Adventures With Cassiopaea

Chapter 29

There is evidence that the eruption of Thera coincided generally with the ejection of the Hyksos from the Nile Delta. There is also evidence that many of the king list segments that are currently arranged in a linear way may have represented different dynasties in different locations, some of which ruled simultaneously. In particular, there is evidence that the 18^th dynasty overlapped the Hyksos kings to some considerable extent. This is important to us at present because of the fact that there is one strikingly singular event in Egyptian history that is mirrored in a dramatic way in the stories of the Bible. The earliest document that describes the time of the Hyksos is from the Temple of Hatshepsut at Speos Artemidos which says:

Hear ye, all people and the folk as many as they may be, I have done these things through the counsel of my heart. I have not slept forgetfully, (but) I have restored that which had been ruined. I have raised up that which had gone to pieces formerly, since the Asiatics were in the midst of Avaris of the Northland, and vagabonds were in the midst of them, overthrowing that which had been made. They ruled without Re, and he did not act by divide command down to (the reign of) my majesty. [ANET 1969, 231; Breasted 1988, 122-26; Shanks 1981, 49]

The expulsion of the Hyksos was a series of campaigns which started with Kamose who was king in Thebes. He unsuccessfully rebelled against the Hyksos. His son Ahmose was finally successful in pushing the Hyksos out. An army commander named Ah-mose records in his tomb the victory over the Hyksos. He says:

When the town of Avaris was besieged, then I showed valor on foot in the presence of his majesty. Thereupon I was appointed to the ship, 'Appearing in Memphis.' Then there was fighting on the water in the canal Pa-Djedku of Avaris. Thereupon I made a capture, and I carried away a hand. It was reported to the king's herald. Then the Gold of Valor was given to me. Thereupon there was fighting again in this place....Then Avaris was despoiled. Then I carried off spoil from there: one man, three woman, a total of four persons. Then his majesty gave them to me to be slaves. Then Sharuhen was besieged for three years. Then his majesty despoiled it. [ANET 1969, op. cit. 233]

Note that Avaris was besieged, there is no mention of how Avaris was taken, and there is no burning of Avaris claimed. What is more, the archaeological evidence shows that Avaris was not destroyed in a military engagement. The likelihood is that Avaris was abandoned due to the eruption of Thera. This exit from Egypt by the Hyksos, many of whom fled to Canaan, was part of their history. In fact, there were probably many refugees arriving in the Levant from many places affected by the eruption and the following famine. And when the descendants of the refugees were later incorporated into a tribal confederation known as Israel, the story became one of the single events they all agreed upon. In this respect, they all did, indeed, share a history.

The fact is, other than the expulsion of the Hyksos, there is no other record of any mass exit from Egypt. Avaris was on the coast, and thus closer to the effects of the volcano. Naturally, the Egyptians of Thebes saw the expulsion of the Hyksos as a great military victory, while the Hyksos themselves, in the retelling of the story, viewed their survival as a great salvation victory. This seems similar to other events recorded in ancient history where both sides claim a great victory. Nevertheless, that there was something very unusual going on during this times comes down to us from the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. There is a little diary preserved on the reverse of this work which records the events leading up to the fall of Avaris.

Regnal year 11, second month of shomu - Heliopolis was entered. First month of akhet, day 23 - the Bull of the South gores his way as far as Tjaru. Day 25 - it was heard tell that Tjaru had been entered. Regnal year 11, first month of akhet, the birthday of Seth - a roar was emitted by the Majesty of this god. The birthday of Isis - the sky poured rain.

Recorded on a stela of King Ahmose from the same period:

The sky came on with a torrent of rain, and [dark]ness covered the western heavens while the storm raged without cessation…[the rain thundered] on the mountains (louder) than the noise at the Cavern that is in Abydos. Then every house and barn where they might have sought refuge [was swept away … and they] were drenched with water like reed canoes … and for a period of […] days no light shone in the Two Lands. [Vandersleyen, C. RdE 19 (1968), pls. 8, 9; W. Helck, Historisch-biographische Texte der 2. Zwischenzeit (Wiesbaden, 1975), 106-7]

The Rhind mathematical papyrus is named after the Scottish Egyptologist Henry Rhind, who purchased it in Luxor in 1858. The papyrus, a scroll about 6 metres long and 1/3 of a metre wide, which includes certain information about who wrote it and when it was written. The scribe identifies himself as Ahmes, and says that he is copying the scroll for the Hyksos king Apophis, in the year 33 of his reign. Ahmes then tells us that he is copying the text from an older version. It is here that we find some disagreement. Some experts think that the original of the mathematical problems, which is what the papyrus consists of, was written during the reign of Amenemht III, from the 12^th dynasty. Egyptologist Anthony Spalinger does not, however, entirely agree. In a lengthy, detailed analysis of the papyrus, the mathematics, the arrangement of the problems, and every observable detail about it, he writes:

One might query at this point the source or sources of Rhind. Did the original exemplar contain the opening table as well as the subsequent problems, or, to complicate the case further, was that treatise itself derived from various unknown works now lost? That this is not idle speculation can be seen by [Egyptologist] Griffith's remarks concerning the grain measures employed. He stressed the presence of the quadruple hekat in this papyrus, a measure which was unknown to him as a standard in the Middle Kingdom. […] In Rhind the quadruple hekat occurs in Books II and III but not in Book I, in which only the single hekat occurs. […] In the Middle Kingdom (Dynasty 12), only the single and double hekat have been found; one has to wait for Rhind to note the presence of its four-fold companion. […] Can we therefore assume that Book I represents the copy mentioned at the beginning, and Book II (as well as the problems on the verso) another source or sources? […] I am of the belief that the sources of Book II (and III, but this needs more clarification) was either different from that of Book I or else a reworked series of problems having their origins in the copy that Scribe Ahmose employed.[…]

Equally of note is the presence for the first time of the quadruple hekat. […] Clearly the concept must relate to storage bins, silos, or granaries. […]

Significantly, the relationship of one deben of weight to 12 "pieces" can also be found at the end of the 18^th dynasty, a point that Gardiner stressed in his important breakthrough of the Kahun Papyri.[…]

After the papyrus had been completed, and undoubtedly after some use as a teaching manual, later remarks were written on the verso in the great blank following problem 84. […] Upside down, in a different (and thicker) hand than that of the original scribe, it presents an early case of cryptographic writing. Gunn, in his review of Peet, was the first to attempt a concise evaluation of the meaning, and he observed the presence of such writing from Dynasty 19 on, citing examples from Theban tombs, as well as other monuments from that capital. […] Following Gunn, I feel that the presence of cryptography at this point ought to predicate a date within Dynasty 18, and the eventual location of Rhind at Thebes just may supply some support for this supposition. After all, it is from that city that we know the most about this so-called enigmatic writing, and such texts are dated to the New Kingdom and not earlier.

With no 87, located […] roughly in the center, Rhind presents the famous and highly-debated jottings concerning the taking of Avaris by Ahmose. I feel that it was added to the middle of the verso, and rightside up, so to speak, soon before the entire roll was transported to Thebes from the north. […] The brief remarks provide not merely a terminus a quo for the presence of Rhind later than year 33 of the Hyksos ruler Apophis, they also indicated that a major historical event was purposively written down on a mathematical tractate, itself being of high importance and value. Soon after, Rhind was, I believe, transported back by someone in the victorious Theban army to the new capital and later used there as a treatise, only to have a further addition entered (no. 87). […] I feel that the regnal dates do not refer to the reign of Ahmose but rather to that of the last Hyksos ruler in Egypt, a position that I am well aware is open to question; however, the historical event is at least clear: the end of Hyksos control in the eastern delta (Heliopolis and Sile are noted as having fallen). If we follow Moller, then the possessor of Rhind at that time felt these major events worthy of a remark on one of his prized treasures. […] The scribe was identical to the copyist of Rhind itself. [Spalinger, Anthony, The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus As A Historical Document, Studien zur altagyptischen Kultur 17, 1990, 295-338]

I hope that the reader caught the term "cryptographic writing" in reference to the account of the events leading to the fall of Avaris. It actually took me awhile to realize what these guys were talking about when I read these references to "cryptographic writing" in the 18^th and 19 dynasties. Finally, I understood that they were not suggesting that something was being written in a secret code for military purposes. What this term actually means to Egyptologists is that, "since we cannot possibly give up our chronology to allow these matters to coincide with a certifiable cataclysm going on in the region, we must therefore say that the writers do not mean what they say, but rather they are using metaphors. What's more, we will will call it 'cryptographic writing." Egyptologist R. Weill was the first to insist on this distortion being a type of literary fiction. It then became the convention for interpreting Egyptian historical writing. In this way, a period of desolation and anarchy would be described in exaggeratedly lurid terms of catastrophe and climatological cataclysm, usually for the glorification of a monarch to whom the salvation of the country is ascribed. [cf. Redford]

Well, that's pretty bizarre! Handy, too. A bunch of guys spend their lives trying to validate the lives and dynasties and chronology of these people, and when it doesn't agree with what they want to believe about it, it can be consigned to "literary fiction." And of course, this means that what is or is not "literary fiction" can be completely arbitrary according to the needs of the Egyptologist!

Based on this "cryptographic" interpretation, Manning contends that the text on the verso of the Rhind papyrus is not about a "real storm" or climatological event, but that it is about "the restoration of the Egyptian state to the order and station of the Middle Kingdom - after the dislocation (all-wrecking storm) of the Hyksos era, and the destruction of Middle Kingdom shrines…One might even argue that the whole Theban text is a symbolic encoding of Ahmose's defeat of the Hyksos…" [Manning, Sturt, A Test of Time, Oxford, Oxbow, 1999]

I must say that I was rather astonished to read such a remark. I think it was at that moment that I realized how truly sick Egyptologists really are.

Continue to page 260

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