Re: Hyksos - clarification

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 498
Date: 1999-12-08

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Brent Lords
To: cybalist@eGroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 1999 10:08 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Piotr: Goliath and Uriah the Hittite as IE -

Brent writes:

...
Since the rulers of the Hyksos had names and gods that were apparently
Indo-Aryan, and since the Hyksos brought the horse and chariot to Egypt
for the first time, as a military weapon (some Egyptian nobles MAY have
chariots before that), it was postulated that the Hyksos were
Hurrians.(who it is believed were also ruled by an Indo-Aryan class). 
Hence the source group for the Jew's "Horites" moving into the Levant. 
The other school said they were simply Canaanites, possibly northern
Syrian (getting close to your Luwians), who were taking advantage of
Egypts chaos due to the droughts.

I was always of the Hurrian school, because I couldn't see much
Indo-Aryan influence in northern Syria, nor use of the Chariots until
the IE brought them in. But I assumed that they gathered in, and
included Semites from the Levant as they invaded.  (I had heard
somewhere, that this was a typical IE tactic.)
But the picture is not clear.
Brent,
 
Does your "Indo-Aryan" (in the Hyksos context) mean Indo-European or specifically Indo-Iranian? Technically, (Indo-)Aryan is an alternative name for the latter, but that would exclude Hittite- or Luwian-speakers. The Hurrian elites were even more specifically (Proto-)Indic rather that Iranian, judging from the terminology cited in Kikkuli's treatise on horses.
 
Piotr