The Hyksos and the Jews

So far in this blog, I've limited myself to discussion about topics that, to the best of my knowledge, are in the academic mainstream. However, this week, I'll move a little further afield and look at a hypothesis that is a bit further outside. Or at least, we'll look at one of the pieces of supporting evidence for that theory and try to determine how it could have arisen.

Some Necessary Background
 
Before we get started, some history is necessary.  Specifically history of Egypt in the middle of the second millennium BCE. The fourteenth dynasty of Egypt ended with the invasion of the Hyksos in the 17th century. The Hyksos were a Semitic people and the fifteenth dynasty consists of Hyksos Pharaohs. They placed their capital in Avaris, on the eastern edge of Egypt, and ruled from that location for a hundred years or so. The 16th and 17th dynasties ruled smaller regions of Egypt in the south and west, also during this hundred year stretch. The Hyksos were expelled by the early Pharaohs of the 18th dynasty at about 1550 BCE. According to Egyptian sources, which we'll get to in a bit, the Hyksos then settled in the region of Canaan and Syria.

No records from the Hyksos themselves survive, and everything we know comes from the Egyptian side. Temple inscriptions, pharaoh lists, and other archaeological realia, including the destruction of the Hyksos capital Avaris (now Tel-el-Daba) confirm the basic story. However, there were several written accounts appearing much later. The one we'll focus on today is the account of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived over 1000 years after the events described in the preceding paragraph, in the 3rd century BCE.

Manetho's actual writings have been lost, but they were recorded by Josephus in his work "Against Apion." The expulsion of the Hyksos in Manetho's account bears some resemblance to the Exodus account of the Torah. Indeed, the story of a group of people that left Egypt under unfriendly terms, and then settling in the Canaan region, has led lots of people to associate the Hyksos expulsion with the Exodus story [1]. Around the time of Josephus the connection was explicit, with the Hyksos founding the city of Jerusalem after the expulsion. Although, it should be noted, that Manetho himself, never seems to equate the Hyksos with the Jews.  We'll discuss more about the relation between the Exodus narrative and the actual Hyksos expulsion in a future week when we discuss the historicity of the Exodus.  For now, we'll focus on a specific detail in Manetho's account.

The Problem of False Cognates
 
Now that we've got the basic history out of the way.  Let's turn to the Torah.  This week's parsha includes the following verse (Gen 46:34) 

That ye shall say: Thy servants have been keepers of cattle from our youth even until now, both we, and our fathers; that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians.'

The idea that shepherds are abominable to Egyptians is strange, because Egyptians certainly had shepherds and practiced animal husbandry throughout their entire history [2].  Even the Torah itself acknowledges that the Egyptians kept cattle, as we see in Gen 47:6:

[Pharaoh says to Joseph] 'the land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land make thy father and thy brethren to dwell; in the land of Goshen let them dwell. And if thou knowest any able men among them, then make them rulers over my cattle.' 

It is true that Egyptians did not practice animal sacrifice, like the Semitic nations did, but that's not what the verse seems to imply. Where could this have come from?

The answer lies in Manetho's account. Manetho derives an etymology for the Hyksos from a combination of the words hyk and sos. Hyk he relates to the Egyptian word for kings, and sos he relates to the Egyptian word for shepherd. This is the same root that shows up in shasu, which was commonly used to define desert dwelling shepherds.
 
However, today, we know more about the Egyptian language of the 17th century BCE than the Egyptians of the 3rd century BCE did, and we find that Manetho's etymology was in error. Looking at inscriptions from the 17th century, we can determine that the correct meanig for sos is foreigners, not shepherds. Hyksos actually means foreign rulers. However, Manetho's etymological meaning, or wherever he learned it, became the standard in Egypt and everyone, including Josephus would translate the Hyksos as the shepherd kings.
 
The Torah Includes Manetho's Error
 
The explanation for Gen. 46:34 offered by Russell Gmirkin, in "Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and the Exodus [3]" is that the authors of these verses in the Torah were basing their writing off of Manetho's account.  Gmirkin sees the version of the Exodus in the Torah, as a reaction to the Egyptian accounts, in which the Hyksos, or proto-Israelites, were invaders and cruel tyrants, who were expulsed through valiant Egyptian military action. In the Exodus account the Jews are the ones who were treated cruelly, and they escape through valiant divine intervention. In both stories the foreign people are despised by the Egyptians.  In the Egyptian account it's because they are foreign occupiers.  The Torah, however, states that the Egyptians despised them simply because they were shepherds.

The inclusion of this false etymology, is to Gmirkin, a sure sign, that the Torah authors must have based it off of Egyptian accounts. If they had their own historical documents, completely independent from the Egyptian accounts, they would not have produced this error.  Remember that the error only exists because of a false cognate in the Egyptian language!  Gmirkin actually goes further and claims that the Torah must have been written after Manetho's account, but I don't think that's necessary or as well supported. What is more likely is that whatever source Manetho used also had this error. We don't know when people started thinking of the Hyksos as shepherd kings, and it very well could predate Manetho. However, if Jews were using Egyptian sources to frame the Exodus, then it makes sense to ascribe this bizarre statement about the Egyptians hating shepherds to a reaction to the Egyptian account.
 

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1. See for example, Finkelstein and Silberman, "The Bible Unearthed" Simon and Schuster, 2001 p. 54-56.^

2. The Papyrus Anastasi 6.4.16 describes Egypt giving refuges to bedouins and their herds at Per Atum. Gmirkin, "Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and the Exodus" T & T Clark, 2006, p. 179, footnote 57.^

3. For more see Gmirkin p. 178-180.^