In the sixteenth instalment of the Peopling the Past Video series, we are joined by Dr. Danielle Candelora who discusses the Hyksos, the immigrants from Western Asia that settled in the Eastern Delta of ancient Egypt and ruled the north of Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period.
Danielle Candelora is an Egyptian archaeologist and an Assistant Professor of Ancient Mediterranean History at SUNY Cortland. She earned her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA, and her dissertation is entitled: Redefining the Hyksos: Immigration and Identity Negotiation in the Second Intermediate Period. Her research investigates the multivariate processes of identity negotiation in the Eastern Nile Delta during the Second Intermediate Period, an era of intensive immigration from the Levant which culminated in the rule of the Hyksos in the North of Egypt. She explores how immigrants integrated into and influenced Egyptian society, as well as the cultural blending which resulted. Danielle is a co-director of the AEF Osiris Ptah Nebankh Research Project, and the co-director of the Museology Field School at the Museo Egizio di Torino.
Interested in learning more? Check out these relevant publications from Dr. Candelora.
Candelora, D. 2021. “Grisly Trophies: Severed Hands and the Egyptian Military Reward System.” Near Eastern Archaeology 84(3): 192–199.
Candelora, D. 2019/2020. “The Eastern Delta as a Middle Ground for Hyksos Identity Negotiation.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Kairo 75: 77–94.
Candelora, D. 2019. “Hybrid Military Communities of Practice: The Integration of Immigrants as the Catalyst for Egyptian Social Transformation in the 2ndMillennium.” In The Crossroads III – A Stranger in the House: Foreigners and Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Societies of the Bronze Age, edited by J. Mynářová, M. Kilani, and S. Alivernini, 25–48. Prague: Czech Institute of Egyptology.
Candelora, D. 2018. “Entangled in Orientalism: How the Hyksos Became a Race.” Journal of Egyptian History 10(2): 45–72.
Candelora, D. 2017. “Defining the Hyksos: A Reevaluation of the Title 1qA 2Aswt and its Implications for Hyksos Identity.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 53: 203–221.
Further Reading
Excavation reports are published as part of the Tell el-Dab’a series published by Österreichische Archäologische Institut
Bietak, M. 1996. Avaris, the Capital of the Hyksos: Recent Excavations at Tell El- Dabʿa. London: British Museum Press.
Oren, E., ed. 1997. The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspectives. University Museum Monograph 96. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.
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