The Hyksos of Egypt and the Exodus

 Nadene Goldfoot                                      

A man described as "Abisha the Hyksos"
(𓋾𓈎𓈉 ḥḳꜣ-ḫꜣswt, Heqa-kasut for "Hyksos"), leading a group of Aamu.
Tomb of Khnumhotep II (circa 1900 BC).
This is one of the earliest known uses of the term "Hyksos".

The term "Hyksos" is derived, from the Egyptian expression 𓋾 meaning "rulers [of] foreign lands".Hyksos  "ruler(s) of foreign lands"; Ancient Greek: Ὑκσώς, Ὑξώς) is a term which, in modern Egyptology, designates the kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt (fl. c. 1650–1550 BCE). 1500 BCE is the date that Simcha Jacobovici, archaeologist and historian,  declares to be the date of the Exodus led by Moses.   

Hyksos in hieroglyphs
ḥḳꜣ-ḫꜣsw / ḥḳꜣw-ḫꜣswt,[17][18] "hekau khasut"[4][b] "Hyksos" Ruler(s) of the foreign countries

The first century AD Jewish historian Josephus gives the name as meaning "shepherd kings" or "captive kings" in his Contra Apion (Against Apion), where he describes the Hyksos as Jews as they appeared in the Hellenistic Egyptian historian Manetho. Josephus's rendition may arise from a later Egyptian pronunciation of ḥḳꜣ-ḫꜣswt as ḥḳꜣ-šꜣsw, which was then understood to mean "lord of shepherds." 

In his epitome of Manetho, Josephus connected the Hyksos with the Jews, but he also may have called them Arabs. In their own epitomes of Manetho, the Late antique historians Sextus Julius Africanus and Eusebius say that the Hyksos came from Phoenicia. Until the excavation and discovery of Tell El-Dab'a (the site of the Hyksos capital Avaris) in 1966, historians relied on these accounts for the Hyksos period.  According to ancient classical authors, the Phoenicians were a people who occupied the coast of the Levant (eastern Mediterranean). Their major cities were Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and Arwad. These cities are in today's Lebanon, which is now falling apart as a country due to the Hezbollah terrorists who have taken it over.  

           We believe these are Israelites entering Egypt, now understood as the foreign Hyksos. All their clothing is woven with patterns and colors, similar to Joseph's coat of many colors.  Jacob was starting a trend.  They had fled to Egypt at a time of famine due to a drought that had hit Canaan and were led there by Jacob, leader of his family of 70 dry Israelites.   Picture above is from this panel.  They remained until they had multiplied, scaring the Egyptians of their large numbers that caused them to become Egyptian slaves.  Altogether, they were in Egypt 400 years before the Exodus began in 1500-1311 BCE.  The difference of 189 years ended 40 years later by arriving in Canaan with Joshua leading the final number of 601,730 Israelites of 12 tribes of Jacob.  It actually was 603,550 people who had left Egypt.  They had a loss of 1,820 along the way as it was rough going, fighting along the way with natural dangers besides.  

         Joseph wearing his coat of many colors that his father had made for him special.  

Wouldn't Joseph, 11th son of Jacob, be the 1st Hyksos ruler in Egypt?  He was bought as a slave by Potiphar, chief of Pharaoh's household, but imprisoned on a false accusation brought by Potiphar's wife.  His reputation as an interpreter of dreams eventually reached the pharaoh (king) who released him from prison and was so impressed that Joseph was appointed viceroy (just under the pharaoh).  Joined by his father and brothers (12 tribes of Jacob)  he received grazing land in Goshen, thus beginning the Israelite settlement in Egypt.  The story of Joseph has been dated during the Hyksos domination of Egypt of the 18th to 16th centuries BCE.  

                                            A fragmentary statue of Ahmose I, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The pharaoh in this history was Ahmose I.  pharaoh and founder of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, classified as the first dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. He was a member of the Theban royal house, the son of pharaoh Seqenenre Tao and brother of the last pharaoh of the 17th dynasty, Kamose.

In the Bible, the pharaoh's daughter raised Moses (One of the reasons for associating Moses with various pharaohs is because of the shared name “mose” or “moses” in their monikers. The biblical definition of “Moses,”  משה Mosheh in the Hebrew, is given simply as “drawn,” as at Exodus 2:10:)as her own after the baby was fished out of the river (Exodus 2:10); her other son is thus the older stepbrother of Moses, with the theory that the name Ahmose means “brother of Moses,” and therefore it was during the reign of pharaoh Ahmose I that the patriarch lived.  This takes care of the naysayer who said, " Furthermore, if the date for a “historical” Moses in the 15th or 13th century were accurate, then he could not have been the brother of a pharaoh from the 16th century"and  Egyptologists are certain that the name means “born of the moon” or “the moon has given birth.

 During the reign of his father or grandfather, Thebes rebelled against the Hyksos, the rulers of Lower Egypt. When he was seven years old, his father was killed, and he was about ten when his brother died of unknown causes after reigning only three years. Ahmose I assumed the throne after the death of his brother, and upon coronation became known as nb-pḥtj-rꜥ "The Lord of Strength is Ra".

The details of the 10 plagues that Moses brought on the Egyptians because of Pharaoh belligerence against freeing the slaves could account for some of these deaths.  

During his reign, Ahmose completed the conquest and expulsion of the Hyksos from the Nile Delta, restored Theban rule over the whole of Egypt and successfully reasserted Egyptian power in its formerly subject territories of Nubia and Canaan. The archaeological evidence for an Egyptian presence in Canaan outside Gaza seems to start with Thutmose III. He then reorganized the administration of the country, reopened quarries, mines and trade routes and began massive construction projects of a type that had not been undertaken since the time of the Middle Kingdom. This building program culminated in the construction of the last pyramid built by native Egyptian rulers. 

Ahmose's reign laid the foundations for the New Kingdom, under which Egyptian power reached its peak. His reign is usually dated to the mid-16th century BC which would be 1550 BCE.                        

Was Ramses II the Pharaoh depicted as "Moses's brother" in the Bible? The Torah lists the places where the Israelites rested. A few of the names at the start of the itinerary, including Ra'amses, Pithom and Succoth, are reasonably well identified with archaeological sites on the eastern edge of the Nile Delta, as is Kadesh-Barnea, where the Israelites spend 38 years after turning back from Canaan; other than these, very little is certain.

RAMESSES I-who everyone thought was the pharaoh of the Exodus

One scholarly tradition places the Exodus around 1290  , reducing the time between that and the accepted date of Solomon’s temple to a mere 329 years, not the 480 of God’s Inerrant Word.

 (Jews still say that Moses was born in 1391 BCE and started the Exodus at age 80) which would have been in 1311.) In this timeline, the pharaoh of the Exodus has been identified as Ramesses/Rameses/Ramses I (fl. 1292–90). The same dearth of evidence for this contention in the historical/archaeological record occurs in this era as well, but now the apology is that, since the Exodus represented a military defeat, it could have been ignored, because Egyptian rulers “never recorded their reverses and, in fact, transformed some of them into victories.”

  

If Egyptian rulers were prone to transforming defeats into victories, in such an extreme case as the Exodus tale one would expect that the pharaoh would boast loudly about having vanquished such a mighty foe with its powerful god. Nothing of the sort occurred, however, and there remains no other outside verification for any event of the Exodus, either during the time of Ramesses I or at all.  (My comment-what does the writer expect 3,333 years ago (1,311- 80th birthday of Moses+2,022=3,333)?  Moses was the only one who was a scribe.  There were no TV stations or reporters along the way with them recording.  Moses did it all which turned out to be the Torah, known as the 5 books of Moses.  He was the 1st reporter for the Jewish people and had to create his own newspaper/book.    

         Shaded green area is the Middle Kingdom

Israelites were the Hyksos, the foreigners who spent a good deal  of their 400 years in Egypt as slaves.  They were known to be Semites, and lived as a large population of the Middle Kingdom.  Excavations in Egypt have revealed royal Hyksos scarabs, etc. bearing names similar to Hebrew, while Hyksos remains have also been uncovered in Israel before 1948.  The Hyksos ruled in Egypt in about 1720-1580 BCE, and during this period, the Israelites entered the country and were favorably treated;  the period of bondage is believed to have begun after the expulsion of the Hyksos.  Remember, Joseph came first, lived alone, and finally his father and brothers came during the drought finding him ruling as the viceroy.  

The word Hyksos is apparently Egyptian, meaning "rulers of the foreign lands",  It was first applied to his people by Manetho, a 3rd century BCE Egyptian priest and author of the history of Egypt, who erroneously took the word to mean "shepherd kings."  His history included the story of the expulsion of the lepers who he connected as the Israelites, from Egypt at Divine behest.  This bit of anti-Semitism could have also started with Alexandrian anti-Semites.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmose_I

https://live.jewishexpert.com/moses-pharaoh#:~:text=In%20the%20Bible%2C%20the%20pharaoh's,I%20that%20the%20patriarch%20lived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyksos

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ramses-ii-pharaoh-depicted-mosess-brother-bible-dr-tony-mariot

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phoe/hd_phoe.htm#:~:text=According%20to%20ancient%20classical%20authors,Sidon%2C%20Byblos%2C%20and%20Arwad.