Tuesday, August 21, 2018

What I find problematic here is that the 14th dynasty (a collection of largely unrelated, many which were in power in the same time, local rulers) gets only one direct sentence and is implied in the end when the talk goes to the radiocarbon dates.

The 14th dynasty mixed Egyptian and Canaanite rulers, some of which seem to have ruled parts of Sinai and even parts of southern Palestine, and paved for the day of the Hyksos 15th dynasty(1650-1540 BCE) - which itself might also not have been a dynasty in the meaning it's usually understood, although state functions could have survived when power (possibly) shifted from lineage to another.

But then the Egyptian 13th dynasty(c.1800 - 1650 BCE) is itself a mix of mini-dynasties and individual rulers, who did rule in the context of a continued government (although things did fall apart in the last decades, with the kings ruling little beyond Memphis based on the geographical locations of surviving archaeological record) to which gave some shape the apparently increased power of viziers who stayed in office while one short-ruling king followed another.

The 14th dynasty, which emerged in the delta - aka the central government lost power to local rulers - somewhere between 1800-1720 BCE, can be seen as setting the stage for the rule of Hyksos - and the brief Abydos Dynasty's(1650-1600 BCE) kings who were (based on their skeletons) expert horsemen, also show that the horse had been introduced to Egypt at the beginning of the Hyksos period and could thus predate them, again showing that innovations here connected to the Hyksos predated them.

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