The Second Intermediate Period marks a period when ancient Egypt was divided into smaller dynasties for a second time, dating from 1782 to 1550 BC, between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the start of the New Kingdom. There is no universal agreement in Egyptology about how to define the period.
It is best known as the period when the Hyksos people of West Asia established the 15th Dynasty and ruled from Avaris, which, according to Manetho's Aegyptiaca, was founded by a king by the name of Salitis. The settling of these people may have occurred peacefully, although Manetho presents the Hyksos as "invaders of an obscure race" who conquered Egypt with brutality.
The Turin King List from the time of Ramesses II remains the primary source for understanding the chronology and political history of the Second Intermediate Period, along with studying the typology of scarabs, beetle-shaped amulets mass-produced in ancient Egypt and often inscribed with the names of rulers.
History
Collapse of the Middle Kingdom
The 12th Dynasty of Egypt ended in the late 19th century BC with the death of Queen Sobekneferu. She had no heirs, causing the dynasty to come to an abrupt end, and with it, the most prosperous era of the Middle Kingdom; it was succeeded by the much weaker 13th Dynasty. According to the Byzantine chronicler George Syncellus, all three sources of the translated king list of Africanus, Eusebius, and the Armenian of Eusebius state that the 13th Dynasty had sixty kings that ruled and lived in Dioplus for roughly 153 years. Retaining the seat of the 12th Dynasty, the 13th Dynasty (c. 1773 – 1650 BC) ruled from Itjtawy ("Seizer-of-the-Two-Lands") for most of its existence.
Migration to Thebes
The 13th Dynasty switched to Thebes in the far south possibly in the reign of Merneferre Ay. Daphna Ben Tor believes that this event was triggered by the invasion of the eastern Delta and the Memphite region by Canaanite rulers, who had their own culture, a variant of the contemporary late Palestinian Middle Bronze Age culture of the southern Levant. For some authors, this marks the end of the Middle Kingdom and the beginning of the Second Intermediate Period. This analysis is rejected by Ryholt and Baker however, who note that the stele of Seheqenre Sankhptahi, reigning toward the end of the dynasty, strongly suggests that he reigned over Memphis.
Though the 13th Dynasty may have controlled Upper Egypt, the 14th Dynasty ruled Lower Egypt, and both houses agreed to co-exist allowing trade. Evidently the rulers had trouble with securing power within their territory, being replaced in rapid fashion, but other factors like famine may have played a part. The eventual collapse of the 13th Dynasty became an opening for two smaller dynasties to take control of Egypt.
Transitional period
After allowing discipline at the southern forts to deteriorate, the government of the 13th Dynasty eventually withdrew its garrisons and, not long afterward, the forts were reoccupied by the rising Nubian state of Kush. An independent line of kings created the 14th Dynasty in the western Delta. In the north, Lower Egypt was overrun by the Hyksos, a Semitic people from across the Sinai. According to Manetho, invaders from the east seized Egypt "without striking a blow; and having overpowered the rulers of the land, they then burned our cities ruthlessly, razing to the ground the temples of gods..."
Similar to the First Intermediate Period of Egypt, the Second Intermediate Period was dynamic time in which rule of Egypt was roughly divided between rival power bases in Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, each controlling a portion of land.
Fourteenth Dynasty
The 13th Dynasty proved unable to hold on to the entire territory of Egypt, and a provincial ruling family, located in the Nile Delta, broke away from the central authority to form the 14th Dynasty (c. 1700–1650 BC). According to Syncellus, all three sources agree that the 14th Dynasty had seventy-six kings and their court was located in Xois, now modern day Sakha. The precise borders of the 14th Dynasty state are not known, due to the general scarcity of its monuments. In his study of the Second Intermediate Period, Kim Ryholt concludes that the territory directly controlled by the 14th Dynasty roughly consisted of the Nile Delta, with borders located near Athribis in the western Delta and Bubastis in the east. Most modern Egyptologists share the view that Avaris – rather than Xois – was the 14th Dynasty's seat of power.
Contested rulers proposed by Ryholt as the first five rulers of the dynasty are commonly identified as being of Canaanite (Semitic) descent based on their names. His conclusions about their chronological position within the period are contested in Ben Tor's study. Other sources do not refer to the dynasty as foreign or Hyksos and they were not referred to as "rulers of foreign lands" or "shepherd kings" in kings lists. The most attested, non-contested ruler of the dynasty, Nehesy Aasehre, left his name on two monuments at Avaris. His name means "the Nubian". According to Ryholt, he was the son and direct successor of the pharaoh Sheshi with a Nubian Queen named Tati.
The contested rulers (with the translation of their nomens) are:
Fifteenth Dynasty
The kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty are said to have been either Canaanite or Amorite. 17th Dynasty Pharaoh Kamose is known to have referred to Apophis, one of the kings of the 15th dynasty, as ruler of Retjenu (Syria–Palestine). The kings formed "the second Asiatic Kingdom in the Delta" and ruled Lower Egypt from Avaris for a hundred years. In Manethonian tradition, Salitis, described as a Hyksos (ḥḳꜣw-ḫꜣswt, a "shepherd" according to Africanus), is believed to have conquered the entirety of Egypt, but it is more likely that his rule did not extend beyond Lower Egypt. The settling of Levantine populations in Egypt may have occurred peacefully in the wake of the disintegration of the 14th Dynasty. It is believed that Avaris in the Delta was the largest city in the world from 1670 to 1557 BC under the Hyksos, however the kingdom being based in Avaris is now viewed as a secessionist move rather than expansionist. It is still debated if the movement of the Hyksos was a military invasion or a mass migration of Asiatics from Palestine.
The Turin King list indicates that there were six Hyksos kings, with an obscure Khamudi listed as the final king of the 15th Dynasty:
Abydos Dynasty
The Abydos Dynasty (c. 1640 to 1620 BC) may have been a short-lived local dynasty ruling over part of Upper Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period in Ancient Egypt and was contemporary with the 15th and 16th dynasties. The Abydos Dynasty stayed rather small with rulership over just Abydos or Thinis. The dynasty tentatively includes four rulers: Wepwawetemsaf, Pantjeny, Snaaib, and Senebkay. The Abydos Dynasty ceased when the Hyksos expanded into Upper Egypt. A possible graffito of Wepwawetemsaf was discovered by Karl Richard Lepsius in the tomb BH2 of the 12th Dynasty nomarch Amenemhat at Beni Hasan, about 250 km North of Abydos, in Middle Egypt. If the attribution of this graffito is correct and if Wepwawetemsaf did belong to the Abydos Dynasty, then its territory might have extended that far north. Since the dynasty was contemporaneous with the 16th Dynasty, the territory under Abydene control could not have extended farther than Hu, 50 km south of Abydos.
Sixteenth Dynasty
The 16th Dynasty (c. 1650–1580 BC) ruled the Theban region in Upper Egypt. Of the two chief versions of Manetho's Aegyptiaca, the 16th Dynasty is described by the more reliable Africanus (supported by Syncellus) as "shepherd [Hyksos] kings", but by Eusebius as Theban. In his 1997 study of the SIP, the Danish Egyptologist Kim Ryholt argues that the 16th Dynasty was an independent Theban kingdom. From Ryholt's reconstruction of the Turin canon, 15 kings can be associated to the dynasty, several of whom are attested by contemporary sources. While most likely rulers based in Thebes itself, some may have been local rulers from other important Upper Egyptian towns, including Abydos, El Kab and Edfu. By the reign of Nebiriau I, the realm controlled by the 16th Dynasty extended at least as far north as Hu and south to Edfu.
Ryholt gives the list of kings of the 16th Dynasty as shown in the table below. Others, such as Helck, Vandersleyen, Bennett combine some of these rulers with the Seventeenth Dynasty of Egypt. The list of rulers is given here as per Kim Ryholt and is supposedly in chronological order:
The continuing war against the 15th Dynasty dominated the short-lived 16th Dynasty. The armies of the 15th Dynasty continually encroached on 16th Dynasty territory, eventually conquering Thebes itself. Famine, which had plagued Upper Egypt during the late 13th Dynasty and the 14th Dynasty, also blighted the 16th Dynasty, most evidently during and after the reign of Neferhotep III. Sometime around 1580 BC, the 16th Dynasty was subsumed after conflict between Thebes and Avaris.
Seventeenth Dynasty
The 17th Dynasty (c.1571–1540 BC) was established by the Thebans quickly after the fall of the 16th. The borders between the Hyksos and the Egyptians seem to have alternated between Beni Hasan and Asyut. The founder of the dynasty was Rahotep and scholars consider his dynasty to have been native to Egypt. 17th Dynasty kings constructed a palatial complex at Deir el-Ballas, which is thought to have played an important role during the rule, but was later abandoned in the New Kingdom. Five kings are recorded on the Karnak King List, dated to the reign of Thutmose III. Three kings are also listed in the kings scene of TT2, dated to the reign of Ramesses II. More names may have originally appeared in the missing sections of the kings lists.
The last two kings of the dynasty opposed the Hyksos rule over Egypt. The 17th Dynasty would see four different ruling families whose last king did not have a male heir to the throne. Subsequently, other powerful families established kings having short reigns. The 17th Dynasty maintained a short-lived peace with the 15th Dynasty, which ended with the start of the reign of Seqenenre (c. 1549–1545 BC), who started a series of wars against the Hyksos and perished in battle. King Kamose (c. 1545–1540 BC) continued the war against the Hyksos as a whole, but his brother Ahmose I would be the king to deal the final blow; he thus became the first king of the New Kingdom 18th Dynasty.
Reunification
At the end of the Second Intermediate period, the 18th Dynasty came to power in Egypt. The first king of the 18th Dynasty, Ahmose, completed the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt and consolidated his rule over the land, unifying Upper and Lower Egypt. With that, Ahmose ushered in a new period of prosperity, the New Kingdom.
Art and culture
Society
In the Late Middle Kingdom, Tell el-Dab'a became a major harbour for ships and a trading post with connections across the Mediterranean. It became increasingly populated by natives of the Levant, evidenced by changes in ceramics, burial customs, and architecture. Egyptian ethnonyms for Levantines include ꜥꜣmw ('Asiatics'), Jwntj.w ('those with bows'), k3tj.w ('those of the turquoise mining region on the Sinai'), Mnṯw.w ('furious ones(?)'), and Sṯtj.w ('those from the land of Setjet'), though this does not reflect their own identity. The exact origin of this Levantine population is debated; it is surmised they are a result of either seaborne immigration from the northern Levant or immigration from the southern Levant across the Sinai. Archaeological evidence from both regions suggests a rapid decline in trade contacts between Egypt and the northern Levant (Byblos), coinciding with the beginning of substantial trade contacts between Egypt and Palestine (southern Levant), sometime in the early 17th century BC. A number of seals found in Palestine attesting to Egyptian pharaohs are completely absent in the northern Levant. Support for the southern Levant shift is evidenced by 2020 analysis on Canaanite pottery from Tell el-Dab'a.