[9][10] The first king, also described as a Hyksos (ḥḳꜣw-ḫꜣswt, a "shepherd" according to Africanus), led his people into an occupation of the Nile Delta area and settled his capital at Avaris.

[4] There is no evidence of conflict at that time however, and the settling of the Canaanite populations could have occurred rather peacefully in the power vacuum left by the disintegration of the Fourteenth Dynasty.

[11] The people of Avaris in the Nile Delta were called "Aamu" by the Egyptians, which was also the term used to designate the inhabitants of Syria and the Levant, or the enemies of Ramses II at the battle of Kadesh.

[12][13] It was not an official title of the rulers of the Fifteenth dynasty, and is never encountered together with royal titulature, except in one rare instance in an inscription from Tell el-Dab'a mentioning an unknown king and describing him as a Hyksos.

[15] The Fifteenth Dynasty at one point, after a period of about 20 years since its foundation, extended its rule as far south as Thebes, entering into conflict with Pharaoh Neferhotep III.

For Alexander Ilin-Tomich, the territory directly ruled by the Hyksos kings of Avaris was likely confined to the eastern Delta and the nature and extent of their control over Middle Egypt remains unclear.

[19] According to the Kamose stelae, the Hyksos imported "charriots and horses, ships, timber, gold, lapis lazuli, silver, turquoise, bronze, axes without number, oil, incense, fat and honey".

[18] The Fifteenth Dynasty also exported large quantities of material looted from southern Egypt, especially Egyptian sculptures, to the areas of Canaan and Syria.

However, the Danish Egyptologist Kim Ryholt maintains in his study of the Second Intermediate Period that these prenomens all refer to one man: Apepi I, who ruled Egypt for 40+X years.