The Bible tells us that Joseph was appointed the pharaoh's grand vizier. It is certainly feasible, indeed almost certain, that the Hyksos rulers of northern Egypt appointed as their chief ministers those of Canaanite extraction – after all, they were from Canaan themselves. It is also a period from which few records survive, meaning that someone like Joseph could have gone unrecorded. The story would further sit with the Genesis account, as the Hyksos rulers did see themselves as pharaohs. (Although the term pharaoh did not emerge until the New Kingdom, the word is generally used to refer to a specifically Egyptian style of king.) According to Manetho, the Hyksos not only ruled Lower Egypt, they emulated the Egyptians and established their own pharaonic dynasty. This is demonstrated by archaeological evidence which has unearthed their royal palace.
The Hyksos kings established their capital in the Nile Delta at the city of Avaris where, Manetho tells us, they installed a garrison of 240,000 men. Until recently Avaris was thought to have been the Egyptian city of Tanis, near the modern fishing village of San el-Hagar. Today, however, Egyptologists have identified it as a site thirty kilometres to the south, at Tell-el-Daba. Recent excavations by the Austrian archaeologist Dr Manfred Bietak, of Vienna University, have revealed four distinct levels, three of them certainly levels of occupation: a Middle Kingdom layer; a layer that is distinctly Semitic and culturally associated with Canaan, dating from around 1650 to 1550 BC; a period of abandonment and relative inactivity; and a level of extensive rebuilding from around 1300 BC. The ruins and artefacts unearthed at Tell-el-Daba clearly demonstrate that the Hyksos rulers lived as Egyptian-style kings and not as the 'desert princes' they had once been. These must have been the five so-called fifteenth-dynasty kings of Lower Egypt mentioned by Manetho, and the two mysterious sixteenth-dynasty pharaohs, also seemingly of Hyksos origin, whose names have been found on scarabs discovered in both Egypt and Palestine. These dynasties co-existed with the seventeenth dynasty of the Egyptians proper in Thebes: the Theban princes who continued to rule unoccupied Upper Egypt.
If there is any truth in the biblical account of the Descent (the Israelite arrival in Egypt), it must have been one of the Hyksos pharaohs who raised the family of Jacob to high status and appointed Joseph as his chief minister. Not only are the Hyksos the only pharaohs of the time who would actually have done such a thing, but Avaris is precisely where the Bible places the Israelites. It was in a region later known as Goshen, and it is in the 'Land of Goshen' that the Bible tells us the Israelites had settled. Moreover, Avaris was later reconstructed as the city of Pi-Ramesses – the very city that the Hebrews are said to have been used as slaves to help build (see Chapter Eleven).
Remarkably, one of the sixteenth-dynasty Hyksos pharaohs was called Yakob-aam, a name in which a number of biblical scholars have seen a striking similarity to the Hebrew name Jacob, which Israelites, certainly later, had used. (The English J represents a Y-sound in Hebrew). As Yakob-aam seems to have been one of the last Hyksos kings, it may be that by the time that the Egyptians retook the north, the Israelites were actually the ruling faction among the Hyksos. This might explain the pharaoh's remark, 'the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we'. It might also explain why, according to the Bible, they were so harshly treated – they were the Hyksos' leaders.
If the Joseph story is in any way true, and he did arrive during the period of a Hyksos king, it would make it a little later than the period derived from the 430-year-Sojourn reference in Exodus 12:40. However, one has to be careful when it come to precise biblical numbers, as we have already seen with the references to Abraham's father's age. On balance, however, there is certainly enough evidence to accept that the early Israelites did settle in Egypt during the Hyksos era.
We now come to the enslavement of the Israelites. According to Exodus 1:8–11:
Now there arose a new king over Egypt which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses [the historical Pi-Ramesses, previously Avaris].
This is clearly many generations after Joseph's time, as we can infer from the immediately preceding verse: 'And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.' (Exodus 1:7.) It is very possible that the biblical enslavement of the Israelites reflects the historical period when the Egyptian pharaohs of the south – the seventeenth-dynasty Theban kings – eventually overcame the Hyksos pharaohs of the north.
During the Hyksos period Upper Egypt had been governed by a line of native Egyptian princes from the ancient capital of Thebes. For well over a century Upper Egypt, although a free state, had been a vassal state of the Hyksos. This was due to the superior military might of the Hyksos. While the Egyptians had old-fashioned solid wood bows, and had been somewhat backward in metallurgy for the manufacture of such weapons as swords, shields and battleaxes, the Hyksos had the much more powerful composite bow and weapons of a superior construction. Most of all they had employed the revolutionary innovation of the horse-drawn chariot.
In Thebes the Egyptian monarchy ultimately devised plans for reconquest of the north, by adapting and even improving the very weaponry by which they were being held in submission. The composite bow was a difficult weapon to make. Many of its raw materials – such as wood from birch trees and the tendons from a certain breed of bull – were not to be found in the south of Egypt. Even when these were obtained, and the techniques mastered to construct the weapon, considerable time would need to be spent practising the skills to use the new bow. Chariot warfare, on the other hand, was a completely new concept. It required numerous horses, the main supply coming from the north-east of Canaan. Some had to be captured, brought back, then bred and their offspring ultimately trained, while the soldiery had to be taught to drive and fight from chariots. Somehow, and quite remarkably, the Theban kings managed to organize all of this – and right under the noses of the Hyksos. Relatively speaking, the espionage missions and covert activities involved must surely have been as complex and elaborate as anything dreamed up by the modern CIA. The result of the Egyptian effort was a new, professional army, the likes of which Egypt had never known before.
The first Theban king to lead the offensive against the Hyksos was Seqenenre II, around 1570 BC, who apparently revolted against a provocative command from Avaris. Although the Hyksos suffered, the revolt failed to defeat them and Seqenenre was killed. His mummified body, found in 1881, shows that he had five sword wounds on the neck and head, indicating that he had literally been hacked to death. His son and successor, Kamose, launched a full-scale attack on the Hyksos king Apophis, and drove him back to the walls of Avaris. The account of his campaign was discovered in 1954, on a limestone stela from the Temple of Amon-Re at Karnak. Kamose's mother Queen Ahhotep, we are told, took an active part in rallying the people in the struggle and was awarded military honours. According to an account of the struggle found in the tomb of a ship's captain named Ahmose at el-Kab, just to the north of Aswan, Kamose's younger brother and successor, Amosis, kept up the pressure; he laid siege to Avaris itself, which fell sometime around 1550 BC, and pursued the defeated Hyksos into Canaan. Under Amosis, as Amosis I, Egypt was reunified under Egyptian rule – the start of the eighteenth dynasty and the beginning of the New Kingdom.
That many of the Hyksos were enslaved there can be no doubt. The inscriptions in the tomb of Ahmose make this very clear. Indeed, many of the Hyksos that retreated into Canaan were ultimately pursued and taken prisoner. Under a series of eighteenth-dynasty pharaohs, Egyptian armies repeatedly swept through Canaan, laying waste the city states. Tuthmosis I
II, the most formidable campaigner, finally crushed the dispossessed Hyksos at the decisive battle of Megiddo, a strongly fortified town overlooking the Plain of Esdraelon, and completely invaded Canaan. The account of this crucial campaign, which brought Egypt to the zenith of her power, was discovered on the one of the pylons (the so-called Seventh Pylon) erected in the Temple of Amun-Re at Karnak.
Let us return to the Biblical account of the enslavement of the Israelites: in the popular misconception, portrayed by Hollywood, the Israelites, unlike the Hyksos, never fight against the Egyptians. However, Exodus 1:10 suggests that they did. The pharaoh is concerned that, 'they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us'. Historically, the Hyksos made an alliance with the Nubians of Kush, to the south of Thebes, in order to contain the kings of Upper Egypt. The account of the king who 'knew not Joseph', therefore, and decided to do something about the Israelites, could well refer to Kamose and his attack on Avaris.
Precisely when the Israelites themselves might have been enslaved is difficult to answer, but it may have been once the Hyksos city states had been overrun. Although biblical scholars have tended to think of the 'king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph' of Exodus 1:8 as the same character as the 'Pharaoh' who sets taskmasters over them in Exodus 1:11, this is not made clear in the narrative itself. The Pentateuch were religious texts and long periods of history, being considered irrelevant, are forever being condensed into a few verses or even words.
From various eighteenth-dynasty tomb illustrations, it is clear that the number of Hyksos slaves rose dramatically by the reign of Tuthmosis III. In the tomb of Tuthmosis III's vizier Rekhmire at Thebes, for instance, there is a scene showing Hyksos slaves making bricks, while taskmasters stand over them, beating rods in hand. According to Exodus, this is precisely the fate of the Israelites. In Exodus 1:11: 'So they were made to work in gangs, with officers set over them, to break their spirit with heavy labour.' And in Exodus 1: 14: 'And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick.' (A number of bodies from Egyptian graves of the era have been found with a broken left forearm, prompting speculation that the individuals sustained such fractures when they tried to protect themselves against a blow from a weapon such as the beating rods shown in the tomb illustrations.)
There is even evidence of a people who may actually have been the Israelites being prominent among the Hyksos slaves. They are specifically referred to as Apiru – also rendered as Hapiru or Habiru by some translators – a name which some scholars believe to have been the origin of the word Hebrew. There are a number of scenes and textural references which include them during and after the reign of Tuthmosis III:
Circa 1500 BC: The oldest reference to the Apiru is on a scene from the tomb of Tuthmosis III's great herald Antef, which lists them among the prisoners of war captured during the pharaoh's campaigns.
Circa 1475 BC: A scene on the tomb of the noble Puyemre at Thebes, dating from the reign of Tuthmosis III, shows four men working a wine press and accompanying hieroglyphics read 'straining out wine by the Apiru'. It is accompanied by another inscription telling us of the location: 'wine of the vineyard of War-Hor'. This was in the very area which was later called Goshen.
Circa 1430 BC: A list of foreign captives found on an inscribed stela discovered at Memphis, dating from the reign of Amonhotep II, includes 3600 Apiru.
Circa 1305 BC: In the reign of Seti I, the Apiru are referenced in connection with a revolt at Beisham in Palestine.
Circa 1270 BC: The Leyde Papyrus, concerning the reign of Ramesses II, mentions the Apiru being used as hard labour to erect a pylon at Memphis.
Circa 1270 BC: In the reign of Ramesses II the Apiru are recorded being used to make bricks at Miour in the province of Fayum.
Circa 1180 BC: During the reign of Ramesses III the Apiru are listed working on land sacred to the god Atum at Heliopolis.
Circa 1180 BC: The last mention of the Apiru is in the reign of Ramesses III when they are listed as quarrymen
Although it has been suggested that the term Apiru was used to refer to a particular type of workmen, prisoner of war or class of slave, this would seem unlikely. Similar workers are shown time and time again throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, without being referred to by any name other than captives, foreigners or slaves. The only distinctions usually made are by words such as fa-kat – 'workers' – or yus – 'builders'. In fact the word Apiru almost certainly refers to a specific Hyksos tribe, as a very similar name is recorded in the texts found at Mari. Here a tribe whom the Mari king Zimri-Lim had some difficulty in controlling are called the Habiru.
The word Hebrew actually means 'one from the other side of the river', and seems to have been derived from a word by which foreigners called the Israelites. Hebrew is very seldom a word that the ancient Israelites use to describe themselves. Apart from the fact that the very term, 'one from the other side of the river', appears to be someone else's description of them, in the Bible itself it is usually others who use the word Hebrew, or it is for their benefit that the term is employed.
In the First Book of Samuel 29:3, for example, it is the Philistines who call them by this name: 'Then said the princes of the Philistines, What do these Hebrews here?' Another example is in Exodus 1:19. Here the Israelite midwives are talking to a foreigner when they explain their actions to the pharaoh: 'And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as Egyptian women.'
Perhaps the most telling example is found in Exodus 5 :1–3, where the pharaoh would seem to be unfamiliar with the term Israel:
And afterwards Moses and Aaron went in, and told the pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And the pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go. And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us.
Here it is for pharaoh's benefit that God is being referred to as the 'God of the Hebrews', as he seems to have no understanding of the term 'God of Israel'. In other words, to themselves they are the children of Israel, to others they are the Hebrews.
The only problem in connecting the Apiru with the Hebrews is that they are still in Egypt around 1180BC, which seems to have been over a century after the most likely period of the Exodus. However, the later references may refer to new captives. From the reference on the Israel Stela, we learn that Merenptah had recently sent troops to fight the Israelites around 1220 BC, and was seemingly victorious. If so, he would presumably have returned with a fresh supply of Hebrew slaves. The last mention of the Apiru pre-dating Merenptah's reign is around 1270, when they are recorded making bricks during the reign of Ramesses II. This is precisely the time that most biblical scholars actually place the Exodus (see Chapter Eleven).
The biblical account itself certainly does not contradict the theory that the Exodus took place in the early thirteenth century BC. The story of the Exodus proper begins with the birth of Moses who, according to the account, is born at a time when the pharaoh, in an attempt to check the population of Israelite slaves, ordered that every male child born to them should be killed. Moses' mother, to save him from his fate, hides Moses in a basket in the reeds of the river bank, where the infant is found by the pharaoh's daughter and brought up as her son at the royal court. Although the popular Hollywood image has the pharaoh of Moses' time being the same pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites, it seems clear from the Biblical account that a period of at least a generation, probably far more, separates the two. According to Exodus 1:12, the following separates the original enslavement of the Israelites from the birth of Moses: 'But the more that they [the Egyptians] afflicted them [the children of Israel] the more they multiplied and grew . . .' This is clearly a considerable period of time. The enslavement could therefore first have occurred during the time of Tuthmosis III (circa 1500 BC), and the Exodus from Egypt occurred much later in the reign of Ramesses II (circa 1270 BC) –
shortly after the anti-Atenist persecutions of Horemheb.
We will return to the question of the Exodus later. For the moment we must reach a conclusion regarding the Israelite presence in Egypt. From the assorted evidence we have examined, it would seem that the Biblical account of the Israelite period in Egypt is probably correct – certainly in outline. In other words, the direct ancestors of the Israelites who historically appeared in Canaan in the thirteenth century BC had for many years been used as slaves in Egypt. In conclusion, it would seem that they were a tribal group known as the Apiru, or Hebrews, who were an influential people among the Hyksos who settled in Egypt around 1700 BC. They could certainly have reached high office during the Hyksos era, have been appointed chief ministers, and may even have been pharaohs themselves namely the sixteenth dynasty. They were ousted from power along with the Hyksos around 1570 BC, and had been enslaved by the reign of Tuthmosis III around 1500 BC. Thereafter, they had been used as hard labour, principally in northern Egypt, by a successor of pharaohs until the early thirteenth century BC. (Nearly all the above references to the Apiru are from northern Egypt.)
Just prior to Akhenaten's reign (circa 1360 BC), therefore, the Israelites certainly seem to have been present in Egypt to have influenced the young king. Moreover, they seem to have been in northern Egypt, around the area of Heliopolis – precisely the location from where Akhenaten seems to have been influenced (see Chapter Seven). The big question, however, is why? Why should the most powerful man in Egypt, and seemingly thousands of others like him, abandon their centuries-old beliefs in favour of a foreign religious concept? How could they have been influenced by the religion of enemy slaves?
SUMMARY
• In the biblical account, the Israelites spend 430 years in Egypt before the Exodus. They are originally made welcome by a pharaoh during Joseph's time, but later, concerned by their growing numbers, the Egyptians enslave them. Eventually, Moses is called by God to lead them out of Egypt and, after the country is beset by a series of plagues and terrible deaths, the pharaoh begrudgingly lets them leave. Suffering a change of heart, he then pursues the Israelites, who manage to escape when the waters of the Red Sea miraculously part. Finally, after wandering for forty years in the wilderness, they are led by Joshua into the 'Promised Land' of Canaan.
Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings Page 18
