Famines, indeed, did occur in Palestine from time to time, and we hear of Egyptian kings sending corn to that country to supply its needs.[117] As Egypt was the granary of Italy in the days of the Roman Empire, so too it had been the granary of Western Asia in an earlier age. A dry season in Canaan brought famine in its train; and if that dry season coincided with a deficient Nile in Egypt, there was no other land to which its inhabitants could look for food. It is quite possible that one of these famines in Canaan may have happened at the very time when the Nile refused to irrigate the fields of Egypt. When, however, we read that ‘the famine was over all the face of the earth,’ and that ‘all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn because the famine was sore in all lands,’ it is evident that the narrative has been written from an Egyptian point of view. The Egyptians might have supposed that when a low Nile produced a scarcity of food all other countries would equally suffer—such, indeed, was the case with Ethiopia—but a supposition of the kind is inconceivable in the mind of a Canaanite. An inhabitant of Palestine knew that the crops of his country were dependent on the rain, not on the waters of the Nile; it was only the Egyptian who modelled the rest of the world after that part of it which was known to him. Here, then, we have a clear indication that the story of Joseph must have been written in Egypt, and further probability is added to the theory that it has been translated into Hebrew from an Egyptian original. But more than this. Is it likely that the Hebrew translator, if he had been acquainted with the climate of Canaan, would have left the words of the story just as we find them? Can we imagine that the language he employed about the extent of the famine would have been so definite, so comprehensive, so Egyptian in character? Like the Egyptian words embodied in the narrative, it points to a writer or translator who lived in Egypt, and not in Canaan. Who was the Pharaoh under whom Joseph became the first minister of the State? Chronology shows that he must have been one of the kings of the last Hyksos dynasty. George the Syncellus makes him Aphophis, Apopi Ra-aa-kenen, or Apopi II. of the monuments, and the date would suit very well.[118] Apopi II. was the last powerful Hyksos sovereign. His authority was still obeyed in Upper Egypt, but it was in his reign that the War of Independence broke out. According to the story in the Sallier Papyrus, it was caused by his message to the _hiq_ or vassal prince of Thebes, requiring him to renounce the worship of Amon of Thebes and acknowledge Sutekh, the Hyksos Baal, as his supreme god.[119] The war lasted for four generations, and ended in the expulsion of the foreigner.