discovery of a large adjoining hall which proved to contain 41 sealings showing the cartouche of the Hyksos ruler Khyan together with 9 sealings naming the 13th dynasty king Sobekhotep IV. The preserved contexts of these seals shows that Sobekhotep IV and Khyan were most likely contemporaries of one another. This could mean that the 13th dynasty did not control all of Egypt when Sobekhotep IV acceded to power, and that there was a significant overlap between the 13th and 15th dynasties since Sobekhotep IV was only a mid-13th dynasty ruler; although one of its most powerful kings. Therefore, Manetho's statement that the Hyksos 15th dynasty violently replaced the 13th dynasty could be a piece of later Egyptian propaganda. Rather, the 13th dynasty's authority must have been collapsing throughout Egypt in its final decades and the Hyksos state in the Delta region simply took over Memphis and ended the 13th dynasty's kingdom. However, this analysis and the conclusions drawn from it are rejected by Egyptologist Robert Porter, who argues that Khyan ruled much later than Sobekhotep IV (a gap of c. 100 years exists between the two in conventional chronologies) and that the seals of a pharaoh were used long after his death. Thus the seals of Sobekhotep IV might not indicate that he was a contemporary of Khyan. Merneferre Ay was the last Egyptian ruler of the 13th Dynasty who is attested by objects in both Lower and Upper Egypt. Henceforth, his successors, from Merhotepre Ini on, are only attested in Upper Egypt. References Clayton, Peter A. Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2006. . States and territories established in the 19th century BC States and territories disestablished in the 17th century BC 13 19th century BC in Egypt 18th century BC in Egypt 17th century BC in Egypt 2nd-millennium BC establishments in Egypt 2nd-millennium BC disestablishments in Egypt 2nd millennium BC in Egypt de:Zweite Zwischenzeit#13. Dynastie