Ecclesiastes 1:9 tells us that there is nothing new under the sun. This, of course is not a command to forbid a venture into historical discovery. While there is nothing new under the sun, there is an incalculable quantity in the realm of history that has been forgotten and lost. An example would be the secret ingredients of Greek fire, a highly flammable liquid which filled clay projectiles and were used mostly in naval warfare by the Byzantine Empire. This weapon when catapulted at an enemy was used for both offense and defense. For seven centuries it helped to stave off the doom of Constantinople, present day Istanbul. The formula for Greek fire is an example of ancient secrets lost to the ages.
There are secrets lost to history and seemingly unimportant bits of information that we often glance over that may hold great significance but that are not comprehended as such. The other day my brother called and pointed out a verse I have read before but had not appreciated as an interesting link to the topic I have been researching for the last several years which would be ancient Egypt and the Bible. That verse was Numbers 13:16 which reads, “These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Hoshea, the son of Nun, Joshua.” In Joshua 24:15, it is Joshua who says at the end of verse 15, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” I might have known Joshua’s real name at one point, but I certainly forgot it.
Joshua was the assistant of Moses and then the leader of the Israelites as well as one of the 12 spies who spied out the land of Israel. That he would say what he said in Joshua 24:15 is inspiring since he was also a Hyksos descendent. When I first heard the word Hyksos, I assumed it was a derivative of some nebulous derogatory designation. My spellchecker almost always flags it as a misspelled word. The word Hyksos means rulers of foreign lands and they were also known as shepherd kings. How is this related to Egypt?
The country of Egypt in modernity (Misr, as it is known today) has frequently been occupied by different world and regional powers including the United Kingdom, France and various Arab governments. At present, it is ruled by the Military, which, to their credit, is very careful not to stifle tourism. In antiquity, Egypt was ruled by four distinct powers. It was ruled by Rome, Greece and Persia. The Greeks and the Egyptians seemed to have gotten on very well together and part of this was because the Persians, who ruled Egypt before the Greeks, were not especially kind, hence, in the eyes of the Egyptians, the Greeks who were awed by Egypt and its ancient culture, were seen as deliverers from the Persians.
I know, some of you must be thinking, “can’t this guy count?” The fourth power to rule the land of the Pharaohs were the Hyksos rulers. Mysterious and enigmatic are good words to describe them. But how could Joshua be a Hyksos? The Hyksos not only ruled Egypt for more than one hundred years, but also sizable parts of Palestine. Their defeat at the hands of the 18th dynasty is more than 3500 years removed from the present day. The 18th dynasty includes some of the most famous rulers from ancient Egypt including Tutankhamun (whose tomb was discovered in 1922), Queen Nefertiti (whose famous bust is in the Berlin Museum), Queen Hatshepsut and the guy who is known as the Napoleon of ancient Egypt, Thutmose III.
There are historical and Biblical anchors linking the Hyksos to information that can be verified and trusted. Some ancient sources would include Josephus and a Greko-Roman Egyptian priest and historian named Manetho. Other ancient sources would be artifacts that are qualified sources when published in academic scholarly publications. This would include surviving tablets, statues and papyrus such as the Turn Cannon which mentions many Hyksos rulers.
What seems to distinguish the Hyksos from other ancient rulers would be a significant lack of available information, and if the Biblical record is not in the equation, almost all that can be said of the Hyksos is that they are mysterious and enigmatic. Josephus in his book, against Apion (in the latter part of his complete collected works), claims that these shepherds were their or his forefathers. Manetho describes the Hyksos as barbarous invaders who burned down Egyptian towns and razed temples. He also adds a bit of interesting information that I have not found in any modern history book. He mentions that the Hyksos eventually settled in Judea near Jerusalem, which is precisely where the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh ended up.
When reading up on Manetho it is easy to see that he has no love for the Hyksos, and while he does describe them as invaders, modern archeology is strongly showing that the Hyksos were emigrants, and that they settled in Avaris which is in the northeastern part of the Nile delta. Avaris, or modern Tell el Daba, is within a ten-mile radius of the ruins of the Biblical town Pithom. Is this a coincidence?
An example of a source that is an anchor tethering this topic to archeology would be a statue which is discussed in a purely scholarly publication known as jstor. The statue, at the entrance of what was a tomb, is most unusual since most ancient statues in Egypt are of royalty. Well, this large, seated statue is a 1 ½ life size representation (almost 9 feet) of a dignitary who is not royalty or Egyptian.
This statue (or the fragments from which it was reassembled and which have curiously disappeared), was wearing a coat of colors, and is painted in the way Egyptians depicted asiatics, or people directly to the east adjacent to Egypt. There are Christian archeologists who have speculated that this statue represents Joseph and the details around this statue and its tomb, such as 11 other tombs in close proximity as well as architectural styles and pottery type, leave few other contenders as to who these people were except for the Israelites.
There is a lot of interesting archeological information regarding the Hyksos, such as finding the bones of various stock animals like donkeys, sheep and goats, but not one bone of a pig anywhere within archeological area of Avaris. I mentioned earlier that the Hyksos were conquered by the 18th dynasty under the first Pharoah of that dynasty. Some of the more recent sources point out that the controversy between the 18th dynasty and the Hyksos were due to the Hyksos having so much power and their being monotheists. One of the initial aggressors, a leader named Kamose, continued the warfare against the Hyksos because Amun, the chief god of the Egyptians commanded him to do so. The priests of Amun would probably have no objection to this course of action, and the scenario would be similarly repeated several hundred years later involving a Pharoah named Akhenaten.
Another historical source would be the biographical tomb painting of a soldier named Ahmose. (He is not to be confused with the 1st King of the 18th dynasty with the same name.) This Ahmose boasted of being part of the army that eventually defeated the Hyksos. This is connected to another interesting item mentioned by Manetho. He asserts that the Hyksos, in their sacred books, claim that they had been slaves. The soldier Ahmose killed a number of Hyksos in the eventual siege of Avaris and was given many slaves over the course of several years along with gold and other rewards. Likely, he was not the only Egyptian soldier rewarded in this manner for such actions. There are of course other ancient sources, but time is not a one-size fits all item.
What about the Biblical record? There is much in the Biblical record that is corroboratory in nature to what ancient sources have to show regarding the Hyksos. There are three questions that scholars and historians ask about the Hyksos. Who were they? Where did they come from? Where did they go?
I have not encountered any sources modern or ancient who have conclusively answered all three or even two of these questions. Josephus, and Manetho, biased as he is, comes the closest. The conquest and slavery of the Hyksos is far too similar to the Israelites to be dismissed. My scholarly research points strongly to Ephraim and Manasseh as being the ancestors of the Hyksos. What does the Bible say?
In Genesis 48:19, Jacob who is on his deathbed, is about to bless the two half Egyptian sons of Joseph. He places his hands in a crossed position on the heads of Ephraim and Manasseh (who would have been in their early to mid-twenties) which displeased Joseph, but Jacob prophesies that Ephraim would become greater than Manasseh. The Biblical record does not elaborate on this, but it does state Jacob saying of Ephraim, “but truly, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.”
The archeological evidence points to the town of Avaris as being established in the late 12th dynasty under Pharoah Amenemhet III, who some scholars believe is the Pharoah who elevated Joseph. The Hyksos seem to have had some control in the late 13th dynasty, part of the 14th and for much of the 15th and 16th dynasty. The 17th dynasty morphed into the 18th dynasty. The Turn Cannon in Turin Italy, while having a number of sections missing, mentions the names of about 40 Hyksos rulers though very little other than their names are known about many of them. The scarabs, or seals of different Hyksos kings have been found not just in Egypt, but in southern Palestine or present-day Israel and as far north as Syria. Many of these scarabs can been seen in museums such at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC.
The Biblical record and scholarly sources together help to answer the three questions about the Hyksos. Who were they? Where did they come from? Where did they go?
Who were they? They were the descendants of Joseph, albeit as reputable sources such as Nicolas Grimal point out, highly Egyptianized, which makes sense given their heritage. Where did they come from? In part, their heritage was from Caanan which makes sense since some of their names are not exactly Egyptian. Jacob-Har for instance was a Hyksos ruler. Where did they go? They, along with the children of Israel became slaves, and during the Exodus, many or most of them departed with the rest of the Israelites. Exodus 12:38 mentions a mixed multitude that went up with the Children of Israel and God allows a provision for the 3rd generation of an Egyptian and Edomite to enter into the assembly of the children of Israel in Duet 23:8.
There are 8 generations from Ephraim until Joshua, but he had many more descendants who were not the first-born sons. 1st Chronicles 7:20-29 record the family of Ephraim including the fact that his daughter Sheerah built upper and lower Beth Huron which were two among many of the towns where they settled after the Exodus. These towns were not far from Jerusalem. It also lets us know that two of his sons were killed by the residents of Gath because his two sons, Ezer and Elead because they tried to take their cattle. There is sufficient evidence here that the sons and daughters of Ephraim did not spend all of their time in Egypt.
For a most of the duration of my studies over the last several years, I have thought that the Israelites were the Hyksos, but at the end of 2023, the research results and my background in Biblical studies forced me to realize that this created more questions than answers. In January of this year, I went to Egypt for further research, and taking along a book called Avaris, the Captital of the Hyksos, by Manfred Bietak, I tried to figure out who the Hyksos were. I went to museums in Cairo by day and I studied this book by night, praying that God would show me who the Hyksos were.
One evening after a long day of walking around, taking pictures and studying statues, as I was reading the book, Avaris, the Capital of the Hyksos, and I was thinking about the similarities between the Hyksos and Ephraim and Manasseh, it hit me that they were the same group of people. And my research since that time has only confirmed this. There are still road bumps to this idea, but I am still studying, and this supposition has resulted in answered far outnumbering questions. The implications of this research are massive. For instance, it has resulted in a confirmation of previous research outcomes such as specific identification of people in the books of Genesis and Exodus.
A historian and writer whom I have a lot of respect for, Terri Fivash, more than 20 years ago correctly conjectured that Amenemhet III was the Pharaoh who elevated Joseph from prison to be the prime minister of Egypt. I went from there and my research showing that the Hyksos were the descendants of Joseph and his Egyptian wife, have implications for who other people were.
The Hyksos, as being related to, but culturally removed from the Israelites, were a threat to the religion of Egypt (the worship of Amun and lesser gods) due to their power combined with their monotheism. After the Hyksos had been defeated, the conqueror, the 1st Pharoah of the 18th dynasty, Ahmose, or his son Amenhotep I may have been the Pharoah who knew not Joseph and prescribed slavery to discourage the Israelites from falling in with another nation to Egypt’s detriment, and it would have likely been Amenhotep I (the second pharaoh of the 18th dynasty) who commanded that the baby boys be thrown into the river.
It would have been the 3rd Pharoah of the 18th dynasty, Thutmose I who had only one legitimate child, a daughter who would be forced by the dictates of succession to marry a half-brother.
When she would marry her half-brother, the future Thutmose II, she would lose any power unless she had an heir. How could she get an heir without being married. She was stuck. But, one day, when she went down to the Nile River to bathe, there was a basket floating in the water in the rushes by the Nile River. In her rationale, the gods had sent her an heir, and she would be able to keep her power. Even though she would marry her step-brother, she would have an heir. She named her heir very carefully, the name of which, Moses, was similar to her father’s name Thutmose I. This daughter of Pharoah was Hatshepsut and she would become one of the most famous female Pharaohs of ancient Egypt.
The only thing that could jeopardize her power was if her heir committed a grievous offense and while Egyptian history is mum on this, it is just what the Bible reveals. In Egypt, wherever you find a monument of Hatshepsut, more specifically her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari, near the valley of the Kings, much of the hieroglyphs and paintings are chiseled out. Her mummy in the Museum of Egyptian civilization shows a regal and very proud looking person. Her reign was not characterized by military achievements but by monuments, advances in society, and the overall quality of living. She reigned about 20 years.
The Bible records that Moses fled when he was 40 after killing an Egyptian who was the aggressor. He would come back 40 years later to face the napoleon of ancient Egypt, Thutmose III who history tells us had never lost a battle from Egypt up to Syria. He had a perfect record and arguably, the military force of Egypt had never been so powerful. It makes sense that this ruler would be very proud and arrogant. It is also understandable that some Israelites despaired that their situation could ever be improved much as we are sometimes tempted to wonder if we can be delivered from the body of death which Paul spoke of.
The mummy of Thutmose III bears forensic indicators of someone who drowned and suffered multiple abrasions to his body. History tells us that his first-born son died under unrecorded circumstances. His second born son and heir Amenhotep II (whose 1st born son also died early), in the room next to him, also in the Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo, bears many curious scars all over his body. The scars look like many small boils like chicken pox scars only larger, rounded, more severe and indented. What kind of plague would cause something like this? Amenhotep II’s second son and heir would be Thutmose IV.
There are many implications and undiscovered gems yet to be searched out in connection with what I believe I have been given, which is a restoration of history previously lost to the ages. In John 3:27, John the Baptist says, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven.” I cannot answer the question I often ask myself, which is why I have been privileged to discover what I have shared here and in other places like my blog. I do not have an answer except that God is good. What I have learned, by God’s grace, is not whether I have succeeded more than other historians. I am unequivocally convinced that what I have shared here is completely viable. The questions of who the Hyksos were, where they came from, and where they went have, I believe, been answered, and I am also firmly convinced that without God’s leading and guidance, I would have many less advantages over other historians who have pondered these three questions.
I think that the subject of the Hyksos will always be a source of fascination to me. But a source of greater fascination is plight of the Israelites and conquered Hyksos, who, to all human appearances, had no hope against the Napoleon of ancient Egypt, Pharoah Thutmose III.
Sometimes it is tempting, in our Christian lives, to give into the false idea that we will never reach the standard God has for us.
But, the Israelites were not commanded to look at the military might of the as-yet unconquered Thutmose III. They were not to look at his armies or vast resources. We are not commanded to look at all the enemy of souls can throw at us. We are not commanded to consider his many advantages. We are told to look to God and Christ and to make this warming vista our focus. Like the Israelites and conquered Hyksos of old, we are to look to Jesus, and say, as Joshua, a Hyksos descendent, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” This should be our prayer as well as what God alone can give us which would be grace and strength in Jesus to do so. Thank you for going with me on this trip into the realm of history. Blessings!
