The Hyksos Invasion

Hyksos, meaning “rulers of foreign lands,” stems from the manner in which the short-lived dynasty of Hyksos kings referred to itself. These Hyksos invaded and took over Egypt, they were known as “The foreign Kings or Shepherd Kings”. The sun used to burn their faces red, that’s why they were called “burnt faces”. Their origins were unknown. Egyptian histories refer to a Hyksos capital called Avaris.

The Hyksos appeared in a chaotic time after the collapse of the so-called Middle Kingdom period but before the blossoming of the New Kingdom, the five centuries of prosperity and territorial expansion familiar to many from the reigns of pharaohs such as Akhenaten and Tutankhamun.

Hyksos came to the power in the Delta about 1730 BC and accordingly reigned in Egypt, with varying success for a century and a half.

Begins almost 600 years before they took power, climate records show that around 2200 B.C., the world was gripped by a little ice age. In Egypt, the two centuries that followed were marked by persistent droughts. The prolonged dry spell may have led to political instability that resulted in the fragmentation of ancient Egypt’s Old Kingdom.

From Avaris, the Hyksos rapidly expanded their rule. For a brief period, in the 15th Dynasty (around 1650 BC–c. 1550 BC), the Hyksos dominion stretched to envelop central Egypt.

The Egyptians called them Heka Khawaset-Foreign Rulers. They were awarlike nation, introducing in to Egypt the chariot.

Their occupation of Egypt split the country in two, with new political and administrative centres formed by the Hyksos at Avaris in the north and Egyptians at Thebes in the south. The Hyksos’ rise was reflected in Avaris, too. The city’s foot-print nearly tripled, and at its height, the city was home to an estimated 25,000 people, spread out over a square mile of bustling, crowded, stinking cityscape.

The associated military clashes that arose in this era between the two centers, and most significantly the Hyksos Expulsion, conflicted with ideas of Egyptian kingship and culture. This in turn had a lasting impression on the Egyptian’s perception of foreigners and of themselves.

In about 1550 B.C., Hyksos were driven out by the Theban pharaoh Ahmose (r. 1550–1525 B.C.), first King of the 18th dynasty. He launched a campaign to seize Avaris and crush the Hyksos once and for all. Avaris was captured. And the Hyksos agreed to leave Egypt willingly. According to reliefs celebrating the pharaoh’s victory, though, the dynasty’s end was bloodier.
The Hyksos Invasion

Bolas used by ancient Inca

Residing in a mountainous terrain that yielded little wood, the Inca’s most effective weapons were stones, rolled down hills or hurled from slingshots. Stones thrown from slings were the common weapon that could be used from a distance.

Inc also threw bolas. Bolas is a type of throwing weapon made of weights on the ends of interconnected cords, which hurled at the legs of enemies to bring them to their enemies.

Bolas were most famously used by the gauchos or Argentinean cowboys but that have been found in excavations of Pre-Columbia settlements, especially in Patagonia, whore indigenous peoples used them to catch 200-pound guanaco (Ilamalike mammals) and nandu (birds).

They were also used in battle by the Mapuche and Inca army. Bolas were used extensively against the Spanish, especially to cripple their horses. When the bolas were spun around, then hurled, the stones encircled that arms or legs of an enemy.
Bolas used by ancient Inca 

War in History

War in History
War has been a sensational topic. Warfare concentrates and intensifies some of our strongest emotions; courage and fear, resignation and panic, selfishness and self-sacrifice, greed and generosity, patriotism and xenophobia.

The stimulus of war has incited human beings to prodigies of ingenuity, improvisation, cooperation, vandalism and cruelty.

It is the riskiest field on which to match wits and luck: no peaceful endeavor can equal its penalties for failure, and few can exceed its rewards for success.

It remains the most theatrical of human activities combining tragedy, high drama, melodrama, spectacle, action, farce and even low comedy.

War displays the human condition in extremes.

It is thus not surprising that the first recovered histories, the first written accounts of the exploits of mortals, are military histories.

The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs record the victories of Egypt’s first pharaohs, the Scorpion King and Narmer.

The first secular literature or history recorded in cuneiform recounts the adventures of the Sumerian warrior king Gilgamesh.

The earliest written part of the Books f Moses, the “J-strand”, culminate in the brutal Hebrew conquest of Canaan.

The annals of the Chinese, Greeks, and Roman are concerned with wars and warrior king.

Most Mayan hieroglyphic texts are devoted to the genealogies, biographies and military exploits of Mayan kings.
War in History