DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55202#0168
148
THE MIDDLE KINGDOM IN THEBES
would surely have been destroyed by the indignant Upper Egyptians
once they had thrown out the Asiatics. If one takes literally the
words of Queen Hat-shepsut, some temples still needed restoration
even in her day, and she is to be credited with having rebuilt the
temples of Upper Egypt still ruined after the Hyksos had sacked
them.14 The inscription in which she boasts of this, carved in the
Speos Artemidos of Beni Hasan, was written nearly a century after
the expulsion of the Asiatics, and one would have thought that the
damage they had done would long since have been made good, were
it not for what she tells us.
To the ancient Thebans it is more than likely that mention of the
Hyksos meant Khian and Apopi almost wholly. Khian’s long reign
of forty years has left its traces from Crete to Baghdad.15 Although
he undoubtedly never entered the former island and probably did
not get to the city of Baghdad, he did control an empire from the
shores of the Aegean Sea almost to the Euphrates, a matter of a
thousand miles, and the find made at Gebelein, above Thebes on
the Nile, sets his southern boundary perhaps another thousand
miles south of Mesopotamia. From this it would seem that in him
we have one of the first great conquerors of the Near East. There is
no reason to believe that the realm of Apopi was any narrower than
it had been in Khian’s day and, in default of evidence to the contrary,
we may take it that the last Hyksos ruler ascended the throne of an
undiminished empire.16 In fact, he probably started as a conqueror
himself. Manetho stated that Xois was the capital of its little king-
dom for only 184 years,17 and if this be the case—which we have no
reason to doubt—Xois and the western Delta fell to Apopi’s arms
in 1594 b.c., twenty-seven years before Egypt was liberated by
Afh-mose.
Curiously enough, the Middle Kingdom ended in Thebes before
it came to a close in Memphis, with a rebellion which put another
line of local princes on the throne there before the rest of Egypt was
liberated. Their story is not part of this book, to be sure, but it is
interesting to see how accurate the full history of Manetho must
have been before it was so badly copied by the epitomists whose
versions of it are all that we have today.
14 Breasted, AR, II, p. 290; History, p. 280.
16 Evans, Annual of the British School tn Athens, VII, p. 64; Budge, Hieroglyphic Texts, I,
Pl. 18.
18 Mayer, Geschichte, I, §§ 307-8.
17 See above, p. 95.
THE MIDDLE KINGDOM IN THEBES
would surely have been destroyed by the indignant Upper Egyptians
once they had thrown out the Asiatics. If one takes literally the
words of Queen Hat-shepsut, some temples still needed restoration
even in her day, and she is to be credited with having rebuilt the
temples of Upper Egypt still ruined after the Hyksos had sacked
them.14 The inscription in which she boasts of this, carved in the
Speos Artemidos of Beni Hasan, was written nearly a century after
the expulsion of the Asiatics, and one would have thought that the
damage they had done would long since have been made good, were
it not for what she tells us.
To the ancient Thebans it is more than likely that mention of the
Hyksos meant Khian and Apopi almost wholly. Khian’s long reign
of forty years has left its traces from Crete to Baghdad.15 Although
he undoubtedly never entered the former island and probably did
not get to the city of Baghdad, he did control an empire from the
shores of the Aegean Sea almost to the Euphrates, a matter of a
thousand miles, and the find made at Gebelein, above Thebes on
the Nile, sets his southern boundary perhaps another thousand
miles south of Mesopotamia. From this it would seem that in him
we have one of the first great conquerors of the Near East. There is
no reason to believe that the realm of Apopi was any narrower than
it had been in Khian’s day and, in default of evidence to the contrary,
we may take it that the last Hyksos ruler ascended the throne of an
undiminished empire.16 In fact, he probably started as a conqueror
himself. Manetho stated that Xois was the capital of its little king-
dom for only 184 years,17 and if this be the case—which we have no
reason to doubt—Xois and the western Delta fell to Apopi’s arms
in 1594 b.c., twenty-seven years before Egypt was liberated by
Afh-mose.
Curiously enough, the Middle Kingdom ended in Thebes before
it came to a close in Memphis, with a rebellion which put another
line of local princes on the throne there before the rest of Egypt was
liberated. Their story is not part of this book, to be sure, but it is
interesting to see how accurate the full history of Manetho must
have been before it was so badly copied by the epitomists whose
versions of it are all that we have today.
14 Breasted, AR, II, p. 290; History, p. 280.
16 Evans, Annual of the British School tn Athens, VII, p. 64; Budge, Hieroglyphic Texts, I,
Pl. 18.
18 Mayer, Geschichte, I, §§ 307-8.
17 See above, p. 95.