HYKSOS. - With this term (Yakāc) Manetho designates the chieftains of Asiatic tribes who invaded Egypt at the end of the Middle Kingdom, settling in the Delta where, establishing the XVth and XVIth dynasties, they reigned from c. 1730 to 1580 B.C.
Still according to Manetho (in Flavius Josephus, C. Apionem, I, 14), H. would be interpreted etymologically as "shepherd kings." But the official designation in contemporary Egyptian documents is that of hāʾah-ʾāʾat, that is, "chiefs of foreign countries": a periphrasis that does not imply a specific ethnic community. The term then came by extension to designate all the components of the invasion. The scarcity of monuments from the period of the H. and the vague later mentions of them make historical reconstruction very uncertain. Certain elements are: a) the H. formed a complex of tribes, for the most part Semitic, which came to Egypt from Asia; b) they founded a capital in the eastern Delta called Avaris, which according to some Egyptologists (Montet, Gardiner) is to be identified with Tanis (v.); c) they adopted the pharaonic royal protocol for their sovereigns; d) they showed a predilection for the Egyptian god Seth, in whom they perhaps saw a hypostasis of the Semitic Ba'al. The introduction of the horse and chariot into Egypt, traditionally attributed to the H., cannot be demonstrated, nor can it be excluded a priori. The chronology (reconstructed in part on the so-called "stele of year 400," in part on the fragments of the Turin "king papyrus") remains very uncertain, as does the number and succession of the individual H. sovereigns, especially those of the XVIth dynasty.
Some ancient authors such as Apion and Flavius Josephus identified the H. with the Hebrews, but this hypothesis is untenable: the peaceful coming to Egypt of Jacob's family cannot be identified with the invasion of the H. If one accepts 1730 as the date of the invasion, the descent of Jacob, placed in the 17th century by the recent chronology of A. Ungnad and W. F. Albright, would coincide with the period of the H.