• Egypt, Egyptian
    Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1

    • “Hyksos Period.” Many commentators place Joseph’s entry into Egypt and that of his father and family in what is popularly known as the Hyksos Period. However, as Merrill Unger comments (Archaeology and the Old Testament, 1964, p. 134): “Unfortunately, [this period] is one of great obscurity in Egypt, and the Hyksos conquest is very imperfectly understood.”

      Some scholars assign the Hyksos to the “Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Dynasties” with a 200-year rule; others confine them to the “Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties” during a century and a half or only one century. The name Hyksos has been interpreted by some as meaning “Shepherd Kings,” by others, “Rulers of Foreign Countries.” Conjectures as to their race or nationality have been even more varied, with Indo-Europeans from the Caucasus or even in Central Asia, Hittites, Syrian-Palestinian rulers (Canaanites or Amorites), and Arabian tribes all being suggested.

      Some archaeologists depict the “Hyksos conquest” of Egypt as northern hordes sweeping through Palestine and Egypt in swift chariots, while others refer to it as a creeping conquest, that is, a gradual infiltration of migrating nomads or seminomads who either slowly took over control of the country piecemeal or by a swift coup d’état put themselves at the head of the existing government. In the book The World of the Past (Part V, 1963, p. 444) archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes states: “It is no longer thought that the Hyksos rulers . . . represent the invasion of a conquering horde of Asiatics. The name seems to mean Rulers of the Uplands, and they were wandering groups of Semites who had long come to Egypt for trade and other peaceful purposes.” While this may represent the present popular view, it still leaves the difficult problem of explaining how such “wandering groups” could take over the land of Egypt, especially since the “Twelfth Dynasty,” prior to this period, is considered to have brought the country to a peak of power.

      As The Encyclopedia Americana (1956, Vol. 14, p. 595) says: “The only detailed account of them [the Hyksos] in any ancient writer is an unreliable passage of a lost work of Manetho, cited by Josephus in his rejoinder to Apion.” Statements attributed by Josephus to Manetho are the source of the name Hyksos. Interestingly, Josephus, claiming to quote Manetho verbatim, presents Manetho’s account as directly connecting the Hyksos with the Israelites. Josephus, it seems, accepts this connection but argues vehemently against many of the details of the account. He seems to prefer the rendering of Hyksos as “captive shepherds” rather than “king-shepherds.” Manetho, according to Josephus, presents the Hyksos as conquering Egypt without a battle, destroying cities and “the temples of the gods,” and causing slaughter and havoc. They are represented as settling in the Delta region. Finally the Egyptians are said to have risen up, fought a long and terrible war, with 480,000 men, besieged the Hyksos at their chief city, Avaris, and then, strangely, reached an agreement allowing them to leave the country unharmed with their families and possessions, whereupon they went to Judea and built Jerusalem.​—Against Apion, I, 73-105 (14-16); 223-232 (25, 26).

      In the contemporary writings the names of these rulers were preceded by titles such as “Good God,” “Son of Reʽ,” or Hik-khoswet, “Ruler of Foreign Lands.” The term “Hyksos” is evidently derived from this latter title. Egyptian documents immediately following their rule called them Asiatics. Regarding this period of Egyptian history, C. E. DeVries noted: “In attempting to correlate secular history with the biblical data, some scholars have tried to equate the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt with the Israelite Exodus, but the chronology rules out this identification, and other factors as well make this hypothesis untenable. . . . The origin of the Hyksos is uncertain; they came from somewhere in Asia and bore Semitic names for the most part.”​—The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, edited by G. Bromiley, 1982, Vol. 2, p. 787.

      Since Joseph’s elevation to power and the benefits it brought Israel were by divine providence, there is no need to seek some other reason in the form of friendly “Shepherd Kings.” (Ge 45:7-9) But it is possible that Manetho’s account, actually the foundation of the “Hyksos” idea, simply represents a garbled tradition, one that developed from earlier Egyptian efforts to explain away what took place in their land during the Israelite sojourn in Egypt. The tremendous effect on the country produced by Joseph’s ascension to the position of acting ruler (Ge 41:39-46; 45:26); the profound change his administration brought, resulting in the Egyptians’ sale of their land and even of themselves to Pharaoh (Ge 47:13-20); the 20-percent tax they thereafter paid from their produce (Ge 47:21-26); the 215 years of Israelite residence in Goshen, with their eventually exceeding the native population in number and strength, according to Pharaoh’s statement (Ex 1:7-10, 12, 20); the Ten Plagues and the devastation they wrought not only on the Egyptian economy but even more so on their religious beliefs and the prestige of their priesthood (Ex 10:7; 11:1-3; 12:12, 13); the Exodus of Israel following the death of all Egypt’s firstborn and then the destruction of the cream of Egypt’s military forces at the Red Sea (Ex 12:2-38; 14:1-28)​—all these things certainly would require some attempted explanation by the Egyptian official element.

      It should never be forgotten that the recording of history in Egypt, as in many Middle Eastern lands, was inseparably connected with the priesthood, under whose tutelage the scribes were trained. It would be most unusual if some propagandistic explanation were not invented to account for the utter failure of the Egyptian gods to prevent the disaster Jehovah God brought upon Egypt and its people. History, even recent history, records many occasions when such propaganda so grossly perverted the facts that the oppressed were presented as the oppressors, and the innocent victims were presented as the dangerous and cruel aggressors. Manetho’s account (over a thousand years after the Exodus), if preserved with some degree of correctness by Josephus, may possibly represent the distorted traditions handed down by succeeding generations of Egyptians to account for the basic elements of the true account, in the Bible, concerning Israel in Egypt.​—See EXODUS (Authenticity of the Exodus Account).

      Israel’s slavery. Since the Bible does not name the Pharaoh who initiated the oppression upon the Israelites (Ex 1:8-22) nor the Pharaoh before whom Moses and Aaron appeared and in whose reign the Exodus took place (Ex 2:23; 5:1), and since these events have either been deliberately omitted from Egyptian records or the records have been destroyed, it is not possible to assign these events to any specific dynasty nor to the reign of any particular Pharaoh of secular history. Ramses (Rameses) II (of the “Nineteenth Dynasty”) is often suggested as the Pharaoh of the oppression on the basis of the reference to the building of the cities of Pithom and Raamses by the Israelite laborers. (Ex 1:11) It is held that these cities were built during the reign of Ramses II. In Archaeology and the Old Testament (p. 149) Merrill Unger comments: “But in the light of Raamses II’s notorious practice of taking credit for achievements accomplished by his predecessors, these sites were most certainly merely rebuilt or enlarged by him.” Actually the name “Rameses” seems to have applied to an entire district already in the time of Joseph.​—Ge 47:11.

      [Picture on page 692]

      Gigantic statues at Abu Simbel, all honoring Ramses II

      By means of God’s deliverance through Moses, the nation of Israel was freed from “the house of slaves” and “the iron furnace,” as Egypt continued to be called by Bible writers. (Ex 13:3; De 4:20; Jer 11:4; Mic 6:4)