Bible
and Spade 15.1 (2002) 21-23 [text only]
Copyright © 2002 by Bible
and Spade. Cited with permission.
Joseph in
First of Six Parts
No portion of the Old Testament has a richer
Egyptian
coloring
than the story of Joseph. Egyptian
names, titles,
places, and
customs all appear in Genesis 37-50. In
the
last one
hundred years or so, historical and archaeological
research has
made the study of the Egyptian elements in
the Joseph
story more fruitful than ever before. In order to
examine the
Egyptological information, it is necessary to
establish
the period in Egyptian history when Joseph was
in
Mainline contemporary scholarship and the
Bible's own
chronology are
in accord in dating Joseph sometime
between 2000
and 1600 BC. This time frame includes
two
important
periods of
(2000-1786
B.C.) and the Second Intermediate Period
(1786-1570
B.C.). However, before narrowing down our
dates for
Joseph any more, let us first survey these two
periods.
The Middle Kingdom was one of
ages (Hayes,
1964) (Aling, 1981). The country was
unified
and
prosperous, and was in the process of conquering
this area is
called
The eight Pharaohs of this period comprise
Dynasty: The
founder was the great Amenemhat I (1991-
1962
BC). He died by assassination, but not
before he had
associated
his son Sesostris I with him on the throne as co-
regent. Sesostris in his long reign (1971-1928 BC)
campaigned
with success in northern
no less than
35 sites in
Under his immediate successors, fighting in
subsided and
trade received the main royal attentions.
Since
page 21
nation.
The most important king of the 12th Dynasty
was
Sesostris
III (1878-1843 BC). He renewed the
efforts to
conquer
south as
Semnah was taken. Sesostris III also
instituted
great
administrative reforms. He broke the
power of the
local
nobility. These officials had been a
thorn in the side
of the
Pharaohs all through the 12th Dynasty. We know
little in
detail of what Sesostris III did, but he did end the
semi-independence
of the so-called Nomarchs (provincial
governors). We will have occasion to return to this point
later.
Under Amenemhat III (1842-1797 B.C.) the
Middle
Kingdom
reached its highest level of material prosperity.
exploitation
of mines and quarries was greater than ever
before, and
a project to reclaim land in the Faiyum region
to the west
of the
The final rulers of the Twelfth Dynasty
(including one
female king)
were weak. As central authority broke
down,
so did
control of
enabled an
ever-expanding infiltration of Asiatics to enter
to seize
control of northern
Kingdom
period of Egyptian history.
The Second Intermediate Period, or as it is
sometimes
called, "the Hyksos Period," was not a
time of
greatness for
controlled
by Asiatics, a group called the Hyksos
by the
Egyptians. The south was ruled by local
Egyptian
dynasts of no great power or importance,
at least in
their early years. [The best study of the
Hyksos is
John Van Seters, The Hyksos (
A few comments on the Hyksos are necessary
here. There
are several wrong views concerning
them which
have become popularly held. The first
is that they
entered
military
invasion led by chariots. While the Hyksos
page
22a
probably did
introduce the war chariot to
they most
certainly did not enter the country and
conquer it
in a military campaign. They entered
the
there in
sufficient numbers to do so, simply
established
one of their leaders as an Egyptian-style
Pharaoh. They resided in a capital city called
Avaris;
later in Egyptian history this city would be
re-named
"Ramses" after the great king Ramses II
(1290-1223
BC).
Another misconception about the Hyksos
concerns
their name. Josephus, a Jewish historian
writing in
the first century AD during the days of
he great
Jewish Revolt against the
and
term
"Hyksos" meant "Shepherd Kings." This is of course
quite
wrong. The name Hyksos comes from two
Egyptian
words
meaning "Rulers of Foreign Lands," and has
nothing at
all to do with shepherds.
The final incorrect idea regarding the
Hyksos is that
they ruled
all of
the delta
region, at least for any length of time.
page 22b
During which of these two periods of time
did Joseph
come to
among
scholars to date him to the Hyksos period, since it
is generally
assumed that the Israelites were fellow Asiatics
related to
the Hyksos. It is also assumed that,
since Joseph
eventually
rose to a high position in the Egyptian court,
the king must
have been a fellow countryman of Joseph's.
If we allow
for a sojourn of some 400 years in
the
Israelites, and if we accept the so-called Late Date of
the Exodus
(in the middle 1200's BC), a date for Joseph
around 1650
BC would be perfect.
The Bible, on the other hand, provides us
with some
very
specific chronological data regarding these events. I
Kings 6:1, a
pivotal reference for all Old Testament
chronology,
dates the Exodus 480 years before the fourth
year of
Solomon, accepted by virtually all scholars as 966
BC. This places the Exodus in ca. 1446 BC; a date
which
agrees with
the so-called Early Date for the Exodus.
Next, Exodus
12:40 states that Jacob came to dwell in
in ca. 1876
BC. These Biblical references clearly
show
that Joseph
ought to be dated in the Middle Kingdom rather
than in the
Hyksos Period.
Several specific points in the Joseph story
confirm a
Middle
Kingdom rather than a Hyksos date for Joseph.
In
Genesis 41:14
Joseph is called out of prison to meet with
the king.
Before going to meet the king, Joseph puts on
new (clean)
clothing and shaves himself. This
becomes
understandable
when we realize that the Egyptians were a
clean people
and were particularly offended by facial hair.
This verse points to the Pharaoh being a
native Egyptian,
and not
Hyksos. The latter, being Asiatics, were
not
bothered by
facial hair and a general lack of cleanliness.
When Joseph
is rewarded and promoted by the Pharaoh
for interpreting
the king's dream, he is named to be ruler
over all the
never ruled
all the
Pharaohs of
the Middle Kingdom did.
Also, when Joseph is given a wife by the
king as a reward
for his
interpretation of the dream, the woman is said to
page 23a
be the
daughter of Potiphera, Priest of On. On was the
center of
solar worship in ancient
worshiped
there was Re or Ra, the northern manifestation
of Amon-Re,
the supreme deity of both the Middle
Kingdom and
The Hyksos, while they did not persecute the
worshipers
of Re, did
not give that deity the number one position.
Their
favorite deity was Set, a delta god sometimes
regarded by
the Egyptians as nearly a devil-like figure.
The Hyksos
identified Set with the Palestinian god Baal,
a god from
their Canaanite homeland who was very
familiar to
them.
Now if Joseph was being rewarded by a Hyksos
king, it
stands to
reason that his new wife would not have been
the daughter
of a priest of Re, but rather the daughter of a
priest of
Set. Once again, the Middle Kingdom seems a
better
choice for dating Joseph than the Second
Intermediate
Period. Thus, relying on the Biblical
chronology
and the historical material, we will place
Joseph in
the Middle Kingdom Period, under two great
rulers,
Sesostris II (1897-1878 BC)and Sesostris III
(1878-1843
BC).
Joseph entered
note that
slavery was not a very old concept in
had not
existed earlier in the
when the
great pyramids were being built. Those
structures
were not, as is sometimes stated, built by slave
labor. They
were constructed by drafted peasant labor.
The Middle Kingdom is the first major period
in
Egyptian
history where slavery was well known. In the
1950s AD,
the American Egyptologist William C. Hayes
published a
famous papyrus document from the Middle
Kingdom
which had a list of slaves on one side and a
discussion
of Egyptian prisons on the other (Hayes 1972).
In the next
issue of Bible and Spade, we will examine the
information
this valuable papyrus provides for us
regarding
the story of Joseph.
page
23b
Bibliography
Aling, C. F.
1981
Hayes, W. C.
1964 The Middle Kingdom of
Hayes, W.
C., ed.
1972 A papyrus of the Late Middle Kingdom in
the
Museum Reprint.
page
23c
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