The rule of the Semitic Hyksos was like that of the Semitic Akkadians and Amorites in that the Hyksos were regarded as foreign kings by the non-Semitic native Egyptians who frequently rose up against them, just like the non-Semitic native Sumerians (or Babylonians) regarded the Akkadian and Amorite kings as foreigners and frequently rose up to expel them.
Semitic here refers only to language and not necessarily ethnicity as the Hyksos, Akkadians, and Amorites all spoke similar Afro-Asiatic languages, unlike the peoples they conquered and ruled. They may have been related. Scholars once posited an Arabian origin for these peoples while today they are believed to have largely originated as nomadic herders coming down from the northern mountains.
The native Sumerians/Babylonians and incoming Akkadians had co-existed for a time and the Akkadians adopted the more advanced Sumerian/Babylonian culture while retaining their own language. The Sumerian/Babylonians dominated in the south of Mesopotamia while Akkadians gained power in the north. After Sargon of Akkad usurped the Sumerian/Babylonian throne, the Sumerians frequently rebelled as they continued to do against Sargon's sons and under his grandson king Naram- Sin.
When the great Akkadian empire eventually collapsed under a combination of internal Sumerian rebellion and foreign invasion the Sumerians established a neo-Sumerian government for a time until they came under the domination of the invading Amorites.
When the Amorite neo-Babylonian empire fell to the invading Hittites, some of the Amorites are believed to have migrated to Canaan and to have been part of the Semitic tribes that invaded and took over the kingdom of Lower Egypt (the northern river delta). Like the Akkadians before them in Babylon, the Hyksos conquest of Lower Egypt leveraged a previous base population of Semitic merchants (Canaanites in the this case) that had assimilated to the local culture and provided a springboard to political dominaton.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
How was the rule of the Hyksos like that of the Akkadians and Amorites?
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