The Hyksos Take Power in Egypt

The event

During Egypt's Second Intermediate Period, a group of Semitic-speaking peoples from Canaan and the Levant — called "Hyksos," from an Egyptian phrase meaning roughly "rulers of foreign lands" — gradually gained control of the eastern Nile Delta and eventually ruled all of northern Egypt from their capital at Avaris. They introduced new technology into Egypt, most notably the horse-drawn war chariot and improved bronze weapons, and ruled as Egypt's Fifteenth Dynasty for roughly a century.

The Hyksos period offers a fascinating backdrop for the end of the Joseph narrative and the beginning of Exodus. A Semitic dynasty ruling from the Delta, favorable to fellow Semitic peoples, would explain very naturally why Jacob's family was welcomed into nearby Goshen (Genesis 47) and settled comfortably for generations. Many evangelical Old Testament scholars, in fact, place this warm reception specifically during Hyksos rule, since a native Egyptian dynasty already suspicious of Semitic outsiders fits far less naturally with the friendliness Joseph's family received.

That same theory offers a plausible explanation for Exodus 1:8's ominous line, "Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph." When native Egyptian pharaohs eventually expelled the Hyksos and reunified the country under the New Kingdom, a fiercely nationalistic and foreigner-wary Eighteenth Dynasty would have every reason to view the numerous, prospering Israelites in Goshen with suspicion and turn them to forced labor — exactly the kind of humiliating memory a conquered, restored Egypt would want to erase, and exactly the setting that would produce the enslavement Exodus describes.

Dating

Hyksos-era dates are tied to the broader Egyptian chronology debate discussed under the Middle Kingdom; some evangelical chronologists place Jacob's family's arrival in Egypt within this Hyksos period rather than the preceding Middle Kingdom.

Scripture references

• Genesis 47
• Exodus 1:8