Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

The Allure of the Ancient investigates how the ancient Middle East was imagined and appropriated for artistic, scholarly, and political purposes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bringing together scholars of the ancient and early modern worlds, the volume approaches reception history from an interdisciplinary perspective, asking how early modern artists and scholars interpreted ancient Middle Eastern civilizations—such as Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia—and how their interpretations were shaped by early modern contexts and concerns.
The volume’s chapters cross disciplinary boundaries in their explorations of art, philosophy, science, and literature, as well as geographical boundaries, spanning from Europe to the Caribbean to Latin America.
Contributors include Elisa Boeri, Mark Darlow, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, Florian Ebeling, Margaret Geoga, Diane Greco Josefowicz, Andrea L. Middleton, Julia Prest, Felipe Rojas Silva, Maryam Sanjabi, Michael Seymour, John Steele, and Daniel Stolzenberg.

<http://thehyksosenigma.oeaw.ac.at/news/std-the-enigma-of-the-hyksos-workshop-11th-icaane-2018/>
This is a workshop, to be held on the 6th of April 2018 at the 11th ICAANE in Munich. First results of an ERC Advanced Grant "The Enigma of the Hyksos" at the Austrian Academy and the Bournemouth University/UK are presented by an international team of scholars supported by external researchers. The research programme deals with the origin  the reasons of immigration, the homogenity or heterogenity of a Western Asiatic communit, living during the late Middle Kingdom and the Second intermediate Period in the eastern Nile Delta. They were responsible for the rule of the Hyksos, a foreign dynasty, which took power in Egypt after the Middle Kingdom around1740 BC. The reearch also concentrates on the rise of power, on the way of rule, on the definition of the material culture of these foreigners, on their cultual interference with the Egyptian culture and on the reasons of their decline and failure to build a stable kingdom. Another subject is the impact of the Hyksos on the Egyptian Culture of the New Kingdom. The research is approached with methods of humanities and of biological sciences.

Die Hyksos (griechische Transkription der altägyptischen Bezeichnung Heqauchasut, Herrscher der Fremdländer) waren eine Dynastie von Königen nahöstlicher Herkunft, die Ägypten zwischen ca. 1640 -1530 v. Chr. beherrschten. Ihre geographische Herkunft, die Art ihrer Machtübernahme und ihre Rolle in der altägyptischen Geschichte sind bis heute ein Rätsel geblieben.

The first foreign dynasty which ruled Egypt between c. 1640 and 1530 BC was seen by Egyptologists and historians alike for a long time through a filter of scanty contemporary and posthumous Egyptian as well as antique texts. They rendered the tradition about these rulers in an absolutely biased and distorted way. It is the methods of modern archaeology, which enable to elucidate aspects and parts of history, prehistory and the aftermath of the Hyksos rule in a new light. We want to know from where and when the elite and the people behind the Hyksos rule came from, how they arrived in Egypt and how they settled there and were able to build up their power. We also want to know what the backbone of their economy had been and how they interacted with the rest of Egypt and with whom they entertained their commercial and political contacts. Finally, the question arises, why the Hyksos rule failed in Egypt.

Within this workshop you will hear some of the answers to these questions. We are able to offer evidence that the Western Asiatic population, on which the Hyksos rule rested, came from a different region in the Levant - at least parts of their elite. Temple architecture and burial customs show that the religious inspirations and the concepts of afterlife in the eastern Nile Delta originated from northernmost Syria and northern Mesopotamia. The same can be also concluded from the introduction of the artificial irrigation systems for which new evidence could be collected from Tell el-Dab‘a, a harbour town which became the capital of the Hyksos. It is the site on which excavations between 1966-2011 under the supervision of the speaker produced with more than 80 field- and working-up-campaigns an enormous quantity of evidence on settlement, tombs, palaces, temples and a hoard of material culture which was partly published in 24 volumes but would still need the same amount of publications in the future if circumstances would allow it. Other excavations in the Delta and in the Wadi Tumilat such as Tell el-Retaba, Tell el Maskhuta and Tell el Khilgan contribute to the cultural phenomenon of the Hyksos. This ERC project was able to draw from these excavations but also produced conclusions, which place these archaeological results with the help of international colleagues into a much wider perspective. Our studies in relationship with the Hyksos lead us not only to the Levant but also to the wider cultural background of Mesopotamia and also to Asia minor, and concerning trade also to Cyprus and the Aegean. It seems clear now that the flourishing trading network built up by a Western Asiatic community before the Hyksos Period broke down during their reign, as they were cut off from the resources of Upper Egypt and Nubia and could not offer a barter for their trade with the Levant.