By Water & Blood

The Title ḥqȝ-ḫȝswt (“Prince of the Deserts”)

Excerpted from W. M. Flinders Petrie, Hyksos and Israelite Cities (1906), from his discussion of Hyksos scarab titles and the Beni Hasan scene of Absha. Light OCR cleanup applied; consult the source PDF for the full plates and apparatus.

A Title, ḥqȝ-ḫȝswt, “prince of the deserts,” or foreign lands.

The first test, the title “prince of the deserts,” obviously belongs to the age when the Hyksos were not yet completely established in Egypt.

Even in the XIIth dynasty, as early as Senusert II, a ḥqȝ-ḫȝst, or “prince of the desert,” named Absha, is represented with his family coming into Egypt, as shown on the celebrated scene at Beni Hasan. This title (in the plural) is the same as that of the Hyksos rulers, the ḥqȝ-ḫȝswt, “prince of the deserts”; and as ḫ became š in later times, and so passed into the Greek s (already noted in the instances of Khufu = Souphis and Khyan = Siaan), so the ḫȝswt would read sastu or sasu, and the ḥqȝ-šasu were the kyksos of Manetho. This prince of the desert in the XIIth dynasty is entirely of the Bedawy type of Semite, with the aquiline nose and the growth of beard of the modern Bedawy. His name Absha is probably the Abishai of Jewish usage. And the Semitic nature of this desert prince cannot be doubted.

Salatis and his immediate successors still called themselves Princes of the Deserts, but Khyan conquered far and wide by the aid of the wealth and skill of Egypt, and took the title “embracer of territories.”