Hyksos

No verified four-dynasty break in 1567 BCE

There is no verified single event in 1567 BCE at which the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Dynasties ended and the Eighteenth began together. University College London states that the year or years in which reunification took effect are unknown; about 1550 BCE is a conventional estimate.

The chronology used by the Art Institute of Chicago puts Dynasty 15 at about 1650–1550 BCE, Dynasty 16 at about 1650–1580, Dynasty 17 at about 1580–1550 and Dynasty 18 beginning about 1550 — which makes Dynasty 16 end roughly thirty years before the others.

The dynastic divisions were imposed by later historiography. Ahmose I belonged to the same Theban royal family as the Seventeenth Dynasty rulers but is conventionally listed first in Dynasty 18.

The event underneath the date: Avaris

What can be described is a campaign. Ahmose I continued the war his Theban predecessors Seqenenre Tao and Kamose had pushed northward, and attacked Avaris, the Hyksos capital in the eastern Nile Delta, by land and by water.

The tomb autobiography of the naval soldier Ahmose son of Abana describes fighting on the waterways around the city, the "gold of valour" he received, and the plundering that followed. His personal reward at the sack was four captives: one man and three women.

The surviving Hyksos power was then pursued into southwest Asia, and the same inscription reports that Sharuhen was besieged for three years and plundered.

Why "expulsion" oversells it

Hyksos rule was concentrated in northern Egypt while native Theban kings held parts of Upper Egypt, so this was not the liberation of an entirely foreign-governed country.

The Sixteenth Dynasty is contested on the same terms. Reconstructions disagree over whether its rulers were Theban Egyptians or a line of minor Hyksos rulers.