New Thoughts on Egypt’s Hyksos Rulers

POOLE, ENGLAND—The Hyksos people, thought to have originated in West Asia, may have come to power in Egypt some 3,650 years ago by marrying into local royal families, according to a Science News report. It had been previously thought that the Hyksos rulers of Egypt’s 15th Dynasty took power by force. Biological anthropologist Christina Stantis of Bournemouth University and her colleagues analyzed strontium isotopes in the teeth of 71 individuals whose remains were unearthed at Tell el-Dab’a, the site of the Hyksos capital in the Nile Delta. About half of the remains in the sample dated to hundreds of years before Hyksos rule, while the rest dated to the period of the Hyksos dynasty. The strontium levels indicate that most of the women buried in elite graves shortly before the Hyksos came to power grew up eating plants and animals raised outside the Nile Valley. By contrast, all but a few of the elite males from this time period were found to have grown up locally. Stantis suggests the nonlocal women were Hyksos women who may have married into Egyptian royal families after moving to the Nile Delta. The study also suggests that about half of the men and women buried in the cemetery during the period of Hyksos rule came to Tell el-Dab’a from elsewhere. Further analysis could reveal where they originated. To read in-depth about the Hyksos, go to “The Rulers of Foreign Lands.”