“Bad Shepherds” of the Eastern Delta

Lloyd D. Graham

Text Abstract: During the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE, the Nile’s Eastern Delta was
supposedly the locale of truculent “shepherds” who were inimical to Egypt. These
problematic herdsmen seem largely to have been refractions of foreign powers generated
by independent etymological confusions, behind which lie the Hyksos and the Assyrians;
however, the caricature may contain a grain of truth. The shepherd-rebels from the Delta,
who have intriguing overlaps with the (proto)Israelites of the Exodus, ultimately found
their way into Greek novels.

Graphic abstract:

1. Introduction

Egyptian narrative literature of the Late Period tends to take liberties with historical events
in the manner of a popular novel or even a folk-tale,1 and the same trait can be seen in
Greek-language histories – or, more accurately, pseudohistories – of Egypt written in the
Greco-Roman period.2 For example, such accounts claim that, during the Second and Third
Intermediate Periods, the Eastern Delta was the locale of mysterious groups of shepherds
who had either assumed the rulership of Egypt or had at least attempted to do so.3 These
troublesome herdsmen seem to have been the result of two separate etymological
confusions. Behind these “bad shepherds” of the north-east – unworthy kings and would-be
usurpers – lie the Hyksos and, most probably, a divinised representation of the Assyrian
army.

As we shall ultimately see, it is possible that something more than coincidence and
linguistic accident underpins the repeated characterisation of foreign interlopers from the
north-east as shepherds from the Eastern Delta.

2. Shepherd Kings: The Hyksos and the Exodus

The Hyksos rulers of the Second Intermediate Period, who established their capital at
Avaris in the Eastern Delta, were reported by the Jewish historian Josephus (1st century

1
CE) to be “Shepherd Kings.”4 This identification occurs within his Greek-language
polemic Against Apion. Josephus claims that the passage in question is a verbatim extract
from the second book of Manetho’s Aegyptiaca ;5 this lost work represents the only known
native narrative of the history of ancient Egypt to be written in Greek. Hyksos is a Greek
rendering of the Egyptian phrase HqA(.w) xAs.wt, Ruler(s) of Foreign Lands.” As we shall
see, Manetho’s – or Josephus’s6 – misinterpretation probably arose from an over-literal
translation of the equivalent term HqA(.w) SAs.w, “Ruler(s) of the Bedouin,” as “Lord(s) of
the Shepherds.”7 Josephus’s account, which we will next examine in detail, was influential;
for example, it was repeated in the 4th century CE by Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea, an
important Christian polemicist and historian.8

Josephus ascribes to Manetho’s second book of Aegyptiaca the following information

about the Hyksos:9
“There came, after a surprising manner, men of ignoble birth out of the eastern parts, and had
boldness enough to make an expedition into our country, and with ease subdued it by force,
yet without our hazarding a battle with them. So when they had gotten those that governed us
under their power, they afterwards burned down our cities, and demolished the temples of the
gods, and used all the inhabitants in a most barbarous manner; nay, some they killed, and led
their children and their wives into slavery. At length they made one of themselves king, whose
name was Salatis [...] He chiefly aimed to secure the eastern parts, as foreseeing that the
Assyrians, who had then the greatest power, would be desirous of that kingdom, and invade
them; and as he found in the Saite Nomos [Sethroite], a city very proper for this purpose, and
which lay upon the Bubastic Channel, but with regard to a certain theological notion was
called Avaris, this he rebuilt, and made very strong by the walls he built about it [...]”
In reality, Hyksos rule was the result of migration and/or infiltration rather than invasion.10
It represented a domination of Lower Egypt by Canaanite peoples who had settled in the
Eastern Delta; these probably seceded from central Egyptian control near the end of the 13th
Dynasty.11

It is curious that Manetho/Josephus should mention the possibility of Assyrian invasion in

connection with this first wave of “shepherds,” for – as we shall see in Section 4 – a
subsequent wave of “shepherds” is likely to be none other than the army that Salites (Dynasty
15, 1648-1590 BCE) allegedly feared – even if it was almost a millennium late in arriving.12
After naming the next five kings of the Hyksos dynasty, Josephus continues to quote
Manetho as follows:13
“And these six were the first rulers among them, who were all along making war with the
Egyptians, and were very desirous gradually to destroy them to the very roots. This whole
nation was styled Hycsos, that is, Shepherd-kings: for the first syllable, Hyc, according to the
sacred dialect, denotes a king, as is Sos a shepherd; but this according to the ordinary dialect;
and of these is compounded Hycsos: but some say that these people were Arabians.”
Hyc – or, more properly HqA – is the Middle Egyptian word for “ruler,” so this part of the
etymology is largely correct. Moreover, Sos is probably the Coptic Shos, “herdsman,”14 in
which case a group of pastoral nomads – “shepherds” – is indeed indicated. Shos is in turn
is derived from the Middle Egyptian term Shasu (SAs.w), which denotes Bedouin
tribesmen.15 Nomadic groups designated as Shasu roamed the desert regions of both

2
Canaan and Nubia;16 in this case, the northeastern origin of the Hyksos and the location of
their capital in the Eastern Delta makes it clear that they came from the Levant. The Shasu
of Edom, south of the Dead Sea, may have worshipped the god Yahweh (who became the
sole god of Israel; Exodus 15:1-26, Deuteronomy 32:8-9) from as early as the 15th century
BCE,17 a point which may have a bearing on the later entanglement of Hyksos and Israelite
traditions (discussed below).

Josephus then interrupts Manetho’s narrative to provide an alternative etymology for the
name Hyksos:18
Now in another copy it is said that this word does not denote kings, but, on the contrary,
denotes captive shepherds, and this on account of the particle Hyc. In Egyptian hyk, in fact,
and hak when aspirated, expressly denote “captives”;19 and this seems to me the more
probable opinion, and more agreeable to ancient history.
Underpinning this etymology is the Middle Egyptian word HAq, “plunder” or “captive.”20 It
is only later that Josephus explains why he favours this understanding over the correct one
(HqA, “ruler”); his logic is revealed in the final excerpt below. But first, Josephus resumes
Manetho’s narrative thus:21
“These people, whom we have before named kings, and called shepherds also, and their
descendants [...] kept possession of Egypt five hundred and eleven years.”22

After that, resurgent Theban kings drove the “shepherds” from the Egyptian hinterland into
their capital, Avaris, and laid siege to them. The ultimately unsuccessful siege was
abandoned in favour of a negotiated withdrawal of the foreigners to the Levant. Josephus
concludes Manetho’s narrative as follows:23
“They [= the Egyptians] came to a composition with them [= the Hyksos], that they should
leave Egypt, and go, without any harm to be done to them, wherever they would; and that,
after this composition was made, they went away with their whole families and effects, not
fewer in number than two hundred and forty thousand, and took their journey from Egypt,
through the wilderness, for Syria; but that as they were in fear of the Assyrians, who had then
the dominion over Asia, they built a city in that country which is now called Judea, and that
large enough to contain this great number of men, and called it Jerusalem.” Now Manetho, in
another book of his, says “That this nation, thus called shepherds, were also called captives,
in their sacred books.” And this account of his is the truth; for feeding of sheep was the
employment of our forefathers in the most ancient ages; and as they led such a wandering life
in feeding sheep, they were called shepherds. Nor was it without reason that they were called
captives by the Egyptians, since one of our ancestors, Joseph, told the king of Egypt that he
was a captive, and afterward sent for his brothers into Egypt by the king’s permission.
This account identifies the biblical Exodus of the (proto)Israelites with the expulsion of the
Hyksos from Egypt. In reality, the latter is likely to have predated the former,24 and the
biblical account may to some extent incorporate folk-memories of the Hyksos’
banishment.25 One point of overlap lies in the biblical assertions that the Israelites built the
city of Raamses/Rameses (Exodus 1:11) and commenced the Exodus from there (Numbers
33:3-5); a geographic link with the Hyksos becomes apparent in Jacobus van Dijk’s

3
statement that “Rameses II [...] expanded the city of Avaris and made it his great Delta
residence called Piramesse (‘house of Rameses’), the Raamses of biblical tradition.”26
Although in part ascribed to Manetho, the identification of the Hyksos’ expulsion with the
Exodus is most likely a later Jewish interpolation27 – one well suited Josephus’s agenda.28

That the Egyptians considered at least some HqA.w xAs.wt – the Egyptian phrase that
underpins the Greek word Hyksos – to be the chieftains of herdsmen is suggested by a
scene in the Middle Kingdom tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan. There, clad in
Joseph-grade coats of many colours (Genesis 37:3)29 and conducted by a HqA xAs.t named
ib-SA (Abisha, an Israelite name found in 1 Chronicles 2:16),30 a group of thirty-seven
Asiatics (aAm.w, Aamu)31 arrive before the nomarch, accompanied by many animals (Fig.
1).32 The non-pack animals are wild ungulates (specifically, ibex and gazelle), so they are
perhaps symbolic of the delegation’s desert homeland rather than representative of their
flocks; nevertheless, the nomads tend to them in the manner of herd animals.33 The gazelle
may be an emblem of “Gazelle-land,” which Hans Goedicke identifies as “denoting part of
the Wadi Tumilat and the north-eastern Delta fringe as the area of nomads,”34 but the
inscription says the nomads originate from a locale called Sw(.t), which is thought to be in
northern Sinai.35

We have already noted the interchangeability of the words xAs.wt and SAs.w (Shasu), with
the latter probably accounting for the first word of “Shepherd Kings.” William Murnane
observes that, at the start of Egypt’s 19th Dynasty, “Problems with Shasu marauders had
been perennial in southern Palestine” and that in this case “The terrain that the Shasu had
rendered impassable would be the hilly country bordering the main highway between
Egypt and Asia, lying south of this road [...] and following the coastal plain northeast into
Palestine.”36 As rebels of the Levantine hill-country, the Shasu were behaving in a manner
consistent with that expected of the (proto)Israelite population in Canaan/Palestine, and
such attributes – together with the previously-noted association of some Shasu with
Yahweh – provide good reasons for believing that the Israelites may have been
sedentarised Shasu.37

No doubt the identification of the (proto)Israelites as Hyksos “shepherds” by ancient

Jewish redactors (3rd century BCE – 1st century CE) was aided by Genesis 46:31-32, the
passage in which Joseph said to his family: “I will go up and tell Pharaoh, and will say to
him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come
to me. The men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of livestock; and they have
brought their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have.’”38

In the last block quotation from Josephus, we may note that, once again, this author
(anachronistically) mentions the threat posed by the Assyrians – a foreign power that will
form the focus of Section 4 in this paper.

3. Lepers and shepherds: Amarna and Israel

Later in Against Apion, Josephus again cites Manetho to narrate a postscript in which the
“shepherds” (Section 2) return to Egypt 518 years after their expulsion.39 By this stage,
Avaris had become a refuge for 80,000 lepers and other “unclean people” from Egypt.40

4
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Fig. 1. Wall-scene from the tomb of Khnumhotep II (Tomb 3) at Beni Hasan. The delegation, which
occupies part of a single register on the left-hand wall, has here been split into two overlapping panels to better
fill the page; the shared portion of each image is indicated by a blue line above each panel marked “overlap.”
The first (i.e., right-most) figure in the upper panel is the Scribe of the Royal Document, Neferhotep; he extends
in his right hand a document (small rectangle, truncated at right of photograph) while he introduces the group
to Khnumhotep (at far right, not shown).41 The text on the document reads:42 “Year 6 under the Majesty of the
Horus ‘Leader of the Two Lands,’ the king of Upper and Lower Egypt Kha-kheper-re [= Senwosret II, Dynasty
12]: List of the Aamu [= Asiatics], whom the son of the mayor Khnumhotep brings about the black eye-paint:
Aamu of Shu, their number 37.” Between the shoulder of the second Egyptian (“the Overseer of Hunters,
Khety”) and the head of the first Asiatic appears the caption HqA xAs.t, “Ruler of Foreign Lands” and – between
their pairs of legs, in front of the ruler’s ibex – his name, ib-SA (Abisha). The second long inscription, which is
written in large hieroglyphs above the Aamu of the figure’s upper panel, is readable from the photograph as
iyi.t Hr ini.t msdm.t ini.n=f aAm 37: “An arrival regarding the bringing of black eye-paint, he [=Abisha] having
brought 37 Aamu.”43 Overall, the wall scene is very dirty; the unusually clear and bright appearance of the
Asiatic behind Abisha is the result of an experimental cleaning regime conducted in the past but not extended
beyond this trial figure. Author’s photographs, Feb 2020.

This population decided to revolt against the Egyptian king and, to bolster their strength,
the rebels invited the shepherds to return to their former stronghold of Avaris. As a result,
an army of 20,000 shepherds returned to this city from the Levant.44 Josephus reports
Manetho as saying:45
Meanwhile, the army that had come back to Egypt ... and joined with the “unclean”
Egyptians treated the people so impiously that their previous occupation as “Shepherds”
seemed like a golden age to those who saw their current sacrileges. They not only burned
cities and villages, plundered the sanctuaries, and befouled the images of the gods, but they
also kept the kitchens going to cook the sacred animals that the people revered. They forced
priests and prophets to slay and butcher the animals, and they threw the men out naked. It is
said that the man who gave them their constitution and laws was a priest of the people of
Heliopolis [...]
The stated chronology – 518 years after the expulsion of the Hyksos – places the return of
the shepherds at the beginning of the 21st Dynasty, i.e. at the start of the Third Intermediate
Period. This was indeed the start of a time of instability and fragmentation within Egypt,
during which non-Egyptians – specifically, Libyans and Nubians/Kushites – came to power
in the 23rd to 25th Dynasties.46 However, the Egyptian kings named in the narrative belong
to the New Kingdom. The pharaoh against whom the “unclean people” rebel is called
Amenophis, which situates the crisis in the 18th Dynasty,47 while “his son Sethos, who was
also named Ramesses” is clearly a conflation of the first three kings of the 19th Dynasty.48

The historical crisis in the 18th Dynasty, which rocked Egyptian society to its foundations,
was of course the religious upheaval implemented by Amenhotep IV – better known as
Akhenaten – in which the traditional pantheon of Egyptian gods was suppressed in favour
of sole worship of the Aten, a deity whose manifestation was the sun-disk. The religious
perversions of the “unclean Egyptians” and the identification of their leader as a priest of
Heliopolis – the “city of the sun” – provide a good fit for the Atenist revolution and its sun-
struck protagonist, Akhenaten.49 Moreover, the thirteen-year “reign of the lepers”

6
approximates the twelve-year duration of the rule of this king from his purpose-built
capital, Akhetaten.50 Manetho’s king Amenophis is clearly an amalgam who embodies the
pre-Amarna era of Amenhotep I-III, against whose inherited traditions the heretic pharaoh
rebelled. None of Akhenaten’s revolution involved foreign intervention, but it is obvious
that his forced relocation of Egypt’s capital from Thebes to Akhetaten – a completely new
city, built at forced pace in the desolate plain of Amarna – has become confounded with
memories of that other remote and unwelcome capital, the Hyksos stronghold of Avaris. It
is for this reason that the “shepherds” were brought back to Egypt by Manetho and/or
Josephus. It would seem that whenever Egypt is in peril, subversive shepherds are sure to
be involved.51

Ultimately, Manetho’s king Amenophis and his son Ramesses return with their armies
from their thirteen-year exile in Ethiopia (by which is meant Nubia and other territory
south of Egypt),52 whereupon they successfully purge Egypt of the “unclean ones” and
their shepherd reinforcements, pursuing any survivors “as far as the borders of Syria.”53
Subsequent to the restoration of traditional religion in Egypt, the historical Ramesses II did
of course campaign into Nubia and the Levant;54 his expansionism established a “golden
era” of Egyptian power and prosperity akin to the country’s former glory under Amenhotep
III.

Egypt’s religious convulsion in the 18th Dynasty had impacts far beyond its time and place.
Akhenaten’s exclusive worship of the Aten has prompted some modern scholars to identify
him as the first monotheist,55 an honour traditionally enjoyed by Moses.56 Jan Assmann’s
groundbreaking book, Moses the Egyptian, connects the two figures, tracing the origins of
Moses’s monotheism back to Akhenaten.57 However, as we shall soon see, Assmann is far
from the first person to make such an identification. It is well known that Akhenaten is the
new name that Amenhotep IV chose for himself when he disavowed Amun, the king of the
traditional gods honoured in his original theophoric name; his new theophoric name
reflected his new-found devotion to the Aten. Josephus – claiming the authority of
Manetho – tells us that the heretical priest from Heliopolis, in whom we have recognised
the figure of Akhenaten, did precisely the same thing: “When he changed his allegiance, he
changed his name.” What is startling is the new name that we are told he chose for himself.
Originally called Osarseph, in honour of the traditional god Osiris, “he changed his name
and was called Moses.”58

Ian Rutherford has pointed out that some geographical details of the Exodus under the
biblical Moses, which (as we noted in Section 2) may recapitulate the expulsion of the
Hyksos, show intriguing overlaps with surviving narratives of the “lepers and shepherds.”59
For example, Josephus reports another tradition about the “unclean ones,” this time on the
authority of Chaeremon, in which – after their expulsion by Amenophis – they linked up
with another group of exiles at Pelusium.60 Baal Zephon, opposite which the escaping
(proto)Israelites were specifically instructed to camp (Exodus 14:1 & 9), was a major
sanctuary at Pelusium61 – moreover, one devoted to a Canaanite storm-god worshipped
locally as Seth of Avaris, and thus linked with the Hyksos.62 Mention of Pelusium, as well
as the fact that this second group of exiles had been denied permission by Amenophis to
cross Egypt’s border, suggests that they could have elements in common with the

7
(proto)Israelites of the Exodus.63 In addition, the Sea of Reeds (Heb. yam suf; Exodus
13.18), which provides such a memorable part of the (proto)Israelites’ journey toward Sinai
(Exodus14-15), is most likely located within the marshlands of the Eastern Delta,64 the
territory of the troublesome shepherds. Indeed, the Hebrew word suf (“reeds”) is thought to
be a loanword from Egyptian; yam suf is probably cognate with the Egyptian toponym pA
Twf, “the Papyrus Thicket,”65 which we will meet again in Section 4. The Onomasticon of
Amenope lists pA-Twf a toponym at the eastern edge of the Delta.66

4. Marauding shepherds: The Aamu and the Assyrians

The next time that troublesome shepherds from the north-east make an appearance
Egyptian (pseudo)history occurs in the Inaros-Petubastis cycle of stories, which are thought
to date to early Ptolemaic times.67 In the words of Franziska Naether,68 who draws upon the
groundwork of Joachim Quack:69
We turn to another region, the Eastern Delta, which was home to a group constantly opposing
the crown, especially in the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1069-664 BCE). Though dwelling
in Egypt, the inimical shepherds living there are one of the groups challenging the Pharaoh in
the narrative cycle of the Inaros-Petubastis-Stories. They are called “herdsmen” (aAm.w) and
appear especially in the stories The Fight for the Prebend of Amun and The Fight for the
Armor of Inaros. [...] One can assume that the territory of the rebellious shepherds in the
Eastern Delta was not far away from the Sinai and their presumed wandering communities
must have led to this designation – even though [in the stories] they perform Egyptian rites
and worship Amun.70
Petubastis has been identified with the historical Petubastis II, a Delta king of the 23rd
Dynasty based in Bubastis or Tanis.71 Date estimates for his reign vary widely: some assign
Petubastis’s rule to ca. 765-730, making him a contemporary of Takelot III and his
successors in Upper Egypt at the end of the 22nd Dynasty.72 Others identify Petubastis as
the king of Tanis ca. 680-665 BCE,73 and thus coincident with the two late-25th Dynasty
rulers of Upper Egypt, the Kushite kings Shebitqo and Taharqo.74 The latter assignation
also places Petubastis as a king in the Delta at the time of the Assyrian invasions of Egypt.
Even if the historical king who informs the Petubastis of the Inaros-Petubastis story cycle
predates the arrival of the Assyrians, other key characters in the narrative – including
Inaros – “are indeed historical characters of the 7th century.”75

The storyline of The Fight for the Prebend of Amun is complex. It opens (1) with king
Petubastis, who has travelled to Thebes with his army, claiming the prebend of Amun – a
benefice or salary paid to the High Priest of Amun – for his son, Anchhor. But, as Thomas
Schneider explains, this decision is contested:76
(2) The next day, a contender for the benefice of Amun appears on the stage: a young Horus
priest from Buto [...] claims that it is he who is actually entitled to the benefice of Amun.
[...] He is accompanied by 13 shepherds [...] To the dismay of Petubastis, Amun confirms
the righteousness of the young priest’s claim. [... T]he Horus priest intends to take the barge
[= sacred barque] of Amun as a security. Anchhor (Chayris), supported by the general Teos,
and the Horus priest become enraged and prepare to fight.
(3) Petubastis’ son Anchhor (Chayris) and his army from four nomes is opposed to the Horus
priest and the thirteen shepherds. In the first two duels, the Horus priest defeats Anchhor

8
 (Chayris),77 and one of the shepherds [defeats] Anchhor’s general Wertepiamonnut. They
are bound in fetters and imprisoned below deck on the barge of Amun. The priest and his
supporters celebrate their victory [on board with a festival]. [...]
(4) [...] Minnebmaat, prince of Elephantine and overseer of Upper Egypt, arrives to support
Petubastis. He is able to reach, in four consecutive duels with four of the shepherds, draws.
Then Petechonsis and Pemau arrive from the north and engage in more duels with the
remaining shepherds. Although the text becomes very fragmentary towards the end of the
story, it may be inferred that each of them fought another four times (1 + 4 + 4 + 4 [=13,
one duel for each shepherd]).
(5) The end of the story and solution to the conflict is not preserved. In accordance with the
oracles conveyed throughout the text, it seems likely that a solution respecting the interests
of all sides was reached.78
The combative herdsmen supporting the priest from Buto are described as coming from the
swamps and marshland,79 which clearly indicates an origin in the Delta, and most probably
its eastern part, for “the Delta, and particularly the Eastern Delta, was a marshy land in
antiquity.”80 For example, the shepherd-warriors’ homeland is so understood by Naether in
the first block quotation in this section.

If the nature of the ending suggested by Schneider – i.e., part (5) in the block quotation – is
indeed correct, then the resolution of the Petubastis tale mirrors that of the negotiated
solution to the “Hyksos problem,” as reported by Manetho/Josephus; in both cases, the
troublesome “shepherds” were repulsed under a negotiated settlement rather than
vanquished in open combat. In reality, of course, the Hyksos were defeated militarily by
the Theban kings Sequenenre, Kamose and Ahmose I (17-18th Dynasties) and the Asiatics
were either expelled from Egypt or – if they had useful skills – resettled within it.81 It is
worth noting that Joachim Quack believes that the tradition of Osarseph and his shepherd
army from the Levant, as recorded in Greek-language texts about Egypt (Section 3), helped
to shape the Egyptian story of the Horus priest from Buto and his shepherd-warriors from
the Delta.82

The interpretation of aAm.w given by Naether in the first quotation of this section is correct;
in Demotic – the language of the stories – this word means “herdsmen” or “shepherds.”83
However, the classical meaning of aAm.w in Middle Egyptian – which we already
encountered in Section 2 – is “Asiatics,”84 a sense which persisted into Demotic times.85
The intercompatibility of the terms aAm(.w) and HqA(.w) xAs(.w)t – the latter being the
Egyptian phrase underpinning the word Hyksos – has already been illustrated by Fig. 1.86
The homeland of the shepherds in The Fight for the Prebend of Amun is called pr Dwf,
beneath which probably lies the Egyptian toponym pA-Twf – a locale at the eastern edge of
the Delta named “the Papyrus Thicket” that we met at the end of Section 3.87 Its location at
the north-eastern boundary of Egypt would certainly accord with these aAm.w n(.w) pr Dwf
being Asiatics.

If the warriors in The Fight for the Prebend of Amun were indeed Asiatics rather than
shepherds,88 then there are good reasons to identify them with the Assyrians, who – first
under Esarhaddon, and then under Ashurbanipal – invaded Egypt via the Eastern Delta
between 674 and 667 BCE.89 As we have seen, Petubastis may well have been a king at
Tanis in the Eastern Delta at the time of the Assyrian invasions. Several tales from the

9
Inaros-Petubastis cycle centre upon Esarhaddon or other Assyrian figures,90 and The Fight
for the Armour of Inaros – one of the stories cited in the Naether quotation as involving the
shepherds91 – links Petubastis directly to Esarhaddon’s unsuccessful campaign of 674 BCE
in the following terms:92
Pemu said: Woe and misery! By Re-Harakhte, the Chief of the Gods, the Great God
[--- --- pharaoh] Petubastis on the ... (?)
when the chief of Ashur Esarhaddon son of S[ennacherib ---
---] to take Egypt from pharaoh Petubastis,
I jumped in [--- / ---],
I made very much bloodbath and destruction.
I caused him to return to the east [---]
Overall, Jacqueline Jay concludes that “The chaotic period immediately following the
Assyrian domination provides a rough background for a number of tales [...] including
Prebend and Armour.”93

Thomas Schneider analyses the attributes of the Asiatic shepherd-warriors – thirteen

armoured Aamu sporting horned helmets, shields and sickle-shaped swords – and
concludes that they represent a divinised form of the Assyrian army.94 This idea is
corroborated by the fact that the Egyptians speak of them exactly as one would speak of a
foreign army that threatened to invade the kingdom.95 More specifically, Schneider
suggests that the details of these warriors – their number, dress and weapons – may well
derive from genuine Egyptian encounters with battle-standards featuring the Assyrian war-
god Nergal flanked by his twelve divine warriors.96 Based on possible paronomasia,
Schneider also identifies the unnamed priest as Horchebi, grandson of the Kushite king
Shabaqo and son of the High Priest of Amun, whose office he successfully inherited (along
with its prebend) around the time of the Assyrian conquest of Thebes.97 The conquest,
which in the tale is encoded by the inconclusive conflict between the Kushite overseer of
Upper Egypt (aided by pro-Kushite princes from the north) and the invading shepherd-
warriors, did essentially end in a negotiated resolution, as per point (5) above – one that
quickly proved beneficial to Egypt.98

5. The rebel shepherds (boukoloi) of Greek novels

The idea that the Aamu warrior-shepherds discussed in the last section might have served
as an inspiration for the warlike βουκόλοι (boukoloi, “herdsmen”) of the Nile Delta that
appear in Greek novels of the 2nd-3rd centuries CE dates back at least to Gaston Maspero in
the late 1800s.99 Ian Rutherford observes that “On the level of semantics, there is no doubt
that the Egyptian word ‘aAm’ [...] would have been taken as the precise equivalent to the
Greek βουκόλος.”100 The boukoloi feature prominently in fictional stories by three writers:
Aithiopica, by Heliodorus of Emesa, Cleitophon and Lucippe, by Achilles Tatius, and
Ephesiaca, by Xenophon of Ephesus.

In Aithiopica, the leader of the boukoloi – Thyamis – is the son of a Memphite priest called
Kalasiris;101 Thyamis’s younger brother, Petosiris, has dispossessed him of the priesthood,
such that the two end up fighting a duel at Memphis.102 The situation is resolved by the

10
unexpected arrival of Kalasiris.103 The storyline of this sub-plot seems to echo that of The
Fight for the Prebend of Amun: in both cases, the herdsmen are led by the son of a priest
who has unfairly been dispossessed of his father’s office; the herdsmen take the side of the
plaintiff against the established authority of the king or governor; the opposing sides
engage in duels over the dispute; and the conflict is ultimately resolved in a non-violent
manner.104 Of the boukoloi, we are told that they eat raw fish (to the Greek mind, a
hallmark of barbarity) and that:105
The Herdsmen cultivate an alarming appearance, particularly as regards their hair, which
they pull forwards to meet their eyebrows, and toss violently as it falls over their shoulders,
for they are well aware that long hair makes lovers seem more alluring, but robbers more
alarming.

In Cleitophon and Lucippe, the protagonists sail from Pelusium toward Alexandria, but at
one point their boat is menaced from the shore by a group of boukoloi:106
All at once, the shore was full of wild frightening men, all large and black (not deep black
like Indians, but black as, say, a half-Ethiopian might be), bareheaded, heavyset but quick
on the feet. They all shouted in a foreign language ...
The homeland of these brigands is described thus:107
In the region inhabited by the robbers, the Nile when it retires [after the annual inundation]
leaves many ponds, shallow and muddy, on which the robbers sail, in light boats containing
one person: any other kind would run aground at once. When water fails, these are taken on
the sailor’s back and carried to a deeper channel. Among the swamps, the uninhabited
islands are covered with papyrus growing close, behind which, as behind a rampart, the
pirates hold their councils and plan their ambushes. In the inhabited islands are rude huts,
like a city walled in by the marsh. The robbers had retired to the island of Nicochis, for this
place, though connected with the land by a causeway, was otherwise wholly surrounded by
the lagoons.
Both of the novels’ protagonists end up being captured by the boukoloi, and at one point
Lucippe is in danger of being sacrificed, for: “‘We have a tradition’, says the leader of the
robbers, ‘that sacrifices, especially human sacrifices, must be performed by newly initiated
bandits.’”108 The ritual typically includes cannibalism, for we are told of a previous
instance where they were obliged to “offer up a maiden, taste her liver, put her body in a
coffin, and retire so that the enemy might take the site of the sacrifice.”109

In Ephesiaca, herdsmen capture the hero – Habrocomes – when he makes landfall in the
Eastern Delta. These bandits, who are not called boukoloi but ποιμένες (poimenes,
“shepherds”) convey Habrocomes to Pelusium, where he is sold into slavery.110

Taken as a whole, we can see telltale indications of continuity between these stories and
earlier accounts of shepherd-warriors from the Delta (Sections 2-4). The association with
piracy, which in the novels arises naturally from the waterlogged maze presented by the
boukoloi’s homeland and sees them capture both Cleitophon and Lucippe,111 is a signature
activity even in far less conducive environments; for example, in The Fight for the Prebend
of Amun, the warrior-shepherds seize the sacred barque of Amun and imprison their

11
captives below its deck.112 However, we should also recognise that, to some extent, the
Greek stories about bandit boukoloi reflect the actual situation in the Delta in Ptolemaic
times, ca. 200 BCE. As Günther Hölbl relates:113
A papyrus dating to the end of the third century [BCE ...] describes how Egyptian bandits
attacked a military post and a temple precinct; the attackers came from an area outside the
village community. This is obviously an example of the well-known phenomenon of
anachoresis in which individuals would seek refuge in the deserts and the Delta marshes as
a result of the intensive exploitation of the Egyptian peasantry. Such indigents gathered
together and plundered wherever there was something to be had; it was of no concern to
them whether the owners were Greeks, Egyptians or even Egyptian priests. From the Rosetta
Stone we also know that, at the end of [Ptolemy IV] Philopator’s reign [= 204 BCE], civil
war raged in the Delta. In light of the fact that the “enemies” even attacked sanctuaries, this
war should be viewed as a rebellion of the lower classes inspired by social injustice. This
uprising in Lower Egypt dating to the last years of Philopator’s reign represented a growing
movement which would be completely quashed only in 185 [BCE].
Despite the accuracy of this quotation, native resistance to Greek rule in Ptolemaic Egypt
was concentrated not in the Delta but in Upper Egypt, especially around Thebes. For
example, Horwennefer and Anhkwennefer led a rebellion in which parts of Upper Egypt
seceded from Ptolemaic control between 206-186 BCE.114 Egyptian nationalists vilified
their Greek overlords as successors to the Hyksos (of some 1500 years earlier!) by referring
to them as “Sethians” or “Typhonians.”115 This slur occurs repeatedly in the anti-Greek
Potter’s Oracle (Demotic, 2nd century BCE), which bewails: “For in the time of the
Typhonians they [= Egyptians] will say: ‘Wretched Egypt, you are wronged by terrible
iniquities wrought against you.’”116 Although nationalist polemics equated the Greeks with
the Hyksos, they do not seem to have portrayed them as royal or reprobate shepherds.

Some of the Greek novels’ supposedly fictional accounts of harassment by boukoloi even
contain details that can be verified as authentic. For example, the island of Nikokhis and its
lawless denizens from Cleitophon and Lucippe has a counterpart in contemporaneous
historical records – an administrative papyrus of the late 2nd century CE from Thmouis in
the Eastern Delta (just south of Mendes, and somewhat west of Avaris) complains of
attacks from the “unholy inhabitants of Nikokis,” and records that “most of the inhabitants
of the village of Kerkenouphis had been killed by the ‘impious men of Neikokis’, who
came to the village and burnt it.”117 At a later date, the record-keeper adds that “some
fishermen had been killed by the ‘impious men of Nikokhis’.”118 In another cross-over of
fact with fiction, the historian Cassius Dio tells of a group of boukoloi who caused a civil
disturbance in 171 CE under a priest called Isidorus:119
The so-called Boukoloi were disturbed in Egypt and made the rest of Egypt revolt under the
priest Isidorus. First, they deceived the Roman centurion, wearing female clothing as if they
were the wives of the Boukoloi, and about to give them gold on behalf of their husbands.
When he approached them, they killed him, and his companion they sacrificed and swore
an oath over his entrails, and ate them. Isidorus was the best of his generation in bravery.
Then in pitched battle defeating the Romans in Egypt, they would have taken Alexandria
itself, had not Cassius sent from Syria conducted a campaign in such a way as to destroy
their common purpose and separate them from each other.

12
In this historical account we see a group of herdsmen being led by a priest and engaging in
armed conflict with the authorities, as in The Fight for the Prebend of Amun and in
Aithiopica; the group has communal rituals, as in The Fight for the Prebend of Amun
(when, for example, the shepherd-warrior Aamu hold a festival on the captured barque of
Amun to celebrate their victory),120 and these rituals may extend to human sacrifice with
cannibalism,121 as in Cleitophon and Lucippe. In such cases, it is difficult to determine
whether art is imitating life or life is imitating art. Rutherford quite reasonably suggests
that, as Egyptian nationalists operating in a time of unrest, “the Boukoloi whom Avidius
Cassius subdued 172 CE are likely to have called themselves aAm.w and to have set
themselves in the tradition of the heroes of the Inaros-Petubastis cycle.”122

The location of the boukoloi homeland is a subject of debate. In Achilles Tatius’s

Cleitophon and Lucippe it is (as we saw above) near Nikokhis in the Eastern Delta. The
Ephesiaca also locates its bandit-shepherds in the Eastern Delta. (In both accounts, we
might note that Pelusium provides a point of intersection with the Hyksos/Israelite
trajectories of Section 3.)123 Herodotus refers to a “Bucolic” branch of the Nile,124 and this
has traditionally been identified with the modern Damietta branch in the Eastern Delta.125
More speculatively, the class of Egyptian warriors that Herodotus calls έρμοτύβιες
(hermotubies) might take their name from a Hellenised contraction of aAm.w n(.w) pr
Dwf,126 the term that designated the warrior-shepherds in The Fight for the Prebend of
Amun (Section 4);127 numbering 160,000 in the 26th Dynasty, the hermotubies were
reportedly drawn from six nomes of the central and western Delta.128 Other accounts, too,
favour the west. In Heliodorus’s Aithiopica, a lake and its fringing marshland – collectively
designated Boukolia – “is the home of the entire bandit community of Egypt, some of them
building huts on what little land there is above water, others living on boats that serve them
as both transport and dwelling.”129 As the novel’s plot seems to place this locale near
Chemmis, it has been identified with an actual region of the Western Delta – near
Alexandria and Lake Mareotis – which is named Boukolia. Eratosthenes tells of a time,
prior to the founding of Alexandria, when its “harbour at Pharos [...] was not of free access,
but watched and guarded by herdsmen, who were robbers, and [who] attacked those who
attempted to sail into it.”130 Although these herdsmen were probably not outlaws opposed
to central authority so much as natives who sought to repel foreign invaders,131 their
memory may, over time, have become assimilated into that of the boukoloi. There is also
indirect support for a Western Delta location in the texts discussed in Section 4, insofar as
the young Horus priest in The Fight for the Prebend of Amun comes from Buto. Overall,
we may conclude with Ian Rutherford that the boukoloi were probably not confined to just
one half of the Delta, but could be encountered in any of its marshlands.

If we accept that the Egyptian boukoloi and their antecedents always enjoyed a pan-Delta
distribution, as opposed to their range being expanded only in the Hellenistic imagination,
then the “savage shepherd” trope is opened up to other influences coming to Egypt from
the west. It is to one such candidate that we now turn.

6. Other influences: The Herdsman’s Tale

The boukoloi are probably not solely the heirs of the Hyksos, Aamu, Assyrians, and so on.
To some extent, these wild, frightening, black, hairy male marsh-dwellers – who are eaters

13
of raw flesh and lovers of human sacrifice – may also be gender-inverted transformations
of the hairy goddess from The Herdsman’s Tale (Dynasty 12), whose abnormal appearance
strikes terror into the eponymous herdsman in his marshland setting.132 As the preserved
text breaks off, she is approaching the herdsman as a naked woman whose hair is
disordered,133 a nexus reminiscent of the crazy coiffure of Heliodorus’s boukoloi, whose
long hair made them more alarming opponents but more alluring lovers.

Thomas Schneider interprets the ambiguous goddess as a Sakhmet-like deity of the Libyan
desert who also frequents marshland thickets and who, in this case, is making an
appearance in the Western Delta.134 A folk-memory of her may live on in a widespread
Libyco-Berber myth that tells of “a kind of ogress, a man- and animal eating demon. She is
a big cat or lioness, but [… w]hen represented as an old and malicious woman, she still
retains her animal characteristics – her body is covered with a fur, she has a mane, her face
is black, she has long teeth or tusks, and hands with claws. […] She is of startling wildness,
eats human flesh and the animals of farmers and herdsmen.”135 If outlaw-shepherd
boukoloi are in part a transformation of this unruly force, the result is not only inverted in
gender (although we might remember Cassius Dio’s cannibal boukoloi, who disguised
themselves as women and then ate their ambushed victim’s entrails) but also in function,
for in his new Greek setting the Tale’s herdsman has morphed from prey into predator.

7. Unique or paradigmatic? The Marsh Arabs of Iraq

It is interesting to note that Mesopotamia had an approximate counterpart to Egypt’s

troublesome marshlanders: the tribal occupants of the swamps in the south of Sumer, where
the Tigris and Euphrates flowed into the Persian Gulf. Accordingly, the Assyrians (Section
4) of the expanding empire in Mesopotamia, who had a formidable army but no navy, had
been obliged to engage Phoenician ships and sailors “to subdue Chaldaean rebels in the
marshes near the Persian Gulf.”136 Nevertheless, the Chaldaeans intermittently came to rule
Babylonia. Chaldaean kings were often fiercely anti-Assyrian,137as in the case of Marduk-
apla-iddina II (721-710 BCE)138 – the biblical Merodach-Baladan (2 Kings 20:12; Isaiah
39:1) – who was driven back into the marshes by the Assyrian king, Sennacherib.139
Chaldaean revenge was was eventually exacted. In 626 BCE, Nabopolassar proclaimed
himself the founder of a new Chaldaean dynasty; “by 616, Nabopolassar had consolidated
his powers over Babylonia to such an extent that he was able to invade Assyria,” whose
capital – Nineveh – he sacked in 612.140 Babylonia went on to replace Assyria as the
regional superpower.141

As the Assyrian homeland occupied the northern part of Mesopotamia, whereas Babylonia
comprised the southern part, opposition to Assyrian rule from the marshlands of the far
south would probably be better viewed as nationalist resistance to an occupying power
rather than rebellion against central authority. This would align the Chaldaean marsh-
dwellers more closely with Eratosthenes’ pre-Alexandrian cowherds (Section 7) than with
the other warrior-shepherd manifestations considered in this paper, since both groups could
be viewed as nationalist natives who sought to repel foreign invaders. Either way, the
“intransigent marshlander” trope has persisted in Mesopotamia until modern times. Over
the millennia, the swamps of Sumer evolved into the marshlands of southern Iraq and
became the homeland of the Arab al-ahwār (“Arabs of the marshland”), often referred to
pejoratively as maʿdān (“plain-dwellers”) or shroog (“those from the East”) (Fig. 2).142

14
 (a)

(b)

Fig. 2. Marsh Arabs in the wetlands of southern Iraq. (a) A traditional village of reed houses, ca. 1978.
Photo by Nik Wheeler/Corbis via Getty Images, reproduced here under licence (order 2066937298). (b) Marsh
Arabs poling a traditional mashoof in 2003. Photo by Hassan Janali; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital
Visual Library, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.143

15
They are herdsmen insofar as water-buffalo provide their main source of subsistence.144
These marshes were long considered a source of – and refuge for – opponents of Saddam
Hussein,145 whose Ba’athist regime exacted retribution for a failed uprising in 1991 by
diverting the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates away from the wetlands, drying them out
and displacing most of their occupants.146 The Marsh Arabs’ traditional habitation (Fig. 2a)
and transport (Fig. 2b) resemble those attributed by Achilles Tatius to the boukoloi of the
Eastern Nile Delta and by Heliodorus to Boukolia (Section 5). In the two panels of Fig. 2
we can almost see the boukoloi returned to life, “some of them building huts on what little
land there is above water, others living on boats that serve them as both transport and
dwelling.”147

8. Conclusion

In the Ancient Near East, a primary duty of the righteous king was to “be the shepherd of
his people.”148 In Egypt, the first hieroglyph of the word HqA (“rule,” “ruler”) is a
shepherd’s crook149 and the Egyptian king carried a crook and flail as insignia of his
rulership;150 yet, despite this, invocations of the shepherd as a metaphor for Egyptian
kingship are uncommon in textual references.151 However, it is not entirely absent; for
example, in the Teaching for King Merikare – which seems to be set in the First
Intermediate Period – the king is urged to “Shepherd the people, the cattle of God, For it is
for their sake that He created heaven and earth.”152 Indeed, Jan Assmann claims that from
this period until the New Kingdom “the role of social reformer and ‘good shepherd’ was a
part of the official image of the king.”153

The “good shepherd,” or legitimate king, stands in stark contrast to the “bad shepherds”
examined in the current paper, which feature in (pseudo)historical accounts from the Late
and Greco-Roman Periods. Behind some of these unworthy kings (Section 2) and
conquerors (Section 4) we may discern the historical reality of the Hyksos and the
Assyrians; as foreign migrants or invaders from Asia, respectively, neither were regarded
as legitimate overlords of Egypt. For completely different etymological reasons, both found
themselves refracted in later literature as “shepherds.” In Greek, the Hyksos (HqA.w xAs.wt,
“Rulers of Foreign Lands”) morphed into enigmatic “Shepherd Kings,” perhaps via an
overzealous translation of the cognate term HqA.w SAs.w, “Bedouin chieftains.” For their
part, the Assyrians were identified in literary tales as aAm.w (Aamu), a classical Egyptian
word for “Asiatics” that – in the Demotic used to record the stories – had changed in
meaning to denote “herdsmen.”

The Hyksos – referred to by Hatshepsut as “the abomination of the gods”154 – represented

the first non-native overlords of Egypt, while the arrival of the Assyrians constituted the
first organised attempt by a distant superpower to invade Egypt. In literature relating to
both of these national traumas, the foreign agents end up recast as shepherds from the
Eastern Delta. Interestingly, the first group of troublesome shepherds were resurrected for
an ancillary role in the retelling of a third trauma (Section 3), namely the religious
revolution of the Amarna period. This time, the historical event was purely internal to
Egypt, but its impact was just as shocking as any foreign takeover – perhaps even more so.
It was seemingly unthinkable that shepherds from the Eastern Delta were not somehow
involved.

16
Is it possible that there is something more than coincidence and linguistic accident to the
repeated characterisation of foreign infiltrators or invaders from the north-east as
troublesome shepherds from the Eastern Delta, and the fanciful recruitment of the same
group to explain Egypt’s internal aberrations? Perhaps this typecasting of villains as
shepherds reflects millennia of friction and conflict between the Egyptian farmers of the
Nile valley the nomadic Bedouin of the surrounding deserts, augmented by a bitter memory
of Egypt’s subjection to the pastoralist Hyksos who migrated from the Levant into the
Eastern Delta. Witness how Akhenaten’s henchmen – who were neither foreigners or
nomads – ended up vilified as Hyksos “shepherds;” it would be even easier to recast the
Assyrian army, who really did arrive in the Eastern Delta from the Levant, in a similar
light. And, as already noted in Section 4, some later stories of shepherd armies from the
north-east may have been influenced by the structure of earlier ones. The Greeks of
Ptolemaic Egypt, too, were likened by Egyptian nationalists to the Hyksos, although
seemingly not to shepherds. However, the memory of problem pastoralists from the north
did not disappear, and the motif may even have become augmented by mythological
elements of Lybico-Berber origin. Ultimately, the time-honoured trope of outlaw shepherds
in the Delta migrated from Egyptian (pseudo)historical narratives into Greek novels, where
they appear in the marshlands as pirate-bands of boukoloi (“herdsmen”) or poimenes
(“shepherds”) – groups which, like their antecedents, seem to have straddled the boundary
between fiction and fact. These groups had Mesopotamian counterparts in the swamp-
dwellers of southern Babylonia – a population whose successors have perpetuated the
marshlanders’ reputation for rebellion into modern times.

In ancient Egypt, then, we see a recurring distrust and vilification of pastoralists from the
marshlands in the north-east of the country. In light of this, we should applaud the biblical
Joseph’s insight – and indeed prescience – when he welcomed his newly-arrived family to
Egypt with the warning that “All shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians.”155 Equally
uncanny was his belief that the proper place for foreign shepherds attracted by Egypt’s
bounty was the land of Goshen156 – a locale in the Eastern Delta.157

© Lloyd D. Graham, 2020, excluding third-party quotations and Fig. 2. v02_15.11.20

Cite as: Lloyd D. Graham (2020) “‘Bad Shepherds’ of the Eastern Delta,” online at
https://www.academia.edu/44151544/_Bad_Shepherds_of_the_Eastern_Delta.

Endnotes
All URLs were accessed 22 Sep 2020, unless otherwise noted.

1
Quack (2006), 499.
2
Verbrugghe & Wickersham (1996), 107.
3
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.75-92, in Whiston (1999), 942; Quack (2005), 55-57; Naether (2019), 33-34.
4
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.75-92, in Whiston (1999), 942.
5
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.74, in Whiston (1999), 942.
6
Verbrugghe & Wickersham [(1996), 99 fn. 18] caution that it is not certain that Manetho used the word
Hyksos or gave any interpretation of the term.
7
Bietak (1980); Rutherford 114, fn. 33; Morentz & Popko (2010), 103-104.

17
8
Verbrugghe & Wickersham (1996), 156-157.
9
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.75-78, in Whiston (1999), 942.
10
Schneider (2010), 157-159.
11
Bourriau (2003), 177-179.
12
The first Assyrian invasion attempt, under Esarhaddon, occurred in 674 BCE; Taylor (2003), 353.
13
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.81-82, in Whiston (1999), 942.
14
Erman & Grapow (1971) vol. 4, 412.10.
15
Faulkner (1962), 261.
16
Bryan (2003), 227.
17
Bietak (2015), 19-21
18
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.83, in Whiston (1999), 942.
19
The first part of this sentence is taken from the Loeb translation of Manetho’s Aegyptiaca [Waddell (1940)],
which is also the sense given by Verbrugghe & Wickersham (1996), 157-158. In contrast, the version in
Whiston [(1999), 942] reads “shepherds” instead of “captives,” and thus makes no sense.
20
Faulkner (1962), 163; Bietak (1980).
21
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.84, in Whiston (1999), 942.
22
Actually, just ca. 100 years of Hyksos rule; Bietak (2015), 32; however, the 400-Year Stela from the temple
of Seth in Avaris commemorates four centuries of Canaanite cult influence at Avaris; Bietak (2015), 31-32.
23
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.88-92, in Whiston (1999), 942.
24
Schulz (2010). For example, Bietak (2015) convincingly places the Exodus in the late Ramesside period
(20th Dynasty).
25
Sparks (2007), 593; Levy et al. (2015), xii; Redford (2015).
26
Van Dijk (2003), 292. Piramesse (at modern Qantir) was deliberately founded adjacent to Avaris, the former
Hyksos capital, and – over time – came to engulf it.
27
Droge (1996), 135-136, & 122 esp. fn.14; Bietak (2015), 32.
28
Verbrugghe & Wickersham (1996), 118.
29
This is the traditional translation, consistent with the Septuagint; however, the Hebrew of this Genesis
phrase is uncertain, and may just indicate a long robe with sleeves (NRSV).
30
Goedicke (1984). In the Chronicles genealogy, Abishai is a descendant of Judah, one of the sons of
Jacob/Israel; the capital of the land of Judah in later times was Jerusalem.
31
Faulkner (1962), 38.
32
Rutherford (2000), 113.
33
Rutherford (2000), 113, who credits Prof. Rittner (presumably Robert K. Ritner) with identifying them as
pastoralists with their herd animals.
34
Goedicke (1984), 209.
35
Rutherford (2000), 113 fn. 29; Goedicke (1984), 210.
36
Murnane (1990), 41.
37
Levy et al. (2015), xiii; Faust (2015); Sparks (2007), 592-595 & 605.
38
Biblical quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Edition.
39
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.230, in Whiston (1999), 951.
40
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.233-237, in Whiston (1999), 951.
41
Goedicke (1984), 209.
42
Here I essentially follow the translation of Goedicke (1984), 205, after consulting the transcription of
Newberry (1893), Pl. 38 (digitised by the Heidelberg Historic Literature project, online at
https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/newberry1893bd1/0144).
43
In this reading, the end of the sentence is understood as a present perfect subordinate (circumstantial) clause.
The tempting alternative reading, ... msdm.t ini n=f aAm 37, in which ini is understood as a prospective
relative form to yield “... black eye-paint, which the 37 Aamu will bring to him [= Khnumhotep]” is
precluded because msdm.t is feminine and, as an antecedent, would require ini.t. The same grammatical
issue precludes the understanding of ini as a perfective relative form; accordingly, Goedicke [(1984), 206-
207] understands the final clause to be an independent statement and (like the present paper) takes the
suffix pronoun to refer to Abisha.
44
Josephus, Against Apion, 1.243, in Whiston (1999), 951.
45
Verbrugghe & Wickersham (1996), 162.
46
Taylor (2003).
47
Amenhotep I-IV were kings of the 18th Dynasty.
18
48
In order: Ramesses I, Seti I and Ramesses II.
49
Assmann (2002), 227. For Akhenaten’s moon-struck Mesopotamian counterpart, Nabonidus, and the
afterlife of this Babylonian “heretic king” in Near Eastern legend, see Lewy (1949).
50
Assmann (2002), 227. Construction of Akhetaten was begun in Akhenaten’s year 5 [Van Dijk (2003), 269]
and Akhenaten died in his year 17 [Van Dijk (2003), 272], which yields an interval of 12 years.
51
Straddling existing tropes and anticipating ones yet to come in the present paper, Jan Assmann [(2002), 228]
writes that: “The Amarna trauma was the motive for recasting memories of the Hyksos Period in the form
of a story of religious conflict. […] But the Amarna trauma did not only retrospectively transform the
memory of the Hyksos, it also marked Egyptian views and experience of things foreign, and Asiatic in
particular, in the age to come. Thus the legend of the thirteen-year rule of the lepers can be seen as
collapsing reminiscences of Amarna with memories of the Hyksos, especially of Assyrian conquest,
Persian and Greek rule, and ultimately the encounter with the Jews.”
52
Verbrugghe & Wickersham (1996), 100 fn. 19.
53
Verbrugghe & Wickersham (1996), 163.
54
Van Dijk (2003), 289-290.
55
Hoffmeier (2015).
56
Freud (1955).
57
Assmann (1997).
58
Verbrugghe & Wickersham (1996), 163.
59
Rutherford (2000), 114-115.
60
Rutherford (2000), 114.
61
So Rutherford (2000), 115. Note, however, that Manfred Bietak considers all claimed identifications of this
toponym to be controversial; Bietak (2015), 29 fn. 52.
62
Rutherford (2000), 115; Bietak (2015), 31.
63
Rutherford (2000), 114.
64
Bietak (2015), 27.
65
Bietak (2015), 27.
66
Bietak (2015), 27 fn. 46.
67
It is “The next time” in terms of the stories’ settings within Egyptian chronology. The Inaros-Petubastis tales
are thought to date to early Ptolemaic times; Rutherford (2000), 109, incl. fn. 13. The oldest records of the
two Inaros-Petubastis tales that concern us certainly date to Ptolemaic times [Jay (2016), 128; Schneider
(2015), p.5 of online typescript PDF], so the tales’ composition predates Josephus and possibly even
Manetho. For estimated dates of both the settings and the extant manuscripts of the two Inaros-Petubastis
tales, see Jay (2016), 128. It is quite possible that the extant copies of these Demotic tales of rebel
shepherds from the Delta also draw upon the historical reality of that region ca. 200 BCE, when peasants
driven to desperate measures by Ptolemaic over-taxation formed bandit gangs that launched indiscriminate
attacks on any source of wealth; see ahead to the quotation from Günther Hölbl in Section 5.
68
Naether (2019), 34
69
Quack (2005), 55-57.
70
As, for example, when they say: “'Receive our oath that we make before Amun, the great god, present here
today: no one cause the prophet of Horus of Pi, in Buto, to hear a word that displeases him, without us
watering the ground with his blood ...;” Rutherford (2000), 110, translating from P. Spiegelberg, col. 4.
71
Schulz (2010).
72
Schulz (2010). Depauw [(1997), 88] says that “the historical background of the characters, mostly warriors,
is the Third Intermediate Period [...] The narratives themselves, however, do not refer to actual historical
facts and are timeless.”
73
Schneider (2015), p.6 of online typescript PDF.
74
Schulz (2010). Consistent with this, Jay [(2016), 136] says that “the tale’s portrayal of conflict between the
minor kings and nobles of the Delta certainly fits the scenario at the end of the Third Intermediate Period.”
75
Schneider (2015), p.6 & 8 of online typescript PDF; Quack (2006).
76
Schneider (2015), p.5-6 of online typescript PDF.
77
“The young priest arose against Ankh-Hor, the royal son, as a lion against a wild ass, as a nurse against her
nursling (?); he seized the inside of his armour, he threw him on the ground, he bound him firmly, he
pushed him on the road before him. The thirteen herdsmen rushed after him, and not a person in the world
attacked them, so great was the fear that they imposed.” Rutherford (2000), 110, translating from P.
Spiegelberg, col. 5.
78
In line with this, Rutherford [(2000), 110] suggests that “Ankh-Hor probably secured the Benefice, and the
young priest of Buto departed with his band of thirteen herdsmen.”
19
79
Quack (2005), 55. The association of herdsmen with marshland and swamps is iconic. For example, in the
early 12th-Dynasty Herdsman’s Tale (discussed in Section 6), the preserved portion begins: “Look, I had
descended to (= I was down in) the marsh/swamp, which is close by this low-lying land/pasture” (v. 1-2)
and the text later contains the declaration “There will be no driving me away from this marsh” (v. 19);
Schneider (2007), 311.
80
Lorton (1977), 315. Buto is of course in the Western Delta; on the broadening of the shepherds’ homeland to
include the entire Delta, see ahead to Section 5.
81
Bourriau (2003), 197-204; Bietak (2010), 170-171.
82
Quack (2005), 57. Quack [(2005), 87] also sees parallels between the shepherd assistants of the Horus priest
and the marshland shepherds who assisted the young Horus in the Delta in mythological times, a
connection reiterated by Rutherford (2000), 111, incl. fn. 21. Schneider [(2015), p.9 of online typescript
PDF] reviews the textual layers identified by Quack and other scholars.
83
Schneider (2015), p.7-8 of online typescript PDF; Rutherford (2000), 114.
84
Faulkner (1962), 38.
85
Schneider (2015), p.7-8 of online typescript PDF. Rutherford [(2000), 114] points out that the two senses
could have a common root, if Asiatics were mainly perceived as working as herdsmen.
86
Rutherford (2000), 115.
87
Rutherford (2000), 111.
88
As earlier identified by, for example, Depauw (1997), 88.
89
Taylor (2003), 353.
90
E.g. Esarhaddon’s Letter to Inaros; The Duel between Inaros and an Assyrian Sorceress; A Visit to
Esarhaddon’s Sleeping Quarters; Schneider (2015), p.4 of online typescript PDF.
91
Contra William J. Tait, who reportedly considers the shepherd warriors limited to The Fight for the Prebend
of Amun; Rutherford (2000), 109 fn. 14. Nevertheless, the two fight stories – one for the prebend of Amun
and and the other for the armour of Inaros – share protagonists (e.g. Petubastis and Pemu), so their settings
must be contemporaneous.
92
Ryholt (2004), 495.
93
Jay (2016), 135.
94
Schneider (2015), p.9 of online typescript PDF. Horned headwear is a signifier of divinity in the Ancient
Near East.
95
Schneider (2015), p.10 of online typescript PDF
96
Schneider (2015), p.11 of online typescript PDF
97
Schneider (2015), p.11-12 of online typescript PDF
98
Schneider (2015), p.13-14 of online typescript PDF; Taylor (2003), 353.
99
Rutherford (2000), 110 & 119.
100
Rutherford (2000), 110. Both terms are here given in the singular.
101
Kalasiris is the Greek version of gl-Sri, a Late Egyptian/Demotic term denoting a distnguished warrior, a
type which in Ptolemaic Egypt was particularly attached to temples. Herodotus identifies two types of
Egyptian warrior, the kalasiries and the hermotubies [Fischer-Bovet (2013), 210; Rutherford (2000), 115];
the latter term will be encountered later in Section 5. The term gl-Sri is found in the Inaros-Petubastis cycle
of stories; e.g. in The Fight for the Prebend of Amun (Section 4, second block quote, point 4) Minnebmaat,
the prince of Elephantine and overseer of Upper Egypt, is a kalasiris; so too is Montebaal in The Fight for
the Armour of Inaros. For discussion, see Rutherford (2000), 117-118.
102
Rutherford (2000), 106.
103
The arrival of the kalasiris in Demotic literature often leads to a resolution of the conflict [Rutherford
(2000), 117-118], a trend preserved in the Greek Aithiopica.
104
Rutherford (2000), 106-107 & 112.
105
Aithiopica 2.20.5. Rutherford (2000), 107, quoting from the translation of Morgan (1989). An older
translation is publicly available online at http://www.elfinspell.com/HeliodorusTitle.html.
106
Cleitophon and Lucippe 3.9. Rutherford (2000), 106, quoting from the translation of Winkler (1989).
107
Cleitophon and Lucippe 4.12. Translation from Wolff (1912), 68.
108
Cleitophon and Lucippe 3.22. Rutherford 107, quoting from the translation of J.R. Morgan in Reardon, B.P.
(1989) The Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley).
109
Cleitophon and Lucippe 3.19. Translation from Wolff (1912), 62.
110
Ephesiaca 3.12. Rutherford (2000), 108.
111
Rutherford (2000), 111.
112
See Section 4, second block quote, point (3). Rutherford (2000), 111.
20
113
Hölbl (2001), 154.
114
Hölbl (2001), 153-159.
115
Pfeiffer (2019). For the Hyksos as worshippers of Seth/Typhon, see Section 3.
116
Smith (2020).
117
Rutherford (2000), 107.
118
Rutherford (2000), 107.
119
Cassius Dio 72.4. Translation from Rutherford (2000), 109.
120
See Section 4, second block quote, point (3). Rutherford (2000), 111.
121
The barbarous trait of eating uncooked flesh (in Aithiopica, raw fish) taken to its ultimate extreme.
122
Rutherford (2000), 116.
123
Rutherford (2000), 115 fn. 39. In addition, the domination of Egypt by the detested Persians had begun
when Cambyses II defeated Psamtek III at Pelusium in 525 BCE, and was reprised when Artaxerxes III
defeated Nectanebo II at the same site in 343 BCE. In the Egyptian imagination of Ptolemaic times,
Pelusium must have been well enmeshed with the activities of unwelcome foreign powers.
124
Herodotus, Hist. 2.17; De Sélincourt (1972), 135.
125
E.g. Negm et al. (2015), Fig. 1. See the discussion in Rutherford (2000), 112 fn. 24.
126
Herodotus, Hist. 2.165-166. Translations: De Sélincourt (1972), 195 (hermotybians); Godley (1920), online
via the Perseus Project at http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-
eng1:2.165.1 (Hermotubies); Rutherford (2000), 116 (Hermotubies) & 117 (Hermotubis).
127
The term underpinning the name of Herodotus’s other class of Egyptian warrior, the kalasiris, also features
in The Fight for the Prebend of Amun; see note 101.
128
Fischer-Bovet (2013), 210-211.
129
Heliodorus 1.5. Translation from Rutherford (2000), 112.
130
Strabo 17.1.19. Translation from Hamilton & Falconer (1903), online via the Perseus Project at
http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0099.tlg001.perseus-eng2:17.1.19; Rutherford (2000),
109.
131
Rutherford (2000), 109. In the same vein, earlier Greek material (ca. 6th century BCE) tells of “Bousiris, a
mythical Egyptian king and eponym of a town in the Delta region [... who] himself is also on occasion
depicted as black-skinned” and who is known for “his transgressive act of sacrificing any foreigner who
made landfall in Egypt;” Skinner (2012), 103-104.
132
Schneider (2007); Escolano-Poveda (2017).
133
Schneider (2007), 316.
134
Schneider (2007), 316.
135
Schneider (2007), 317-318. Schneider’s proposal remains viable even now that additional fragments from
the Herdsman’s Tale have been recovered; Escolano-Poveda (2017), 37-40.
136
Van de Mieroop (2016), 247.
137
Van de Mieroop (2016), 271.
138
Van de Mieroop (2016), 359.
139
Van de Mieroop (2016), 273.
140
Van de Mieroop (2016), 285.
141
Van de Mieroop (2016), 286.
142
Williams (2020), 706; Partow (2001), 15-17.
143
Wikimedia Commons, online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marsh_Arabs_in_a_mashoof.jpg.
144
Partow (2001), 16-17, incl. Fig. 8.
145
Wheeler (2020).
146
Partow (2001), 23-35.
147
Heliodorus 1.5. Translation from Rutherford (2000), 112; quoted at greater length earlier in Section 5.
148
Winter (2008), 83.
149
Sign S38; Gardiner (1957), 508.
150
Wilkinson (1999), 160-161.
151
Graham (2019), 37 (endnote 103).
152
Tobin (2003), 164.
153
Assmann (2002), 155-156 & 234.
154
Bourriau (2003), 203.
155
Genesis 46:34. For a discussion of actual motivations for this distaste, see Pinker (2009), 161-166.
156
Genesis 46:34.

21
157
Virtual Jewish Library (2008). Bietak [(2015), 22 & 30] places it in the Eastern Delta at Wadi Tumilat.

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