Watchman's Teaching Letter #38 June 2001
This is my thirty-eighth monthly teaching letter, and I am now in my fourth year of publication. Since the time I completed my thirty-seventh letter for May, there has been a series on television entitled Secrets Of The Pharaohs. As I am usually working on my teaching letters a couple of months ahead of time, I recorded this series of television programs in February of this year. The first of the three showings was on the 18th Dynasty of Egypt which we have been considering as being contemporary with the Israelite captivity in Egypt. The second in this series was about the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Recently they have found a buried city near there which they believe was used to house the workers that built it. The third in the series did not relate to our study. There was also a program on TLC entitled Egypt's Lost City which was about Akhenaten’s city known today as Tell el-Amarna. About a year ago, I caught a four-part series entitled Egyptian Mummies. Part four of that series was about Tutankhamen. This is simply amazing as I no more than got a good start on the subject of Egypt and all this information is being addressed on television. Also, since lesson #37, I found a book entitled The Bible Is History by Ian Wilson. This 1999 book is simply outstanding and filled with useful and fantastic information. Also, I was advised by a person on my mailing list there was a good article in the January, 2001 National Geographic entitled “Ancient Ashkelon.” As you may see, with all this new information, in addition to my previous research, I have been quite busy.
WALKING STEP BY STEP THROUGH ISRAEL’S SOJOURN IN EGYPT FROM JOSEPH UNTIL JOSHUA
Since preparing lesson #37, with the addition of all this new information to contemplate, I am beginning to realize the Hyksos probably were descendants of Cain. This may come as a surprise to you. If so, we are right back to the subject of Two Seedline, and there is no other subject in all Scripture more important. The following is what I had to say about the Hyksos in lesson #32:
“At their height, the Hyksos occupied the land of the Hurrians, Carchemish, Syria, Palestine and much of the northern part of Egypt. By inhabiting the Delta area of Egypt, they were in control of all commerce on the Nile. This cutoff the remainder of Egypt almost entirely, from commercial trade and the rest of the then known world. The Hyksos could sit in their fortress at Avaris and call all the shots up and down the Nile. These Hyksos were a very strange people, desiring to set up a government like that of the Egyptians. It makes one wonder why they didn’t set up a government like they had wherever they came from, wherever that was. They seem to be a kind of chameleon type of people, adapting themselves to their surroundings. We have a chameleon type of people today living in the United States, pretending to be of the white race, and passing themselves off as such; changing their names to fit the territory. Some students believe the Hyksos came from the Caucasus or even Central Asia. At least, as far as the Egyptians were concerned, the Hyksos were an Asiatic people. The Hyksos seem to have been active merchants. They introduced into Egypt a new system of weights and balances. Does this seem to ring a bell of any kind? It kind of makes one wonder who the Hyksos people were. We can, though, be quite sure they were not Egyptian or Israelite.”
We are now going to consider some evidence which powerfully suggests the Hyksos were indeed descendants of Cain. I will start by quoting from the article in National Geographic of January, 2001 entitled “Ashkelon Ancient City Of The Sea”, page 78:
“As Canaanite Ashkelon prospered, its army grew strong. Historians have long known that around 1650 B.C. a mysterious group of warriors called the Hyksos invaded the Nile Delta and ruled it for a century. No one knew where the Hyksos, which means ‘foreign rulers’ in ancient Egyptian, came from. Recent excavations at Avaris, the Hyksos capital in Egypt, have produced artifacts identical to those found in Ashkelon, leading Stager to propose that the Hyksos were actually Canaanites and that many came from around Ashkelon.
“Even before the Hyksos conquered the delta, the Egyptians were having trouble with the Canaanites. Pharaohs of the 12th dynasty (1938-1755 B.C.) cursed three kings of Ashkelon in so-called execration tests. Scribes would write the names of the kings on ceramic bowls or human figurines, and the pharaoh would smash them to magically destroy their power.”
Such an execration was performed by Jeremiah, (Jeremiah 19:10-11), where he took a baked clay bottle, smashed it, and pronounced that Judah and Jerusalem will be broken, never to be whole again. Now the clergy of today claim this broken bottle will be put back together again when they claim the “Jews” returning to Jerusalem is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. That’s a little off the topic, but I thought I would inject that one in here as long as we are speaking of “execrations”. To follow-up on this last quotation concerning the Hyksos, I will quote from The Bible Is History by Ian Wilson, page 39:
“As pictorial evidence of how such peoples could and did make tolerated infiltrations, an 8-foot-long tomb painting from this period, found at Beni Hasan, south of Cairo, depicts the arrival at Egypt’s eastern frontier of eight Asiatic men, four women, three children, two donkeys, an ibex and a gazelle. They were apparently part of a group of thirty-seven Hyksos coming to trade in eye make-up. The men’s hair-styles are strongly reminiscent of that of mysterious Ankhu statue. One of the weapons they are carrying is unmistakably a Canaanite duck-bill-shaped axe of the kind that Bietak found in the Tell el-Dab’a graves ...”
Little did I know when I was researching about four to five years ago on Satan’s seduction of Eve which I finally put together as Research Papers Proving Two Seedline Seduction Of Eve that the material I found at that time was actually connected with the Hyksos. Had I not run across the book The Bible Is History by Ian Wilson and the article in the January, 2001 issue of National Geographic entitled “Ancient Ashkelon”, I may never have perceived the connection. The following is what I cited in my Research Papers from The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, volume 3, page 782:
“KENITES ... meaning (metalworkers, smiths). Clan or tribal name of semi-nomadic peoples of South Palestine and Sinai. The Aramaic and Arabic etymologies of the root gyn show that it has to do with metal and metal work (thus the Hebrew word from this root, ‘lance’). This probably indicates that the Kenites were metal workers, especially since Sinai and Wadi ‘Arabah were rich in highgrade copper ore. W. F. Albright has pointed to the Beni Hassan mural in Egypt (19th century B.C.) as an illustration of such a wandering group of smiths. This mural depicts thirty-six men, women and children in characteristic Semitic dress leading, along with other animals, donkeys laden with musical instruments, weapons and an item which Albright has identified as a bellows. He has further noted that Lemech’s three children (Genesis 4:19-22) were responsible for herds (Jabal), musical instruments (Jubal), and metal work (Tubal-Cain, or Tubal, the smith), the three occupations which seem most evident in the mural.”
I underlined the various marks of Cain in the above quote. If you will remember, Cain and his descendants were to become famous as wanderers and vagabonds (tent dwellers). They were to become famous as workers in metal. They were to become famous as musicians. They were to become somewhat involved in cattle. All these traits of Cain can be found in Genesis 4:20-24. These various characteristics have followed Cain (the “Jews”) down to this very day. Neither the National Geographic nor Ian Wilson see the Cain connection with the Hyksos, but W. F. Albright (an accomplished archaeologist and Bible scholar) comprehends the connection very effectively, and is right on the money.
THE HYKSOS’ DUCK-BILLED AXE
Being metal workers, the Hyksos developed a very vicious battle weapon called a duck-billed axe. Pharaoh Seqenenre Tao of the 17th Egyptian Dynasty fell victim to such a weapon. In the book Mummies Myth And Magic, pages 84-85 there is a gruesome looking picture of his mummy. There are five nasty gashes in his skull. On pages 84-85 there are these comments:
“Seqenenre Tao was a ruler of Upper Egypt, in the south. He rebelled against the foreign Hyksos kings who ruled Egypt from their capital in the delta. That Seqenenre died a violent death is all too apparent from his mummy. Looking at the damage to his skull, one can imagine the ferocity of the blows he must have endured that resulted in his death ... Among the cache of royal mummies found in 1881 at Deir elBahri was the damaged and poorly embalmed body of Seqenenre Tao, a ruler in Luxor during the troubled Seventeenth Dynasty. One of his sons, Kamose, is credited with the final expulsion of the foreign Hyksos rulers; another, called Ahmose, founded the Eighteenth Dynasty and became the first pharaoh of the New Kingdom.”
Ian Wilson in his The Bible Is History, page 41 comments:
“As generally agreed by those who have examined his mummy, he died in terrible agony from having been hacked about the head by the very Hyksos, duck-billed type of axe that Bietak and his helpers found in the grave at Tell elDab’a, a type also carried by the seemingly peaceful traders depicted in the Beni Hasan wall-painting.”
Again, Ian Wilson speaks of the duck-billed Hyksos type of axe on page 68:
“It was this same weapon that is believed to have enabled the Hyksos/Canaanites to gain control so easily of Lower Egypt, until the Egyptians developed their own equivalents and turned the tables on them.”
What I like about Ian Wilson’s book is that he equates the Hyksos with the Canaanites. He terms them as “Hyksos/ Canaanites.” He makes it clear what he means when he says on page 38: “... many of the very same texts make clear that these were not any specific ethnic group but instead trouble-making mercenaries of mixed origin.” Here we have a very good example of the description of the Bible passage found in Genesis 15:19-21. Listed among this mixed group are the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perrizzites, Rephaims, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites. The Kenites among these were the descendants of Cain. Canaanite is a general term for many peoples. All these peoples had mixed until the blood of Cain flowed in all their veins. Now in Genesis 15:19-21 are listed ten nations and they race-mixed so much that in Deuteronomy 7:1-2 there are only seven. The Kenites, Kenizzites and Rephaims were completely absorbed by the other nations of this group from which the “Jews” are extracted. The Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible, Abridged by Ralph Earle, page 38, has this to say:
“The Kenites. Here are ten nations mentioned, though afterwards reckoned but seven; see Deut. vii. 1; Acts xiii. 19. Probably some of them which existed in Abram’s time had been blended with others before the time of Moses, so that seven only out of the ten, then remained.”
In the Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, page 116 we find this about this mixed group of nations spoken of in Genesis 15:19-21:
“When the Israelites entered Canaan they found there a very mixed population generally designated by the term Amorite or Canaanite.”
The next mention of the descendants of Cain is found in 1st Chronicles 2:55:
“And the families of the scribes which dwelt at Jabez; the Tirathites, the Shimeathites, and Suchathites. These are the Kenites that came of Hemath, the father of the house of Rechab.”
Now the whole 2nd chapter of 1st Chronicles, from verse 3 on, is the lineage of Judah. Then tacked on at the end of the chapter (verse 55) is this group of people who were actually descendants of Cain known as Kenites and having no blood connection at all with Judah. A footnote in The Complete Word Study King James Bible, by Spiros Zodhiates, page 1055 says: “They became incorporated into the tribe of Judah.” The word Kenite here is 7017 in the Strong’s Concordance. Actually the numbers for Cain are both 7014 and 7017. You will notice here in 1st Chronicles 2:55, they are called, “the families of the scribes.” They were scribes at this time and they were scribes in Yahshua’s time — they are the same people.
At this time I am going to quote from The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, volume 3, pages 783-784. As I quoted from this same article on the “Kenites” above, this will be the second quote from the same article:
“The early monarchy. During this period a significant concentration of Kenites was located in the southern Judean territory. This is clear from 1 Samuel 15:6 cited above and also from David’s relations with them.”
Again, a third quote from the same article:
“Postexilic references. In 1 Chronicles 2:55 the families of the scribes living at Jabaz are said to be Kenites. Apparently, during the kingdom and exile periods, certain Kenites had given up nomadic smithing and had taken on a more sedentary, but equally honorable profession of scribe.”
Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, page 114, has this to say about the name of the Kenites:
“The etymology of the name suggest that they were smiths or artificers, a theory which is supported by their association with the Wadi ‘Arabah, where there were copper deposits which had been worked by the Egyptians since the middle of the 3rd millennium.”
Again in the Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, page 181, we have more on the name of the Kenites:
“The name Cain is generally taken by Semitic philologists to mean ‘smith’, and regarded as the patronymic of the Kenite clan of smiths.”
The Jamieson, Fausset & Brown Commentary On The Whole Bible has this to say on Kenite, page 293:
“The families of the scribes — either civil or ecclesiastical officers of the Kenite origin, who are here classified with the tribe of Judah, not as being descended from it, but as dwellers within its territory, and in a measure incorporated with its people.”
The Matthew Pool’s Commentary On The Holy Bible has this to say on the Kenites, volume 1, page 778:
“The Scribes; either civil, who were public notaries, who wrote and signed legal instruments; or ecclesiastical ... and are here mentioned not as if they were of the tribe of Judah, but because they dwelt among them, and probably were allied to them by marriages, and so in a manner incorporated with them. Which dwelt, or rather, dwelt; Hebrew, were dwellers. For the other translation, which dwelt, may seem to insinuate that these were descendaArialnts of Judah, which they were not; but this translation only signifies cohabitation with them, for which cause they are here named with them.”
HYKSOS RETURN TO CANAAN
I do not agree with Ian Wilson when he makes the following comment in his book The Bible Is History, on page 71:
“Yet if it was not the Egyptians, Kenyon’s favored candidates — the land-hungry Hyksos/Canaanite invaders returning from their settlement in Egypt — are hardly more plausible. After all, the last thing a group of this kind would do, would be to destroy and abandon a city they had fought for in order to make it a new home. This would be particularly the case with Jericho, which has one of the best water supplies anywhere in Israel, including a natural spring pumping out water at the rate of 173/4 gallons per second.”
After the Hyksos were successfully driven out of Egypt, they apparently returned to Canaan. Evidently, one of the places they returned to was Jericho. I believe I would rather favor the view of Kenyon than Wilson, that it was the Hyksos returning to their former position at Jericho. From all the evidence I have seen the Hyksos occupied a very wide area at the zenith of their expansion. If you will remember, I stated at the start of this lesson: “At their height, the Hyksos occupied the land of the Hurrians, Carchemish, Syria, Palestine and much of the northern part of Egypt.” At this point, in their retreat, the Hyksos were probably simply returning to an area they had formerly occupied. I would rather believe the Hyksos knew they needed a strong position and that they rebuilt Jericho to defend themselves from the threat of advancing Egyptians. No doubt, they were still there when the Israelites under Joshua’s leadership finally destroyed the city. Future archaeological evidence may force me to change my position on this, but for lack of better evidence, I tend to believe a scenario of the Hyksos retreating to Jericho fits the overall picture quite well. I will address this issue again later in this lesson. As I said in lesson #37, Pharaoh Amosis did not pursue the Hyksos any great distance after he initially defeated them and drove them out of Egypt. This is what I said in that lesson :
“After three years of siege, the Egyptians were finally victorious, slaughtering many, if not nearly all of the Hyksos. No doubt, the Egyptians also took many of the Hyksos as slaves. Thus, the Theban government regained control over trade between Egypt and Palestine. The Egyptians under Amosis did not pursue the Hyksos on into Palestine at this time. It was some 61 years later that Thutmosis III advanced into that area.”
WHERE DID THE HYKSOS COME FROM?
For this we will get back to the article “Ashkelon, Ancient City Of The Sea” in the National Geographic of January, 2001, page 74:
“The Canaanites, a people who probably originated in eastern Syria, had begun migrating down the Mediterranean coast about seven centuries earlier. ‘They came by the boatload’, says Stager, ‘They had master craftsmen and a clear idea of what they wanted to build — big fortified cities.’
“The Canaanites made Ashkelon a major center of trade, exporting wine and olive oil through the eastern Mediterranean. Stager’s team recently found evidence of the cosmopolitan nature of the Canaanite Ashkelon — part of the 13th-century tablet used to teach scribes languages. The tablet had one column of Canaanite words, which would have matched up with two or three adjacent columns containing equivalent words in different languages. Based on complete tablets found in Syria, linguists suspect that one column would have been a Semitic language called Akkadian, another an unrelated tongue, possibly Hurrian or Hittite.”
From the description of Ashkelon above, we can clearly see it was a commercial center. One might describe it as the New York of its day. Essential to trade would be the necessity of understanding and conversing in all the various languages with whom one might be doing the trading. No doubt, these Hyksos/Canaanites were related to the people we know today as “Jews.” For another two references on how the Hyksos invaded Egypt and Pharaoh Amosis 1 finally drove them back out are found and described in the book The Boehm Journey To Egypt, Land Of Tutankhamun on pages 35-36:
“During the Thirteenth Dynasty a force from the area of Palestine and Syria attacked and conquered nothern Egypt. These people, probably Syrians who ruled the eastern Mediterranean, were called Hyksos. It is not known how long the Hyksos ruled nothern and middle Egypt. Some historians estimate as long as sixty-six years ... from the Fourteenth through the Seventeenth Dynasties ... There are varied assessments as to the extent of the destruction and exploitation practiced by the conquerers. Building inscriptions show that the foreigners enjoyed being Egyptianized and even adopted the pharaonic style and titles. No doubt conventional progress remained inert, but the civilization seems to have held together. In fact, the regime at Thebes in the south retained a large measure of independence as the Hyksos were able to extend their rule only to the point about midway between Memphis and Thebes ...
“The glory of liberating Egypt fell to Amosis 1 ... first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty. His reign ushered in the New Kingdom, a period of unparalleled progress and power which was to last almost five hundred years ... This epoch, which also is called the Empire period, encompassed the Eighteenth through the Twentieth Dynasties.”
On the same page, probably unknown by the author, he describes very realistically, in the Hyksos, one of the marks of Cain. While Cain was not alone in the talent of music, it was one evidence of his identification:
“... Cultural characteristics of the Hyksos which appealed to the Egyptians were adopted by them. In particular they [the Egyptians] were attracted to their musical instruments, the tamborine, oboe, and lyre.”
Again, I will quote from The Boehm Journey To Egypt, Land Of Tutankhamun on page 37. I partially quoted this one in lesson #32. In that lesson, I wanted to show you how it was probably the Hyksos that Joseph charged the 20% income tax and gave it to the pharaoh at Thebes. I am quoting it here again to give you an overview of the history during the time when Egypt drove the Hyksos back north into Canaan.
“Unfriendly lords who opposed Amosis or who refused to support the war of liberation were dealt with forcefully and brutally by the king, who often paused in his war with the Hyksos to defeat or punish rival nomes. This is one of the reasons it took so long to expel the Syrians [Hyksos], a period estimated to be more than twenty years. Finally, after years of siege upon Avaris, Delta stronghold of the Hyksos, they were dislodged and began their retreat to lower Palestine.
“Amosis I, now a great hero of Egypt, was in a position to eliminate the feudal system, and he did. He confiscated the lands and properties of the lords he defeated and stripped them of their peerage. Those who supported him during the long Hyksos war also turned their estates over to the pharaoh in return for retention of their old titles and offices. All of Egypt once again was the personal property of the pharaoh.”
Once we begin to understand the Hyksos were the descendants of Cain, these quotations which I have been presenting in this and former lessons come to life and are immensely intriguing. Also, understanding who the Hyksos are makes the Bible story of Genesis 3:15 more compre-hendible. Seeing the animosity develop between pharaohs Seqenenre Tao, Kamose and Amosis I against the Hyksos reminds us of the predicted war that was put in motion between the children of the Serpent and the children of the woman. The next quotation will be from The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, volume E-J, page 47:
“Although Egyptian inscriptions picture the Hyksos as arrogant and impious, this was no barbarian horde. The Hyksos adjusted to Egyptian ways and commissioned good Egyptian works of art. In particular, they seem to have been active merchants. They introduced in Egypt a new system of weights, a recently discovered stele tells of ‘hundreds’ of Hyksos ships laden with rich cargo at an Egyptian port, and objects bearing the names of Hyksos kings have been found all over the Near East.
“The Hyksos kings at Avaris tolerated the existence of weakened Theban rulers and were content with the firm possession of the Delta and tribute from Thebes. In the course of time the Egyptians at Thebes themselves acquired the new weapons of warfare ..., a Theban king named Kamose found the situation intolerable. His counselors urged him not to provoke a war. He stood in peaceful relations with the Asiatics to the north and the Nubians to the south; although the Egyptians could not claim sway north of Hermopolis in Middle Egypt, they were permitted to pasture their cattle in the Delta; war might endanger the advantages they held. Kamose brushed aside the counsel of his nobles and started a war of liberation ...
“Early New Kingdom ... Kamose succeeded in pushing the Hyksos back into the Delta, but it was reserved for the following king, Ahmose I [Amosis I], to expel the Hyksos, reunite Egypt, and thus start the Eighteenth Dynasty ... After three campaigns, Ahmose captured Avaris. The war then shifted to Palestine, where the town of Sharuhen was besieged for three years before it fell. The clear implication is that the Hyksos fell back upon their homeland in Asia. For a few generations the new dynasty was too busy with the political reorganization of Egypt to undertake more than occasional raids into Palestine-Syria.”
THE HYKSOS-JERICHO CONNECTION
Next, I will show you some more evidence that when the Hyksos were driven out of Egypt by Amosis I, they evidently returned to Jericho. I will now quote from Wonders Of The Past, volume 2, page 1218:
“The expansion and elaborate fortification of the city [Jericho] at this time indicates a period of relative prosperity, and the suggestion is borne out by numerous ‘finds’ both in the city and in the necropolis. The art is that of the Hyksos period, during which Egypt itself was overrun and governed by foreign people of that name; and it is evident that Jericho profited from the success of the Hyksos in their wars. Names of Hyksos leaders are found upon seals both in the tombs and the palace area of the city, suggesting that some of these personages both resided and died there. On the slopes below the palace, which occupied a dominating position in the middle of the city, overlooking the spring, a vast complex of store-rooms came into being at the same time, stocked with grain-bins in which charred remains of barley, oats, millet and sesame seem to be recognizable. Sixty-eight such storerooms were examined layer after layer down to their foundations. Not all were stacked with grain jars, but all formed part of a vast emporium far surpassing the resources and requirements of the local ‘king’ of Jericho — indeed, quite a number of jars had been sealed after the fashion of the age in the name of Hyksos chieftains. It seems clear that Jericho served as a base for the Hyksos invasion of Egypt as well as for the administration of the area, and that the storerooms uncovered in this excavation were used for military stores as well as for the royal treasury of the period.”
If the above is true, we can begin to see the importance of the Israelites under Joshua destroying Jericho. For more, showing Cain’s marks on the Hyksos, I would like to now take some excerpts from a book entitled A Short History Of Ancient Egypt by T. G. H. James, pages 93-96:
“Immigrants trickled steadily into the Delta and into Upper Egypt. Many were craftsmen, in particular metal workers, and their skills were welcomed. In addition to individuals and families, large groups seem to have seized the opportunity of entering Egypt, and over the years powerful tribal communities were built up, especially in the Eastern Delta. Their leaders were called in Egyptian hikau-khasut, ‘chieftains of foreign desert countries’, and this designation became debased into the name Hyksos, used by Manetho.
“According to later tradition, the Hyksos rulers were ruthless destroyers who led hordes of invading foreigners throughout Egypt, looting temples, massacring the inhabitants, overthrowing native culture, and imposing an alien regime ... the assumption of control seems to have been gradual and not the result of simple invasion. By about 1720 BC the Asiatics in the Eastern Delta were sufficiently organized to set up a capital at Avaris ... it is unlikely the Hyksos ever exercised more than a tacit sovereignty over the south ... It seems that the Hyksos tried to behave like Egyptian rulers. Their god was Egyptian; they used Egyptian titles and put their names in cartouches; they built Egyptian-style buildings and appropriated Egyptian statues for their own use; they also appear to have fostered traditional Egyptian culture.”
You now have the best of my documentation that the Hyksos were the descendants of Cain. You will have to critique this information for yourself and decide its validity. If you have any information on this subject, please share it with me.
