliance with the people of the sea (Minoans?) to help them fight the Hittites (much later than when they drove out the Hyksos) so I think that rules out the Hittites, I'd go with someone from Canan.
Then again it could be the Amakelites(?) both the Jews & Egyptians take credit for exterminating these guys (they don't seem very popular) Chances are we might never know.
To me, since Egyptian & Jewish culture are so closely related (circumcission, pokes at monotheism, gods who were 'Holy' instead of randy little horndogs turning themselves into swans to get laid) I'd say that the descendents of the Hyksos became the Jews.
The Pharoah that 'knew not Joseph' was probably the Egyptian one (non Hyksos) who tossed them out for causing trouble. Killing the ram & spreading it's blood around was an insult to the Egyptian God Ra, who's symbol was the Ram.
The Egyptians did defeat the Hittites eventually but it cost them alot, pretty much sent them into a downward spiral they were than beaten by the Greeks & later the Romans.

[This message has been edited by marduck (edited May 21, 2001).]

Ish, have you read Josephus' Against Apion? Check out Book 1 (82). He writes about the Hyksos. Myself, I find it kind of hard to believe? (plus Josephus is vague)

thanks, offa

KCTAN: The identification of the Hyksos with the Hebrews is doubtful at best. More likely is the identification of the Hebrews with the Habiru.

Interesting Offa.

Here is Offa's find in Josephus:

Against Apion Book 1
"(82) This whole nation was styled Hycsos - that is, shepherd-kings: for the first syllable, Hyc, according to the sacred dialect, denotes a king, as is Sos a shepherd, but this according to the ordinary dialect; and of these is compounded Hycsos. But some say that these people were Arabians."

I did a quick search on the Hyksos(Hycsos) which surprisingly turned up this description in the Holman Bible Dictionary:

"Racial name from the Greek form of an Egyptian word meaning "rulers of foreign lands" given to kings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties of Egypt. The word, which does not appear in the Bible, was later misinterpreted by Josephus as meaning "shepherd kings.""

"With the decline of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (about 200-1786 BC) large numbers of Asiatics, mostly Semites like the Hebrew patriarchs, migrated into the Nile Delta of northern Egypt from Canaan. These probably came innitially for reasons of economic distress, such as famine, as did Abraham (Gen. 12:10). Unlike Abraham, many groups stayed in Egypt as permanent settlers. Under the weak 13th Dynasty, some Asiatics established local independent chiefdoms in the eastern Delta region. Eventually, one of these local rulers managed to consolidate the rule of northern Egypt as pharaoh, thus beginning the 15th Dynasty. The 16th Dynasty, perhaps contemporary with the 15th, consisted of minor Asiatic kings. As these dynasties of pharaohs were not ethnic Egyptians, they were remembered by the native population as "Hyksos." "

So, I answered my own question as to the source of the Hebrews possibly being the Hyksos... Although, it looks like it was not necessarily them and could have even been a combination of different peoples driven into Egypt by famine.

Thanks for the info Offa.

Ish

Sorry, double post. I think Netscape 6 is buggy...

[This message has been edited by Ish (edited May 21, 2001).]

Well, the Hebrews have been tentitavely identified as a people that the Egyptians called the 'Apiru,' whom we see Rameses II subjugating on various temple walls by judicious use of a whacking great mallet. The Egyptian term for the Hyksos was the 'Aamu', and we've found the remnants of their city, Avaris (now called Tell el-Dab'a). The term 'Aamu' was in use before the Second Intermediate Period (which started around 1650 BC), and was still in use by the time good old Rameses II was knocking ten bales of stuffing out of them at Kadesh (Rameses died in about 1213 BC). Seeing as the word for Hebrews at that time seems to have been Apiru, it seems a bit unlikely that they were the Aamu as well.

Egyptologists usually translate Aamu as 'Asiatics'; inhabitants of Western Asia. All the royal and personal names of these people seem to be derived from West Semitic languages - that doesn't necessarily mean that they were the original children of Israel, though. There is evidence from Avaris' ruins that a community of Asiatics, abeit very Egyptianized, lived there from the 13th Dynasty (that's from about 1773 BC to the 1650s BC), and my Oxford History of Ancient Egypt says that there are contemporary references to 'camps of Asiatic workmen.' That, however, is about all the evidence for an Asiatic community living within Egypt seperately from the Egyptians.

The culture at Avaris does not seem to have remained static with time - it seems to have started out as part of a defensive system in the First Intermediate Period (about 2160-2055 BC), but developed new cultural traits as time moved on, discarding old ones. This means that there seem to be many layers of different cultures at the site, any one of which could, I suppose, have been the biblical Hebrews. The hypothesis I have heard to explain this is that Egypt received influxes of immigrants first from the area of Lebanon and Syria, and then from Palestine and Cyprus, and this seems to be supported by the human remains that have been preserved.

Now, if this hypothesis is correct, and Egypt did receive immigration from Palestine and the area around it, then perhaps the Hebrews of the Bible did live at Avaris. I'm not too sure that they were the people you'd associate with the Hyksos, though, because of the two different words for the races - Aamu and Apiru.