Jacob, Who ? – 2

The two kings in Manetho’s list that scholars have not been able to corroborate from names on monuments or other objects are the first two, Salitis and Bnon. Some scholars have suggested that Manetho’s Bnon may be a ruler of the contemporaneous XVIth Dynasty whom Manetho incorrectly placed in the XVth Dynasty.

Who really were the first rulers of the XVth Dynasty? A great number of scarabs found in Egypt and Sudan, as well as in Israel, contain the name of an early Hyksos king named Y‘qb-HR in its Egyptian transliteration, which should probably be reconstructed as Y‘aqub-Haddu in its Semitic form. Readers will immediately recognize the Semitic name Yaakov or Jacob in this Hyksos king’s name.

The archaeological context of these scarabs is of utmost importance. They were found with pottery and other artifacts dating to the middle to late 17th century BC. Other evidence suggests that the first Hyksos ruler was the king Manetho listed last and called Assis, and that Assis is to be identified with a ruler recorded on scarabs under the Egyptian name Sðsûy (Sheshai). The archaeological evidence with respect to Sðsûy is abundant and quite clear; he can safely be placed at the beginning of the XVth Dynasty, about 1670/1650 BC.

It seems likely, therefore, that Y‘aqub-Haddu/Y‘qb-HR/Jacob was the second Hyksos ruler in the XVth Egyptian Dynasty. He probably ruled about 1650 BC .But there is additional evidence that we must consider. In 1969 a scarab containing the hieroglyphic name Y‘qb-HR was found in a Middle Bronze II tomb at Shiqmona, a suburb of Haifa, Israel. This welcome find nevertheless created a problem, as often happens. Even after all the finds in the tomb, including the pottery, were carefully analyzed, it was clear that this scarab had to be dated to about 1730 BC This is nearly a hundred years earlier than we have dated the Hyksos king Y‘qb-HR (about 1650 BC). Moreover, 1730 BC is clearly before the Hyksos period in Egypt—in short, before the XVth Dynasty.

Y‘qb-HR was a local prince ruling in Canaan under the hegemony of an Egyptian Pharaoh of the XIIIth Dynasty?  Probably not, in part because of the strong affinities between Y’qb-HR’s prenomen Mr.wsr.R‘ and the prenomen of other Hyksos rulers. Now I am convinced that another solution is the correct one. The Shiqmona scarab of Y‘qb-HR (which, incidentally, does not contain a prenomen) probably represents another, even earlier, Jacob.

In 1930 a scarab almost identical to the Shiqmona scarab was published by a German scholar named Martin Pieper. It so closely resembles the Shiqmona scarab in all details that I believe it was probably produced by the same artisan. The only difference between them is that in the scarab published in 1930 the name Y‘qb-HR is framed by a cartouche ( an oval indicating royalty). These two scarabs, however, are totally different stylistically from the Egyptian and Nubian “Jacob” scarabs I referred to earlier. It is also significant that the scarab published in 1930 was purchased in Jerusalem. Of course, we have no idea where it was found. But there does seem to be a close association between the Shiqmona scarab and the scarab published in 1930.

What is the answer to the puzzle? I believe that the two Israeli “Jacob” scarabs—the one found in 1969 in Shiqmona, and the one purchased in Jerusalem and published in 1930—represent a different and earlier Jacob from the Jacob of the other scarabs. The Jacob of the other scarabs represents the name of a Hyksos king—probably the second one—of the XVth Egyptian Dynasty. The two Israeli scarabs from about 100 years earlier represent an earlier Canaanite ruler named Jacob-HR.

This Canaanite Jacob was, no doubt, an ancestor of the later Hyksos Pharaohs of the XVth Dynasty. The ancestors of the XVth Dynasty Pharaohs were, without question, local rulers on the fringes of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom’s sphere of influence. The Middle Kingdom ended just before the XVth Dynasty and the period of Hyksos rule in Egypt. The original home of the kings of the XVth Egyptian Dynasty was Canaan. The slow disintegration of the Middle Kingdom in the 1700s BC gave ruling houses, such as that of Y’qb-HR/Jacob, new opportunities in a country with which they had been in contact for ages. They immigrated into the Delta, which was already partly inhabited by Semitic populations, and made their center there. At a later period, when that dynasty took control of all Egypt (after 1670), initiating the XVth Dynasty, the name of one of its Canaanite forefathers was reused, this time as the name of a Hyksos ruler in the XVth Dynasty. This phenomenon of the reuse of older names has been observed in several other West Semitic dynasties.

The Semitic-Canaanite character and origin of the XVth Egyptian Dynasty now appears unquestionable. Older theories that sought a Hurrian origin have little evidence, if any, to support them. Is there any connection between Y‘qb-HR and the Biblical Y‘aqob, or Jacob? More than 65 years ago Raymond Weill argued for a connection between the pre-Biblical Canaanite rulers and Hyksos princes, on the one hand, and the Biblical stories of Jacob, on the other. In his reconstruction, the Israelite tribes, after entering Canaan and during the period of their settlement in the 13th and 12th centuries BC, assimilated the legends of Jacob from the local Canaanites. In the land of Canaan, Y‘qb-HR (Jacob) had already been transformed from a historical figure into a local hero about whom a cycle of legends was told. Jacob also gave his name to a cult place named Y‘qob-El. Some time during the eighth century BC or thereabouts, the editor of the Biblical text of the Jacob stories connected the local Canaanite legend, by then already Israelite, with the cycle of legends about the sojourn of the Israelite tribes in Egypt. Having knowledge of a Hyksos king named Y‘qb-HR/Jacob, he composed one personality out of both figures; thus, the Biblical Jacob.

In a brilliantly intuitive way, Weill reconstructed the Biblical literary process. Now we can add some new material. The scarab of the local Egyptianized Canaanite king found in Shiqmona, which can safely be dated to the middle of the 18th century BC, points to the origin of the later XVth Egyptian Dynasty, the Hyksos Dynasty, in a local Canaanite royal house of central Canaan. The emigration of this house to Egypt, its sojourn there and the later reuse of the dynastic name in the Hyksos Dynasty, of course, have numerous parallels with the stories of Jacob in Genesis 28–49.

The stories about Jacob and his sons, their sojourn in Egypt and their later departure from the land of Goshen were first compared with Hyksos rule in Egypt, however, by Manetho. Now, 20th-century archaeology has added to the story.

Undoubtedly, additional elements of this history will emerge from the ground in the future. But we will probably never know the entire story. What does seem clear is that there was a West Semitic ruler named Jacob-HR who lived in Canaan about 1750 BC His people immigrated to the eastern Delta and ultimately became the Hyksos rulers of Egypt—the XVth Dynasty. One of these rulers reused Jacob’s name about 1650 BC Then, about 1570, this Semitic dynasty was expelled from Egypt, recrossed the desert and took refuge in the city of Sharuhen in southern Canaan, where for three years it withstood the advancing Egyptian armies. Hyksos rule ended when Sharuhen was captured and destroyed about 1565 BC. It is interesting that the personal name Jacob does not appear at all in the land of Israel in any archaeological remains after the Hyksos period—until the third century BC. The name Jacob is not found either in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1200—the Canaanite and settlement periods) or in the Iron Age (1200–586 B.C.—the period of the Judges and the Monarchy).

Finally, let us return for a moment to the last Hyksos king in Manetho’s list, Assis, who I earlier suggested was really the first Hyksos ruler in Egypt and whose name under the form Sheshai is found in numerous scarabs of the period. The name Assis/Sheshai has been preserved in the so-called Hebronite king-list found in Numbers 13:22.

When Moses sent Joshua and Caleb to scout out the land of Canaan, just before they came to the Valley of Eschol where the grapes were so large that a single branch had to be carried on a frame between the two men, they arrived at Hebron. Living in Hebron they found Anakites, ruled by Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai. Then comes the notice that “Hebron was founded seven years before Zoan of Egypt” (Numbers 13:22). Zoan, Tanis in Greek, was identified in Hellenistic tradition with Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos. The mention of Zoan clearly connects the Biblical passage in Numbers with the Hyksos. It seems likely that the ruler referred to in the Bible as Sheshai is the Hyksos king referred to as Assis in Manetho’s list of Hyksos kings.
 
Assis/Sheshai, when he ruled Egypt in the Hyksos period, also ruled Hebron. The tradition that Assis/Sheshai ruled Hebron was preserved there, and this tradition was later incorporated into Scripture by the Biblical writer. We can even speculate when this occurred. King David ruled Hebron during the first seven years of his reign, and it was probably at this time that this local Hebron tradition concerning an ancient Hyksos king was incorporated into Israelite tradition. This Hebronite tradition actually stemmed from the Hyksos period (c. 1650–1600 B.C.), but the Biblical writer placed Sheshai/Assis in the settlement period (c. 1250 BC), about 500 years after he actually ruled.

This same Hebronite king-list is used in two other places in the Bible. In both Joshua 15:14 and Judges 1:10, we are told that Caleb defeated and destroyed “Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai,” the three Anakites from Hebron, as if the three had lived in Caleb’s time rather than in the Hyksos period. We have here an excellent illustration of the way the Biblical writer uses traditional materials.