These Hyksos, who had the rule in Egypt when the Israelites were welcomed there, were invaders of this kind, foreigners who had seized the throne and the power. They were shepherds, living the pastoral life—though perhaps they left off that when they became the rulers of Egypt—and wherever they came from, whether direct from Arabia or, as is more likely, from farther north, probably from Syria, all scholars are, I think, agreed that they were Semites. Josephus, the historian of the Jews, asserts that they actually were the Israelites. Modern historians think him mistaken there. But, though not Israelites, they were almost certainly of the same Arabian origin.
And there you have the answer to the question how it came about that the Israelites found a welcome in Egypt. The powerful people in the country were their relations.
And so things went well with them for many years, perhaps about three or four hundred; but other powers—"a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph"—at length threw off the yoke of the Hyksos, the Shepherds, and took the throne from them. The Israelites were shown no favour then. They were set hard tasks, were treated like slaves, until finally, under the leadership of a very great man and prophet, Moses, they decided to flee away into the desert, away from the land of Goshen, in which they were made so unhappy, although it was a fertile land.
After the Exodus
Probably they were very useful slaves and tillers of the soil, and probably that was the reason why, as we are told in the Bible, Pharaoh was so unwilling to let them go. At length, however, go they did—only, as we are further told, to be pursued, and only, as the Bible also tells us, to be saved by a miracle at the passage of the Red Sea.
This Exodus, as it is called, probably took place in 1200 B.C. or a little earlier, and the Israelites wandered some forty years in the wilderness, living in tents, and moving about as the manner of pastoral tribes was, and is, with their flocks and herds. We see, then, that 1150 B.C. or a few years sooner, would be about the date at which they would begin, under Joshua, the invasion of Canaan. Our story has not reached that point yet.
CHAPTER V
THE MINOANS IN CRETE
Those, then, were the two great powers on land in the very old days of the story of mankind. There was Egypt along the Nile, and Babylonia—for a thousand and more years, rather to be called Assyria—along the Euphrates and Tigris.