© Charles Chandler

 

The date for this is not precise — Canaanites had been migrating to the delta for some time.¹ Josephus thought that the name meant "Shepherd Kings," who he took to be Jewish pastoral nomads.^2:b1:§14 There he was abiding by the tradition that the Israelites were 430 years in Egypt before returning to Canaan.³ If we go with 1288 bce as the end of the Exodus (see below), counting back 430 years takes us to 1718 bce — close enough to be a match. But starting the Hebrew story in 1720 bce results in people living well beyond biological limits, suggesting that the timeline has been artificially stretched. Starting roughly 200 years later, all of the lifespans become realistic, and the Torah matches up with secular history in many ways. We can only conclude that the Hyksos were not in the original story, and contributed little more than an incongruous date. It's possible that the Deuteronomic redactors sought to make stakeholders out of everybody in Canaan who had spent some time in Egypt, including the descendants of the Hyksos, with a sweeping generalization that there was really just one migration to Egypt in 1720 bce, and one Exodus 430 years later. But stretching the timeline forfeits a lot of correlations between the Torah and secular history, so this has to be rejected. Apion's reading of Manetho was more accurate — two expulsions from Egypt were described, and only the latter, which mentions 18^th and 19^th Dynasty pharaohs (e.g., Amenhotep, Seti, and Ramesses), was recognizably Hebrew.