If, then, any reliance is to be placed on the length of time ascribed to the Hyksos dominion in the valley of the Nile, and if we are still to hold to the old belief of Christendom and see in the Hebrew wanderer into Egypt the Abram who contended against Chedor-laomer and the subject kings of Babylonia, it would have been about two centuries after the settlement of the Asiatic conquerors in the Delta that Abraham and Sarah arrived at their court. The court was doubtless held at Zoan, the modern Sân. Here was the Hyksos capital, and its proximity to the Asiatic frontier of Egypt made it easy of access to a traveller from Palestine. We are told in the Book of Numbers (xiii. 22) that Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt; and it may be that the building here referred to was that which caused Zoan to become the seat of the Hyksos power.
Asiatic migration into Egypt was no new thing. On the walls of one of the tombs of Beni-Hassan there is pictured the arrival of thirty-seven Aamu or Asiatics “of Shu,” in the sixth year of Usertesen II. of the twelfth dynasty. Under the conduct of their chief, Ab-sha, they came from the mountains of the desert, bringing with them gazelles as well as kohl for the ladies of the court. Four women in long bright-coloured robes walk between groups of bearded men, and two children are carried in a pannier on a donkey’s back. The men are armed with bows, their feet are shod with sandals, and they wear the vari-coloured garments for which the people of Phœnicia were afterwards famed.
After the Hyksos conquest Asiatic migration must naturally have largely increased. Between northern Egypt and Palestine there must have been a constant passage to and fro. The rulers of the land of the Nile were now themselves of Asiatic extraction, and it may be that the language of Palestine was spoken in the court of the Pharaoh. At all events, the emigrant from Canaan no longer found himself an alien and a stranger in “the land of Ham.” His own kin were now supreme there, and a welcome was assured to him whenever he might choose to come. The subject population tilled their fields for the benefit of their foreign lords, and the benefit was shared by the inhabitants of Canaan. In case of famine, Palestine could now look to the never-failing soil of Egypt for its supply of corn.