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Hippos and Hyksos: How Loud Hippos Caused a Civil War in Ancient Egypt
Because let’s be honest. We love the drama.
Nothing piques my interest like a good conversation about the Tudors. I know literally everything there is to know about them, but mmm, that drama though.
But drama doesn’t start or end with the Tudors.
Oh, there’s much better.
But this story isn’t like any Egyptian story you’ve heard. This story is, if nothing else, evidence that humans have always been ridiculously petty. This particular time involved chaos and, out of everything, pet hippos.
So without further ado, meet:
Apepi (ca. 1575 BC — 1540 BC, Hyksos ruler of Lower Egypt)
Setting the Scene
To fully appreciate this story, you need some background.
A mistake is to think civilization was linear from Mesopotamia to Egypt to Greece to Rome (like what 6th grade history taught me). No civilization existed within a vacuum. There were always several cultures and civilizations interacting and impacting each other in various ways. I know. I’ll get to the fun stuff in a minute, but I think this context is very important with this story.
