Sharuhen

Sharuhen (Tell el-Ajjul) was an ancient town in the Negev Desert, between Rafah and Gaza. Following the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt in the early 1500s BCE, they fled to Sharuhen and fortified it. The armies of Pharaoh Ahmose I seized and razed the town after a three-year siege.

The destruction of Sharuhen was merely the first stage of a new policy of pre-emptive warfare waged by the Egyptians. Because the Egyptians of the 17th Dynasty felt deeply humiliated by the 15th and 16th Dynasty rule of the Hyksos (ca. 1655 BCE-ca. 1580 BCE), the Theban dynasty launched an ambitious war, led by Seqenenre Ta'a II, against the foreign king, Apep, to reclaim lost territory. Though his own campaign to expel the Hyksos from Egypt failed, and he himself was killed in battle, his son, Kamose, launched an attack on the Hyksos capital of Avaris. It was his much younger brother, Ahmose I, however, who finally succeeded in recapturing Avaris, razing it, and expelling the Hyksos rulers from Egypt altogether. The profound insult of the foreign rule to the honour and integrity of Egypt could be corrected, and its recurrence prevented, only by extending Egypt's hegemony over the Asiatics to the north and east of Egypt. Ahmose I engaged in a retaliative three-year siege of the Southern Palestine citadel of Sharuhen, thereby launching an aggressive policy of pre-emptive warfare. His success was continued by his successor but one, Thutmose I, who extended Egyptian influence as far as the Mitanni kingdom in the north and Mesopotamia in the east, thereby creating what was to become the most extensive empire in the ancient world.

References

• Baines, John; Malek, Jaromir; Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt; Checkmark Books; Oxford; 2000
• Bunson, Margaret R.; Encyclopedia of ancient Egypt; Facts on File; New York; 2002
• Quirke, Stephen; Spencer, Jeffrey; The British Museum Book of ancient Egypt; Thames and Hudson, New York; 1992