By Sir Philip Sassoon, Bart., M.P.
I thank the Society for the honour they have done me in asking me to preside upon so interesting an occasion. Professor Petrie needs no introduction; and I can but express the gratitude of the meeting to him for coming to lecture on an absorbing topic. We should have to go very far to find a more eminent Egyptologist. He is not limited to a discussion and criticism of other men’s discoveries; he is a most successful excavator himself. He has with his own hands unearthed many objects of the deepest interest to all students of the remote Egyptian past. He has been engaged in this work for forty years, during thirty of which he has occupied the distinguished position of Professor of Egyptology at this University, where he has spoken with peculiar authority on the significance of his own and other men’s discoveries, and has interpreted them to laymen such as myself. The late Arthur Davis, in whose memory these lectures are held, was a type of that rare and valuable man who, while engaged in business, is yet inspired by a studious ambition. He was a man above the average, who taught the lesson to the average man of affairs that the delights of learning are open to all those who are able to make use of the opportunities they can find and create. Such men are an honour to any cultured community.
The Status of the Jews in Egypt
In considering the history of any people, one of the main elements is that of their status. What were their abilities and how were they shown? What permanent mark did they make on their period? How did they stand in reference to their neighbours, in the same country and in other countries? There are now Jews in Lemberg and Jews in Paris; but how entirely differently we regard them, because of their status. How utterly diverse is the mark left on the world by the men of mind, by Isaiah or Aristotle, compared with the energies of patriots, like the Maccabees or Sulla. Mere existence matters nothing to the present or the future; it is the energizing influence of fresh thoughts or organization that alone gives value to any people. Various races at present who think a great deal of themselves have never added a single idea or capability to the rest of the world, their status is simply that of incapable dependence upon the civilization of others. Regarding then the dominant importance of status, it seemed that it would be useful to focus together the various fragments of views that have been gained as to the position occupied by the Jewish race in Egypt at different periods.
We may glance first at the earlier relations of Semites with Egypt. The second prehistoric civilization was of Eastern origin; and judging by the strong analogies of the Egyptian language with Semitic speech, it seems probable that this prehistoric age was dominated by a race which later developed into the historic Semites.
Coming into recorded history, we can now realize, from recent discoveries, how the VIIth and VIIIth Egyptian dynasties which overthrew the earlier pyramid builders were Syrian kings ruling over Egypt. Their personal names are preserved in some reigns on the great list of kings at Abydos,[1] and their status is recorded by a cylinder of one of these kings[2]—Khondy—bearing a figure of a flounced Syrian before him, and an Egyptian in the background. The king himself has his name in a cartouche and wears the crown of Upper Egypt; so he did not rule only over the Delta, and his name being at Abydos points to control of the whole country. As to the language, the names of these kings appear to be Semitic, as Telulu the exalted, Shema the high, Neby the prophet. All of this accords closely with the recent publications of Professor Albert Clay[3] on the importance of a north Syrian kingdom, as the real centre of the Semitic peoples, rather than Arabia, which he regards as a backwater, where an early type has remained undisturbed. His appeal to the Semitic names in early Babylonia shows that they are quite as early as—or earlier than—the Sumerian.
This Semitic conquest of Egypt had a close parallel in the Hyksos invasion of Egypt. The Hyksos or “princes of the desert,” as they call themselves, were nomadic Semites who pushed down into Egypt during the weak condition of the country in the XIVth dynasty. Even during the XIIth dynasty there had been small bodies of Semites coming in, as shown by the celebrated scene at Beni Hasan, where Absha heads a party of 37 Amu;[4] or on a scarab of User-Khepesh, who was the guardian of 110 Amu.[5] At last a flood of nomads, probably driven south by a famine period of drought, burst into the country, much like the Arab invasion of the age of Islam. After plundering the country they settled down, as earlier invaders had done, by adopting the system which they had found there, and becoming kings of Egypt, who restored and enlarged the temples and encouraged learning.[6] They continued, however, attached to their earlier life; and the remains of one king—Khyan—being found as far apart as Crete and Baghdad, indicates that they kept up a wide trade, if not an extensive rule.[7] The title adopted by that king, “embracing territories,” shows that he probably ruled Syria as well as Egypt, like the Syrian King Khondy in the VIIIth dynasty.
It is the nature of the Hyksos rule that enables us to realize the actual setting of the first stage of Jewish history. It is as one of the late waves of nomadic Hyksos that the account of Abraham must be viewed. Wandering round the Syrian desert, as the Hyksos had done, drifting up and down the ridge of hill pastures of Palestine, passing in and out of Egypt as necessity led, the life in the Patriarchal narratives gives the picture of the life of the “shepherd kings,” the “princes of the desert.” The status of these Hebrew wanderers was just that of the people among whom they came in Egypt, the ruling caste of the country, who sat upon the more industrious but less independent Egyptians. They would naturally be received with the affability, and on the easy terms, which are represented. That this was taken in the course of the Hyksos rule is shown by the king having adapted himself to Egyptian feeling, and its being unsuitable to let pure nomads come in to the cultivated Delta, because the shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians. Hence, though on perfectly good terms, it was preferred to keep these fresh nomads on the border, in the Wady Tumilat, rather than revive the antagonism of the agriculturalist. The story of Joseph falls into place most naturally in Egypt, where even under purely Egyptian kings the highest positions could be held by Pa-khar or Nehesi, “the Syrian” or “the negro.” That this was during a Semitic rule is suggested by the tide of Joseph being Abrekh, the Abarakku minister of state of Babylonia.[8]