This Semitic conquest of Egypt had a close parallel in the Hyksos invasion of Egypt. The Hyksos or “princes of the desert,” as they call themselves, were nomadic Semites who pushed down into Egypt during the weak condition of the country in the XIVth dynasty. Even during the XIIth dynasty there had been small bodies of Semites coming in, as shown by the celebrated scene at Beni Hasan, where Absha heads a party of 37 Amu;[4] or on a scarab of User-Khepesh, who was the guardian of 110 Amu.[5] At last a flood of nomads, probably driven south by a famine period of drought, burst into the country, much like the Arab invasion of the age of Islam. After plundering the country they settled down, as earlier invaders had done, by adopting the system which they had found there, and becoming kings of Egypt, who restored and enlarged the temples and encouraged learning.[6] They continued, however, attached to their earlier life; and the remains of one king—Khyan—being found as far apart as Crete and Baghdad, indicates that they kept up a wide trade, if not an extensive rule.[7] The title adopted by that king, “embracing territories,” shows that he probably ruled Syria as well as Egypt, like the Syrian King Khondy in the VIIIth dynasty. It is the nature of the Hyksos rule that enables us to realize the actual setting of the first stage of Jewish history. It is as one of the late waves of nomadic Hyksos that the account of Abraham must be viewed. Wandering round the Syrian desert, as the Hyksos had done, drifting up and down the ridge of hill pastures of Palestine, passing in and out of Egypt as necessity led, the life in the Patriarchal narratives gives the picture of the life of the “shepherd kings,” the “princes of the desert.” The status of these Hebrew wanderers was just that of the people among whom they came in Egypt, the ruling caste of the country, who sat upon the more industrious but less independent Egyptians. They would naturally be received with the affability, and on the easy terms, which are represented. That this was taken in the course of the Hyksos rule is shown by the king having adapted himself to Egyptian feeling, and its being unsuitable to let pure nomads come in to the cultivated Delta, because the shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians. Hence, though on perfectly good terms, it was preferred to keep these fresh nomads on the border, in the Wady Tumilat, rather than revive the antagonism of the agriculturalist. The story of Joseph falls into place most naturally in Egypt, where even under purely Egyptian kings the highest positions could be held by Pa-khar or Nehesi, “the Syrian” or “the negro.” That this was during a Semitic rule is suggested by the tide of Joseph being _Abrekh_, the _Abarakku_ minister of state of Babylonia.[8]