As the rule of these Shepherd kings began about 2100 B.C., and finished about 1587 B.C. (Petrie), it is clear that the visits of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph, including Jacob and his family, all fall within this period. As will easily be understood, such a synchronism is not without its value, especially when considering the historical authority of the Pentateuch. That it was during the dominion of the above-named rulers that Joseph entered Egypt is or has been the opinion of all the best students of Egyptian history—Birch, Brugsch, Maspero, Naville, Wiedemann, and many others—and there can be but little doubt of its correctness. It is remarkable that there is no native record of Joseph’s administration, but this is, after all, hardly to be wondered at, especially when we consider the disturbed state of the country at a later date, when many records, especially those of the hated conquerors, must have been destroyed, and in any case there is the ever-present chance of some untoward fate overtaking them, by which such documents, if they really existed, may have become lost to the world for ever. The strange thing about the foreign rulers who held possession of Egypt so long is, as has already been pointed out by Prof. Petrie, that they remained throughout to all intents and purposes a distinct nationality. Intermarriage between the two races, even when they were on the most friendly terms, must have been comparatively rare, and it is on this account that the native princes succeeded at last in ridding the land of the “impure,” as the native recorder has it. From this same record we get the information that one of the Shepherd kings was ’Apop’i (Apepy), the Apophis of the Greeks, and that he ruled at Hawar, a town which is identified with Avaris. The only god which this ruler served was Sutekh, identified with Râ or Rê (in earlier times also, to all appearance, pronounced Ria), the Egyptian Sun-god. According to the Sallier papyrus, from which the above details are taken, it would seem that Râ-’Apop’i, as he is there called, sent to Seqnen-Rê, “king of the South,” proposing that the latter should clear away all the hippopotamuses on the canals of the country, in order that Râ-’Apop’i might sleep. If the king of the South did not succeed in doing this, then he was to embrace the worship of Sutekh, but if he did succeed, then Râ-’Apop’i promised not to bow down before any other god of Egypt except Amon-Râ, the king of the gods. This, of course, was a distinction without a difference, and is evidently put forward by the writer as such, for the worship of Sutekh in all probability meant the renouncing of the worship of all the other gods of Egypt, a thing which no Egyptian was likely to consent to. On the other hand, the worship of Amon-Râ by the Hyksos king would have been no great hardship, as it would in all probability not have involved any change in his faith, seeing that it was generally recognized that this deity and Sutekh were identical.