The Hyksos, Kings of Egypt and the land of Edom

We have seen from the beginning the startling suddenness with which the Hyksos people burst in upon Egyptian history, coming from the east, out of that general area which embraces the northern portion of the Sinai Peninsula and the south fringe of Palestine, where lay the Land of Edom. Outside of the various theories put forth, and what we have proposed in the preceding chapters, we know absolutely nothing of whence these people came. It has been a baffling problem to scholars for a long time.

It is, however, quite reasonable to suppose that when the Hyksos kings were finally forced to retreat from Egypt they would fall back toward the land from whence they came. Let us consider, then, the path of their retreat.

As we would expect, the Hyksos Kings, after a siege in Avaris, first went from the Delta Region across the Isthmus of Suez. They were going back the way they had come. Ahmose I, the Egyptian king credited with expelling these foreigners, then pursued them eastward into southern Palestine. There the Hyksos power held out against the Egyptian forces for three years at the siege of Sharuhen, a very long siege indeed. (32) Finally Sharuhen fell, and with that event the Hyksos power was not only broken, but vanishes completely from history.

Sharuhen is therefore of key importance in tracing the Hyksos retreat. As mysteriously and as suddenly they come into history, so the Hyksos kings and armies disappear again.

The location of this city, the last known stronghold of the Hyksos kings is believed to be Tell el-Far'ah (33)

It lies well to the southwest in the Land of Canaan, in the territory later assigned to the tribe of Simeon. In the Bible it .is referred to under the following names:

Shilhim (or "armed men") Joshua 15:32.
Sharuhen (or "Pleasant Dwelling"), Joshua 19:6
Shaaraim (or "The Gates") I. Chron. 4:31

As we said before after their defeat at Sharuhen, the Hyksos Kings and armies vanish from sight, the trail is lost. Historians and scholars think they then retreated to their own country - wherever that was! And the scholars have looked northward and have searched and searched in that direction for such a place, but have not found it.

Which Way from Sharuhem?
Obviously, further retreat from Sharuhen could only be either northward, eastward or southward.

Directly eastward may be discounted as it leads towards the wastes of the southern end of the Dead Sea.

If the Hyksos King's retreated northward through Palestine, the inference would be that their homeland lay northward of Palestine. Thus we have had proposals offered us that the Hyksos were Hittites from Asia Minor under another name, or came from some part of Syria. All very vague and unsatisfactory suggestions, but granting that it was so, it then follows that there must have been a southward conquering sweep through Palestine before the Hyksos first reached Egypt. But where has any evidence of such a southward march been found? The Hyksos graves found in 1931 at Old Gaza (Tell el Ajjul) are no indication of a southward conquest thought Canaan; rather they appear as a northerly limit of Hyksos occupation. Our suggestion is that the Hyksos influence spread from south to north. Turn O scholar, standing puzzled and frustrated at Sharuhen because of this dead-end trail. Turn and cast your eyes southward and southeastward, where lies the Land of Seir and the regions of the ancient Kingdom of Edom. The home of the Hyksos Kings we suggest to you, was not northward from Old Gaza or from Sharuhen, but is to be found south easterly in a land where the use of the Arabian horse in warfare was likely first developed.

Why the Edomite Kings avoided overrunning Canaan
You may ask then, if the horse gave the Hyksos/Edom desert kingdom its battle advantage, so that they could take Egypt under control, why did the Edomite Kings to push northward into the rich land of Canaan before conquering Egypt, for the horse would give a much advantage in Canaan as in Egypt?

In reply we suggest two factors which would operate to move Hyksos/Edom to avoid Canaan and leave it relatively untouched at first.

1. If the Edomites were the head of the associated peoples comprising the Hyksos, they would posses the tradition handed down from Esau that the Land of Canaan was Jacob's (Israel's) and was not to be touched by them. The inclusion of Ishmaelites in the Hyksos conglomeration would do nothing to weaken this tradition. Tradition is a powerful force in any peoples, and especially so in the Near East.

So Hyksos/Edom spread its empire northward, not through Canaan but up through the Arabian Desert east from Palestine. Canaan would be to early Edom, taboo, sacredly set apart for a brother-nation, inviolate by a solemn pact between two brothers.

2. Another reason why a Hyksos/Edom power would refrain from pressing into Canaan is that Esau had married Canaanites wives from southern Palestine, and the Canaanites in that region would be in affinity with Edom and on friendly terms. Indeed, it is quite possible that Hittites and Hivites from Canaan would be assisting Edomite Allies.

Breakup of the Empire
When Ahmose I defeated the Hyksos at Sharuhen, he had a wedge deep between the Canaanite allies on the north and the Hyksos/Edomite home-desert on the south. Indeed, his soldiers probably overran the Sinai Peninsula as Ahmose I would not wish to leave his right flank wide open, nor run the risk of having his retreat cut off should he not succeed in defeating the Hyksos at Sharuhen; and indeed in later history we find Edom holding but little territory west of the Arabah Valley. Edom thereafter seems to center on the east side of the valley. In conquering the south fringe of Canaan and the North Sinai Desert, Ahmose I was actually subduing the original home of Edom as that home is depicted in the Bible, and so, according to our theory, crushing the Hyksos in their own, home land. There, in that very area, he brought the foe into final, vital combat; hunted him out, overthrew him, and broke forever the Hyksos Empire. No wonder the Hyksos hung on so long at the siege of Sharuhen; fighting for three desperate years. It was their "last ditch" stand. They either had to defeat Ahmose I right there or go down to extinction. Oh, yes; the Hyksos had some Canaanite allies on the north in the Hittites and the Hivites, but as we said before, Canaan itself does not appear to have been a conquered part of the Hyksos/Edomite Empire, only a friendly ally; otherwise the Hyksos might have retired northward from Sharuhen to one fortified city after another throughout Palestine and worn out Ahmose I and his army. But, no, Sharuhen was final: The Hyksos conglomeration did not win, and so it was extinction: The candle had burned out: Thus we see why the Egyptian had no more wars with the Hyksos thereafter; why the story ends at Sharuhen. It was the end: Hyksos/Edom collapsed.

With this collapse and defeat of the Edomite faction, the very leaders of this Hyksos conglomeration, the whole empire would naturally go to pieces. Using our imagination a little we may infer as follows.

We may suppose that any Hittite and Hivite elements assisting Hyksos/Edom would revert to their Canaanite cities to the north. The Hittite soldiers would go back to Hebron (where the Bible places Hittites, Gen. 49: 29-32) or some such Hittite settlement; the Hivites to a Hivite home such as Gibeon (Josh.9:3-7; 11:19); or they may have fled even further than that with Ahmose's soldiers so close at their heels, to return later when things settled down. With Sharuhen fallen, Canaan seems to have offered little resistance to Ahmose I.

Amalek, originally an Edomite tribe, seems to now break away to become an independent nation. The Amalekites may have been forced away from the rest of Edom by being held under Egyptian rule during the rest of the reign of Ahmose I. and his successors. Anyway, not very long after, at the time of the Exodus, we find the Amalekites to be an independent people. They attacked the Israelites in the wilderness even before the latter reached Mount Sinai (Exod.17:8-l6). Amalek was the first of the nations to wage war with Israel thereby falling under God's order for extermination (Num.24:20).

Moab, which likely collaborated with Edom, appears to be free of Edomite control when next we meet this nation in history, toward the close of the forty years of wandering.

The Midianites, close by the eastern border of Moab, who had been defeated by Hadad I King of Edom and probably remained subservient to Edom from then until the collapse at Sharuhen, probably regained complete independence, only to succumb later to the Amorite King Sihon, for in the latter days of Moses the chiefs of Midian are sheiks of Sihon king of Heshbon (Josh.l3:21). However, upon Sihon the Amorite being destroyed by Moses and the children of Israel, the five Midianite sheiks of Sihon immediately became independent, collaborated with Balak, King of Moab in hiring the Prophet Balaam (Num. 22:4,7), and very soon after, when Moses sent an expedition against them, these same five chiefs have assumed the title of "kings" (Num.31:8). But in all this, after the siege of Sharuhen, the Midianites appear to be no longer under Edom's thumb.

The Ishmaelite segment in the Hyksos/Edom composition, upon the fall of Sharuhen would flee towards their own country, the North Arabian Desert. Most likely this group would fly northward from Sharuhen to escape pursuing Egyptian troops, and would cross the Jordan River and Gilead to reach Arabia.

The knowledge we possess of the siege of Sharuhen is given us in the record of an Egyptian army officer who served in the Hyksos wars. His account indicates there was a chasing of Hyksos remnants up into Canaan and parts of Coelesyria. But there is no account of any further sieges of cities held by Hyksos Kings: that ended at Sharuhen.

In later history the Ishmaelites appear as being free of any Edomite control or leadership (Judg.8:24). The Hyksos/Edomite King, if he survived the siege and any Edomite and Horite soldiers who happened to escape, would turn southward toward the Land of Seir. We may surmise they would cross the Arabah Valley to the east side to get away from the Egyptian armies overrunning Sinai and southern Canaan.

It is thus, we suggest, that the whole Hyksos/Edomite Empire fell to pieces, never to rise again. After the fall of Sharuhen the Hyksos/Edomite Kings had no more strongly fortified cities into which retreat could be made, for such were lacking in the Land of Edom, at that time. Hyksos/Edom having destroyed the Horites had not built large, fortified cities in Edom, being nomads. Archeology has confirmed this nomadic period stretching from about 1700 BC to 1300 BC. So the Hyksos lacked fortified home cities into which to retreat.

Our Theory is further Supported
The scattering of the Hyksos forces from Sharuhen as above depicted, is, we know speculation and surmise. Yet, the picture is not entirely without some justification for we do know that the fall of Sharuhen marked the disappearance of the last organized resistance of the Hyksos that we can find in history. The last vestiges of the Hyksos armies must have been scattered from there somewhat as we have pictured.

The very fact that the Egyptian records follow up the Hyksos Kings only as far as Sharuhen, and at that point the whole Hyksos Empire suddenly fades forever, is very strong evidence the Hyksos far homeland was not far away in some such place as Syria or Asia Minor where the empire could still have carried on in strength for years outside of Egypt. No, that homeland must have been either at Sharuhen or at some very near by place, so that the fall of Sharuhen wrecked their entire empire forever. Thus our argument receives strong support by the sudden disappearance of the Hyksos Kings at Sharuhen. The close by place we suggest was Edom.

We submit that in taking the North Sinai Desert, reaching Sharuhen, and levying tribute upon the Canaanite cites to the north, Ahmose I had done all that was necessary to break up the Hyksos confederation or conglomeration, whichever it was. Thereby he had driven the Hyksos Kings right back into their own homeland, had subdued parts thereof, had left them no fortified cities, and had been able to levy tribute on the Canaanite allies. His objective fully accomplished, he desisted from further effort in that direction, and returned home in triumph there to bring Nubia into his kingdom and to consolidate his position at home.

Some Important Considerations
Although the Hyksos Kings vanished from sight, they have left us an important legacy. Their rule was not in vain.

They introduced the use of horses for war, both cavalry and for chariots. Chariotry afterwards made Egypt the mightiest nation on earth. The Hyksos also introduced the composite bow. One wonders if the Ishmaelite allies of Hyksos/Edom had a hand in that, for their progenitor Ishmael, according to the Scriptures, was noted as being "an archer" (Gen. 21:20). This notation in Scripture indicates that archery was an outstanding ability with him. He or his children may possibly have originated the composite bow, or have taken it up from some earlier people and introduced it into Egypt. But it is likely that the Hyksos have made one still greater contribution to world progress, before which war horses and composite bows seem relatively unimportant. This is the alphabet.

The founder of the Horite colony which occupied part of the Sinai Peninsula, the Arabah and neighboring regions, was "Seir the Horite" (Gen. 36:20). From him the area received the name of "the land of Seir," and this branch of the Hurrians are correctly called, "Seirites." The term "Seirites" is in later history used of the Edomites who had inter-mingled with and intermarried with these Horites, and finally supplanted them.

Now the Egyptians had valuable turquoise mines at Serabit in the Sinai Peninsula. The people round about, evidently the Horites or Seirites, labored in these mines for the Egyptians. The Egyptians had long had their hieroglyphic writing where each sign or picture, as a rule, stood for a whole Egyptian word. This was not suitable for the language of the Seirite workmen and their overseers. Evidently someone hit upon the idea of using some of the Egyptian signs to represent sounds in the Seirite language, and, lo, the first alphabet was born!

In 1906 the great archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie found alphabetic inscriptions at these mines which must have been written at least as early as 1500 B.C., and the study of these inscriptions has given rise to the belief the alphabet arose as described above. "Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia," 1958 ed., Vol. I, page 186; (published by F. E. Compton & Co., Chicago,) summarizes the story thus: "Origin of our alphabet. Just how this invention was made, we do not know in detail. Some scholars believe it came when a Semitic people called the Seirites were working in some turquoise mines in the Sinai Peninsula, and the Egyptian masters of the mines taught them how to write. The Egyptians did not teach their full, elaborate method of writing with pictures, they taught a simpler method which they used for writing names. In this method, each picture stood for the first sound in the name of the object shown in the picture."

The Seirites, using this method could put signs together to spell out the sequence of sounds in any word in their own language.

This would soon be found to be a simple and easy method of writing. The new method of using a sign for a sound instead of a sign for a word would be in use for some considerable time, we surmise, before it would begin to spread into more general use amongst the upper, learned classes. Thus the origin of the idea must go back a long time before the writing of the Serabit inscriptions of 1500 B.C. The invention thus seems to belong to the Horite period.

Later, the Edomites, mingling with these Seirites (Horites) around 1800 BC, would learn these alphabetical signs. Under the Hyksos/Edomite Empire the new idea would naturally pass on to their Canaanite allies. The Canaanites may have improved the alphabet. Then the Canaanites of Tyre and Sidon (the Phoenicians), sailing over the Mediterranean Sea spread the alphabet far and wide. Through the Greeks and the Romans it has passed down to us.

Thus the Horites and the Edomites (the Hyksos), may have helped tremendously in giving us the alphabet. Without it, that Divine Revelation, the Bible, could scarcely have come to us; certainly the general public would never have been readers. Thanks to those Sinai mine workers, I, today can type these words from which your eye so quickly and easily gathers up my message. Did the Spirit of God move upon Moses to include in his writings these references to the Horites because of the important role they played in making Holy Writ possible?

End of Chapter Eight