IFAO

This paper is divided in two parts. Part one is a translation and a commentary on the sections of the Kamose stelae mentioning the conquest of the oasis of Djesdjes by the king of the Theban XVIIth dynasty. It is argued that all the passages about the oasis, in the Kamose text, concern only one campaign and one oasis, Bahariya. Bahariyans are considered enemies like other Egyptian populations from Middle Egypt who collaborated with the Hyksos rulers. Part two presents the recently prospected cemeteries of Bahariya in the context of the material culture of Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. The IFAO mission in Bahariya has discovered on the surface of the necropolis of Qaret al-Toub some clear fragments of Tell al-Yahudiya ware, probably imported from one of the production centres located mainly in the Eastern Delta of the Nile. This attestation to commercial relations between Bahariya and the Northern part of Egypt, directly under Asiatic rule, provides interesting data complementary to textual evidence suggesting that Bahariyan elites were in contact with the Hyksos at the end of the Second Intermediate Period.