DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55202#0170
VIII
HYKSOS IMPORTATIONS INTO EGYPT
With all his great gifts the ancient Egyptian lacked the trait
which could have made him into an inventor along practical lines.
Without any outside help he developed primitive pictures into a
remarkably efficient method of writing quite as soon, in all likeli-
hood, as that was done anywhere else in the world. His art was
wholly native from a very early period, and his religion was a com-
plicated set of beliefs which remained unaffected by outside in-
fluences before the Eighteenth Dynasty when intimate relations
with his neighbors followed his invasion of foreign countries.
However, he was not practical. Even the Middle Kingdom Egyp-
tian was a far simpler person than his militarily inclined grandson
of the Eighteenth Dynasty when the completely defeated Hyksos
were sent flying out of the Nile Valley to disappear in Asia whence
they had come. The Egyptian had not made a single important de-
velopment over his ancestors in any practical thing which would go
to make life less arduous. He was always content to live as his fore-
bears had until some outsider forced him to adopt a new way of life.1
He had lived almost entirely isolated from his neighbors, except for
raids among the blacks up the Nile, and rather fearful trading ex-
peditions interspersed with a rare slave-catching foray among the
more warlike tribes across the narrow deserts into Palestine and
Syria. By such means he had increased his supply of gold and ivory,
and of pine wood and lapis lazuli, but he remained for century after
century in exactly the same state of civilization as his ancestors. In
the Twelfth Dynasty he may have been richer than he had been in
the Old Kingdom, but he did everything exactly as his predecessors
had, without making a single step forward. Then came the tragic
days of disunion in the Thirteenth Dynasty, followed by the in-
vasion.
The Hyksos invasion itself is one of the great events of the history
of the Nile Valley, but as we know it only from the side of the
Egyptians, who did not want to dwell upon it any more than they
1 Winlock and Crum, Tbe Monastery of Epipbanius at Tbebes, p. 96.
HYKSOS IMPORTATIONS INTO EGYPT
With all his great gifts the ancient Egyptian lacked the trait
which could have made him into an inventor along practical lines.
Without any outside help he developed primitive pictures into a
remarkably efficient method of writing quite as soon, in all likeli-
hood, as that was done anywhere else in the world. His art was
wholly native from a very early period, and his religion was a com-
plicated set of beliefs which remained unaffected by outside in-
fluences before the Eighteenth Dynasty when intimate relations
with his neighbors followed his invasion of foreign countries.
However, he was not practical. Even the Middle Kingdom Egyp-
tian was a far simpler person than his militarily inclined grandson
of the Eighteenth Dynasty when the completely defeated Hyksos
were sent flying out of the Nile Valley to disappear in Asia whence
they had come. The Egyptian had not made a single important de-
velopment over his ancestors in any practical thing which would go
to make life less arduous. He was always content to live as his fore-
bears had until some outsider forced him to adopt a new way of life.1
He had lived almost entirely isolated from his neighbors, except for
raids among the blacks up the Nile, and rather fearful trading ex-
peditions interspersed with a rare slave-catching foray among the
more warlike tribes across the narrow deserts into Palestine and
Syria. By such means he had increased his supply of gold and ivory,
and of pine wood and lapis lazuli, but he remained for century after
century in exactly the same state of civilization as his ancestors. In
the Twelfth Dynasty he may have been richer than he had been in
the Old Kingdom, but he did everything exactly as his predecessors
had, without making a single step forward. Then came the tragic
days of disunion in the Thirteenth Dynasty, followed by the in-
vasion.
The Hyksos invasion itself is one of the great events of the history
of the Nile Valley, but as we know it only from the side of the
Egyptians, who did not want to dwell upon it any more than they
1 Winlock and Crum, Tbe Monastery of Epipbanius at Tbebes, p. 96.