Abraham, Sarah, and Lot left their kin at Haran and moved westward on to the land of the Canaanite tribes, traveling thru Carchemish, Aleppo, Aleppo, Qatna, and Damascus. From Damascus they crossed the Jordan River into Canaan near Hazor. They settled as a band of immigrants into a nomadic herding lifestyle in the hill country west of the Jordan Valley. Here Genesis provides us with a glimpse of a bronze age herding clan of transplanted Mesopotamians.

The journey from Damascus to Beer-Sheba was along the Ridge Route. Abraham  stopped at Shechem where he came to the “great tree of Moreh” and there God confirmed the covenant he had first made with Abraham in Harran, regarding the possession of the land of Canaan. God appeared to him saying “To your descendants I will give this land” (Genesis 12:7). Abraham built an altar at Shechem and then proceeded to the mountain on the east of Bethel and camped (“pitched his tent”) between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. He then continued on presumably remaining on the Ridge Route traveling by Salem (Jebus or later Jerusalem) and Beer-Sheba toward the Negev (Genesis 12:9). Before the birth of Ishmael a famine occurred in Canaan prompting Abraham to briefly visit Tanis (Avaris or Zoan) in Egypt. There he had an encounter with Pharoah Senwosret II, Khakeperre Senusret II, the fourth pharaoh of the Twelfth Dynasty (Middle Kingdom). Upon being escorted out of Lower Egypt he settled in the Negev moving his flocks from there as far as Bethel and Ai. Later his nephew Lot settled at Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot was the patriarch of Ammon and Moab (Genesis 19:36-38).

Abraham was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael in BCE 1889 (Genesis 16:16). , patriarch of the twelve Arabic tribes, by his wife’s Egyptian handmaid Hagar, Isaac by his wife Sarai (presumably his half-sister whose name later became Sarah), and after Sarah’s death six sons, patriarchs of desert tribes, by his second wife Keturah (Genesis 25:1-4, 12-18). Genesis 25:6 tells us that Abraham had a number of children by concubines. Isaac, b. BCE ca. 1875, d. ca. 1695, had two sons—Esau, patriarch of Edom, and Jacob, the patriarch of the Israel. While Ishmael took an Egyptian wife Isaac married Rebecca the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padan Aram, the sister of Laban the Syrian (Genesis 25:20) Jacob married Lea and Rebekah daughters of his mother’s brother Laban. Abraham died at age 175. Ishmael and Isaac entombed him (b. BCE 1975 d. BCE 1800) at Shechem in Hebron where he had buried Sarah in The Cave of Machpelah purchased from Ephron the Hittite (Genesis 23:19, Acts 7:16). Entombed in The Cave of The Machpelah are Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Lea. The burial of Rachel, who died giving birth to Benjamin, was at Bethlehem. Jacob was born in BCE 1815 when Isaac was 60 years old (Genesis 25:26). Jacob was 130 years old in BCE 1685 (BEC 1815 – 130 = BCE 1685) when he first arrived in Egypt (Genesis 47:9)

Egypt before Abraham

Egypt before Abraham is essentially Egypt from Adam to Noah’s flood. The rise of civilization after the flood accounts for perhaps about four centuries. Pre-flood Egyptian dynasties were present for over 1,000 years. The Egyptians called their land kmt. So now you know why the popular “modern journal of Ancient Egypt” is called Kmt. This is a good magazine to follow if you maintain a continued interest in ancient Egypt. Genesis introduces us to ancient Egypt at Genesis 12:10.

Joseph and the Israelite Settlement in Egypt

When Jacob arrived in Lower Egypt (northern Egypt) in BCE 1685 he encountered the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt (1720-1578), the first Hyksos dynasty. Around BCE 1720 a foreign group referred to as Hyksos infiltrated Lower Egypt from the northeast. They successfully invaded the land of the Nile and erected their capital at Avaris (Tell ed-Dab’a). Though they penetrated Egypt at a time of political disintegration that had resulted in a proliferation of local rulers throughout Lower Egypt (the western delta had already seceded to form an independent kingdom), the success of Hyksos imperialism appears largely due to their exploitation of a number of Asiatic technological innovations. Those may have included the horse-drawn war chariot, the battering ram, and the composite bow. The names and order of their kings is uncertain. his would mean that Joseph, taken to Egypt as a slave, was promoted about BCE 1665 in the middle of the Hyksos occupation of Egypt. It is impossible to identify the pharaoh before whom Joseph appeared because the dating and succession of Hyksos kings remains indemonstrable today. Soon after BCE 1560 native Egyptian princes expelled Hyksos from Egypt and inaugurated the so-called New Kingdom period of Egyptian history.