Endnote 20 – The Exodus from Egypt: Myth or Reality?

See Aharon Kempinski, “Jacob in History,” BAR 14:01. Y‘qb-HR, possibly Jacob-’el or, less probably, Jacob-haddu (“‘El/Haddu will/should protect/prosecute [enemies]”). Kempinski has argued, on the basis of finds in tombs from Tel Cabri on the northern coast of Israel, that Jacob was in origin a Canaanite dynastic name of the 18th century B.C.E., later adopted by the Hyksos dynasty, see “Some Observations on the Hyksos (XVth) Dynasty and Its Canaanite Origins,” in Pharaonic Egypt. The Bible and Christianity, ed. S. Israelit-Groll (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985), pp. 129–137. More recently see “Two Scarabs of Yakabum,” in Studies in Egyptology presented to Miriam Lichtheim, ed. S. Israelit-Groll (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), pp. 632–634. There is the possibility, however, that the Hyksos Jacob was a nomarch during the early stages of penetration of the Delta in the late Middle Kingdom and that the seal at Cabri derives from relations there with his dynasty.