That Joseph served a Hyksos king has long been accepted by the majority of Egyptologists as a very probable hypothesis, both chronologically and from the internal evidence of the Biblical narrative. The Arab writers represent the Hyksos as Amalekites of Midian. Mr Naville agrees with those who think they came from Mesopotamia, and already possessed a high degree of civilisation and culture.
Bubastis seems to have been a favourite place of residence with the Shepherd Kings; and thus Joseph would be but a short distance from his brethren in the land of Goshen, where they looked after the king’s herds of cattle.
_Saft-el-Henneh or Goshen._--In more than one season Mr Naville carried on operations to discover the locality of Goshen, which had always been matter of conjecture and controversy. He has come to the conclusion that Goshen was a city a little to the east of the modern Zagazig, and situated in a district of the same name. The land of Goshen may be described as a district roughly triangular in shape, with its apex to the south; having Zagazig at its north-west angle, Tel-el-Kebir north-east, and Belbeis at the lower extremity. The town of Goshen appears to have been at Saft-el-Henneh, nearly half-way between the eastern and western points of the triangle. Here we find the name Tel Fakûs, the Phakusa of the Greeks, and apparently the same as Kesem, Gesem, or Goshen. Saft-el-Henneh itself is a large village, standing in the midst of a country peculiarly fruitful, corresponding thus to “the best of the land,” which was given to the Israelites.
“At the first glance,” says Mr Naville, “one sees that Saft-el-Henneh stands on the site of an ancient city of considerable extent. The whole village is constructed on the ruins of old houses, many of which are still to be seen on the south side.”
The monuments discovered at Saft include a colossal statue, in black granite, of Rameses II., which, probably, belonged to a temple of some importance; and a shrine of Nectanebo II., with a dedicatory hymn, and the information that the place where the shrine was erected was called Kes.
The Book of Genesis tells us that Goshen was a pasture land. We may thence infer that it was not thickly inhabited, and not yet organized into a province with its capital, its temples, its priests, and its governor. Since then the name is absent from the earliest Egyptian lists of provinces--namely, those of Seti I. and Rameses II. (the Pharaoh that oppressed Israel)--Mr Naville maintains that the hieroglyphic records which simply omit the name, and the Bible narrative which incidentally shows us the reason why, are remarkably in accord.