Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt and Hyksos

by Damien F. Mackey This [Twelfth] dynasty will terminate with a crocodile-named woman ruler, Sobek-neferure Crocodile Sobek Despite all that I have written so far about the Twelfth Dynasty, the Egyptian dynasty that began the Oppression of Israel under its “new king” (Exodus 1:8), Amenemes, I yet suspect that there are some further dimensions needing to be added to it. According to my reconstruction of the life of the Egyptianised Moses (Sixth Dynasty’s Weni and Twelfth Dynasty’s Mentuhotep), the Twelfth Dynasty needs to expire while Moses is yet in Midian. This dynasty will terminate with a crocodile-named woman ruler, Sobek-neferure (amongst her various other names). That has led me to the conclusion that the Twelfth Dynasty, so busy in the crocodile region of the Fayyum oasis, was a crocodile worshipping dynasty. Consequently, I have been able conveniently to propose identification of my two composite rulers, Amenemes (Amenemhat) and Sesostris, with supposed Thirteenth Dynasty rulers, Amenemhat and (the composite) Sobekhotep. That reconstruction now leaves it open for Khasekhemre Neferhotep (whom various revisionists have recognised as the Pharaoh of the Exodus), to have been the stubborn ruler whom Moses and Aaron had had to confront to the end of setting Israel free (Exodus 5:1). The Oppression begun by Amenemes, with male babies being killed, and heavy slave building construction, would only intensify with this Neferhotep, with Moses and Aaron getting the blame for it from their fellow Israelites. Thus (Exodus 5:4-21): But the king of Egypt said, ‘Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their labor? Get back to your work!’ Then Pharaoh said, ‘Look, the people of the land are now numerous, and you are stopping them from working’. That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and overseers in charge of the people: ‘You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’ Make the work harder for the people so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies’. Then the slave drivers and the overseers went out and said to the people, ‘This is what Pharaoh says: ‘I will not give you any more straw. Go and get your own straw wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced at all’.’ So the people scattered all over Egypt to gather stubble to use for straw. The slave drivers kept pressing them, saying, ‘Complete the work required of you for each day, just as when you had straw’. And Pharaoh’s slave drivers beat the Israelite overseers they had appointed, demanding, ‘Why haven’t you met your quota of bricks yesterday or today, as before?’ Then the Israelite overseers went and appealed to Pharaoh: ‘Why have you treated your servants this way? Your servants are given no straw, yet we are told, ‘Make bricks!’ Your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people’. Pharaoh said, ‘Lazy, that’s what you are—lazy! That is why you keep saying, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the LORD.’ Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks’. The Israelite overseers realized they were in trouble when they were told, ‘You are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you for each day’. When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, and they said, ‘May the LORD look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us’. We can know that the status of the ‘Asiatic’ Semites (or Aamu) in Egypt had deteriorated even from the time of (my composite) Amenemes (Amenemhat) to the time of Neferhotep. Dr. David Rohl has referred to this very situation, without himself making the (Exodus 5) connection that I would: Several texts have come to light which indicate that certain of these Aamu managed to reach high positions in the administration during the latter part [sic] of the 12th Dynasty (some also marrying Egyptian women), but that this state of affairs did not last long into the 13th Dynasty. The fact that important persons in the time of Amenemhat III felt free to designate themselves as Aam (Asiatic) or as born of an Aamet (female Asiatic) means that one can hardly consider them as slaves in the ordinary sense as in the Brooklyn Papyrus. One must therefore reckon with a deterioration in the status of Asiatics between the time of Amenemhat III and that of Neferhotep. …. Previously, I had proposed that: Apart from the Era of Moses involving the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Twelfth Egyptian dynasties, we need also to factor in the Thirteenth, based on some known correspondences of its officials with the Twelfth Dynasty. Dr. Courville has provided these most useful connections, when writing of the Turin list which gives the names of the Thirteenth Dynasty officials (“On the Survival of Velikovsky’s Thesis in ‘Ages in Chaos’”, pp. 67-68): The thirteenth name [Turin list] (Ran-sen-eb) was a known courtier in the time of Sesostris III …. The fourteenth name (Autuabra) was found inside a jar sealed with the seal of Amenemhat III …. How could this be, except with this Autuabra … becoming a contemporary of Amenemhat III? The explanations employed to evade such contemporaneity are pitiful compared with the obvious acceptance of the matter. “ The sixteenth name (RaSo-khemkhutaui) leaves a long list of named slaves, some Semitic-male, some Semitic-female. One of these has the name Shiphra, the same name as the mid-wife who served at the time of Moses’ birth …. [Exodus 1:15]. RaSo-khemkhutaui … lived at the time of Amenemhat III. This Amenemhet III, as we pick up from reading about him in N. Grimal’s book … was a particularly strong ruler, renowned for massive projects involving water storage and channelling on a gargantuan scale. He is credited with diverting much of the Nile flow into the Fayuum depression to create what became known as lake Moeris (the lake Nasser project of his time). The grim-faced depictions of the 12th dynasty kings, Amenemhet III and Sesostris III, have been commented upon by conventional and revisionist scholars alike. Cambridge Ancient History has noted with regard to the former …: “The numerous portraits of [Amenemhet] III include a group of statues and sphinxes from Tanis and the Faiyûm, which, from their curiously brutal style and strange accessories, were once thought to be monuments of the Hyksos kings.” [End of quotes] “Hyksos kings” - hold that last thought! What I had not appreciated at that stage was the great devotion that Amenemhet (so-called III) had for the crocodile deity, Sobek. https://www.arce.org/resource/rise-sobek-middle-kingdom At Shedet, the new administrative capital of dynasty 12, the cult of Sobek saw yet another plot twist. Amenemhat II began to evoke an early dynastic, merged form of Sobek and Horus. Horus of Shedet was shown as a crocodile on a seal from the reign of Khasekhmwy of the second dynasty. Amenemhat II was the first to see this merge of Sobek and Horus of Shedet as the perfect syncretism to affirm the king’s divinity. But it was Amenemhat III who brought the role of “Sobek of Shedet-Horus residing in Shedet” to the highest significance. Sobek-Horus of Shedet became associated with epithets like “Lord of the wrrt (White) Crown,” “he who resides in the great palace” and “lord of the great palace.” All of these epithets were related to the king rather than associated with any god. Even the name of Horus in this merged form was enclosed in a serekh like a king’s name. The king has always been identified as Horus on earth. With the new divine form of Sobek-Horus, the king as Horus merged with Sobek and incorporated himself as one with the god Sobek. …. [End of quote] Of course, in my scheme of things, “Amenmhat [Amenemes] II” was “Amenemhat III”. As to the Twelfth Dynasty’s female ruler, we read: https://landioustravel.com/egypt/history-egypt/ancient-history/twelfth-dynasty-ancient-egypt/ Sobekneferu Sobekneferu or Neferusobek (Ancient Egyptian: Sbk-nfrw meaning ‘Beauty of Sobek’) was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the last ruler of the Twelfth Dynasty …. She adopted the complete royal titulary, distinguishing herself from prior female rulers. She was also the first ruler to have a name associated with the crocodile god Sobek. …. One reader has wondered if this Sobeknefrure might have been the same person as the Egyptian foster-mother of Moses (we know her as Merris = Meresankh), perhaps coming down to the Fayyum to pay tribute to her crocodile god, when she saw the baby Moses afloat in a ‘basket’ in the water. Whilst that may be an intriguing consideration, the fact is that Moses was now about 80 when the Twelfth Dynasty died out, meaning that Meresankh, as Sobeknefrure, would have to have been close to 100 years of age. Khayan (Khyan) “The numerous portraits of [Amenemhet] III include a group of statues and sphinxes from Tanis and the Faiyûm, which, from their curiously brutal style and strange accessories, were once thought to be monuments of the Hyksos kings.” So we read above. Could it be that the non-royal founder of the Twelfth Dynasty was, in fact, a foreigner? That would perhaps explain why it is said of him, the “new king” (Exodus 1:8), that Joseph meant nothing to him. It might also explain why his statues, and those of Sesostris, have a different, “brutal” appearance to them: HTTPS://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/HYKSOS “The so-called "Hyksos Sphinxes" are peculiar sphinxes of Amenemhat III which were reinscribed [?] by several Hyksos rulers …. Earlier Egyptologists thought these were the faces of actual Hyksos rulers. …”. Were Amenemes and Sesostris in fact the first foreign Hyksos rulers of Egypt? What has set me thinking in this new direction (and I might be entirely off the track) is the apparent evidence for the powerful Hyksos ruler, Khayan, as a contemporary of Sobekhotep, meaning, in my revised context, a contemporary of the Twelfth Dynasty, before the Plagues and the Exodus. This opens the door, perhaps, for Khayan to have been the dynastic founder himself, the “new king” of Exodus 1:8, whilst his son, Yanassi, could be the Unas of the so-called Fifth Dynasty (its last male ruler), whom I have already identified as Sesostris. The origins of Khayan (Amenemes?) may even have been Amorite (Syro-Mitannian). For he, Khayan, or Khyan (Hayanu, h-ya-a-n), may possibly have been a distant ancestor of Shamsi-Adad I (c. 1800 BC, conventional dating), who must be re-dated to c. 1000 BC, where he emerges as King David of Israel’s Syrian foe, Hadadezer (2 Samuel 8:3-8). https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/2991710 “Ryholt notes that the name, Khyan, generally has been "interpreted asAmorite "Hayanu" (reading "h-ya-a-n") which the Egyptian form represents perfectly, and this is in all likelihood the correct interpretation." [Kim SB Ryholt, op. cit., p.128] It should be stressed that Khyan's name was not original and had been in use for centuries prior to [sic] the fifteenth Hyksos Dynasty. The name Hayanu is recorded in the Assyrian king lists--see "Khorsabad List I, 17 and the SDAS List, I, 16"--" "--"for a remote ancestor of Shamshi-Adad I (c.1800 BC)." [Kim SB Ryholt, op. cit., p.128] Khyan's name is transcribed as Staan in Africanus' version of Manetho's Epitome".”