Insight Into Joseph's Family Becoming Slaves

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                     

Joseph's family, led by his father, Jacob, had entered Egypt with his family of 70, and was given Goshen, the Nile River's Delta, land to live in.                                                    

  Joseph, viceroy of Egypt, meeting his Hebrew brothers again, first time  

Pithom, Avaris, Rameses, Succoth, and the initial route of the Exodus plus (in part II) the Red Sea or the Sea of Reeds?  They had been the builders of the storage cities:  The storage cities Pitḥom and Rameses, built for the pharaoh by the Hebrews, were located in the northeastern part of the Egyptian delta, not far from Goshen, the district in which the Hebrews lived. Most likely the pharaoh who enslaved the Hebrews was Rameses himself.  

  Pharaoh Rameses, played by Yul Brynner in movie, Ten Commandments of 1956, possibly the pharaoh that had the Hebrews as slaves building the storage cities

Then there's Raiders of the Lost Ark made in 1981. 

Amenhotep III became Pharaoh of Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands, in about 1390 BC, give or take a year. His great-grandfather, Thutmose III, had carved out a mighty empire stretching from the Euphrates in the north to the Nile’s fourth cataract in the south (see Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs). Thutmose’s aunt, the polarizing Hatshepsut, had earlier opened up trade routes deep into sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of their reigns, wealth poured into Egypt from both directions.  Possible peer of Moses.  

Actually, Pharaoh Amenhotep     ruled during the life of Moses (1391 to1271 BCE) if we look at just the numbers.  “Amenhotep the Magnificent” is pharaoh Amenhotep III’s epithet, and it says it all. In the 1300s BCE he ruled an empire that stretched from northern Syria to Sudan, an area roughly the size of Alaska, Texas, and Wisconsin combined. His 38-year rule was a period of political, economic, and cultural prosperity, and he commissioned numerous carved portraits of himself; these varied in height from 60 feet to a couple of inches. Amenhotep III has the distinction of having the most surviving statues of any Egyptian pharaoh, and they span his entire life. In this portrait, he wears the traditional striped royal headdress, topped by the double crown that represents his rule of Upper and Lower Egypt. The problem is that a Jewish calendar (lunar)  is off from a Christian calendar (solar).                           

Hyksos  "ruler(s) of foreign lands") is a term which, in modern Egyptology, designates the kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt (fl. c. 1650–1550 BC). The seat of power of these kings was the city of Avaris in the Nile delta, from where they ruled over Lower and Middle Egypt up to Cusae.Hyksos rule might have been preceded by groups of Canaanite peoples who gradually settled in the Nile delta from the end of the Twelfth Dynasty onwards and who may have seceded from the crumbling and unstable Egyptian control at some point during the Thirteenth Dynasty.The Hyksos period marks the first in which Egypt was ruled by foreign rulers.  Our Joseph, son of Jacob, had become the viceroy of Egypt, meaning 2nd in command,  under the pharaoh-who remains unnamed by Moses.                                      

The land of Egypt has a total area of 1,001,450 km² (386,662 mi²) and a total coastline of 2,450 km (1,522.4 mi). This land area is approximately 144% of the area of Texas. Egypt is thus one of the largest countries in Africa and the 30th biggest in the world.  The Nile Delta, which is Goshen, is but a fraction of that area.  Egypt is comparatively low at an average elevation of 321 meters above sea level. The highest mountain peak (Dschabal Katrina) is at 2,637 meters. The country has about 30 islands. There are direct national borders with the three neighboring countries Israel, Libya and Sudan. 

The Nile is the longest river in the world. It originates near the equator and flows nearly 7000 km northward. The Delta begins approximately 20 km north of Cairo and extends North for about 150 km. At the coast the delta is about 250 km wide, from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the east.

They multiplied faster than the Egyptians had thought possible, causing a future pharaoh fear of being overcome again as the Hyksos may have been started with Joseph's entering as a slave.  Joseph died at age 110.  Jacob, his father, died at age 147 in Goshen, but buried in Hebron in the Cave of Machpelah.  

וְיָשַׁבְתָּ בְאֶרֶץ־גֹּשֶׁן וְהָיִיתָ קָרוֹב אֵלַי אַתָּה וּבָנֶיךָ וּבְנֵי בָנֶיךָ וְצֹאנְךָ וּבְקָרְךָ וְכָל־אֲשֶׁר־לָךְ׃

You will dwell in the region of Goshen, where you will be near me—you and your children and your grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and all that is yours.

Genesis 45:10

Avadim in Hebrew means Slaves.  

The first 4, then #9,#10 were by Leah;  #7 and #8 by Zilpah; #5 and #6 by Bilhah, and #11 and #12 by Rachel.  Leah and Rachel were full sisters.  

Jacob had 12 sons.  Every 100 years is made up of 4 generations.  Let's say 10 sons per generation per son means 10X4=40X10sons=400 men per 100 years.  Their sheep had also multiplied.  There were no natural enemies such as famine or disease.   It didn't take long to reach a population of 600,000.  400X4-1600X4=6400.  ;  6400X4=25,600X10=256,000; and 256,000X4=1,024,000 far more than the 600,000 ready to leave. They lived in Egypt for 400 years, much of that as slaves when their population showed quick growth of either sheep and/or shepherds.

Times change and people also change.  We share 50% of the DNA from our father and 50% from our mother.  By the time we have 3rd cousins twice removed, we only share 0.195% of our DNA with them.  This is true under normal circumstances, but you were living together for 400 years in close proximity and since the beginning, marrying close relatives such as -Abraham married to Sarah-his niece.  Jews are called and Endogamous people for that reason, even since then in ghettos, etc. for marrying distant relatives.  Most of the time they were not even aware of the fact, until DNA testing came along.     

They will be on the Exodus for 40 years, going from a population of 603,550 down to 601,730 with a loss of 1,820. Take the date of the Exodus as 1500 BCE-and it fits with the Hyksos leaving as well.  Both are one and the same as Simcha shows in his video.     

  When the house of Jacob went to Egypt, they were given the land of Goshen to settle (Genesis 45:10). The Children of Israel settled in Goshen for 430 years, growing from a clan of 70 into a great nation of 600,000. The Bible notes that the land of Goshen was fertile and suited for flocks and livestock (Genesis 47:6). Scholars believe it was in the northeast of Egypt in the delta region. Joseph, in fact, advises his brothers to tell Pharaoh that they are shepherds in order that he settle them in Goshen, since shepherds were abhorrent to Egyptians (Genesis 46:34).  Goshen is believed to have been located in the eastern Nile Delta, lower Egypt; perhaps at or near Avaris, the seat of power of the Hyksos kings.            

    slaves making bread

Goshen, as a place for livestock, is compared to Texas.  In Texas, cattle are the main stock.  Texas is home to 13 million cattle and calves, ranking it first in the United States in total cattle numbers.  The beef cattle industry is by far the largest sector in the Texas agriculture industry.  With cattle that can perform across a variety of climates, and some breeds that were developed in the Lone Star State, there is a lot of potential for Texas genetics to help influence any herd's performance. 

Evidently they were kept as slaves in Goshen, probably in their own very old houses, but what happened to their herds and the herds of the Pharaoh?    

In Numbers 11:5 it says the following about food they had in slavery: We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. Add to that a basic bread,, possibly cattle and sheep (which they took out with them from Egypt, meaning that they had it in Egypt) add to that the popular drink of the time (beer?) and there you have it.  They were used as builders of storage cities.  

This Aish Baladi looks like Pita to me, a staple throughout the Middle East.  

The standard Egyptian bread that is always available in any Egyptian household, 'Aish Baladi is basically Egyptian flatbread. Traditionally baked in extremely hot ovens, this vegan bread is the result of a mixture of whole wheat flour, yeast, salt, and water.Aish Shamsi is thick and round bread, traditionally made from wheat flour and yeast dough. Its name, ‘Aish Shamsi or solar bread, is derived from the fact that it is left to dry under the sun for nearly 12 hours, before being baked in a traditional oven.Several sources claim that this type of bread was inherited from ancient Egyptians. Today, although not very common in bakeries in Cairo and other cities, women in Upper Egypt still choose to make ‘Aish Shamsi at home.

Resource:

The Mystery of the Lost Ark of the Covenant, by Simcha Jacobovici, video on youtube.   

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049833/  Ten Commandmentshttps://www.paramountplus.com/movies/video/wofm8SA4Xg_P0ivuFsV6nsajNHcFZy49/ Raiders of the Lost Ark

https://theisraelbible.com/the-land-of-goshen-where-israel-became-a-nation/

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

https://egyptianstreets.com/2022/08/22/aish-an-assortment-of-bread-types-from-egypt/#:~:text=The%20standard%20Egyptian%20bread%20that,yeast%2C%20salt%2C%20and%20water.

https://www.texasagriculture.gov/Grants-Services/Marketing-and-International-Trade/International

https://masculineepic.com/index.php/2022/10/23/pharaoh-amenhotep-iii/

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

The Nile River Delta of Goshen and It's Cities Where Jacob and 70 Lived

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Pithom:  the storage city mentioned in the Torah, is still being shown.  Pithom is one of the cities which, according to Exodus 1:11was built for the Pharaoh of the oppression by the forced labor of the Israelites. The other city was Ramses; and the Septuagint adds a third, "On, which is Heliopolis." (The Septuagint was the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (Ancient Greek: , and often abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 BCE) by seventy-two Jewish translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

These cities are called by a Hebrew term rendered in the Authorized Version "treasure cities" and in the Revised Version "store cities." The Septuagint renders it πόλεις ὀχυραί "strong [or "fortified"] cities." The same term is used of certain cities of King Solomon in I Kings 9:19 (comp. also II Chronicles 16:4).

Qantir or Rameses: is a village in Egypt. Qantir is believed to mark what was probably the ancient site of the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses II's capital, Pi-Ramesses or Per-Ramesses ("House or Domain of Ramesses"). It is situated around 9 kilometers (5.6 mi) north of Faqous in the Sharqiyah province of the eastern Nile Delta, about 60 mi (97 km) north-east of Cairo. Rameses is mentioned along with Pithom as a "storage city"

that the Israelites had to build in the Torah.   The Arabic name of the village contains Coptic: ⲉⲛⲧⲏⲣ, lit. 'gods'.

An official wearing the "mushroom-headed" hairstyle also seen in contemporary paintings of Western Asiatic foreigners, from Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos. Dated to 1802–1640 BCE. Staatliche Sammlung für Ägyptische Kunst.

Haran is an offshoot of the Euphrates River.  They certainly did come from the "East", Mesopotamia of the Assyrian and Babylon regions.  

Was Abraham part of the Hyksos migration?  We know his father was Terah whose sons were Abram, Nahor, and Haran;  and Haran's son was Lot.  Haran died in the lifetime of Terah in his native land, in Ur Kasdim.  Abram married Sarai, and Nahor married Milcah the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah.  Terah took Abram and Lot, grandson Abram and Sarai and Isaac and left from ur for the land of Canaan;  they arrived at Haran and they settled there.  Terah lived for 205 years and died in Haran.  

The Hyksos,  the term Hyksos is used ethnically to designate people of probable West Semitic, Levantine origin, like Joseph and his father Jacob.  The Hyksos period marks the first in which Egypt was ruled by foreign rulers. Many details of their rule, such as the true extent of their kingdom and even the names and order of their kings, remain uncertain. The Hyksos practiced many Levantine or Canaanite customs as well as many Egyptian customs. They have been credited with introducing several technological innovations to Egypt, such as the horse and chariot, as well as the sickle sword and the composite bow, a theory which is disputed.

The Hyksos did not control all of Egypt. Instead, they coexisted with the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Dynasties, which were based in Thebes. Warfare between the Hyksos and the pharaohs of the late Seventeenth Dynasty eventually culminated in the defeat of the Hyksos by Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. In the following centuries, the Egyptians would portray the Hyksos as bloodthirsty and oppressive foreign rulers, now proved to be wrong. 

Avaris: The ancient site of Avaris is located around 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) south of Qantir. This was the older city in this area. Later on, Avaris was absorbed by Pi-Ramesses. 

A group of West Asian foreigners, possibly Canaanites, labelled as Aamu (ꜥꜣmw), with the leader labelled as a Hyksos, visiting the Egyptian official Khnumhotep II c. 1900 BCE. Tomb of 12th dynasty official Khnumhotep II, at Beni Hasan.

 Avaris was the Hyksos capital of Egypt located at the modern site of Tell el-Dab'a in the northeastern region of the Nile Delta. 

There were Ammonites of Ammon but no country with Amorites,  It is a name in the Torah living in Canaan.  In the 2nd millennium BCE, Abraham's day, there was an Amoritic state in central and S. Syria incorporating the Lebanese Mountains and important harbor towns.; an important link between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and after a long struggle between Egypt and the Hittite kingdom, was annexed to the latter. In Jacob's day they settled on both sides of the Jordan, especially in mountainous regions.  Moses conquered 2 Amorite kingdoms;  Heshbon and Bashan.  At this period, the Amorites were no longer a pure W. Semitic element but mixed with other strains in Canaan, especially the Horites and Hittites.  "The ways of the Amorite" is a term applied in rabbinic and medieval literature to folk practices alien to the spirit of Judaism.

A few researchers are  calling  Hyksos for convenience sake, Amorites,  as the little onomastic evidence we have, shows that they had mainly Western-Semitic personal names.  Interesting, because the Amorites were also people living in Canaan before the Exodus that were either annihilated or assim-ilated  by the Israelites. 

As the main course of the Nile migrated eastward, its position at the hub of Egypt's delta emporia made it a major capital suitable for trade. It was occupied from about the 18th century BCE until its capture by Ahmose I. It's strange that a pharaoh had to capture a city of Egypt when a pharaoh with Joseph ha chosen the Nile Delta, Goshen, as the home of Joseph's father and brothers with their families.  Had the dynasty of pharaohs lost ground and had to fight to gain it back or what?  

The site was originally founded by Amenemhat I on the eastern branch of the Nile in the Delta. Its close proximity to Asia made it a popular town for Asiatic immigrants. Many of these immigrants were from Canaan and they were culturally Egyptianized, using Egyptian pottery, but also retained many aspects of their own culture, as can be seen from the various Asiatic burials including weapons of Syro-Canaanite origin. One palatial district appears to have been abandoned as a result of an epidemic during the 13th dynasty. 

In the 18th century BCE, the Hyksos conquered Lower Egypt and set up Avaris as their capital. Kamose, the last pharaoh of the Seventeenth Dynasty, besieged Avaris but was unable to defeat the Hyksos there.

A few decades later, Ahmose I captured Avaris and overran the Hyksos. Canaanite-style artifacts dated to the Tuthmosid or New Kingdom period suggest that a large part of the city's Semitic population remained in residence following its reconquest by the Egyptians.                             

                Luxor and Ancient Thebes, Egypt:

The pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty set up a capital in Thebes and the palatial complex at Avaris was briefly abandoned, but areas such as the Temple of Seth and G6 region remained continuously occupied. Head across the River Nile to the West Bank and discover the great necropolis of ancient Thebes. Of its many sections, the most visited is the Valley of the Kings, where the pharaohs of the New Kingdom chose to be entombed in preparation for the afterlife.

 Thebes: of Upper Egypt;   known to the ancient Egyptians as Waset, was an ancient Egyptian city located along the Nile about 800 kilometers (500 mi) south of the Mediterranean. Its ruins lie within the modern Egyptian city of Luxor. Thebes was the main city of the fourth Upper Egyptian nome (Sceptre nome) and was the capital of Egypt for long periods during the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom eras. It was close to Nubia and the Eastern Desert, with its valuable mineral resources and trade routes. 

Thebes was a cult center and the most venerated city during many periods of ancient Egyptian history. The site of Thebes includes areas on both the eastern bank of the Nile, where the temples of Karnak and Luxor stand and where the city was situated; and the western bank, where a necropolis of large private and royal cemeteries and funerary complexes can be found. In 1979, the ruins of ancient Thebes were classified by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

After Ramesses II constructed the city of Pi-Ramesses roughly 2km to the north and "superseding Avaris", large portions of the former site of Avaris were used by the inhabitants of Pi-Ramesses as a cemetery and part of it was used as a major navy base, while the "Harbor of Avaris" toponym continued to be used for Avaris' harbor through the Ramesside period. The name "Avaris" is also referred to in Papyrus Sallier I in the late 13th century BC. In addition, the 'Avaris' toponym is also known to Manetho in the 3rd century BCE, quoted by Josephus in his Against Apion 1.14.

Heliopolis or On:  In the Hebrew's scriptures, Heliopolis is referenced directly and obliquely, usually in reference to its prominent pagan cult. In his prophesies against Egypt, Isaiah claimed the "City of the Sun" (Ir ha Shemesh) would be one of the five Egyptian cities to follow the Lord of Heaven's army and speak Hebrew. Jeremiah and Ezekiel mention the "House of the Sun" (Beth Shemesh) and Ôn, claiming Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon would shatter its obelisks and burn its temple and that its "young men of Folly" (Aven) would "fall by the sword".  Its traditional Egyptological transcription is Iunu but it appears in biblical Hebrew as ʾŌn (אֹ֖ן‎, אֽוֹן‎), and ʾĀwen (אָ֛וֶן‎) leading some scholars to reconstruct its pronunciation in earlier Egyptian as *ʔa:wnu, perhaps from older /ja:wunaw/. Variant transcriptions include Awnu and Annu. The name survived as Coptic ⲱⲛ ŌN.  Coptic the language of the Copts, which represents the final stage of ancient Egyptian. It now survives only as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church-who are today's Christians in Egypt.  Copts have historically spoken the Coptic language, a direct descendant of the Demotic Egyptian that was spoken in late antiquity.

Mendes: (ancient Egyptian: ḏdt, modern: Tell el-Rub'a) is an Ancient Egyptian city in Lower Egypt, located in the western Nile Delta. It was the provincial capital of Hatmehit, the sixteenth name of Lower Egypt. Just 500 meters to the south lies the ancient city of Thmouis..

                         The ruins of Tanis today.  

Tanis:The Biblical story of Moses being found in the marshes of the Nile River (Book of Exodus, Exodus 2:3–5) is often set at Tanis, which is often identified with Zoan (Hebrew: צֹועַן  Ṣōʕan) or Tzovaan.  An accumulation of remnants from different epochs contributed to the confusion of the first archaeologists who saw in Tanis as the biblical city of Zoan in which the Hebrews would have suffered pharaonic slavery. Pierre Montet, in inaugurating his great excavation campaigns in the 1930s, began from the same premise. He was hoping to discover traces that would confirm the accounts of the Old Testament. His own excavations gradually overturned this hypothesis, even if he was defending this biblical connection until the end of his life. It was not until the discovery of Qantir/Pi-Ramesses and the resumption of excavations under Jean Yoyotte that the place of Tanis was finally restored in the long chronology of the sites of the delta. 

 Saft el-Hinna:  a village, lies on the ancient Egyptian town of Per-Sopdu or Pi-Sopt, meaning "House of Sopdu", which was the capital of the 20th nome of Lower Egypt and one of the most important cult centers during the Late Period of ancient Egypt. As the ancient name implies, the town was consecrated to Sopdu, god of the eastern borders of Egypt.  During the late Third Intermediate Period, Per-Sopdu – called Pishaptu or Pisapti, in Akkadian, by the Neo-Assyrian invaders – was the seat of one of the four Great chiefdom of the Meshwesh, along with Mendes, Sebennytos and Busiris.

Sais:   was an ancient Egyptian city in the Western Nile Delta on the Canopic branch of the Nile, known by the ancient Egyptians as Sꜣw. It was the provincial capital of Sap-Meh, the fifth nome of Lower Egypt and became the seat of power during the Twenty-fourth Dynasty of Egypt (c. 732–720 BCE) and the Saite Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt (664–525 BCE) during the Late Period. On its ruins today stands the town of Sa el-Hagar .Dating to 5000 BCE, agriculture appears here during this period, as well as at another similar site, Merimde Beni Salama, which is located about 80km south of Sais., leading to gradual changes in climatic conditions from 4600 BCE onwards. It is believed that the Middle Holoce evolution of activity from fish processing to a settled hunting and agricultural phase may be connecene Moist phase started at that time.                        

The Nile delta (Goshen) is situated in northern Egypt, where the river Nile reaches the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in the world. It originates near the equator and flows nearly 7000 km (4349.6 mi) northward. The Delta begins approximately 20 km (12.4 mi) north of Cairo and extends North for about 150 km (93 mi). At the coast the delta is about 250 km (155 mi) wide, from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the east. The area of the Nile Delta is about 20.000 km2 (7.7220432 Square Miles). The Nile Valley and the Nile Delta rank among the world's most fertile farming areas and are surrounded by a highly arid environment.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

alliance.org/deltas/nile-delta

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

https://ancientegypt.fandom.com/wiki/Mendes#:~:text=Mendes%20(ancient%20Egyptian%3A%20%E1%B8%8Fdt%2C,the%20ancient%20city%20of%20Thmouis.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliopolis_(ancient_Egypt)

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saft_el-Hinna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sais,_Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thebes,_Egypt

https://ioa.ucla.edu/content/friday-seminar-tell-el-dabaavaris-capital-hyksos-town-different-ethnicities#:~:text=Avaris%2C%20capital%20of%20the%20Hyksos,mainly%20Western%2DSemitic%20personal%20names.

https://parkcityhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Teacher-Background-Information.pdf