an international team of scientists led by Chris Stantion from the University of Bournemouth (UK), examined the remains of the inhabitants of Ancient Egypt and found that the mysterious Hyksos were not a powerful foreign army, seized possession of the pharaohs.
a study published in the journal PLoS ONE, and briefly about it tells Phys.org. A common theory is that the Hyksos conquered Ancient Egypt in the XVIII-XVI centuries BC during the reign of the XIII-XVII dynasties of the pharaohs. It is believed that this was a whole group of different peoples.
They not only seized part of the country, but also founded his own XV dynasty, which had ruled in several parts of Egypt, approximately between 1638-1530 BC It was the first time in Egyptian history when the country was ruled by foreigners.
But a new study casts doubt on this theory. Stantis and his colleagues studied a sample of tooth enamel of the 75 people buried in the ancient capital of the Hyksos tell El-Daba in the northeastern Nile Delta. They compared the ratio of strontium isotopes in the teeth with the signatures of isotopes of the environment in Egypt and other regions.
It helped to determine the geographical origin of the people who lived in the city. The analysis showed that a large part of the population was not local. It was migrants who were born outside of Egypt, but for some reason was in this state.
Scientists have also found that the ratio of the indigenous population and migrants were comparable as during the reign of Egyptian pharaohs, and after coming to power of the Hyksos.
This model is not consistent with the popular version about the sudden invasion of powerful foreign troops who came from the mysterious distant land. On the contrary, it indicates that this invasion was not. And what happened then?
the Researchers suggest that “the invasion of the Hyksos” was actually an internal affair of the country of the pharaohs. It was truly a multicultural community. Given the large percentage of migrants in the region, it is easy to assume that they gradually took a more and more important positions.
Archaeologists suggest that the process of arrival of the Hyksos to power was not immediate and was not accompanied by violence. Perhaps several generations, before giksosy finally came to power.
by the Way, this is the first case when studying the history of the Hyksos archaeologists have resorted to using chemicals. The study will continue. The researchers plan to Refine the genetics of the Hyksos, and to establish the representatives of which nation among them had the most. Many previous studies have linked them with the peoples of the Middle East.
“Archaeological chemistry, in particular isotope analysis pointed us to the migration of the first generation during a major cultural change in Ancient Egypt, says Stantis. – Instead of the old scholastic theories about the sudden invasion, we now see a lot of people, especially women, who migrated to Egypt from the dynasty of the Hyksos. We believe that this gradually caused a serious economic and cultural changes. It is they, not violence, led to the first foreign rule in Egypt.”
