Israel in Goshen
Brian Edric Colless

(1) The Gebel Tingar Statue
(2) The Avaris Statue
(3) The Retenu Ruler
(4) The Sobek Family
(5 ) The Sinai Coppersmiths
(6) The Sons of Sobekemhat
(7) The Highness Hieroglyph
(8) The Jacob and Sons Company
(9) The Warrior Hebrews
(10) The Dignitary on a Donkey
(11) The Sobek Appellations
(13) The Intermediate Dynasties
(14) The Amurrian Empire
(15) The Hebrew Sojourn in Egypt
(  ) Addenda Storeroom

The story of Israel's sojourn in Egypt (beginning with Joseph as a high officer in the Egyptian royal administration, and ending with Moses as an adopted son in the imperial family) is frequently dismissed as fictional. However, numerous scholars (professional and amateur) have earnestly searched for Joseph (Yosep) and Moses (Moshe) in the evidence from ancient Egypt. Many and varied are the results that have emerged from these quests. Douglas Petrovich (Origins of the Hebrews: New Evidence of Israelites in Egypt from Joseph to the Exodus, 2021) has plausibly identified Joseph, functioning under several names and titles (though never as Yosep) in the 19th Century BCE, in the time of the Twelfth Dynasty, during the era of the Middle Kingdom. My aim in this essay (or this novella, if you deem it to be fiction) is to test the Petrovich theory in all its ramifications, and to bring additional information to bear on it. The whole exercise of making connections will be speculative and hypothetical, but it may strengthen the case  that has already been constructed, and the truth might finally emerge.  Perhaps you think that the things you are liable to read in the Bible are not necessarily so, and not reliable, but that might be a libel. David as the slayer of the giant Goliath has been vindicated by a newly discovered inscription, and the relevant data we now have may confirm the history of Jacob and sons, as recorded in the books of Genesis and Exodus.
    We start with two statues from opposite ends of the Land of the Nile, namely Upper and Lower Egypt.
  (1) The Gebel Tingar Statue

Gebel Tingar is a site near the island Yebu (also known as Elephantine) in the Aswan region in the far south of Egypt (Upper Egypt); this ancient headless statue was discovered there, outside a non-Egyptian shrine (a Semitic bamah). On the ceiling of the Gebel Tingar sanctuary, and on a rock, there are marks, including a  bovine head ('Alep?) among the three on the ceiling; on the rock, a man, a woman, and a hand; their significance remains a mystery, but they might be gods, such as Baal and his consort Athtart; or Ba`alat (`Anat, Hat-Hor) as at the Sinai mines. The statue would originally have been about 2 feet in height; it bears a West Semitic inscription of five letters, which could be proto-alphabetic or proto-syllabic.
Hans Goedicke, A Bamah at the First Cataract, in Timelines: Studies in Honour of Manfred Bietak, 2006, Vol 2, 119-127. I mentioned my reading of the inscription as possibly West Semitic proto-syllabic WARA GASHINA, in my article on The Origin of the Alphabet, p. 77.
https://www.academia.edu/12894458/The_origin_of_the_alphabet
    With the aid of Goedicke's drawing, the characters can be discerned on the photograph of the back of the statue (far left). The cobra snake at the bottom has the stance that is more typical of the Proto-syllabary than the Proto-alphabet, which evolved out of the syllabary, and thus they share many letters.
For my grand unifying "Quadrinity" theory, combining four related "species" of West Semitic writing systems in one evolutionary scheme:
(Proto-syllabary> Proto-consonantary> Neo-consonatary> Neo-syllabary) refer to:
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/04/another-lakish-inscription.html
    The lollipop --o is actually a nail, waw, and thus represents the sound /w/. The original syllabic form (for WA) was a hook, but it is possible that when the Proto-alphabet was invented, the forms of some consonantal characters moved into the syllabary (remember that most of the proto-alphabetic consonantal letters were taken from the syllabary). Accordingly, while this letter is recognizable as proto-consonantal Waw, it could also be proto-syllabic WA.
    The R is a stylized head, a form that appears in the syllabary (RA) and the consonantary.
    The G is a throw-stick (boomerang, gamlu), also GA in the Proto-syllabary.
    The circle is a problem: in the Proto-syllabary it represented the sun, and the syllable SHI (from shimshu "sun"); but in the short version of the proto-alphabet it was an eye (the letter `ayin). However, the proto-consonantal script could have snakes added to the sun-disc, and there is arguably one such uraeus serpent on the left side of this glyph.
    The snake (nakhash) can be deciphered as NA or N, though the cobra with a bend in its tail is usually syllabic.
    Transcribing the text as syllabic WA RA GA SHI NA , or  consonantal WRGShN, the sequence GShN (0r GAShIN) suggests the place-name Goshen (goshèn, not goshén) a region at the opposite end of Egypt, in the Eastern Delta, near Avaris, an important city; Goshen is where the children of Israel settled with their flocks and herds (Genesis 45:10); this toponym is not known outside the Bible.  However, Papyrus Anastasi IV (1b: 1-2) has a lake named gsm, which was stormy and had waves; this  could have been the large outpouring of the Wadi Tumilat (west of the Suez canal), and might have been the Sea of Reeds that the Children of Israel had to cross as they left Goshen (or perhaps not!); significantly, the Septuagint Greek translation has Gesem for Goshen, and adds "of Arabia" (Genesis 46:34).
(Source: https://www.bible.ca/manuscripts/)     
An introduction to Goshen and the Wadi Tumilat (by Deborah Hurn) is available here:
https://www.academia.edu/95389653/Goshen_the_land_where_Israel_became_a_nation
    A Hebrew companion for this Gesem would be the word geshem, "rain", and if there is a connection, it might be a correction to my dictum that it never rains in Egypt, and so the Nile is the main source of their water; on my visit to the Egyptian desert in winter, rain drops kept falling on my head.                                            
    WARA is possibly a personal name, belonging to the seated dignitary.  As an Egyptian word it would mean "great", "senior", or "prince of a foreign land".
(Adolf Erman, Hermann Grapow, Aegyptisches Handwoerterbuch).  
Could this be one of the sons of Israel who held high office in ancient Egypt, as tentatively identified by Douglas Petrovich, in Origins of the Hebrews (2021)?
(Note that Petrovich references Goedicke's article in his bibliography, 280, but its information has no part in his system, as far as I can see.)
    For example, in the inscription on the Ezbet Rushdi stela from an Egyptian temple at Avaris (Petrovich, 216-217, Appendix 3;  245, Fig. 7-8; 73-81 discussion) the word wr appears in connection with the names of a son and father who have the same name: "the controller of this city, Horemhat son of Horemhat wr". Here we seem to have a simple case of son and father, "Jr" and "Sr", such that wr says "Senior", or "the Elder". Petrovich (79-81) plausibly (though not definitely) identifies the two men named Horemhat ("Horus is at the forefront") as the Hebrew patriarchs Joseph (son) and Jacob (father). If the meaning "prince of a foreign land" is valid for wr, could it be applied here to Jacob Israel or his son Joseph, or one of Joseph's two sons, as a prince? The possibility must be considered that Horemhat the son could be Ephraim, grandson of Jacob, but adopted as his son, and given precedence over his elder brother Manasseh (Genesis 48:5, 17-20).

    In this regard, from Nubia (Sudan) in the far south comes a graffito (reproduced above) which has the name Montuhotep written in Egyptian characters, and his social position stated in West Semitic letters: W (Waw, nail) R (head) G (throwstick) Sh (sun-disc with serpent) N (snake) M (water) P (mouth) Q (Qaw, line-cord, wound on stick) D (door). The resulting WR GShN also appears on the Gebel Tingar statue, as “(Foreign) Prince of Goshen”; if the Waw is not there, R (logogram) produces "Head of Goshen".  The remaining MPQD (root pqd, “supervise” or “assign” or “deposit”) would be a noun, “supervisor”, and its derivative word piqadon occurs in Genesis 41:36 with the meaning "storage”, and referring to the food that would be kept in store against famine, under the supervision of Yosep. So this ruler of Goshen would be Joseph, and presumably the Gebel Tingar WR GShN would also be Joseph; but in the other evidence from the quarry-site (Goedicke, 123) the name of the person in charge of one particular expedition was Mni, an "Asiatic"; this suggests Manasseh (Menasshe}, a son of Joseph.
    Nevertheless, one significant thing that has emerged from these discoveries is extra-biblical attestation of the place-name Goshen.

    (2) The Avaris Statue
  A fragmentary statue of an Asiatic (Levantian) man was discovered in a cemetery at Avaris (Tell el-Dab`a, on the east side of the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt) and stylistically dated as having been sculpted in the reign of Amenemhat III; it is tentatively identified as Jacob (by Petrovich, 46-49; 91-93; 246, Fig. 9-10); but Joseph and especially his sons Ephraim and Manasseh are also possible candidates. This northern dignitary, like  the southern personage, is seated; but the Avaris statue would have been larger than life (2 metres), whereas the statue of WR GShN is less than two foot high (55 centimetres). The northern image has a head, but not much else; in the south we have a headless body, but we can imagine from the West Semitic writing on the back of the image that its head was likewise "Asiatic".
    Another statue, made of limestone, similar to the Avaris one, but smaller, and regrettably unprovenanced, is housed in the Munich Museum (Petrovich, 47).
    Statue fragments have been found in various tombs in the Avaris cemetery; the most substantial pieces,  a head and a shoulder, were in the largest tomb (F/I-p21-Gr.1) of Stratum d/2 (Petrovich, 46-47). A possible assumption is that all the pieces have been scattered from one place into other tombs, but a reason for this action is difficult to discern; Petrovich says that this is demonstrated by fragments from Tomb p/21-Gr.1 of Stratum d/1, including part of a right shoulder, which was "a perfect match with the head from the tomb of d/2, so it was clear that the statue had been smashed, and the fragments dispersed". However, another possibility is that there was more than one statue, and at some point in antiquity these were violently shattered to pieces in their respective tombs, and most of the remnants were removed from each place; thus, a fragment of a foot was found in Tomb o/20-Gr.11 of d/1, and it might have belonged to the particular statue of that tomb. This destruction might not be the work of tomb-robbers, but perhaps it was a political attack at a time when a change of government occurred, such as the occasion of the expulsion of the Semitic 15th Dynasty by the Egyptian 18th Dynasty, and this was ordered by a king who did not know (or did not want to know) about Joseph and his status under the 12th Dynasty (Exodus 1:8-11). Alternatively, the damage might have been done by that Hyksos 15th Dynasty, when they established their rule over northern Egypt, and displaced the family of Jacob Israel from its seat at Avaris.
    We might expect statues of Ephraim and his brother Manasseh to have been sculpted during the reign of Amenemhet III, when both of these sons of Joseph were serving the King (Ephraim as the Retenu Ruler overseeing Goshen, and Manasseh as an official on the Sinai turquoise expeditions, as we shall see).
    The remnant of a hieroglyphic text accompanying the base of an Avaris statue (from Tomb F/I-p19-Gr.1) reads SNTR, "incense", a possible indication that the image represents a deceased person, presumed to be Jacob, whose body had been taken home to the Levant (Petrovich, 92-93, Genesis 50:1-14). However, this would suggest that none of the Avaris tombs belonged to Jacob. In passing, I note that the sequence NTR has the sounds of Retenu (an Egyptian name for the Levant) if read backwards (or upwards in the original setting; see Petrovich Fig. 9); this is an improbable idea, but a timely premonition of the importance of the toponym Retenu in our discussion; Petrovich (248-249, Fig. 14 and 15) argues strongly that the title "ruler of Retjenu" was attached to Joseph's son Ephraim, and this is a credible explanation for this puzzling expression, but it does nor explain the toponym "Retenu".

    (3) The Retenu Ruler
    The word Retjenu (Retenu, Retenu) is an enigma. From its usage in the inscriptions of Pharaohs, and in the Tale of Sinuhe,  it is seen to denote the Levant (Syria-Palestine). Its etymology is obscure; attempts to relate it to a Semitic name are rare (I have yet to encounter an explanation published in writing); I had tried Hebrew ras.on ("favour, pleasure", root rs.y) characterizing it as a "pleasant" land; but one suggestion (shared with me privately) is that it  represents West Semitic 'RS.N ("Our Land"); another idea has occurred to me, and it examines Retenu alongside the Egyptian term for "Asiatics" or western Semites, namely `amu; this would seem to be related to Hebrew `am, "people", and the combination `M 'RS.N ("the people of our land") could account for `Amu and Retenu. I offer a solution along similar lines (conceived by myself in 2018, based on information supplied by Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 161): it is built on the two Akkadian appellations for the country and the people ("Amorites") west of the Euphrates, namely Amurru(m) and Tidnu(m), with Amurru Tidnu being broken (erroneously) into `Amu and Retnu. Whatever the truth of this etymological matter is, Retjenu or Retenu or simply Retenu refers to the Levant.
    Finally, it must be added that there are cases of tenu without initial r- in Sinuhe, perhaps suggesting that the author knew it represented Tidnu. Also, the r- seems to be lacking in the enigmatic caption on Sinai 115 (Petrovich, Fig.3); in his defence of his contested reading of this inscription, Petrovich (81-86) has occasion to cite my work on the West Semitic proto-syllabary as the predecessor and progenitor of the proto-consonantary; and we had a long conversation about this in the gestation of his interpretation. He sees this text as a mixture of West Semitic syllabograms (wi, from wiru, copper, represented by an ingot, as I have proposed), consonantograms (square house, for ba and b), and Egyptian hieroglyphs and language.  He reads the first words as itn-wi 6, "6 Levantines"; or could it possibly be "6 collectors of copper" (V15, "take"; copper ingot; G41, alighting duck, determinative "collect"!)? Can this be related to the "2 coppersmiths" and "10 Asiatics from Retenu" of Sinai 114?   The remainder emerges, Petrovich speculates,  as ibr n Geb-bitu mr, "Hebrews of beloved Beth-El (house of the Earth-god Geb)". Bethel ("House of God") in Canaan had sacred associations for Jacob and his family (Genesis 35). In my enthusiasm, I must say that this reading is a consummation devoutly to be wished, but it is difficult to decide whether this was the intended meaning in the mind of the writer, tentatively presumed to be Manasseh, although  the expected name Khebded (an Egyptian name of Manasseh, according to Petrovich, 59-63) does not appear in the remains of the text. The chief personage is named Renfanup (Rn.f-'inpw), royal treasurer and governor of Lower Egypt, and we might expect him to be the one depicted on the donkey. Renfanup might be an alternative name for Manasseh as treasurer, or perhaps for Epraim as governor of Goshen in Lower Egypt. Clues indicating Semites in the picture include the "highness hieroglyph" in the text (see section 7 below).
    Thomas Schneider, an egyptologist, gave a response to Petrovich (23/11/2016), negating the proposed reading 'ibr, "Hebrew".  First, the Egyptian sign which  Schneider transcribes with /j/ was used for Semitic 'aleph (') not `ayin (`), which would be needed for rendering `ibri. Furthermore, in the 12th Dynasty period, Egyptian r  represents Semitic l or d, never r. Also, Egyptian p regularly rendered Semitic p, though b would be possible. The correct reading, according to Schneider, would be (1) 'pn (2) s' 'rw, that is,  'pn son of 'rw. Schneider incorrectly says that Petrovich took the r from line 2 to construct his word 'br; but I know from my own e-mail communication with Douglas in 2013 that he perceives a mouth-sign (r) above the water-sign (n), following the square character, which he understands as proto-alphabetic Bayt; and this r is included in his drawing (Fig.3); Petrovich takes Schneider's r to be t.  Today (25/10/1922) I suddenly discerned, rightly or wrongly, another mouth () (but horizontal) directly below the b or p of the first line, and above the t or r of the second line.
    Accordingly, taking Schneider's strictures into account, and applying my own ideas, we can try Semitic words such as: 'apln, 'apdn, and since we may assume that this is written by a Semite who will allow their r for his r, 'prn; and in line 2, sptw (judge?), sprw (scribe?), splw, spdw (if this were the god Sopdu, lord of foreign lands, mentioned here in Sinai 115, the name would surely have been written in the Egyptian way, with a triangular sign). Looking at 'prn, supposedly not permissible as a transcription, and pausing briefly to note that the Egyptian water sign /\/\/\ (n) became M in the Semitic alphabet, I wonder whether 'prn could be 'Epraim with nunation instead of mimation. This is indeed a labyrinth of enigmas and desperate solutions. Notice, finally, that the signs for 'inpw are embedded in this cluster, as in Rn.f-'inpw, where the hieroglyphic determinative A17 (a seated child) is understood as a logogram for 'inpw, meaning "young prince", though a special Sign A18 exists for "child-king", and shown to be wearing the crown of Lower Egypt. (Tentatively I am presuming that the inscription is Egyptian,  and it refers to Ephraim and his entourage.)
    Returning now to the protagonist of this stela (Sinai 115), namely Rn.f-'inpw (meaning "His name is Inpu"?): the word 'inpw can refer to the jackal-god Anubis, but here the child determinative could indicate "young prince", and this is a remarkably suitable epithet for Epraim, who was younger than his brother Manasseh, but was given senior status. He also appears in Sinai 114, which records "10 foreigners from Retenu", and in 87 the name 'inpw occurs (the intendant Sianup, S3-'Inpw), and so does the "brother of the Retenu ruler" (name defaced, but Khebded presumed, or some other designation of Manasseh). The name of his mother is given here in 115 as Sit-tjehenu; the name for Joseph's wife in the Bible is 'Asnat (Genesis 41:45); it would be difficult to make a direct connection between these two words, but impossible to find "Asenath" in proto-alphabetic Sinai 376, as Petrovich attempts to do (20, 242, Fig. 4); the person named in that text is Asa or Asi , a metal worker (see section 5, below), and notice "the coppersmith Sonb" in a graffito attached to the North Edge of 87.  In the Sinai Egyptian inscriptions there are numerous occurrences of Snb names, though they have different mothers. In 83 (Amenemhet III, year 2) an interpreter bears the name Sonb, and he may have been a Semite. In 34 (Amenemhet IV, year 6) a Sonbu was a leader of stonecutters. (A Sonbu is also attested in the Wadi Hammamat, a source of stone.)
    Remember, at another stone-quarry, a Semitic "prince" from Goshen in Lower Egypt is memorialized in Upper Egypt at the First Cataract of the Nile River. Could he be one of the patriarchs of the family of Israel? Would Joseph, or his sons Epraim (Ephraim) and Menasshe (Manasseh), have had business in the south? We must look further at the possible Egyptian names of Yosep (Joseph), and those of his family, and search for more instances of the word wr.
    For the sake of this line of argument, the evidence in the Bible for the sojourn of Israel in Goshen  (Genesis, Exodus) will be treated as a valid source, and provisional acceptance will be accorded to Petrovich's identification of Hebrew patriarchs in Egyptian inscriptions of the Middle Kingdom, particularly the Twelfth Dynasty era (20th and 19th centuries BCE), when the rulers had the names Senwosret or Senusret (Sesostris) and Amenemhet (Ammenemes). (Petrovich is somewhat inconsistent in using the Greek Sesostris but the Egyptian Amenemh.at rather than Ammenemes.) The last ruler in this Twelfth dynasty was Queen Sobeknofru (or Sebekneferu); her name relates her to the crocodile god Sobek; and subsequently five kings of the Thirteenth Dynasty bore  the name Sobekhotep.
    (4) The Sobek Family
    Sobek takes us back to the Ezbet Rushdi stela at Avaris: Jacob may have been Horemhat wr; the wr is simply understood as denoting seniority ("Horemhat Senior") in relation to his son, also named Horemhat in the text, though it is tempting to take wr in the sense of "prince of a foreign country".  Other names in the inscription are (both incorporating the word sa, "son"): Horemsaf ("Horus is [in] his son", according to Petrovich, 73; or "Horus as his son"?) and Sa-Sobek (Son of Sobek); these are thought to be aliases of Horemhat (Petrovich, 80); if Joseph is a son of Sobek, it may simply mean that he has a special affinity with the crocodile-god of Egypt, but it might also show that Jacob had adopted that name as part of his Egyptian acculturation; in this regard, compare the scarabs of one Ya`qob-Har, associated with crocodilian figures (mentioned below). Horemsaf, "Levantine overseer of the administrative department of foreign land" (Petrovich, 73, 80, 216) would presumably be Horemhat the Father, namely Ya`qob (Jacob), apparently having an official status at Avaris (as a wr, "prince of a foreign land"?); he was obviously the supervisor of all his children and their children, now settled in Goshen; and he would have dwelt in the mansion (the central-hall house) that has been excavated at Avaris (Petrovich, 86-88; 254, Fig. 24); this edifice would have been reconstructed as a home for Ephraim and Manasseh (Petrovich, 88-91, 255, Fig. 25). Jacob had adopted them into a special relationship with himself (Genesis 48:5).
    Incidentally, Horus names abound in Sinai inscriptions: H.ar-wer-Re`in 47 (Amenemhet II, year 24); in 85 (Amenemhet III, year 4) a foreman, and also in that same expedition a H.ori, Governor of Lower Egypt, and this suggests a leader based in Goshen; Khebded, brother of the Retenu Prince is also named in 85; in 88 (Amenemhet III, year 6) H.ar-wer-Re` is an intendant who explores foreign lands for the King, and he expands on this role in 89 and 90 (both also from year 6).  Neither Horemhat nor Sa-Sobek appear in the surviving texts of the Sinai documents.
    On the Ezbet Rushdi stela,  Sa-Sobek ("Son of Sobek", written hieroglyphically Sobek-Sa, with the god's name necessarily in first position!) would be Horemhat the Son, namely Joseph. A high official Sa-Sobek is named as the bearer on thirteen administrative seals from the Middle Kingdom (Petrovich, 79-80); on one seal (1331) he is "the vizier"; on another (1335) he is "the King's wise man", which accords with the Egyptian King's praise of Joseph: "No one is as intelligent and as wise as you" (Genesis 41:39). In this connection, Plutarch (De Iside, 75; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, II, 359) said that the Egyptians considered the crocodile to be "the image of God", and to have wisdom and foresight (knowing where to safely lay her eggs before each rising of the Nile).
Thus on the fatal banks of Nile,
weeps the deceitful crocodile;
thus hypocrites that murder act
make heaven and gods the authors of the fact!
(Nahum Tate, Dido and Aeneas, an opera by Henry Purcell)
    Speculation is reasonable for seeking reasons why this Hebrew family chose to be associated with the crocodile of the Nile. One might think that the lurking reptile matched the image of Jacob as a cunning deceiver (Genesis 27:35) , in obtaining by guile  the birthright from his father Isaac, which was rightfully owed to his elder brother Esau, and which entailed high standing and great privileges (27:37). Petrovich (72-73) portrays Sobek as a powerful god, providing the water of the Nile from his perspiration (the words perspire and transpire are synonymous, but Americans do not happen to know that) and promoting verdant vegetation; Joseph (as Sa-Sobek) was equal to this, in year 5 of Senwosret III (Ezbet Rushdi stela, Petrovich, 216-217) he was diverting water to a memorial temple of Amenemhet I (or Amenemhet II, under whom Joseph is now  known to have served), and he was possibly involved in building the Lahun dike in the reign of Senwosret II, engineering the diversion of the Nile's waters into the Faiyum (Fayyum, Fayum), for the increased cultivation of grain (Petrovich, 98), as reflected in the seven years of plenty, when Joseph stored up grain in great abundance (Gen 41:46-49); it is astonishing that here the Nile has a channel (not a canal) known as Bahr Yusef, "Waterway of Joseph" (Petrovich, 96); and evidence is extant for a profusion of granaries during the reigns of Senwosret (Sesostris) II and III (Petrovich, 98-108).  A search in the Hebrew lexicon for comparable SBK or SBQ words was not fruitful, but ShPK betokens "pour out (profusely)", and SPQ bespeaks "abundance".
    Other possible connections between Sobek and the family of Jacob Israel might be: Sobek's relationship with Horus (Hor in the name Horemhat), assisting him to be reborn each day (that is, making the sun rise); as vizier, Joseph supported the king, the living Horus, in governing the land. Even more significantly, Sobek was called "the great king, the prince of the Nine Bow Barbarians" (Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, II, 356), and these Hebrew princes of Retenu could perceive that as a title applicable to themselves; the Nine Bows was an idiomatic term for foreigners in ancient Egyptian (usually regarded as hostile). If this holy family were wishing to remain faithful to their own theology (with El as the creator), their names constructed with Horus could be viewed as simply referring to the living Horus, the king that they served, and the Sobek element merely referred to the crocodile as a reptile. Incidentally, the Egyptian word for crocodile is msah., not sbk.
    At this point in the presentation of possibilities, I will include two items that will be treated more fully later in the discussion.
    Seal-impressions of a man named Ya`qob-Har, "Jacob of the Mountain",  have been found at Avaris;  one is combined with a crocodile and a crocodile-headed anthropomorphic figure (Kim Ryholt).
   In Sinai 90 the name Sobekemhat (my conjectured reading) has the sign for man (as a determinative?) after the crocodile sign (Petrovich, 252, Fig. 22). (Is this indicating: Sbk is human, not divine, and a name not a common noun, and referring to his father Ya`qob? Or is that merely a rhetorical question that requires no answer?) Perhaps the crocodile became the Ya`qob family totem or their company brand in Egypt, for a variety of reasons.
   In a section devoted to "identifying Joseph epigraphically" (Petrovich, 64-73), an inscription of Sobekemhat is categorized as "funerary" or "mortuary" by Petrovich (68, 94, 218-219, and Fig. 11, 247)  and is assigned to Joseph, previously known as Horemhat and Son of Sobek, and now Sobekemhat. The creator god Ptah, patron of arts and crafts, appears appropriately at the beginning of the text; Joseph had emulated Ptah's creativeness. It was discovered at Dahshur, but not in the mastaba tomb of Sobekemhat, situated in proximity to the pyramid of Senwosret (Sesostris) III; he would have been the vizier who supervised the erection of this king's monumental tomb,  though this ruler was ultimately buried elsewhere (Petrovich, 65); and there was no coffin in the tomb of Sobekemhat, but it was identified as such by the occurrence of his name on some limestone fragments and a damaged offering table (Petrovich, 66; and 251, Fig. 20, showing the inscription on this object).
    The funerary document of Sobekemhat came to light, mysteriously, 1.6 km away, in the pyramid of Amenemhat II (1919-1884), resting on the knees of a diorite statue of a seated person (Petrovich, 68). Could this third statue in our search be a representation of Joseph himself? Did Joseph have a connection with King Amenemhat II ? We think of Joseph operating in the reigns of Senusret II (1887-1878) and Senusret III (1878-1840), using the Petrovich dates; but notice the overlap of Amenemhat's 1884 and Senusret's 1887, indicating a co-regency. If Joseph arrived at the Egyptian court to interpret the royal dreams in 1885 (Petrovich, 197) then we assume that  he was dealing with Senusret, early in his reign; but 1885 is also in the later years of Amenemhat's rule. Accordingly, Joseph would have had contact with Amenemhat, and may have been involved in this king's funeral arrangements; hence the presence of an image of Sobekemhat in the pyramid tomb of Amenemhat II, and his so-called funerary inscription in the lap of the statue. Sobekemhat is a later name of the person identified as Joseph (earlier Horemhat and Sa-Sobek in the Ezbet Rushdi inscription) and so his funerary document would not have been placed in the tomb at the time of the royal interment. On the other hand, despite the idea of Petrovich (68-70) that this document of Sobekemhat was moved from his tomb (next to the monumental grave of Senwosret II) to the pyramid of Amenemhat II, perhaps the statue and the accompanying inscription were both placed there early in the reign of Senwosret II. The purpose  of the inscription could be that the "high steward" Sobekemhat (presumed to be a name assumed by Joseph by that time), as well as Amenemhat II, would be sustained at the festivals by the food offerings presented by the current king, Senwosret II, though it might be the divine Amenemhat providing an abundance of nourishment in return for the food offerings {The intention of this text may be obvious to scholars with more experience than me.} Be that as it may, as I see it,  Sobekemhat (Joseph, represented by a statue) was still alive at the time of the installation, in the tomb of Amenemhat II, even though the term "justified" (literally "true of voice") might imply that he was dead and had passed through the judgement hall of Osiris into the eternal realm.
    Note that the text on the damaged offering table in the mastaba-tomb of Sobekemhat  is similar to the inscription of Sobekemhat in the royal pyramid; Petrovich (68-69) compares them to show that the offering table would have belonged to Sobekemhat, even though the name is reduced to Sbk-m-[  ]; a point of difference is that he is "high steward" ("overseer of the house", imy-r pr wr sbk-m-h.3t) and "controller of the entire land" (hrp t3 tm) in the pyramid, but "treasurer" in the mastaba-tomb; perhaps this shows that the two  documents were produced at separate times, when Joseph had different roles in the royal administration. Petrovich (65-71) strenuously strives to establish that Joseph held the office of vizier; as noted above a high official named  Sa-Sobek is named as the bearer on thirteen administrative seals from the Middle Kingdom (Petrovich, 79-80); on seal 1331 he is "the vizier"; this status for Joseph is usually assumed from the biblical account of his rise to power in Egypt (Genesis 41), but the Bible certainly affirms that Joseph was given exceptional powers.
    In the text of the "mortuary" inscription from the pyramid of Amenemhat II, some of the statements about Sobekemhat are thought to be reflected in the life of Joseph: "Controller of the entire land" is echoed in Pharaoh's assertion to Joseph, "I have set you over all the land of Egypt" (Genesis 41:41); "Steward over the House" chimes with  "You shall be over my house" (41:40). The last line of the text (6) could be rendered thus: "Great steward over the house, Sobekemhat, justified, born of a great daughter"; in each case the word "great" is represented by a bird with a swallow's tail (G36), and it says wr, suggesting "Prince Sobekemhat, born of a princess", but that may not have been the scribe's intention. Joseph's mother was Rachel, daughter of Laban the Aramean (Gen 30:21-25), but, through his father Jacob,  Joseph was descended from Abraham and his wife Sarah, whose name means "princess", and to her a divine promise was given: "She shall be (a mother) of nations,  kings of peoples shall issue from her" (Gen 17:16).
Pardon the enthusiasm of my connection-constructing brain. (Forsooth it fareth farther than facts forthtell. Furthermore, it makes fun of English orthography, whereby the letter A/a has to represent a plethora of vowel sounds, and some cases of th should be voiced dh, if writ foneticliy: Forsuuth it feereth faardher dhaen faects forthtel: feurdhermoor, it meics fan of Ingglish orthografiy.)                
    However, it has to be said  that the Egyptian name given to Joseph in the Bible, S.apenat-pa`eneh. (Gen 41:45) is not found in connection with the names that have been attributed to Joseph by Petrovich (H.oremh.at, Sa-Sobek, Sobekemh.at); but the latter part, pa`eneh., could be 'Ipi-`ankh, "He sets life in order", a fairly common name in the Middle Kingdom (Petrovich, 72); in this regard, notice the name `nh-'ib, an overseer of Lower Egypt, in Sinai 71 and 72, from the time of Amenemhet II. S.apenat has been tentatively transcribed as dd(w) n.f, "He who is called"; or S.apenat might be a distorted form of Sobekemh.at, and I offer that now as a possibility.  Also in Sinai
I have had a long relationship with transcriptions of names by foreigners, particularly Chinese renderings of barbarian toponyms, where syllables are discarded, so that Alexandria becomes Likan.
    Next, in this potentially nascent dynasty, Ephraim and Manasseh were the heirs of Joseph, born of an Egyptian mother, Asnat or Asenath; her father Poti-phera` was a priest in On, the city of Ra` known to Greeks as Heliopolis (Gen 46:20); Petrovich (203-204, 242, Fig. 4) unthinkingly finds her name (as a suspiciously late posthumous mention) in the middle two lines of Sinai 376, and audaciously promotes his mistake as supporting evidence (30, 212); the correct name is Asa or Asi ('s'), taking up the whole of the penultimate column with two bovine heads and a large fish between them, but no snake to represent the n required for 'Asenat; the final T is at the top of the column on the left, but this inscription clearly runs boustrophedon-style from left to right. The West Semitic inscriptions relating to this "Asa Smith" are worth our attention here, to establish whether he is mentioned anywhere in the Egyptian inscriptions, and whether he might have been a member of the Ya`qob family.

    (5 ) The Sinai Coppersmiths
    Asa or Asi was a metal-smith (bn kr, "son of the furnace", in the last line of 376), who appears in four Sinai inscriptions (345, 376, 358, 363). As usual, chronic failure to follow the obvious metallurgical clues leads to confusion; and in this case (376) an additional complication is that the vertical lines of writing are in boustrophedon style (down up down up),  and they begin on the left, not the right, and with his misreading of some of the letters, Petrovich's reading is triply invalidated. Notice that the two lines of horizontal writing on the sphinx (345) are also dextrograde (->), although the predominant direction in these inscriptions is sinistrograde (<-).  Actually, I am not the first to employ the boustrophedon approach to inscription 376: Albright (1966), Cross (1967), Rainey (1975), all tried this (Sass, Genesis of the ABT, 1988, 37-38), but unfortunately they read (say redd) the columns from right to left (sinistrograde), and misinterpreted some of the consonant signs. However, they all recognized the ox-fish-ox sequence in the second column from the right, and they would concur with me that Asenath is an impossible reading. Of course, they all think that the fish represents D (from dag "fish") instead of S (from samk "fish"), so their reading of the name 'Asa' as 'd' will also be wrong. The true D  is the door-sign (dalt "door") to the left of the fish, but they are forced to view it as H. (supposedly a fence). As a consequence of these multiple misidentifications (a dozen on Albright's table), no interpretations of proto-alphabetic inscriptions based on the Albright paradigm are acceptable.
    Most of the appreciative readers of the two books by Douglas Petrovich will acquiescently accept his readings of the Sinai proto-alphabetic inscriptions, and not realize that his renditions of them are not renderings but rendings, with their true meanings ripped out of them. Please forgive me, I am obliged to interrupt this program to deliver breaking news, to rectify the fake news that envelops these important documents. Let it be known: Douglas Petrovich and other scholars who have tackled this enigmatic text are completely innocent of deliberately falsifying their results, or publishing information that is known to be false; but their results need to be falsified in the academic sense (as seen today [14/10/2022] when I was reading  the first page of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens, who speaks of a prediction being "verified or falsified").
    [1] The illness of Asa the smith
    The reader will be able to follow my discussion, since a photograph of the inscription is available on my Cryptcracker site (Sinai 376), with commentary; and this can be compared with Petrovich's Fig. 4.
    Here is my dextrograde (from left to right) boustrophedon unraveling of the text:
    QL` HRS. DWT  'S' BN KR KTB
    "The pickax (HRS.) has inscribed (QL`) the sickness (DWT) of 'Asa' son (BN) of the furnace (KR), the writer (KTB) (or: he has written)"
  Here now is the erroneous version of Douglas Petrovich, running in the opposite direction, sinistrograde (from right to left), and reading each column downwards, not boustrophedon; incorrect letters are placed in round brackets and missing letters are indicated by square brackets:
    BTKR(M)[ ][ ] 'S(N) TWD(B)R QL`(H.) (Y?!)
    "The house (BT) of the vineyard (KRM) of Asenath and (W) its innermost room (DBR) were engraved (QL`) . They have come to life."
    This rendition moves from right to left. and each column is taken as running from top to bottom; he is reading it in the Egyptian way, because the heads of the ox and the human are facing rightwards, which should indicate that the starting point is on the right; but this principle does not apply in West Semitic proto-alphabetic inscriptions; the heads are usually facing in the same direction as the movement of the writing; they are looking where they are going, so to speak (Colless, Origin ABT, 2014, 81-82).
    Petrovich has made a desperate attempt to extract meaning from his incorrect (back to front and partly upside down) interpretation of the text. The only word in it that coincides with my version is QL` ("engraved"), and this is a commendable achievement, because he and I can both see that the sign --o- is Q; others ignore the clear projection at the top and mistakenly discern W, as in the next line to the right, and as with the lollipop of our WR GShN statue from Aswan. What is surprising, bordering on astonishing, is that he can make QL` ("carved") say "were engraved", when the Classical Hebrew language he is promoting here  has no simple passive voice (Semitic qutil), so it would have to be unattested Pu`al (quttal). My reading has a subject and an object for the simple transitive verb: "The pickax has inscribed (engraved = written) the sickness of Asa".
    There is much more that is good in Petrovich's identification of the letters to cause me to raise my arms in joyful exultation: the fish is read correctly as S (not D for dag, which the followers of the Albright paradigm choose); the door is D (for dalt "door", with its doorpost, not Het).
    A new attempt has been offered, by Michael S. Bar-Ron (Proto-Thesis, 2025, 54-57), involving a fatal misreading of eight of the sixteen letters that he sees, and this structural weakness causes a complete collapse of his edifice. He interprets the text from left to right, and each column from top to bottom, and submits this tragic travesty to iur astonished gaze:

(1) WL`D (And forever) (2) HW H.BR (he is a friend) (3) Ada (4) RK RB (a gentle master)
  W (the top projection of the --o- turns the Qaw into a Waw, although this differs from the true Waw in line 2; in Sinai 363 on the gravestone of Asi, he completely overlooks the little Q, a cord wound on a stick; on the votive sphinx, Sinai 345, on which I detect Dh NQY LB`LT, "This is my offering to Ba`lat", he regards as a peculiar W the clear Q in the photograph on p. 53, showing the cord wound on the stick with the end of the string projecting, the Dh = and the Y are redrawn as fishes, yielding "... this and this ,,,"). It has to be said that this fisherman has caught more dag fish in these turquoise waters than any other angler, and tall tales to go with them. There is undoubtedly a fish here in line 3 of 375, but the H in line 1 is a hank of thread, more a fishing line than a fish. In line 2, the tied bag ç, S.adey, becomes B, a house; the Dalt door on its post becomes an improbable fence, and H.et; the Taw at the top of the line is transmogrified into a grotesque human figure, supposedly representing He.
 
    My reading is accurate, I suggest, based on 40 years of constant researching and examination of this collection of Bronze-Age inscriptions, and all available counterparts to them from far afield. All other researchers in this field work with a very limited set of texts, and are unable to distinguish between West Semitic proto-syllabic and proto-consonantal inscriptions. (I have not yet decided which of these categories our Gebel Tingar WR GShN belongs to!)
    QL` HRS. DWT  'S' BN KR KTB
    "The pickax (HRS.) has inscribed (QL`) the sickness (DWT) of 'Asi' son (BN) of the furnace (KR), the writer (KTB) (or: he has written)".
    My first publication of this text (Abr-Nahrain, 26, 1988, 52, and 28, 1990, 12-13) had the last line (reading upwards) as [B]RKT ("blessings" or "pool") instead of BNKRKTB. I had overlooked the signs for B, at either end of this sequence, and looking at them now, I can at last see, reasonably clearly, that each represents a simple square house divided by a diagonal line; this form of B (here apparently with 5 lines, elsewhere with 4 strokes forming a square but with the bottom line diagonal) goes back to the protosyllabary, and recurs in the neoconsonantary and the neosyllabary, but is missing from the ultimate Phoenician alphabet, though the form there could be viewed as a triangular variation of it.
For an explanation of my evolutionary scheme for the early alphabet, formulated as E = (2M + 2C) squared
(protosyllabary > protoconsonantary > neoconsonantary > neosyllabary) refer to
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/04/another-lakish-inscription.html

    Two more mistakes made by Petrovich need to be mentioned. (1) The double-helix character (hieroglyph V28, representing h. in Egyptian writing) is identified as H. instead of H (we can all safely follow Albright on this point); Petrovich is erring here not because he is an Egyptologist and is carrying over the H. from the hieroglyphic system (as has indeed happened with some other scholars), but on account of his assumption that the proto-alphabet was "Hebrew", and therefore it can only have 22 "letters" (apparently overlooking Sin, which would make the total 23, though he allows Sh to cover Sin); this compels him to allow two glyphs for /h./, so that the true H. (a house with a courtyard, as in Sinai 361) has to be classified as an alternative H., that is, an allograph; falsification of this claim could be achieved if both characters could be found together in one inscription; unfortunately this has not happened yet, though they are together in tablets displaying the whole proto-alphabet, and these have many more than 22 letters ('BGHD) .     

You can blame me for this conundrum, about the language in the Sinai proto-alphabetic inscriptions, if there is actually a failing or fault involved. When Douglas Petrovich was framing the theory that is here being criticized (that "Hebrew" was the language in those texts, not "Canaanite"), he asked me to define  "Hebrew", and I suggested that it is/was the West Semitic language (actually a cluster of dialects) spoken by the descendants of Ya`qob Yisra'el (Jacob Israel). This "tongue" is called "the lip of Canaan", and that designation is approved by YHWH (Isaiah 19:18). So, there is no difference between these two entities! The prophet is saying that this language will be spoken in some of the cities of Egypt, and if we think back to Avaris in Goshen in the Nile Delta, Petrovich has made an amazing discovery, that the proto-alphabet (a modification of the already existing West Semitic proto-syllabary) was devised by the children of Israel, specifically by the two sons of Yosep, who would have been educated in all the lore of Egypt, as well as knowing their own WS language and writing system, and they would have realized from their knowledge of Hieroglyphic writing that vowels could be ignored, hence the proto-consonantary. Epraim and Menasshe are both found in the Egyptian inscriptions at the turquoise mines, and the evidence is presented in this essay (or monograph).
    (2) Petrovich finds another B in the second column from the left, but he is inexcusably at fault, because he knows better (see below); unlike the two authentic instances of B it is not square and it has no diagonal line; it is obviously a version of Sadey (ç/ s.) the figure-8 glyph (equivalent to hieroglyph V33 O<, which is somewhat different, but  forms like O< are also found as Sadey); this represents a tied bag (s.rr, as used for the money bags of Joseph's brothers in Genesis 42:35). Followers of the Albright paradigm are convinced that it represents Q/q, but as we have seen, the real --o- is the first letter in this inscription, and it is obviously the ancestor of Q/q. Petrovich is, for the most part,  a follower of my paradigm, and he has this bag (hieroglyph V33) on his own table of signs. All these serious lapses spell ruination for his interpretation, and they could have been avoided if he had taken consultation, which would have been freely given; I was with him at the start of his project, and I did point out some defects in his brilliant system, but there came "a parting of the ways", though I have never ceased to respond to his published work, with delight and despair. Of course, my own research results are not universally accepted, or are universally not accepted, but I like to think that the great mind that directs the Universe understands my life's work and has added this "information" (a technical term in quantum physics) to the Cosmic Book of Knowledge, kindly removing my plethora of intellectual transgressions, and dropping them into a "black hole".
    A general criticism I have made of Petrovich's interpretations of the Sinai inscriptions is that they tend to relate to remote places and events, instead of referring to the things immediately at hand. Here we have to choose between a lyrical reminiscence of the ornamentation in a house in a vineyard belonging to a lady named Asenath who lived in northern Egypt (Goshen or Faiyum), and a plaintive cry from Asa the metalsmith who has used a tool he had made out of copper from the mine in the vicinity of the rock on which he has inscribed the fact of his illness, a sickness unto death, as other inscriptions will reveal. Asa wins because of the immediacy of his statement, while the poetic version of Petrovich, including the name Asenath, is disqualified merely by his misreading and overlooking of several letters in the text.
    Petrovich insists that all the early proto-alphabetic inscriptions had Classical Hebrew as their language, simply because the proto-alphabet was (apparently) invented by two Israelian Hebrews named Ephraim and Manasseh, and their family was the first to use it, and they allegedly held a monopoly (an anachronistic "copyright"). It is true that the "Hebrew" words that Petrovich has concocted here in Sinai 376 are all attested in the Bible, but so are my tentative proposals, including the name 'Asa'. Curiously, however, the other three instances (345, 358, 363) omit the final 'Alep. Petrovich has not studied these Asa inscriptions in this second book; but we can follow the destiny of Asa in them, and learn the names of his personal gods. In this regard, the names Yahweh or Yahu do not appear in the Semitic inscriptions from the turquoise mines, nor in the Egyptian documents; but with regard to the Exodus, YH (Yahu) and YHW (Yahwe), in proto-alphabetic script, appear on Har Karkom, one of the Sinai mountains eligible for identification as Mount Sinai (Mount Horeb), and, marvelous to relate,  it is inside modern Israel, with a military establishment in its vicinity. The form YHW has also come to light on the folded leaden curse-tablet from Mount Ebal.
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2023/12/ebal-curse-tablet.html
    [2] The temple offering of Asa
    The sphinx statuette (Sinai 345, pictures available) is the next Asa document to be examined; it is mentioned by Petrovich (108) as being bilingual, and (129, 204) "apparently belonged to a Hebrew"; as a devotional offering to Hathor it exemplified the apostasy of Israel in Egypt, as described by the prophet Ezekiel (20:5-10). It was found in the H.ath.or temple at the turquoise mining site, Serabit el-Khadim, and it is obviously an offering to the goddess. It seems to have the name  'S (bovine head, fish) on the right side of the body, as a stylized signature. It certainly has BN KR (son of the furnace, as in 376) at the front, as a monogram, with the N-snake inside the B-house, and the KR (K-hand, R-head) atop the square-house; note that I did not recognize this in my first published report on the inscription (1990:13-15). We have already seen this term bn kr in the inscription announcing the sickness of Asa (376); it is also found (presumably plural, "sons of the furnace") in Sinai 352, 364, 382; most other scholars have erroneously read this sequence as BNS.R, misunderstanding the trident-sign (K) as Sadey, having chosen the true Sadey (s./ç), the tied bag (s.rr), to be their Q. The falling domino effect is active here again, and it produced a paradigm that became set in stone; this has doomed to failure all other attempts at deciphering this corpus of proto-alphabetic inscriptions, except mine. I wish my self-assurance were contagious. Dennis Pardee dismissed my "sanguine" (confident and optimistic?) endeavour, and no one dared to countenance it after that. There were indeed errors in my grand scheme, but I had taken account of every inscription in the corpus, and my corrections and new insights are being posted on two of my sites on the Internet.
    Meanwhile, the current adherents of the old school continue to wrench a vast variety of weird and wondrous words of wisdom from the wretched inscriptions; in accord with my bilabial wail, Aren Wilson-Wright is at the forefront of this misguided movement, turning texts about melting of metal into paeans for a narcissist named Math (properly MSh, and thus possibly Moshe, Moses; but it is really the "melt" word in the term KBShN MSh, "melt furnace", as against his reading t b t n m t , with a clear K misread as T); this mythical Math craves laudation for his achievements. Other proponents of the false consensus tacitly confess their ignorance, but still construct grand theories on the origin of the alphabet. Orly Goldwasser has been spreading abroad her falsifiable hypothesis that illiterate Semitic turquoise miners invented the acrophonic principle, and snatched a selection of Egyptian hieroglyphs from the inscriptions in the Hathor temple and artlessly (excuse the "multiguity" of this word) constructed a consonantal writing system (though such ingenuous ingenuity would be more likely to produce a pictographic script or a syllabary, than an acrophonic consonantary). However, the inscriptions we have from Sinai were generally written by coppersmiths (mentioned in the Egyptian inscriptions, and their apparatus is extant on the site), and we know that one of them bore the name 'Asa. The inventors of the alphabet could have derived the idea of a consonantal script from their knowledge of Egyptian writing, but the acrophonic principle had already been applied to Egyptian characters to produce the West Semitic Syllabary, hundreds of years previously (possibly in Byblos), and the construction of the Consonantary (probably in Egypt) mostly involved choosing a set of its syllabograms to function as consonantograms, and this hypothesis is verifiable. Douglas Petrovich (95-86) recognizes this fact, and he has chosen Ephraim and Manasseh as ideal candidates for having undertaken this task in Egypt; and he has shown that Manasseh was at the mines, under the Egyptian name Khebded. I will propose that Ephraim also appears in the Sinai records as Rnf-Inpw and 'I, and apparently Joseph also, as Sobekemhat.
    On the left side of the sphinx (345) there are two statements of Asa's devotion to a pair of goddesses, or to a single goddess under two appellations; in Egyptian language and hieroglyphic script, Asa affirms that he is "beloved (mry) of Hat-hor ..." (the name is written as a square with a bird inside it, and this may have given the writer the idea of putting the snake inside the square for BN, "son", in the monogram bn kr). Below this, in West Semitic language and proto-consonantal script, he describes himself as M'HBB`L[T], "beloved of the Lady"; note that as it stands, the text has "the Lord" (B`L, Baal) not "the Lady" (B`LT, Baalat), the final T having been broken off; I think this damage has also affected the "Turquoise Lady" section of the Egyptian inscription; B`LT was intended, as is shown by its occurrence in the text on the other side, and the frequent occurrence of "beloved of Baalat" in this collection; and the identification of Hat-hor and Baalat is certain. Note also that the doubling of the B has been achieved by placing a dot in the square, as also in Sinai 348 and 353 (MHB.`LT), whereas in 351 and 374 two B-houses are provided (M'HBB`LT); the short sequence MHB`LT also appears in 356, 361, 379, but it is difficult to discern a dot in each case. Doubling of consonants can also be indicated by two dots: for example, in Sinai 367, a stela for a water reservoir, two eyes in a head produce the word rir, meaning "outpouring" (of Baal).
    Turning to the line of protoconsonantal script on the right side of the sphinx statuette, beginning below the Asa signature, an authentic transcription confirms the devotional character of the artefact:
    Dh NQY LB`LT  "This is my offering to Baalat"
Dh (D) is pronounced as in English this, and "this" is actually its meaning here (but not pronounced as in thing; this pair should be written "dhis thing", reflecting dialectal "dis ting"); here the sign for Dh (D) is a pair of vertical lines; I have constantly argued that it is derived from the Egyptian hieroglyph for "eyebrow" (D13), which is a horizontal sign (=), and that is what we usually find in Sinai inscriptons, but here it is vertical, or slantingly oblique; but notice that the `AYIN ("eye") in this line is likewise in a vertical stance! The position of = in the sequence suggests a reading NDhQY (Hebrew NZQY, my injury?); but if we think of it as being above the snake, and thus coming first, we produce Dh NQY,"This (Dh) is my (-Y) offering (NQ)". The word for "offering", niqu, is known in Akkadian (Babylonian) but does not occur in the Hebrew Scriptures; this should not worry Douglas Petrovich, since he accepts that the Abrahamic Hebrews from Ur would have known Akkadian.
    The letter Q, which we have already seen in Sinai 376, appears in three of the four Asa inscriptions, and generally remains unrecognized. It depicts an object that is universally known, that is, a cord wound on a stick, used by builders as a measuring line, and  the Hebrew word for it is qaw. I pointed this out in 1988, but it has remained largely ignored. However, Douglas has accepted my discovery that the letter Q stems from the hieroglyph V25 (though it did not need that character as its model, given its ubiquity). Before proceeding further, I have to express my disappointment with his epigraphical work, in general, and on this point in particular; he rushed into permanent print when he was not adequately prepared; I have not had access to his first book, and so I am reacting to the parts of it that have been released, notably his chart of signs and a selection of proto-alphabetic inscriptions from Egypt and Sinai. Strangely, instead of the obvious qaw, "measuring line", he chose qur, "thread"; I will guess that he wanted a word that is unique to the Bible; but in its only occurrence (Isaiah 59:5, 6) it means a spider's web; he has been influenced by the Hieroglyphic Sign List of James Hoch, which has V24 and its variant V25 as "spun fibre", transferred to Petrovich's sign-table as "spun-fiber". Alan Gardiner's comprehensive table of hieroglyphs has "cord wound on stick", and that is also my understanding of it. Regrettably, we need to delve deeper and bring up even more details. V24 is the simple form --o-; V25 is roughly --o< but actually --o- with an additional oblique line at the top, obviously depicting the end of the cord poking out. Unaccountably, even though his drawing shows a single stroke at the top of his Q in Sinai 376, Douglas has chosen only V25 (with two projecting strokes at the top) as his source, even though both forms are found in proto-alphabetic inscriptions; and, contrarily, he has no equivalent letter for V25 on his chart, because all his proffered examples from Sinai have no extra projecting stroke. He separates the letter-forms that he judges to be from the Middle Kingdom era and those from the New Kingdom; his one instance for the MK is the one we saw in the first Asa inscription, Sinai 376 (but I am now thinking I need to revisit that one, as a protruding line for the end of the cord seems possible); for the NK he has three items, not including the clear case we are examining here on the sphinx (346) in the word nqy, but presenting three imaginary witnesses (349, 351, 353). An examination of 351 (Fig. 28, the one with the depiction of Ptah, the god of crafts and creation) will suffice to show that no credence can be accorded to any of his "Copyrighted 2015" drawings of Sinai inscriptions, in their attractive little boxes, commendable but not recommendable.
    As with all of his Sinai selections, the Petrovich interpretation of Sinai 351 is preposterous: it incongruously reports an extraordinary flooding (presumed to be the Nile River rather than a local river); his reading of the letters on the right-hand column is more exact  than others that have been published, but he turns the initial Dh K into an untidy (vertical stance) Samek (--|-|-|), as Gordon Hamilton had done before him. The K (horizontal version of |=) is unregistered by all scholars, and hence they miss the frequently recurring sequence KBShN MSh, "melting-furnace"; therfore this is an inscription of the "sons of the furnace" (BN KR), and that is why the deity of craftsmanship is in attendance on this stela.
    The Sinai 351 column on the left is difficult to decipher, but it is another well-known sequence, which we have already examined, because of its appearance on the sphinx: M'HB B`LT, "beloved of the Lady". Petrovich manages to turn the L into Q, and discovers the irrelevant word ShQT, "water trough". In the other column he had correctly identified the bag as Sadey, while others chose Q; but there is really no Q (qaw, "line") in either column of 351.
    Returning to the unrecognized Q on the sphinx, we can now characterize it as clearly a V25 form, with a double projection at the top, though the cord is depicted as a dot rather than a circle. All three of these forms are found in a scanadalously disregarded set of proto-alphabetic inscriptions from Thebes. Failure to take account of such vital evidence (ignored by Gordon Hamilton and dismissed by Ludwig Morenz) will eventually lead to the complete and utter downfall of the epigraphic empire that held sway illicitly and tyranically in the 20th century and continues to reign unjustly. I am talking about an inevitable paradigm shift in the theory of the origin of the alphabet; but it may coincide with the collapse of the human civilization that the invention of writing created.
    Now, where were we? In Sinai 376 we learned of the sickness of Asa the Smith (son of the furnace, meaning metal-worker). This infirmity was presumably his reason for offering the sphinx statuette in the temple of  Hat-hor (and Ba`alat). Here is what Asa was saying when he deposited the little sphinx (which I have held in my own hands, merely momentarily, at another hallowed shrine, the British Museum):
    "Asa the Smith, beloved of Hathor, beloved of Baalat:
    this is my offering to Baalat"
    For comparison, Petrovich's understaing of Sinai 345 (available on the Web) is as follows:
HNY 'YL B`LT
"My wealth is the strength of the Lady"
This is a seemingly profound utterance, but if I had obtained that result, I would have told myself to think again, instead of copyrighting it. Fortunately, photographs of the sphinx are provided for our use. There is no H detectable, so we can cancel his first letter, and his entire reading of the text; but the snake is there for N; the vertical Dh = (Z for Petrovich, and also myself in 1990) is presumably mistaken for an incomplete Y; subsequently an intact Yod; and between them he has drawn a bovine head, where the Q should be. A count of three misidentifacations of the characters utterly disqualifies his reading, and he should withdraw it; but he does not recant; he brooks no criticism; he believes in their infallibility, and reprints them in a second book. All these little picture-shows on the internet are products of his novitiate, and should be under constant scrutiny by himself; but they are set in electronic "stone", and yet they are even more crumbly and fragile than the original sandstone on which they were inscribed.
    And now, please turn round, and let us examine the other side of the little sphinx.   A pleasant surprise. No complaints. In the Middle Egyptian inscription, Petrovich has even managed to find an owl for m for the word MPK3T, "turquoise", though he overlooks the same word in the sequence MPKT ZKT ("pure turquoise") in the "Hebrew" inscription Sinai 375a (Petrovich, Fig. 39, 375a). However, he has m'hb b`lt, and recognizes that the double B is achieved by a dot in the square-house sign; it means "(He who is) loved by the Lady". But the question lingers: Who is he who is loved? The name Asa on the shoulder is overlooked, of course.
    It is important to keep in mind that this M'HBB`LT was the original key to decipherment, and in its numerous occurrences its meaning should not change (the various instances were listed earlier). In Sinai 353 the column on the right has this phrase, in conjunction with the "melt-furnace" (KBShNMSh), as already seen in 351. What Petrovich delves up is: "It is a time (`T) to be hopeless (Y'Sh). The (H !!!) Lady (Baalath) had organized for battle (H.MSh "5")". Sigh.  Lord save thy people! I give forewarning here: inclusion of the definite article ha (non-existent in the Bronze Age) will invalidate any of Petrovich's attempts. The two other columns actually speak of gathering (KNSh) provisions ('RHT) from their garden, not about marching into battle with heads held high. I will vigorously and valiantly defend (against this miserable horde) my renderings of the inscriptions that speak of the garden and the rations.
    Two more "melt-furnace" inscriptions that are denied their identity by Petrovich will be mentioned here, namely Sinai 360 and 361. In my estimation of the intended meanings, they both say basically the same thing: they point out that there is a pit (ShH.) for the furnace, and yet 360 cries out "O man you have arrived. You have been pruned off in a year to forget", and 361 reports "Our bound servitude had lingered. Moses then provoked astonishment ...." This sudden appearance of Moshe from the MSh ("melt") of the "melt-furnace" prompts the question why he is not invoked in all the other instances. Finding drama in a collection of labels attached to machinery has been achieved by astonishing machination (quite innocently and unintentionally, but still reprehensibly).
    [3] The Obituary of Asa
    Next in the Asa saga is Sinai 358 (picture available), a graffito on the interior wall of Mine M, which adjoins Mine L, and most of the important proto-alphabetic inscriptions were found at this complex. Attention is always paid to a circle of characters inscribed on the wall, but there are other marks that could constitute a written text (possibly a H and a H. together proving that they represent different sounds, but a concurrence created by wishful thinking!). The clearer set runs thus: ' (ox) S (fish) P (mouth) ` (eye) L (crook) M (water) L (crook) K (hand) [T (cross)] H (>-E).
    'S  P`L  MLKTH
    Asa has done his work
Allow me to say from the outset, that Romain Butin (1932, before I was born) had established the sequence 'SP`LMLK..., and I followed him in 1988 and 1990. In a book dedicated to Butin, Gordon Hamilton (2006, 357-358) confidently transcribes the first line ("there are no uncertain letters", so the Colless reading is incorrect, he adds): 'DDh`LM. The D and Dh ruin this attempt: the D is a fish, hence S; the Dh is not = but a mouth., thus P (though "mouth says p" does not compute, according to Hamilton, 187 ff, contra Colless and others). The last letter (H, "his") is the exulting man, but the character is inverted, corresponding to hieroglyph A29; the scribe may have chosen this stance because this column is running upwards. The word ML'KT means "work" (West Semitic ml(')kt, apparently present on Sinai 349, line 3 (`rk ml'[kt]); the 'alep is not necessary, but may be faintly present below the LK here on Sinai 358; and the T is possible above the K (hand).
    This is where an effort should be made to deconstruct the Petrovich interpretation of that stela, Sinai 349, though he only gives his phantasmic translation in the book (Petrovich, 297, but all the Sinai inscriptions he has treated are available on the Web); first difficulty, the opening verb 'N has no subject: "He (the King?) sought occasion to cut away to the point of barrenness our great number, our swelling without measure. They yearned for the Lady, but the quiver (= wombs!) of our brothers was thoroughly despised, so he performed terror against their quiver and brought about a cry of wailing." These words, wrenched from an unlikely division of the letters of the text,  constitute a midrash (personal to Petrovich) on Exodus 1:15-22. On the contrary, I suggest that the first word is 'NT, "equipment" (Akkadian unutu, Jewish Aramaic 'nt'), as also on the much-misinterpreted Sinai 357, 'NT Sh GN, "garden vessels". The sequence RBNS.BN refers to "the chief of the prefects", rather than "our great number" (rbn) and "our swelling" (s.bn), presumably referring to the fruitful multiplying of the Hebrews in Egypt; but commendably he has the Sadey correct (not Q). Similarly, 'HN (not his 'H.N) in line 4 could be "brothers" (not "our brother"). The false principle in operation here is the insistence of Petrovich that the language of the Sinai inscriptions is "Hebrew", but generally the texts use nunation (as in Aramaic and Arabic) for plurals, rather than mimation (as in Hebrew and Phoenician); and yet the Hebrew patriarch Ya`qob was called "a wandering Aramean".
    The goddess B`LT is everywhere in these inscriptions, though I have never found her in 349; but Petrovich reconstructs her at the end of line 3, and kills my ml['kt].  Notice he adds the in italics, to indicate that the definite article ha- was absent in "the Lady". Another false principle is that because this language is Hebrew, then it must have the definite article ha, as described in manuals of Hebrew grammar; actually, whenever he understands a letter H as "the" in an inscription, it is an indication that his entire interpretation is incorrrect (as with the Wadi el-Hol  graffiti; Petrovich, 29-30, 202).
   In passing, I wonder whether the origin of the Iron-Age ha- (followed by a doubled consonant, as in hammelek, "the king") is in demonstrative han-'; and Arabic 'al/'el goes with 'éllè, "these", and even Latin ill-, "that", resulting in el as definite article in Spain, alongside Arabic el.
  In an attempt to find something laudable in his mistaken construction of what was originally on this stela, Sinai 349, I can happily say that his values for the signs are correct; thus at the bottom, in  line 7, he has S.`Q (tied bag, eye, cord on stick); but his understanding of it as the Hebrew feminine noun s.`q(h) ("a cry") is not possible, since it would require a final -t in the Bronze Age, as he tacitly allows for B`LT (b`l(h) in Hebrew). If there were a sequence of S. and Q, I would gladly sacept it as from the root YS.Q (or S.WQ), "pour out", which is used for the pouring and casting of metals (Exodus 25:12; 1 Kings 7:16, 24; Job 28:2), and this would fit into the present context.
     I vaguely see `ShRT "ten" in line 5, and I want to link it with the "10 Asiatics" in Sinai 85 (year 4 of Amenemhet III), and this would allow us to date Sinai 349; in any case it concerns smiths and their equipment on the site of Mines L and M, not slaughter of infant males in Goshen.
    [4] The grave of Asa
Sinai 363 is the gravestone of Asa (four columns, reading from left to right, which is abnormally normal for 'As' inscriptions):
KNKN D  NHT 'S  TN QNT 'L
This grave is the resting place of Asa. Provide an elegy, O God.
Requiescat in pace.
   Mention should be made of Sinai 163, a small obelisk attributed to the Middle Kingdom, bearing the non-Egyptian names of three men: 'Iashi, Qni, and 'Ihnm; the determinative depicts a kneeling bearded man with an ax, like the one carried by the donkey-rider on Sinai 115. This reminds me of Sinai 376, examined above: "The pickax has inscribed the sickness of Asa". Could 'Iashi be this 'Asa or 'Asi? I have not seen the photograph of this monument (Plate LI in Vol. 1 of The Inscriptions of Sinai), though Orly Goldwasser has now provided a drawing,  and I have the information given by Jaroslav Cerny (1935) on Semites in Sinai, and the translation in Volume 2:
    "... Iashi, his beloved son Qeni, his beloved son 'Ihenem".
    We know that Asa (or more likely Asi) was not the only smith (bn kr) at the Sinai copper and turquoise mines, since bn kr also occurs as plural, "smiths" (352 364 382). Someone set up his gravestone with its epitaph, and somebody wrote his obituary in Mine M; but turquoise miners might have performed those services, of course. Incidentally, Asa's announcement of his sickness was written in the place where copper smelting was done, Wadi en-Nas.b, and the resultant slag has been found in abundance (not to say in heaps or in spades), and a related building has been excavated; but at the time of his death 'Asa was associated with the metal-casting contingent at Mine M. Whether or not 'Asi and 'Iashi were the same person, 'Iashi and his sons Qeni ("Cain"? "Smithy"? Kenite?) and 'Ihenem were recorded on a monument (163) as a trio-unit, and this merits comparison with the "3 coppersmiths", listed but unnamed,  on Sinai 106 (Amenemhet III year 40) and 413 (also Middle Kingdom).
    Among the names of the sons of Manasseh is a certain 'Asri'el (Numbers 26:31, Joshua 17:2); the s is a Sin; perchance he was known familiarly as 'Asa, or 'Asi? Two other sons of Menasseh, namely Shekem and 'Abi(`ezer) appear with their father, who is seated on a donkey, in a drawing on Sinai inscription 405 (see below, The Dignitary on a Donkey). With more difficulty, the 'Ihen(em) of 'Ashi's trio might be identified as 'Ah.iyan, son of Shemida, son of Manasseh.
      There is a connection between the presumed 'Asi of the West Semitic sphinx inscriptions (345) and the 'Ashi of the obelisk inscription (163): a Semite with knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, as would be expected in the households of Manasseh and Ephraim, the sons of Joseph and his Egyptian wife Asnat, daughter of Poti-pher, a priest of Heliopolis (On).
    ( 6) The Sons of Sobekemhat
    Jacob had adopted his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh to himself (Gen  48:1-22), so that each would have a tribe named after him, and so there would be no single Joseph tribe when it came to inheritance of the promised land (Joshua 16:4; 17:14-18). In giving his blessing to his grandsons, Jacob placed his right hand on the head of the younger Ephraim, and Manasseh received the lesser blessing of the left hand (reminiscent of Jacob's own contrived experience with his father Isaac and his elder brother Esau, as noted above) .  
    Continuing our survey of the identifications proposed by Petrovich (Chapter 4, 57-94), we see that Joseph's son Ephraim (as the virtual elder in status, in relation to his older brother Manasseh) was the personage named Di-Sobekemhat ("Sobekemhat-given"). This could mean that Sobekemhat (Joseph) had fathered him, and/or appointed him (Ephraim) to high office; in this regard, a reconstructed scarab on a gold ring has come to light in a tomb at Avaris (Petrovich, 51, information; 248, Fig. 14, depiction; 249, Fig. 15, reconstruction; 247-248, Fig, 12 and 13, the tomb); the unique name Di-Sobekemhat is intact, and most of the toponym Retenu is extant, but the word for "ruler" has to be supplied (h.q3, as in the Greek "Hyksos"). The enigmatic expression "Ruler of Retenu" is well attested, but hitherto unexplained, until Petrovich (51-56) enlightened us; it is found on a number of Egyptian inscriptions from the Sinai turquoise mines, dating from the reign of Amenemhat III (c. 1859-1813), with reference to a "brother of the Ruler of Retenu": Ephraim was the ruler, and Manasseh was his brother (Petrovich, 53-56). I suppose that this prince had authority over his own people in Goshen, not over the whole of the Levant; he would have been perhaps a "Retenu ruler", rather than the "Ruler over Retenu", unless the name Retenu ('ars.enu, "our land"?) in this context refers only to Goshen. Presumably he had taken over the role of Jacob, governing the clan of Israelian Hebrews; Jacob has been tentatively identified on the Ezbet Rushdi stela as Horemsaf (literally "Horus in his son"?) and "the Levantine overseer of the administrative department of foreign land" (Petrovich, 73, 80, 216). In the year of his death (Genesis 47:27 - 49:33) Jacob had "put Ephraim before Manasseh" (Genesis 48:28); subsequently, then or later, when Ephraim was an adult, Joseph (Sobekemhat) would have appointed his son Ephraim (Di-Sobekemhat) to this role of ruler over the population of Goshen. 
    In the Egyptian inscriptions of Sinai, there are many men bearing the title Governor of Lower Egypt, and we need to examine these Egyptian names to find appellations that Ephraim may have adopted throughout his career, as also Manasseh. The stelas that have depictions of an "Asiatic" dignitary on a donkey will prove to be helpful to us in this quest (see below).
    Curiously, the creation of this local governorship in the Delta came at  a time when nomarchs (provincial rulers) were being deposed (Petrovich, 111-119). Incidentally, the scarab of Di-Sobekemhat was made of  amethyst (51), which was mined in the Aswan region (54-55), where our WR GShN was stationed.
    The brother of the Ruler of Retenu had the name Khebded (Petrovich, 59-60). I am credited with suggesting that it had Semitic "love" connotations (hb and dd), but Petrovich offers a more likely Egyptian root, perhaps producing "dishonoured" or "disfavoured", applicable to Ephraim's brother Manasseh, in the matter of Jacob's irregular blessing. Incidentally, the name Manasseh, as in English Bibles, is actually Mnashshe, from the root NShY, "forget"; Mnashshe's birth had made Joseph forget all his troubles (Genesis 41:51).
    Khebded is mentioned in Sinai Egyptian inscriptions from the reign of Amenemhet III: 85 (year 4) 87 (year 5) 92 (year 13) 112 (year lost). The documents for the regnal years between 5 and 13 (88 89 90 all year 6; and 91 year 8) in their present damaged condition have no trace of Khebded, but he may have been there. One person of interest in 85 and 90 bears the name Sbk-wr (is this Jacob, or Joseph, or another member of the family who has embraced the crocodile Sobek as their patron or totem?); in the text of 90 he has the raised-arms determinative sign that identifies him as West Asian, apparently, or even Israelian. Remember, the Asiatic Wr-gshn of Gebel Tingar at the First Cataract is looking for identification among these individuals in the Delta.
    West Asians (`Amu, "Asiatics") appear in Sinai Egyptian inscriptions initially during the reign of Senwosret III; for example, Sinai 81, from Serabit el-Khadim, written on yet another seated statue, presumably representing the King; among the named personnel is the Asiatic Lua (rua, perhaps the patriarch Lewi?), "possessor of honour".
    So many of these documents are damaged, and important details of interest may have been defaced; but the next piece of evidence comes from the Maghara mining area, not from Serabit: 24A (Amenemhet III, year 2) "the Asiatic Esni" is named and portrayed by an image of an armed Asiatic (like 'Ashi on the small obelisk, 163). Could this be Manasseh on his first expedition to the copper and turquoise mines of Sinai? As noted above, Khebded was there in year 4 and 5 and subsequently. Esni might be a nickname for Manasseh, that is, a hypocoristic metathetic diminutive rendition of his name; or else it is Hebrew sani', "hated" or "disfavoured" (Deuteronomy 21:15, on not disfavouring a firstborn child!!), or even 'esni' (Hebrew 'essâné', Nip`al with n assimilated to Sin),  "I have been disfavoured"; and this is equivalent to Egyptian Khebded ("disfavoured"). Incidentally, the Egyptian word for "my brother is lurking in the sequence sni. We know that Khebded depicted himself (riding a donkey) at the bottom of an inscription with which he was involved  (Sinai 112), and that name does not appear in 24A. Petrovich (63, 76-78, 200) thinks it likely that Manasseh inscribed this stela, but he does not take account of "the Asiatic Esni". However, he does mention the law against denying a firstborn son his rights of primacy (Deut 21:15, cited above) in relation to Manasseh receiving the minor blessing (Petrovich, 61).    
    The possible identification of Esni with Khebded and Manasseh seems to be an important addition to the case made by Petrovich, but he has overlooked its significance, and Esni does not appear in the index of his book. One detail that is worth mentioning is this: the names borne by Manasseh, with their connotations of "disfavoured", and his title, "Brother of the Retenu Prince", both acknowledge his lower position in relation to his younger sibling.

   (7) The Highness Hieroglyph
    An interesting feature of the accompanying text of this "Asiatic Esni" tablet, Sinai 24A, is the use of an exulting or jubilating human figure preceding three of the four other names (and if these are listed with Manasseh, they may be kinsfolk of his). Guessing is rampant, and not only on my part, but here are my thoughts: as an ideogram it might correspond to the expression "possessor of honour",  on 81, for example; as a logogram it could mean "overseer" (in Sinai 32, year 20+, it has the quail-chick w attached to it, and is associated with "overseer" and "over the house"); Petrovich (Fig. 21-23) provides drawings of 24A, 90, 92, 32, with this feature present, but the earliest-known example (Senwosret III, year 5) is on the Ezbet Rushdi Stela (Fig. 7-8) in "Head of the Household, Sa-Sobek", alias Horemhet son of Horemhet wr, that is, Joseph son of Jacob. Petrovich (75-79) decides that it is a marker for a Levantine Hebrew, specifically a member of the family of Jacob Israel, and that Joseph and his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, were the authors of this practice; if so, it is surprising that this icon is not found with the Egyptian names of these two worthies. Petrovich involves me in his search for the meaning of this character, and it is gratifying to find someone following the lead of Mendenhall, Hoch, and myself in relating the origin of the proto-consonantary (the proto-alphabet) to its predecessor, the West Semitic proto-syllabary.
    This figure with both arms raised at right angles, represented by hieroglyph A28, denotes (as a determinative in Egyptian writing) "high" or "joyful", attached to words meaning "be high", "be exultant", "extol", "be jubilant", and even "mourn". For the proto-syllabary (and also the proto-consonantary), my hypothesis connects it with the WS root hll, which implies rejoicing and praising (as in Hallelu Yah); a noun hillulu would supply acrophonically the syllabogram hi and the consonantogram h.
    Unfortunately, Douglas has misreported my idea for the source of ha, but fortunately this allows me to reconsider it; yes, haykalu (temple, palace) is its likely acrophonic origin, to be referred to hieroglyph O15 (hall in temple or palace, according to Alan Gardiner), not Petrovich's choice of O4 (reed hut, Gardiner); Petrovich (75) describes O4 as a hut or courtyard, following the sign-list of James Hoch (useful but not as comprehensive as that of Gardiner), who extracts the latter sense from a combination of it with the sign for house (O1 + O4), yielding h "courtyard"; Gardiner is uncertain what this enclosure hieroglyph depicts, but he gives evidence for "field hut"; this glyph certainly turns up as an alternative for B (bayt house) in proto-alphabetic writing (Lakish bowl sherd, 3x; Colless, Proto-alphabetic inscriptions of Canaan, Abr-Nahrain 29, 1991, 36-38); another reason for preferring O15 over O4 is that the entrance is on the right side, and this is consistent with the occurrences of WS proto-syllabic ha; O4 has its entrance on the left, but this had been forgotten by the scribe of the Lakish bowl!
    Putting the derailed train of thought back on track, we contemplate the view from our carriage: the figure with arms raised does not represent submission (Hands up!), but superintendence (I'm the boss!); hieroglyph A28 signifies "highness"; and at this point an idea comes to my mind, that perhaps it denotes a title such as "His Highness" in its West Semitic usage; so it goes with Hebrew râm, meaning "high (in rank)". Petrovich (75-81) subjects this icon to a thorough examination. He rightly sees it as the "precursor" of proto-alphabetic H (Hebrew He); and the ultimate predecessor of proto-consonantal h is proto-syllabic hi; moreover, I have to add, A28 was not the only model, since the Wadi el-Hol horizontal inscription has an equivalent for A28 (letter 7) and also A32 (letter 11), a man dancing for joy (one arm pointing downwards), and there is another example on the vertical portion of the text (letter 5); there is even an instance of A29, a man upside down, in Sinai proto-alphabetic inscription 358. All these details constitute knowledge, but they are not in Gordon Hamilton's (alleged) "state of the art" manual on this subject (2006, 76-86, 257), though two highly unlikely choices are seriously considered there, A1 (seated man!) and A17 (seated  child!); the man with one "pendant" arm is classified as "unclassified" and "uncertain"; and my case for hll is not mentioned, nor the connecting with HI in the proto-syllabary, but the ejaculation "Hey!" is the unchallenged victor for Hamilton, and many other scholars.
    The "high" man with both arms raised is a recurring feature in the Egyptian inscriptions from Sinai. Petrovich (77) lists the 12 documents in which it is found, in combination with h.ry-pr ("head of house"): 32 35 87 90 92 105 112 114 115 117 136 161; then he itemises the 13 (!) plates where drawings of these 12 (!) inscriptions are found: 12 11 24 25A 27 34 37 38 36 39 40 49 48.
    For my own benefit and future use, I will combine the two inventories, increasing the number of plates to 14 (!), and employing Gardiner's Roman numerals (in the past, ability to decipher them was an indication of erudition):
32 (XII) 35 (XI) 87 (XXIV) 90 (XXVA XXVI) 92 (XXVII) 105 (XXXIV) 112 (XXXVII) 114 (XXXVIII XXXVI) 115 (XXXIX) 117 (XL) 136 (XLIX) 161 (XLVIII).
    Here I have to confess an embarrassment of riches (or lack thereof). Years ago, when I was trying to make photocopies of what I considered to be the most important inscriptions for my research (Gardiner et al, I Plates, II Translations) I was confronted by difficulties placed in my way by interlibrary-loan regulations (only a small amount of a book may be copied) and requirements (not to be removed from the borrowing library); so I do not have copies of all the vital pieces of evidence; and the hapless reader attempting to follow my thread in this maze will be even more at a loss. 
(Someone will reprovingly but mercifully tell me where I can get both books on the web).
P.S. On 22/3/2023 I received a second-hand photocopied Volume 2, which had belonged to the scholar Meindert Dijkstra, and has his annotations; copies of Volume 1 are extremely expensive, so I still lack many drawings.
    In passing, I will highlight a detail on Sinai 87 (Plate XXIV); this stela has been wrecked (by religious iconoclasts or ancient anti-Israel Egyptians?); but the sun-symbol accompanying the deleted figure of the King (Amenemhet III, year 5, also on 85, year 4) is a circle with one uraeus serpent, and this is obviously the prototype of a particular form of the letter Sh (from shimsh, sun) that appears twice on the Wadi el-Hol vertical inscription; this refutes the nonsensical identifications that have been applied to this proto-consonantal glyph (regrettably, as all others have done, Douglas has excluded the sun from his slightly misconstructed system, and he misconstrues this letter as K, from the ka sign |_|). The usual proto-alphabetic sun-sign at the Sinai mines seems to be a modification of the icon with a serpent on either side of the sun, with the disc omitted in the Sinai corpus, though it is present in other settings (as proto-syllabic shi and proto-consonantal sh). The Egyptian prototype with two serpents is seen on Sinai 102 (Pl. XLIV, Amenemhet III year 23), with wings added; and likewise 120 (Pl. XLIII, Amenemhet IV, year 6), which also has the sun-disc with one uraeus, on the head of a deity (north edge, and south edge); both types are also observable on 126 (XLI).
    The writing on the east face of Sinai 90 is largely obliterated, but the west face has the list of names with the "high" determinative (Petrovich, 252, Fig. 22); the last one is a "stone-cutter", and his name has two orthographic peculiarities (the editors place "sic" beside two of its characters, one being a crocodile with no tail, followed by hieroglyph A1 "man", as noted above); but it is transcribed as "Sebekem..."; the expected final syllable would be h.at ("forefront"), represented by the forepart of a lion (F4), but the scribe may have found a lion-head too difficult to inscribe, and simplified it, as with the sobek-glyph in the name; the published drawing of it shows an oblong  rectangle with the right side extended downwards; Sobekemhat is one of the names attributed to Joseph son of Jacob in the present theory; it is followed here by A50, depicting a person of rank seated in a chair.  Incidentally, the preceding name, transcribed as Ii, also has this seated dignitary sign as a determinative, and is introduced by the upraised arms figure, which is less angular (at the arms and legs) than the other seven instances (Petrovich, Fig. 22). There is no other occurrence of the name Sobekemhat detectable in the remains of the Sinai corpus, and I will propose an uneducated guess: this is his personal signature, inscribed cursorily by his own hand; and if "stonecutter" is a correct translation, then this is merely a playful reference to this act of engraving his name; he is actually the former Vizier Joseph, officially known as Sobekemhat, and in year 6 of Amenemhet III he would possibly be in his sixties, and retired from high office. 
  (8) The Jacob and Sons Company    
    Another of these overseers on Sinai 90 has a full-bodied crocodile in his assemblage of clearer hieroglyphs; his name is, as mentioned earlier, Sbk-wr, and this appellation is also attested three times on inscription 85. It needs to be asked whether old Jacob himself (Sbk-wr, "the venerable Sobek") was accompanying expeditions to Sinai; after all, Avaris and Goshen were at the northern point of entry to the Peninsula. Petrovich (62-63) affirms (twice) that the mining expeditions "were launched from Avaris", with donkey caravans proceeding over land from Lower Egypt, more often than from Upper Egypt across the Red Sea from the seaport Kosser; but Petrovich does acknowledge  extensive "maritime trade" with the Levant. It should be noted that in Sinai 25 (Amenemhet III, year 2) the Treasury official H.arnakht son of H.eb`o says: "I traversed the ocean laden with treasures on the mission of Horus, lord of the palace".
    Apparently the crocodile names show that the princely family of Israel was in attendance at the mines: Jacob and sons, purveyors of precious turquoise to His Majesty the King of Upper and Lower Egypt. Indeed, this family (or company or corporation) seems to have instigated the almost annual expeditions to the Sinai copper and turquoise mines during the reign of Amenemhet III.   One might say that these Hebrews were unwittingly marking out a route for their eventual exodus. (Incidentally, when I say this name "Jacob" aloud it comes out as Yaa-cob.)
    The abiding question is whether Jacob could have been the Sbk-wr of Sinai 85 and 90, and/or the WR GShN of the Aswan statue. Jacob said he was 130 years old when he stood before the King of Egypt, and he then settled in the land of Goshen, also anachronistically called the land of Ramses (Genesis 47:1-12). For seventeen years (47:27-28) Jacob Israel lived in Goshen ("and took possession of it") with his growing family ("they were fruitful and multiplied exceedingly"); after his decease his body was taken to the ancestral burial cave of Abraham (50:12-13) in Canaan (say Ka-naan). For his part, Joseph (Yo-sep) was 30 years old when he entered the service of the King of Egypt (41:46); at his death he was 110, and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin; but he had enjoined his family to take him with them when they eventually returned to the promised land (Genesis 50:22-26), and this they did (Exodus 13:19). Significantly, the mastaba tomb of Sobekemhat at Dahshur has no sarcophagus (Petrovich, 94, 211); but is that also the case with the adjoining tomb of Nebit, and the third one on the other side of the Nebit mastaba?
    However, according to the chronology constructed by Petrovich (196-203), Jacob died in 1859, before the date of Sinai 85, year 4 of Amenemhat III (1859-1813), and presumably one of his sons or grandsons would now be  Sbk-wr (Prince Sobek?);  thus, Sbk-wr might be a new name of Manasseh; but this identification is difficult to sustain in 85, since the occupation is given as psy, "cook" (on a fragment of a list of names on the east face, Plate XXIII). However, heed my words warily, for I will say this only once: P S Y are the consonants of the name Yosep; but I must add that this is an unusual way of spelling psi, "cook"; the two reeds (M17 twice) may represent Hebrew Yod in "group writing" of foreign words; but  the "fire" hieroglyph (Q7) is a determinative sign, with no phonetic value, and it does not say ps; and here it precedes the y!  Note also that the other two persons named Sbkwr are in two long lists of "youths", and this does not support translating their wr segment as "elder" (but as "Sobek-prince", perhaps). In any case,  Khebded (possibly an alias of Manasseh) is also recorded as a participant: "Brother of the Retenu Prince, Khebded" (Ephraim being the Prince, appointed by Jacob and Joseph, and Manasseh is the brother). Khebdedum (with Semitic mimation at the end, and identified as brother of the Retenu Prince) is named and portrayed in a depiction at the bottom of Sinai 112, a stela dedicated by Sinofret, royal treasurer and governor of Lower Egypt, who had opened Mine D (Sinai 56): Khebdedum is seated on a donkey, and he is followed by an attendant named Qeqbi ("Star"?), and led by an unnamed child or small man.  Thinking stargazingly of "the star from Jacob" (kwkb m y`qb) in the Balaam oracle (Numbers 24:17), I am pondering whether this unusual Qeqbi is a pet-name, with reduplication of q, given to a great-grandchild of Ya`qob, or perhaps a servant in the household of Jacob, and it would mark him as a "Jacobite" or an "Israelite". A further identification is  the double-handled jar hieroglyph (W23), depicted near his name, perhaps standing for wpdw, "butler" (this term is attached to three names on the blighted east face of Sinai 85).
    While we are in the realm of free-ranging speculation, if we accepted the surmise of Petrovich (79) that the upraised arms sign indicates an Israelian Hebrew, then the list of twelve men on Sinai 90, which includes Sbk-wr and Sobekemhat, might well be the Egyptian names of the sons of Jacob, the board members of the commercial company of Ya`qob and Sons. Thus, Joseph is Sobekemhat; Sbk-wr, in this context might be Yehuda (Judah), who was offered pre-eminence over his brothers, in the final blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49:8-12), and he was Jacob's representative and spokesman (Genesis 44:16, 18, 46:28); Gebu the priest might be Levi (though I have already tried the name Lua for him), from whose line Moses and Aaron came, taking the name of the earth-god Gebu as equivalent to West Semitic 'Il (El), as Petrovich has proposed in the place-name Beth-el  (242, Fig. 3, on Sinai 115 picture-caption); but Levi and Simeon are characterized as men of violence (Genesis 34:25-26; 49:5-7).
  (9) The Warrior Hebrews
Douglas Petrovich insists (63-64) that the Asiatics who preceded the Hyksos at Avaris were civil civilians; they were "miners and merchants, not warriors"; it is admitted that the tomb of the Retenu ruler (Joseph's son Ephraim) contained a dagger, two javelin heads, an ax-head, and a knife, "but these are hardly the weapons of a true warrior". Perhaps so, since such implements were buried with nobles to fend off tomb-invaders, and I could give examples, including the Lakish dagger with four proto-alphabetic letters, which DNP (204) characteristically misreads, even though all four signs are on his table of the proto-consonantary, which is largely derived from mine; my solution was published in print long ago (1991), but it is readily available here: a tied bag (S.), a human head (R), a snake (N), a djed-pillar (spinal column, with only two crossbars instead of three, but this form is found in the proto-syllabary as SA; Samek, S in the proto-alphabet); hence S.R  NS, "Foe flee!", and this is classical Hebrew, if you want it to be.
    This essay is turning into a review of the second Petrovich book; the first, on the proto-alphabet, is not available to me, but I have the excerpts he has released, including his table of signs; I think it should now be completely rewritten. Let it be understood that I hugely admire and tentatively support the thesis of each of his two monographs, but I am aghast when I see him venturing unarmed and untrained into the battlefield of ancient West Semitic inscriptions, where his interpretations are wounded countless times, but he persists in defending the supposed invincibility of their broken bodies, which consistently ignore the immediate context of the texts. Thus he uses that Lakish dagger to bolster his unfounded idea that the proto-alphabet belonged solely to the holy family of Israel, because they invented it. This is plausible enough, and makes good business sense, though there is no hint of it in the Bible. Consequently, this dagger would have been engraved for its Canaanian owner by a helpful Israelite, one of the Hebrew "miners and merchants" (Petrovich, 63), who are also absent from the Scriptures; the same would have to apply to all the other cases of proto-alphabetic writing in Canaan, particularly at Gezer  (as published in 1991 in my Abr-Nahrain article on this subject).  The Sinai inscriptions have more to do with metallurgy and metalsmiths, than with mining; the key to deciphering them was discovered by Israeli archaeologists: metal-working equipment at the mines where inscriptions were found; sadly, I alone followed this clue. The word kibshan ("furnace") is embedded in a number of inscriptions that Petrovich and others misinterpret; it is a word that occurs in the Bible (Genesis 19:28, for example).
    The question of Hebrew warriors needs to be examined further. Habiru were acting as military mercenaries in ancient history; for example, the Amarna archive of King Akhnaten (c. 1370-1353) records that a king of Damascus had them in his army (EA 195), and also in the Egytian provincial army in the region of Upi (Petrovich, 190).
    Consideration needs to be given to the evidence of inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hol: the proto-alphabetic inscription(s) indicate the presence of Semites among the military personnel guarding the desert roads; an Egyptian inscription (from the time of Amenemhat III) names an army officer Bebi as "the general of the Asiatics (`amu)" (Darnell et al 2005, 102-103); This might be Jacob's son Benjamin, characterized as "a ravenous wolf", devouring prey and dividing spoil  (Genesis 49:27), or the name Bibi might have been borne by a son of Binyamin (Bin Binyamin). Strange to tell, at the time of writing, a long-standing Prime Minister of Israel is a Benjamin known as Bibi, and he is heavily involved in warfare. From this same area, another Egyptian inscription (WHRI 5) is a letter from "Dedusobek"(Darnell et al 2005, 104), a name that includes the crocodile deity Sobek, adopted into their Egyptian names by descendants of Jacob, apparently; Dedusobek appears among the significant Sobek appellations in Section 11 below. At that time, the Israelian Hebrews would presumably have been included in the category `amu, Asiatics. If the newly constructed proto-consonantary was the copyrighted property of the "Jacob Israel and sons Ltd" company, then some of them must have been serving as soldiers in that region to write on the rockface. However, this monopolistic assumption made by Petrovich is unlikely; Manasseh may well have been the inventor of this West Semitic writing system, but it could well have been used by all Semites who were working for the Egyptian King.
    As for the alleged peaceableness of the Hebrew family of Jacob (they were "not warriors", Petrovich, 63-64),  they described themselves as shepherds (Genesis  47:3), but at the Exodus they went forth from Egypt "equipped for battle" (Exodus 13:18), and their God Yahweh was "a warrior" (Exodus 15:3). David was likewise a keeper of sheep (1 Samuel 16:11), but he was also described as "a man of war" (16:18), who compliantly delivered the bride-price demanded by King Saul; David and  his men killed two hundred Philistians and collected their foreskins so that he could become Saul's son-in-law (18:27). Subsequently, when he took possession of the sword of the giant he had slain (21:9), he made a great slaughter of Philistians (23:5), and Amaleqians, leaving neither man nor woman alive (27:9).
    In the lifetime of Jacob,  as an act of revenge for the rape of their sister Dinah, Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi, who were shepherds and herdsmen,  compelled all the men of a city to undergo circumcision, and then slaughtered them in their weak state (Genesis 34:25-29); Jacob rebuked them for making his name odious in Canaan (34:30), though he later confessed to Joseph (Genesis  48:22) that he had used his sword and bow against the Amorians (Amorites).  Ephraim and Manasseh have no such exploits recorded against them, though "man of war" is an epithet used in a text referring to Manasseh's son Makir and his son Gilead (Joshua 17:1).  Moreover, the armed man named Esni (pictured on Sinai 24A) might be Manasseh, as also the weapon-bearing man Khebded, depicted on Sinai 112, seated on a donkey and holding an ax. Of course, it may be relevant to mention that in olden days in Europe it was customary for a gentleman to wear a sword and ride a horse, not to mention the undignified cowboy of the Wild West, on his hoss, wearing his gun-belt with its pistols and holsters, who would feel undressed without them.
  (10) The Dignitary on a Donkey
    As noted above, there are four mentions of Khebded (Manasseh) in Sinai Egyptian inscriptions, from the reign of Amenemhet III: 85 (year 4) 87 (year 5) 92 (year 13) 112 (year lost); but there are three other pictures besides the one on 112, showing a man riding a donkey. 
  Drawings of relevant inscriptions and depictions on Sinai stelas are conveniently reproduced in this article by Orly Goldwasser:  https://www.academia.edu/7076732 Goldwasser_O_2013_Out_of_the_Mists_of_the_Alphabet_Redrawing_the_Brother_of_the_Ruler_of_Retenu_%C3%84gypten_und_Levante_22_349_370.
    At the bottom of Sinai 115 (year 18) a dignitary is seated "side-saddle" on his donkey, with two attendants; there is a caption above the scene; the writing is damaged, but Gardiner extracts "[Re]tjenu 6" from it, and presumes the remainder has names of the people pictured. Petrovich (81-86, and 242, Fig. 3) discusses the text at length, to justify his rendering: "6 Levantines, Hebrews of beloved Bethel (house of Geb)" (itn-wi srsw ibr n Gb-(b)itu mr), a mix of Egyptian and Hebrew letters, languages, and writing practices, which I can appreciate, if it was written by a person who knew the West Semitic Proto-syllabary and Proto-consonantary as well as the Egyptian hieroglyphic logo-consonantal system; that prescriptive description would suit Manasseh, alias Khebded, who, with his brother Ephraim, would have been educated in all the lore of the Egyptians. Using the earth god Geb as a counterpart to the chief West Semitic deity 'Il or 'El is understandable, as El was widely recognized as 'L QN 'RÇ, "Creator of Earth", though the Bible says "Heaven and Earth" (Genesis 1:1, 14:19).
    Petrovich calls Sinai 115 the Renefsheri stela; but Gardiner has the name Renfanup (Rn,f -'Inpw) for the royal treasurer and governor of Lower Egypt who erected the monument in year 18 of Amenemhet III. That date is all that remains of the writing on the east face; on the west face, the "name-list of the company" is not completely intact, with a large gap above the donkey-rider. Possibly the name Khebded was originally included there, and was not needed directly above the scene. The six Retenu foreigners could be equivalent to those listed on 114 (south edge): "From Retenu 10 foreigners"; this has a riderless donkey pictured at the bottom, with the legend "284 asses" (for transport of goods and people). By the way, there were donkey burials at Avaris, presumably belonging to the nobility (Petrovich, 63).
    However, this monument (115 ) was in the name of Renfanup, with the status of  "royal treasurer and governor of Lower Egypt", and it is more probable that he is the personage on the donkey. In section 3 above, on the Retenu Prince, I discussed various interpretations of the cluster of hieroglyphs accompanying the picture, on the assumption that Renfanup was Joseph's son Ephraim. I now propose this possibility: the word square following the numeral 6 (six digits) says Ipri (Epraim abbreviated); the next column, with the partly obscured mouth, then the water-sign, and then a viper (not a bird), may be read as rnf, "his name".  The final line runs diagonally towards the child behind the donkey, and the goose (sa) and the hoe (mr) say "beloved son".
    Next, on 103 (XLIV), mostly defaced, but still visible, is a man on a donkey being led by a man on foot; the presumption is that Khebded was named somewhere in this stela of Renf`onkh Neh.y (year 25), but more probably this depicts that very dignitary, "the governor 0f Lower Egypt".
    Finally, 405 (LXXXV) offers a colourful depiction of the quartet: the dignitary and the donkey (neither of them identified in the caption), and two attendants, 'Apim at the rear, Shekam leading at the front (Petrovich, 249, Fig. 16). The name Shekam is the climax of the quest, but in reality it is the starting point of a long chain of links (or "an anchor", Petrovich, 61). This is the only one of the many names (of characters in the history we are reconstructing) that has a clear counterpart in the Bible: Shekem was one of the seven sons of Manasseh (Joshua 17:1-2); therefore the personage in the picture was Manasseh, who had the Egyptian name Khebded; he was a brother of a Retenu prince, who would be his sibling Ephraim, identified as Di-Sobekemh.at; and his father Joseph was Sobekemh.at, alias Sa-Sobek (son of the crocodile god Sobek), alias H.oremh.at, son of the Elder H.oremhat, who would be the Patriarch Jacob. QED?
    The other person in the picture (405, LXXXV; Petrovich, Fig. 16) bears the name Apim; it would be foolish to think that this might represent Ephraim (Hebrew 'Eprayim, Syriac 'Aprem); there is only one Ephraim in the Bible, and he is the brother of Manasseh (Mnashshe); but this might be Manasseh's son 'Abi`ezer (Joshua 17:2; Judges 6:34, as ancestor of Gideon; and Judges 8:2, where Ephraim and Abi`ezer are together) with his name abbreviated hypocoristically to 'Abi, and with -m added as mimation (Apim = 'Abim); this is a more probable thought, and it offers more strength to the whole structure, the historical  reconstruction of Douglas Petrovich.
Shk3m seems to stand for Shekem as Shkam, but 3 could represent r or l, and so it has been interpreted as Shaglum or Shakarum; by the same token, 3pym would have to be Rapim; but Gardiner (1955, 206) says Shekam and Apim. In her useful study of all these dignitary-on-donkey  depictions (Egypt and the Levant 22, 2012, 353-374) Orly Goldwasser,  with regard to Stela 405 (p. 364, and n. 53) says that the readings Shkam and Shkmm are both possible; Shkmm assumes that the two bird sgns are the same, both owls; and in either case, the final -m would be Semitic mimation; and so Shekem-m would be the boy's full name, or Sheka-m could be his shortened name, as with Api-m, for 'Abi`ezer.
    However, here on Sinai 405 the identity of the rider on the noble grey donkey is not clear, but the depiction appears immediately below the end of an encomium in praise of King Amenemhet III, and of himself as one "travelling over foreign countries in order to bring noble precious stone to his majesty", namely "Sobekhotep true of voice". This same Sobek-hotep also appears in Sinai stela 116+164, again as "the careful treasurer of the god (the king)" who was "sent to bring the precious stone to his majesty"; and this time he is pictured standing in the presence of the goddess Hat-hor, holding an offering of bread for the king. Unfortunately, no date is available for either of these monuments.
    There are other occurrences of the name Sobek-hotep in the Sinai inscriptions, and subsequently among the rulers of the 13th Dynasty. The Sobekhotep in two inscriptions from Maghara, Sinai  27 (year 41 of Amenemhet III) and 28 (year 42) is (if I understand correctly) "the overseer of treasure Sobekhotep, possessing honour, beloved of Hathor, lady of the turquoise-country".  In 57 (year 4 of Amenemhet IV) the name of the dedicator is lost (perhaps 'Ameny, as in 142) but his mother is Sit-Hathor, and he refers to "his beloved father Sobekhotep". A point of interest here is that this stela was on the track between mines K and L, both of which have proto-alphabetic inscriptions relating to metallurgy, the topic that is overlooked by Petrovich and all others who try to read these important documents.  In Sinai 16, Sbk-htp is a sqd `prw. Is he an officer in charge of Hebrews? But `apiru in that sense does not appear till the 15th century BCE (Petrovich, 82, 83, though I may be misinterpreting his repeated statement, which refers to `ayin being used consistently in `apiru in the New Kingdom). Here, I presume, the `prw means Schmucksachen, jewelry, and this suggests another case of "treasurer". (22/3/2023: in the translation of Sinai 16, Sebekhotep  is "captain and pilot, commander of ..."; a footnote mentions the possibility of a connection with gardening or quarrying; but as he belonged to the 6th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom he is irrelevant to our case.)
    According to Petrovich (68) the treasurer (literally "overseer of what is sealed") was the highest non-royal officer in Egypt, after the vizier; he was in charge of the king's property, the treasures; and he organized expeditions to gather them. This description fits the Sobekhotep we have encountered in words and images in Sinai 405, which is acknowledged by Petrovich (60) to be "the stele of the treasurer Sobekhotep", and he is certain that the potentate riding the donkey would be Manasseh, but he does not make the obvious connection: Sobekhotep is Manasseh.
    Evidently Manasseh had moved up the status ladder, and had taken a Sobek name. A passing thought: if Manasseh survived Ephraim, did he become the Retenu Ruler at Avaris? The Bible does not tell us the whole story of the sojourn in Egypt;. In the period of the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom, the title "Retenu Ruler" apparently disappeared with the passing of Ephraim, whose Egyptian name was Di-Sobekemhat, but he may have had aliases.
    In this connection,  we may ponder why the sons of Manasseh have their Semitic names recorded (Shekam, Apim); the reason could be that they were children, and when they achieved a status and role in society they would have taken an Egyptian name, as Joseph had been renamed by the King of Egypt (Genesis 41:45). An analogy is found in the Book of Daniel (1:7): when Daniel and his three companions entered the service of the King of Babylonia they were given Babylonian names. Presumably these two sons of Manasseh  were in the same profession as their father; they are portrayed  (judging from their presence in the picture on Sinai 405) as learning "the ropes" with Manasseh at the Sinai copper and turquoise mines. Incidentally, both copper and turquoise are mentioned in Sinai 23 as objects of the expeditions, as stated by the royal treasurer Khentekhtayhotep-Khnomsu, in the second year of the reign of Amenemhet III. Sons of Manasseh were presumably acting as royal functionaries late in the reign of Amenemhet III and in the time of  Amenemhet IV. As noted above (Sinai  57), a son of Sobekhotep, whose name is lost, was in the service of Amenemhet IV (year 4), as recorded on a stela that was found near Mines K and LM (where Semitic proto-alphabetic inscriptions were discovered). Another tablet (Sinai 26, from a mine at Maghara),  dated year 30 of Amenemhat III, names Shemsu-H.or as royal treasurer and governor of Lower Egypt, and this suggests that he was from the ruling family of Avaris and Goshen. More research along these lines might be profitable.
  The term "Governor of Lower Egypt" keeps appearing in our discussion. Could it be equivalent to "the Retenu ruler"?
(The examples of the holders of this title are being collected from the Sinai Egyptian inscriptions, with a view to relating their names to those of the 14th Dynasty. Thus, compare Neh.y of Sinai 103 and 105 with King Neh.sy of 14D.)
  Summary of the dignitary-cum-donkey depictions:

  (11) The Sobek Appellations
    More shocks, as I progress further than Douglas Petrovich, who suggests that the introduction of Sobek into the new Egyptian names of Jacob's family simply started a fashion in society, so to speak (72); certainly Sobek was a favourite appellation at that time, but I propose tentatively that a Sobek-name might indicate a member of the Hebrew family of Jacob.  In the index to the Sinai inscriptions, Sobek the deity is not mentioned, but there are quite a few Sobek-names; without all these stela inscriptions from Sinai, we might not have known about their proliferation. Were any of Joseph's brothers and their children involved in the mining and refining of minerals?
    Follow the crocodile and see where it leads. In Section 9 (on Warrior Hebrews) Dedusobek was encountered in an Egyptian inscription in the Wadi el-Hol, from year 30 of Amenemhet III (WHRI 5, a letter from Dedusobek, Darnell et al 2005, 104). Late in the reign of Amenemhet III, in Sinai inscriptions (regnal years in brackets) 51 (38) 27 (41) 409, we meet Ddw-Sbk-rn.f-snb, described in English translation as a "castellan" (governor of a castle), possibly a reference to the "Egyptianized Asiatic Residence" of Ephraim and Manasseh at Avaris (Petrovich, 86-91, 244, Fig. 6). Earlier, in 87 (5) there was a similar Sbk-Ddt son of Nbpw (cp. Akkadian nabû, "called, authorized person of a king") meaning Joseph, and this son Sbk-Ddt was  therefore Manasseh or Ephraim?  The Sebekdidi in 71 was much earlier, in the time of Amenemhet II. Sinai 85 (4), which has the unique sun-symbol of the disc with one serpent and no tail pictured (the model for the letter Sh, from shimsh "sun",  in the Wadi el-Hol vertical inscription); it has Khebded (Manasseh), Sbk-nkht, Sbk-`nty, Htp-sbk, Khwy-sbk, and three instances of Sbk-wr.  The Htp-sbk of that time can not be Manasseh (who is there in 85 as Khebded).  The later Sobekhotep of 405 (with a picture of himself, his donkey, and his sons  'Apim and Shekam) would be Manasseh, the father of 'Abi`ezer and Shekem; and in 116+164 (also with a picture of him in the presence of Hathor and the King); unfortunately the dates for the reign of Amenemhat III are not available in these two cases (405, 116+164).
     Returning to the crocodilian name Dedusobek: as noted earlier, it is attested in the Western Desert of Egypt in the time of Amenemhet III, and in the turquoise region of Sinai during the reign of the same monarch (Sinai 27 51 409); we notice that it resembles Disobekemhat, the name of the Retenu ruler, who was the brother of Khebded, identified as Manasseh, and he was therefore Ephraim, son of Joseph. The differences between the names Disobekemhat and Dedusobek are: the former has only one d (hieroglyph D37, arm with a conical loaf in the hand) and the latter has double d, but both forms can say "give" (James Hoch, Sign List, 13); and the u in dedu is indicated by a quail chick (w). Petrovich (58) has interpreted Disobekemhat as meaning "given (appointed) by Sobekemhat (Joseph)", but Dedusobek might simply say "given by (the god) Sobek", though Petrovich allows the possibility that Disobekemhat might mean something like "appointed to the forefront by Sobek". However that may be, in the Sinai texts Dedusobek is always conjoined with the name Rnfsnb; in Sinai 85, a chief physician (wr sinw) named Rnfsnb appears in a list that also includes Khebded, and there are are several other occurrences of Rnfsnb, presumably representing other individuals. In Sinai 409 (a damaged inscription, lacking its date in the reign of Amenemhat III) Dedusobek-Rnfsnb is the leader of an expedition; and the scribe of the Treasury is an otherwise unknown Seninen, whose mother was named Renessonb. If we may invoke Semitic words for the names of the two men, then Dedusobek is "Beloved of Sobek", and Seninen is perhaps based on the root suggested for the name Esny  in Sinai 24A, "Disfavoured", as with the Egyptian name Khebded. Are Ephraim and Manasseh here united in a quest for precious stones, as sons of Joseph in the service of the King?
    Similarly, in Sinai 27 (Amenemhet III, year 41), the castellan Dedusobek (Ephraim?) and the assistant-treasurer  Sobekhotep (Manasseh?) were together at a mine situated north of Maghara.
    Early in the reign of Amenemhet IV, son of Amenemhet III (Sinai 119 120 121 122 123 130 407 408) a royal treasurer named Djaf Horemsaf was officiating at turquoise expeditions; notice the return of the name Horemsaf , "the Levantine" on the Ezbet Rushdi Stela, who was identified as Joseph the son of Jacob (Petrovich, 73, 80, 216-217). In the Sinai inscriptions the Semitic connections of this person are shown by such words (in translation) as Asia, Asiatic, Retenu, and coppersmiths; this may not be Joseph at this late date, but one of his descendants.
    Another interesting name, from the reign of Amenemhat III, is Sbk-h.r-h.b, "intendant of the Treasury" in 106 (year 40), 53 (44), 107  (44); this is another possible alias for Manasseh, or his brother Ephraim, or one of their uncles or cousins in the family of Jacob Israel.
    Reverting for a moment to the Wadi el-Hol, a hieroglyphic Egyptian inscription of the 26th regnal year of Amenemhet III mentions and depicts the lector priest of Hut-sekhem, Kheperkare, and his beloved son Senuankh; this priest Kheperkare is also listed among the associates of General Bebi (Darnell et al, 102-106). The name Kheperkare occurs in three Sinai inscriptions (6 92 112), possibly three different persons; in 92 Kheperkare is listed alongside Khebded, and likewise in 112, as a foreman, while the sacerdotal duties are in the hands of Sinofret (also the author of Sinai 56, an inaugural inscription at Mine D), who was  royal treasurer and governor of Lower Egypt; this latter title seems appropriate for Ephraim as the Retenu ruler in Goshen; but no clear connections can be made with the sons of Israel in all this, except the presence of Khebded (Manasseh).
    This would be the place to look again at the statue from the far south, with its inscription, WR GShN, possibly saying "Prince of Goshen", with the implication that this dignitary is not a native Egyptian. It is reported that inscriptions at the site are all from the era of the 18th Dynasty, particularly the time of Amenhotep II and III, and this is where rock for statues was quarried, notably one of the two so-called "Colossi of Memnon"; a rock drawing depicts the transporting of a statue to the river for its shipping; the man in charge of it was an Asiatic named Meni. I only have Goedicke's account of all this (123); if this Meni was associated with the 12th Dynasty, I would identify him as Manasseh (Meni as a hypocoristicon of his Hebrew name Menasshe), one of the lords of Goshen. In any case, in the light of what we have seen along this journey, this headless potentate (WR) of Goshen could have been Joseph (Horemhat, Sobekemhat), or Ephraim (Di-Sobekemhat, Retenu ruler), Manasseh (Esni, Khebded, Sobekhotep), or Judah (Sobek-wer?) on a mission for one of the Amenemhats.
    (12) The Hebrews at Avaris
    We now return to Avaris, to inquire further about the tomb of Di-Sobekemhat: it was associated with the magnificent Egyptianized Asiatic mansion, built during the 12th Dynasty and extending into the era of the 13th Dynasty (Petrovich, 49), although Bietak dated the mansion entirely to the 13D (Petrovich, 55). So, there was continuity in this building from the period of the Retenu Prince (and his successors?) and the 13th Dynasty. Taking a hazardous leap, I could suggest that the successors of this local ruler constituted the 13th Dynasty, which has a number of kings with the name Sobekhotep (also an alias of Manasseh, apparently); and its related 17th Dynasty had Sobekemsaf I and II.
    This would seem to exclude the idea of the Jewish historian Josephus, that the expulsion of the Hyksos 15th Dynasty was actually the Exodus of the Hebrews. The improbable theory of Josephus, which combines Hyksos and Israel, could point us to the possibility that the people Israel had their own dynasty in Egypt, and I am broaching the hypothesis that they founded the 13th Dynasty, with Sobek kings; and the obscure 14th and 16th Dynasties are also there for the taking by the multiplying Israelian people, since "the land was filled with them" (Exodus 1:7), the "land" presumably meaning Goshen, or possibly the whole Delta region.
    On the other hand, I need to be logical: although some sons of Israel apparently adopted Sobek appellations, not all bearers of Sobek names would necessarily be Israelian. Worship of the crocodile deity Sobek was strong in the Faiyum (Dietrich Wildung, Sesostris und Amenemhet, 1985, 166-169); Amenemhet III built a large temple for Sobek at Crocodilopolis, the regional centre of the Faiyum (Petrovich, 12-13); and the people who lived and worked there, including the royal familiy, would proudly bear his name in theirs.  Sinuhe, who lived during the reigns of  Amenemhet I (founder of the 12th Dynasty) and  Senwosret I (his son and successor), included "Sobek-Rey, Lord of Semenu", high up in his list of deities, and in that connection I am on record as saying somewhere (on someone else's authority, no doubt) that Sobek was "widely revered".
    It may well be that the deceitful crocodile has led me along a false trail. The 13th Dynasty had five (or more?) Sobekhoteps among their five-dozen rulers, but we are told that they continued to reign from Itj-Tawi, the administrative centre of the 12th Dynasty (Quirke, 54, Mieroop, 107), and this place is unidentified, but it was somewhere near the Faiyum, more precisely it would have ben close to the pyramid of Amenemhat I at Lisht (Mieroop, 101). Still, the mansion or palace at Avaris was not abandoned, and it seems that Joseph had close contact there with his sons Ephraim and Manasseh, and their children for three generations (Genesis 50:22-23).

  (13) The Intermediate Dynasties
    We are now hovering in the interval between the Middle Kingdom 12th Dynasty and the New Kingdom 18th Dynasty (c. 1801-1560, Petrovich, 214), and because of its irregularities it is known as the Second Intermediate Period (dated c. 1770-1550, Mieroop). The early part of the 13D is excluded from this category, as it ruled over Upper and Lower Egypt, but around 177o it lost control of the Nile Delta region to the 14D of Avaris, and it relocated from Itj-Tawi to Thebes. The 15D was set up by Semitic Hyksos invaders at Avaris. The 16D was apparently contemporary with the 15D and the 17D (a continuation of the 13D in Thebes).
    The sources for the names of the kings are: The Turin Royal Canon or The Turin King List (a papyrus document in a deplorable state of preservation) and The Manetho King List (in the Aegyptiaca, a history of ancient Egypt by the 3rd-century BCE priest Manetho, written in Greek; it was lost in its original form,  but it is partly reproduced in the works of historians such as Josephus and Eusebius ). Unfortunately, many (or most) names of kings in the dynasties of interest (13th to 17th) are unavailable in what remains of these two documents.
    Regarding those centuries and dynasties,  it might be better to think of the children of Israel peacefully tending their flocks and herds in Goshen, not engaging in international trade ventures, aloof from all the political events and dynastic changes between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the rise of the New Kingdom, when they were unjustly sentenced to hard labour by "a new king" (Ex0dus 1:8). However, they would have seen the Hyksos occupy their Avaris (Hutwaret) and erect a new fortress there (but not necessarily at Tell el-Da`ba, since Manetho has them ruling from Memphis, though it may have been merely a nominal capital for them); and perhaps the people of Goshen supplied meat to the Hyksos palace, as they may have done in the past, when they were in charge of Pharaoh's cattle (Genesis 47:6). For some reason they did not leave Egypt when the Hyksos Asiatics were driven out. They might have had documents proving that they were rightful owners of Goshen (Genesis 47:11-12, 27-28), and the Hyksos dynasts may have accepted this situation.
    The Bible records that "there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph" (Exodus 1:8). For Petrovich (205 ) this was Ahmose, the first ruler of the 18th Dynasty, the founder of the New Kingdom, who expelled the Hyksos and their Asiatic people from Egypt, and commandeered the teeming people of Israel for the task of rebuilding Avaris for his own use. What did his "not knowing" involve? Was it plain ignorance or deliberate disregard? Was he unaware of the special privileges gained by the people of Israel when Joseph was "high steward"? His stated reason for suppressing them was to prevent them from joining with the enemies of Egypt in war (1:10); in his view, apparently, all Asiatics were bad Asiatics. However, he possibly knew more than we know: the 14th and 16th Dynasties, based in the Nile Delta had  been Hebraic, perhaps, and they had not joined with the Hyksos 15th Dynasty, but had submitted to them in vassalage; or those two dynasties (14D, 16D) preceded the 15th, and succumbed to it. To my surprise, Petrovich has nothing to say about these two regimes, in the Second Intermediate Period, since the Bible tells us nothing about this era, except that Israel flourished throughout the lifetimes of Joseph and his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. (Privately, I have learned that Douglas sees the connection between  Israel and the 14th Dynasty as obvious.)
    Anson Rainey (Sacred Bridge, 59a, in an Excursus 5.2 on the invention of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egypt) speaks of the large number of West Semites who came into Egypt in that period, "as emissaries, merchants, mercenaries, prisoners and slaves, and also pastoralists"; some "achieved considerable prestige in Egyptian governmental circles", and eventually "they formed a ruling class, the XIVth and XVth dynasties".
    It was not unusual for a vizier or a military commander to set up a new family dynasty; and nepotism was not invented by Donald Trump. If Joseph, as Sobekemhat, established Ephraim as a Retenu ruler, to govern the Israelian Hebrew inhabitants of Goshen, in the eastern Delta region, did his successors eventually, sooner or later, constitute the 14th Dynasty?  My resources are very limited, but I will try to construct a hypothetical scheme.
    The 13th Dynasty (c. 1786-1674, Quirke; 1773-1650, Mieroop; 1801-, Petrovich, Bernal) was a hotch-potch of various families producing kings who had short reigns, but controlled the whole land (Quirke, 54-56); it was the natural successor to the 12th, under which Israel had prospered in Goshen. If it had been a Hebrew government (as I boldly adumbrated earlier, but my ratiocination was very dumb), it would surely have ruled from Avaris; but the 13th Dynasty is known to have  retained Itj-Tawi as its capital city, until it moved to Thebes, c. 1700 (Quirke, 54). The Sobek names of some of their kings are not to be considered as a continuation of those borne by sons of Israel, such as Sobekemhat and Sobekhotep, but could be seen as stemming from Queen Sobek-ka-ra alias Sobek-nofru at the end of the 12th Dynasty; and she set the pattern of limited reigns, we might say (1805-1801, Petrovich). The ninth 13D ruler was Sehetepibre Hornedjhertyef, apparently a son of an Asiatic (`Amu sa) (O'Connor, 53). Asiatics held high office in this 13D government (Bietak, mentioned by Petrovich, 47), and a list of names of servants in the time of Sobekhotep III, with 78 of its 95 preserved, has 45 Asiatics, mostly women (Mieroop, 119); possibly descendants of Jacob Israel were in these two classes of society, as officials or servants. In any case, Avaris was occupied in that early period, and it is reasonable to assume that Israel was still residing in Goshen, living in obedience to the 13D central government at Itj-Tawi, as they had done under the 12th Dynasty. On the other hand, they may have assserted their independence, if not immediately, then at the point where the 13th Dynasty moved to Thebes (c. 1700).
    This 13th Dynasty left four small pyramids at Saqqara; it communicated with Byblos; and it launched expeditions in search of valuable stone; but it was compelled to move its administration centre south to Thebes in Upper Egypt, after the reign of King Ay, when it lost control of northern Egypt (Quirke, 54-56). Thus, around 1700 (Quirke, Mieroop) the Eastern Delta seceded, and presumably the 14th Dynasty came to power in that region, for a short time (1700-1674); or it may even have ruled over the Delta immediately after the end of the 12th Dynasty.
    Douglas Petrovich affirms with sound reasoning based on strong evidence that the Asiatics who resided in the region of Avaris, before and after the Hyksos 15th-Dynasty period, were the children of Israel (Appendix 5, 220-237). Kim Ryholt (2010, 120-121) does not go quite so far along that path but he takes a similar stance on the basis of the evidence from the Avaris region. He suggests (n. 75) that the rise of the 14th Dynasty may have led to the distinction between the 12th Dynasty and the 13th Dynasty; the latter exhibited traditional Egyptian culture in the Nile valley, whilst the former displayed Levantine traits in the Delta. The material he presents as evidence (including the many Semitic names of obscure kings found on scarabs, a palace with courtyard burials, and statues that were larger than life) indicates that the Asiatic element in the Delta was able to establish an autonomous kingdom, under the 14th Dynasty, much earlier than hitherto assumed.

    Neh.esy was the name of a prominent 14D king, who ruled from Avaris, still an Asiatic realm, but employing hieroglyphic writing, as archaeology has confirmed (Mieroop, 129, 135). If the name Nehesy does not mean "Nubian", but is related to the Hebrew root n-h.-sh, we are reminded of divination, and Joseph's silver divining cup (Genesis 44:5); or Israel has turned away from the crocodile and is now thinking of snakes and copper (Exodus 7:10; Numbers 21:4-9), both of which have these three sounds. The Governor of Lower Egypt named  Neh.y (Sinai 103 and 105) is an obvious candidate for identification with Neh.esy. It may be that the leaders of Israel in Goshen at this time, the descendants of Joseph's son Ephraim, the Retenu Ruler, were within the 14th Dynasty (that is, they were this dynasty); or else they were under this 14D regime and cooperating with it at Avaris.
    However, despite the conjecture of Flavius Josephus, which made the Israelian people in Egypt the constituents of the kingdom of the Hyksos, this was an "Amorian" dynasty and empire ("Amorite empire", Aaron Burke), and Jacob had differentiated himself from the 'Amori (Genesis 48:22) and also the Kana`ani (34:30). The children of Israel may have been onlookers rather than participants in the struggles between the Hyksos 15th Dynasty (c. 1674-1567)  and the southern 17th Dynasty (c. 1674-1567), which was the legitimate successor of the 13th Dynasty.
    The 16th Dynasty (c. 1674-1567, Quirke) was apparently contemporaneous with the 15th and the 17th (both also c. 1674-1567, Quirke), though it is difficult to think of a region in Egypt where it might have flourished in the presence of those two powerful regimes, and perhaps it was Israel in Goshen, still established there, but having yielded its headquarters and palace at Avaris to the Hyksos.
    At this point I will propose a solution to the problem of the competing dynasties (though other permutations are possible). When the Hyksos 15th Dynasty established itself in Lower Egypt (c. 1674). with its capital at Memphis,  it caused a rupture in Egyptian history, and so the 13th Dynasty, the successor to the 12th Dynasty, became the 17th Dynasty, centered at Thebes; at the same time, the so-called 14th Dynasty, which ruled over the descendants of Jacob Israel in the land of Goshen in the eastern area of the Delta, yielded to the Hyksos, and became  the 16th Dynasty, subservient to the Hyksos, but maintaining its independent identity in the Eastern Delta, providing  an international port for the Hyksos rulers; and Memphis (south of modern Cairo) would have been the Hyksos capital city. However, the fragments of Manetho's history (preserved by Josephus and others) imply that the foreign rulers were eventually driven out of Memphis, and they took refuge in a citadel in the Avaris area, from which they were soon expelled. Israel remained in the land as slaves of the new 18th Dynasty.
    An early personage in this chain of succession in Goshen was "the Retenu Ruler", identified as Ephraim (Petrovich, Fig. 14), and this position was presumably established by Joseph as Vizier under the authority of the 12th Dynasty. However, Jacob Israel was the Patriarch of the family, recognized as such by the 12th Dynasty (Genesis 47:1-12). The "Prince of Goshen", whom we have met at an Aswan quarry, would fit into the Israelian leadership somewhere, possibly as a son of Joseph, namely Manasseh, who was known as a provider of precious minerals to the 12th Dynasty. On the stela of the treasurer Sobekhotep (Sinai 405), apparently a new official Egyptian name of Manasseh, two sons of Manasseh appear with him in a representation of a man riding a donkey, namely 'Apim ('Abi-`ezer) and Shekam (Shekem) (Joshua 17:2).  The "governors of Lower Egypt" came to be recognized in history as the 14th and 16th dynasties. A notable case is the ruler of Avaris named Neh.esy; it is not difficult to assume that he was the Neh.y that we have met in Sinai inscriptions 103 and 105 as "Governor of Lower Egypt".
"Failure to recognize the 14th Dynasty as chimerical (imaginary, BEC) continues to result in strange reconstructions ...." Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times,1992, 107, n. 46.  He argues that in the Turin Canon the 32 names preceding the Hyksos kings constitute the family tree of the 15th Dynasty, a genealogy used in ancestor worship. Alternatively, I suggest, it could really be the names of the 14th Dynasty rulers of Avaris.
    The existence of  a 16th dynasty is vaguely confirmed by scarabs of rulers found in Egypt and the Levant; I am fascinated by one named  Y`qb-har, a king (Redford, 20, No 4), and this may have been the personal seal of the Patriarch himself, survivig as a family heirloom, or employed throughout the life of his commercial corporation; and another seal of  Yakobaam (Quirke, 57). The sons of the Patriarch Ya`qob Israel had personal seals; I have long wondered whether the signet that Yehudah gave to his daughter-in-law Tamar as a pledge (Genesis 38:18) was a cylinder or a scarab; it had a cord, so it might have been a cylinder seal, like the one attributed to Yosep, from Avaris (Bar-Ron), rather than a scarab on a ring, like the one that belonged to "the Ruler of Retenu" (Petrovich, Fig. 14). Israel of Goshen was presumably still at home in the Delta, but apparently the Hyksos kings had occupied Avaris as their stronghold (thw alled fortressand their port (known as Peru-nefer, Petrovich 143-149); and they also held Memphis, the age-old seat of the Kings of Egypt. If Israel was involved in the 16th Dynasty, the question remains as to the position of their capital city, if any or many. Thus, their rulers may have simply reigned from their base in Goshen; but the town of Leontopolis (Nay-ta-hut), now Tell el-Yahudiyeh (famous for its "ware" of decorated jugs and juglets) might have been an Israelian town; it is situated further down the Pelusiac branch of the Nile from Avaris, south of Bubastis, and north of Heliopolis, the city of the Sun-god, where the father of Joseph's wife had been a priest ( ); and Memphis was south of Heliopolis on the Nile.
    The Arabic name, Tell el-Yahudiyeh, has a Jewish connection ("Hill of the Jew"), and it might conceivably go back to the Patriarch Yehudah, and even the "lion of Yehudah" in Leontopolis (Genesis 49:9); but there is a clear connection with Jews in the Roman period, when the high priest Onias IV was exiled from Judaea by the Maccabees, and he built a temple on the model of the one in Jerusalem, but smaller. The site goes back to the Middle Kingdom, like Avaris, and it had a fortified encampment, a walled area, a mile in circumferece. When Flinders Petrie discovered this, he thought it was the Hyksos capital city, Avaris.
    These minor rulers of the 16D would have necessarily been subservient to the Hyksos government, if they were contemporaneous with it. As successors to the Retenu rulers, they would have had an ancient right to be settled in Goshen.
    In the period of the Oppression the people of Israel lived in houses with doors (Exodus 12:21-23), though they were tent-dwellers again when they moved into their wanderings in Sinai (Exodus 33:8). Their ancestor Abram had pitched his tent at Shekem, and then near Bethel (Genesis 12:6-9, 13:1-5), and at the oaks of Mamre, where he received a divine visitation (18:1-2); likewise Isaac (26:17-25); and Jacob camped at Shekem (33:18-20), though he had built a house at Succoth (33:17). Even when the Israelian people were settled in the Promised Land, in the era of the Monarchy, many or most of them called a tent their home, as evidenced in the cry of rebellion against King Rehoboam, "To your tents, Israel" (1 Kings 12:16); but this might  mean that they were preparing for battle, and so the concluding statement, "Israel went to their tents", means they congregated in military camps. Nevertheless the Rechabites were strictly adhering to the rule of not building houses, but dwelling in tents (Jeremiah 35:6-10).
     At Avaris there are examples of typical Israelian "four-room" houses (Petrovich, 132-135, and Fig. 29); it is unlikely that they were all simply shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by day and by night, sheltering in reed huts and tents (though Petrovich does mention huts and broad-room tents).
    If they were in fact the kingdom of the 16th Dynasty, they could not have survived with that status when the Hyksos 15th Dynasty fell under the onslaught from the Theban 17th Dynasty. The Bible does not record the names of the leaders of Israel in this period, but Makir, the firstborn son of Manasseh, is named as important (Genesis 50:23), and as "a man of war" (Joshua 17:1), unless this epithet applies only to his son Gilead.
    Whatever their socio-political standing was in northern Egypt, descendants of Jacob Israel were not driven out with the Hyksos population, but remained in Goshen, and became subservient to the new 18th Dynasty, which did not recognize the authority of their ancestors Jacob and Joseph.
    A statement by Queen Hatshepsut is interpreted as confirming the presence of Hebrews at Avaris in the Hyksos period and during her own reign (Petrovich, 225-227; Redford, 17 for the inscription). In extolling her achievements for the gods, she refers to her restoration of edifices that had been shattered by Asiatics at Avaris (Manetho likewise said that they demolished the gods' shrines), and she mentions nomads or wanderers in their midst (perhaps meaning Israelian Hebrews among the Hyksos population), who were still there in her time (because they believed they had a long-standing right to reside in Goshen); these may have been employed on the building sites of three palaces at Ezbet Rushdi (Petrovich, 226); and this would be part of the construction work with bricks and mortar in store cities, and all kinds of labour in the fields,  which Israel forcibly undertook for Egyptian rulers, while their population numbers increased (Exodus 1: 11-14). A reminder is needed in passing that Hatshepsut may have been the princess who adopted Moses the foundling (Exodus 2:1-10) (Petrovich, 147-148, 207-208).
    However, Wayne Mitchell has privately (October 2024) pointed me to another "candidate for the Pharaoh's daughter mentioned in Exodus 2:5-10, viz. Princess Neferure.  According to the possible Sothic and lunar records studied with Thutmose IV terminus 1446 BC, Princess Neferure would have been between 15 and 29 years of age when Moses was born in ca. 1526 BC. No other candidate has been suggested that would have been in this age range. Pharaoh Hatshepsut, the mother of Princess Neferure, built a palatial complex at Avaris in the area of biblical Goshen using slaves, and the new palatial complex is the probable reason why Princess Neferure was at Avaris during the birth of Moses."
  (I would like to know who her father was.)
  This would mean that Moses was brought up in a palace at Avaris during the reign of Hatshepsut and  Thutmose III,
from whom he fled, and Amenhotep II would logically be the one who experienced the plagues, and the Exodus when Moshe returned, or perhaps not!

    I offer another possible indication of a separate group from the Levant residing among the Hyksos populace, found on the second stela of Kamose, in a report on the siege of Avaris (Redford, 14, No 69): Kamose is taunting the "vile Asiatic", by boasting that he had seized all the fine products of Retenu, and had drunk the wine of the local vineyards, pressed out for him by the Asiatics he had captured. This might mean that a different set of Levantines were tending grapevines (in Goshen?), though the hypothesis is put forward that the family of Israel were importers of wine from Canaan, in the numerous storage jars found at Avaris (Petrovich, 127-129); but these could have contained local as well as imported wine; and in the time of Thutmose III (c. 1504-1450), whose reign partly coincided with that of Hatshepsut (c. 1504-1483), `Apiru are recorded in two Theban tombs as winemakers (TT 39 and 155) (Petrovich, 189). Incidentally, Moses (moshe) would seem to fit more comfortably in the time of the 18th-Dynasty -mose kings (Ahmose, Thutmose) than the era of the 13th Dynasty sobek rulers. 

  (14) The Amurrian Empire

 In the 1950s and 1960s, in Australia, one of my esteemed teachers (Hebrew, Aramaic, Bible history) was Alan Cole (graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of London); he gave me a useful piece of advice: for every new book you study, read three old ones. So, alongside Douglas Petrovich's Origins ... From Joseph to the Exodus (2021) I am consulting a book by another of my teachers (Semitic languages, Bible), John Arthur Thompson, The Bible and Archaeology (1962); and from England, H. H. Rowley, From Joseph to Joshua (1950); and from America, William  Foxwell Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine, Penguin Books (1960). I have to confess that in those days my mentors from afar were Albright, Bright, Wright, Burrows, and Mendenhall, all in America.
    The Amurru Empire was a fact of history, we are led to believe:

"In the seventeenth century Palestine was the centre of a North-west Semitic 'empire' controlled from the Hyksos capital at Avaris in the north-eastern corner of the Nile Delta. At its height under Apophis and Khayan, this Hyksos state may have ruled from the Euphrates to southern Nubia." W. F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine, 86.

     Whatever the truth may be, we can at least speak of an Amorian (Amurrian, Amorite) network of cities, stretching around the Fertile Crescent, from Babylon in Mesopotamia (Hammurabi and his successors) to Avaris in Egypt (Apopis and other Hyksos kings). Eventally Western Semites established themselves in Crete, and used the unsuitable Linear A script for their Semitic language on administrative records on clay tablets, and on their offering tables (https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2016/09/semitic-crete.html). The question of the disappearance of the Hyksos Dynasty is usually answered with the Egyptian account of them having been driven back into the Levant, where they were besieged at Sharuhen; but they are known to have had a large fleet, and either during their time at Avaris or after their expulsion, they could have occupied Crete. The Phaistos disc has been decoded as a call to arms to oppose an invasion by sea (Steven Fischer). Tradition has it as being the Minoan era under King Minos and his dynasty. 
    However, their dominion was over more than the mere Mediterranean maritime world; their ships had crossed the Atlantic Ocean three thousand years, more than three millennia in fact, before Columbus sailed over the ocean blue to the Americas, via the islands that came to be known as the West Indies.
    The 15th Dynasty ruler named Apopi is extolled as "stout-hearted on the day of battle", and as having "a greater reputation than any king", and as being "protector of strange lands that have never had a glimpse of him"; he is "the scribe of Re, whom Thoth himself taught", who reads the writings as fluently as the Nile flows" ("Palette given by the king to the scribe Atju", Redford, Textual Sources No 44, scribal palette from Medinet el-Fayum). King Apopi does seem to be claiming sovereignty over a far-flung realm in which literacy is promoted.
    People are constantly reporting to me the existence of Bronze-Age inscriptions, hoping that I will be able to read them. From the home-ground of the Hyksos, Lower Egypt, where Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions of Khiyan and Apopi have been found (Redford, No 26-44), a set of West Semitic proto-syllabic and proto-consonantal texts turned up in the shop of an antiquities dealer in Melbourne, said to have come from the Nile Delta region, and brought to my attention in 1994 (Colless, Abr-Nahrain, 34, 1996-1997, 50-55); three round oil-lamps have syllabic texts beginning with the word niru ("lamp"!). 
    Beyond the Gibraltar Straits, at a silver mine in Norway (Kongsberg) a protosyllabic inscription from the Bronze Age is still extant (LA HU ZA QA QI,  "to be refined") together with protoconsonantary graffiti. In the region of ancient copper mines, at Lake Huron in Michigan, an inscription on a stone includes a similar sequence (LU ZA QA QI, "for refining"), and also mentions wine (wanu) and "water for drinking". The syllabogram read as QI in each case provided an addition to the table of signs, presumed to be from qir, "wall". In Jamaica, where gold and copper have been mined (I am told), a self-styled metal wine-cup bears a West Semitic protosyllabic inscription. From Puerto Rico comes a host of inscribed figurines (syllabic and consonantal writing), and a tablet (showing all the letters of the original alphabet).This would seem to be evidence of a far-flung empire, with colonies and transmission of Mediterranean civilization on the landscape (cities, pyramids, ziggurats, statues) and in local culture:
Writing: Maya writing uses the same acrophonic principle as the West Semitic syllabary, for the formation of its syllabograms.

Stamps: flat stamps, and roller stamps (cylinder seals in the East)

Pottery: earliest Olmec ceramics are sophisticated

Clay figurines (numerous in graves at Tlatilco; also in Puerto Rico)

Spindle whorls

Stelas with rounded top

Monumental stone carving: no known precedent

Graves under house-floors

Pyramids

Temples (ziggurat, temple on stepped structure, artificial mountain)

Pantheon

Calendar of 365 days

Human sacrifice, child sacrifice

Altars
Stone sarcophagus
    The brilliant Olmec civilization appeared abruptly, with no apparent precursor, nor gradual evolution, in central isthmian America, on the West side of the Atlantic Ocean. Diffusionism has a bad name, but when the same distinctive cultural features are found in two distinct and distant places, it is reasonable to look for a connection.

   It is patently plausible that the Hebraic company of Ya`qob Yisra'el and Sons was involved in all this exploration and commerce.

  (15) The Hebrew Sojourn in Egypt

In the period of Hyksos rule over northern Egypt, if the Israelian  Hebrews continued to reside in Goshen, then they were under the sway of an Amorian kingdom. In the story of the Exodus in the Bible, no mention is made of the Hyksos, thus leaving the door open to identifying the Hebrew Exodus with the expulsion of "the Shepherds" (a misunderstanding of "Hyksos" by Josephus, who espoused this theory of the Exodus); certainly the Egyptians considered shepherds (presumably also goatherds) to be abominable (Genesis 46:24); after speaking of the land of Goshen as the place where Israel would dwell with their herds and flocks, Joseph added that "every shepherd is an abomination in Egypt". Josephus (Against Apion) interpreted the account of Manetho in this way (Hyksos as ancestors of Israel), and as I have already intimated, if this view is accepted then there is an implication, perhaps,  that the children of Israel were already a kingdom with their own kings and dynasty, before Yahweh chose them as his treasured possession to be "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:5-6); and this monarchic period (when Yahweh was not recognized as their king) may have been passed over in Biblical history as an inapposite complication. The connection of the Patriarchs in Egypt with the gods Baal and Sobek, and the goddesses 'Anat and Hathor was not kosher, given that Yahweh their Elohim (plural of majesty and divinity) revealed themself at Mount Sinai as a "jealous God (El)", "visiting the iniquity of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me" (Exodus 20:5-6).
    The number of generations mentioned here is my cue to interpose the problem that the space of time between the arrival of Jacob in Egypt and the departure of his descendants, namely the Exodus, led by Moses and Aaron (1876-1446, Petrovich, 212), is merely three or four generations: thus Jacob begat Joseph, who begat Manasseh, who begat Makir, who was the father of Gilead, who inherited Gilead in the Promised Land (Joshua 17:1). Of course, long lives are attributed to these forefathers: Jacob 147 years, Joseph 110, Kohath son of Levi  133 (Gen 46:11, Ex 6:18), his son Amram 137, (Ex 6:20), his son Moses 120 (his life neatly divided into three periods of forty years); and the genealogies might be abbreviated, that is, selective not complete; but the problem persists, even for an inveterate harmonist such as myself. H. H. Rowley (From Joseph to Joshua, 1950, 66-100) examined all the scholarly harmonizations and demolitions of the competing numbers of years set forth in the Bible.  Douglas Petrovich (21-24, 123-124) has a firm opinion on this: "the Bible is clear that the sojourn in Egypt lasted exactly 430 years" (124); the 430 years are affirmed in Exodus 12:40-41, where the exodus is stated to have begun precisely 430 years after the eisodos (entry, the opposite of exodus), "on the selfsame day", or "to the very day" (Petrovich, 3), apparemtly meaning on the anniversary day.  What was that exact historical day that marked the arrival of "the children of Israel" (Ex 12:40), some four centuries before their historic departure from the Nile Delta? Presumably we should exclude the descent of Abram the Hebrew into Egypt in a time of famine, "to sojourn there" (Genesis 12:10), since he was an ancestor of Jacob Israel, not a descendant. Would the date on which Joseph crossed the border into Egypt (as a slave) be the day in question, and if so, who would have recorded it? More probably it would be the day when Jacob and his sons and their families ("all his seed") settled in "the land of Goshen" (Gen 46:28), or anachronistically (Petrovich, 33-35) "in the land of Rameses" (47:11), as permitted by the King of Egypt and granted by Joseph (47:11); unfortunately the King is not named; certainly, his name was not "Rameses" (the alternative designation of Goshen), but he is called "Pharaoh", and both names are anachronistic in this context. However, that event (Gen 46:28) may have been officially recorded by the palace administration for reiteration by a later Hebrew historian (for Petrovich, that would be Moses).
    Nevertheless, further to Exodus 12:40-41, the term "the selfsame day", literally "bone of this day", implies perhaps that two events occurred within a single day, not 430 years apart; thus, Noah entered the ark at the time when the flooding began, "on that very day" (Gen 7:11-16); but it might mean that Noah, and his family, and the whole animal entourage boarded the vessel together in a single day. Similarly, with regard to the date of the exodus, in whatever year it took place, "the very same day" on which Yahweh brought the multitudes of the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt (Ex 12:40-43, 50-51), journeying from Rameses to Sukkot (Ex 12:37) , was simply the day when the first Passover ceremony was observed (Ex 12:50), the fourteenth day of the first month (Nisan), as stated in that same chapter, with regard to eating the Passover lamb or kid (Ex 12:6), and with reference to eating unleavened bread (Ex 12:18), "for on this very day I brought your hosts out of Egypt" (Ex 12:17). Thus, all three occurrences of "bone of this day" in this context (Ex 12:17, 40, 51) refer to the  single day, 14 Nisan, when the first Passover was observed and Israel departed hastily from Egypt.
    In interpreting the prediction given to Abram in Genesis 15:13, "Your descendants ('seed') will be sojourners (resident aliens) in a land that is not theirs, and serve (as slaves) and be oppressed for four hundred years", Petrovich (123-124) allows the 400 years of residence in a foreign land (including slavery and oppression, but not excluding an initial period of peace in the lifetime of Joseph) to be a rounded number (rough, not precise). As we have seen, the sojourn of Israel was not continual lamentation, mourning, and woe: they prospered or at least survived for centuries during the 12th, 13th, 15th, and 17th Dynasties; Petrovich (123) calculates  316 years for the first period, and 114 years for the oppression under the 18th Dynasty; he insists that the four centuries apply to the whole period of residence in Egypt, not merely to the oppression. Nevertheless, the time of their exodus is said to occur "in the fourth generation" (Gen 15:16); here the term dor might mean century, referring to the four centuries of the figure 400, not to family generations (Rowley, 69-70). In fact, Albright showed (posthumously in an illuminating essay published in The Biblical Archaeologist, 36, 1, 1973, 5-32, 22-23) that the term dor, ancient darum, in Arabic and Syriac, and in an inscription of Shamshi-Adad of Assyria (18th Century BCE), has the meaning "lifetime", ideally a hundred or more years. Accordingly, there is no contradiction between the four centuries and four lifetimes. However, we also have to take account of  the Egyptian 400-year stela of Tanis, erected by Ramesses II (Petrovich, 131-132), and the 480 years from the Exodus to the fourth year of Solomon's reign (1 Kings 6:1).
Avaris was abandoned around 1450, so Israel had made their exit, the Exodus.

My evidence shows that Yosep first served under Amenemhet II,
Amenhotep II was possibly the ruler from whom Israel escaped, or Thutmose IV.

So the Eisodos (starting with Yosep) was around 1920,
and the Exodos was around 1450.

1920 minus 1450 = 470 years

This is comparable to the 430 years calculated from the Bible,

and if we make the starting point when Ya`qob arrived in Egypt,

and allow that we do not have a perfect chronology for the Egyptian kings,

the total 470 can be reduced to 430.

My evidence for Yosep as an important functionary of Amenemhet II is Sinai inscription 72:

`Ankh-ib is pictured presenting cones of turquoise to that king, in year 24 of his reign.

In 71 and 72 `Ankh-ib is treasurer of the King, and governor (the one in charge of) Lower Egypt,
and this fits Yosep as the prince in the palace at Avaris.
    My customary way of escape from such exegetical quandaries is to suppose that more than one source has been used, each considered to be sacred and inviolable, and this has produced paradoxes when they are combined; this idea was ingrained in me long ago by my teacher John Arthur Thompson, in Australia; this thought emanated from E. A. Speiser, I think. Rather than harmonization, this is rationalization. In any case, we were expected to be meekly accepting what is written, not analysing the text of the Bible so rigorously. But the Rabbis did (Rowley, 67-69 for their arguments). One approach was to take the four centuries as covering the sojourn in Canaan as well as Egypt, leaving 210 years for the period of residence in Egypt, and conveniently producing four dor of 50 years; and gematria was also involved in their calculations. In this sophistic style, I would add that there was more than one entry of the Abrahamic Hebrews into Misrayim: Abram went to Egypt in a time of famine in Canaan, and plagues ensued (Gen 12:10-20). They sojourned many sojournings, one Rabbi said, and not always in Egypt. If there was more than one eisodus (entry)  into Egypt, there might have been more exoduses (exits) than one.
    The `Apiru were in Egypt when the Israelian Hebrews were sojourning there, (`Apiru were vintners in the time of Thutmose III);  and the Habiru were reported to have been active in Canaan when the Hebrews were allegedly settling there (during the reign of Amenhotep IV, Akhenaten). A group of 3600 `Apiru were dragged into Egypt by Amenhotep II, and they are possibly the same `Apiru who were labouring for Ramesses II. Let us assume that all these entities in these contexts are the same, that is: Jacob Israel (in Egypt) = `Apiru 1 = Habiru (in Canaan) = `Apiru 2 = Hebrews (in the land of Israel).
    In the theory of Douglas Petrovich, the first `Apiru (Israel) made their exodus from Egypt in the reign of Amenhotep II, in the spring season of the year 1446 BCE; later in the same year that king raided the Levant and brought back a multitude of prisoners, allegedly 89,600, including 3600 `Apiru, presumably serving to replace the thousands of Hebrew slaves that had escaped earlier in the year (Petrovich, 176-192). Of course, if the King's army had been destroyed in its pursuit of the departing Hebrews (Ex 14:26-33, 15:1-10), then a hasty mobilization would have been needed for this campaign. However,  it seems that it was his cavalry and chariotry, not the infantry,  that were lost in the sea; in the account of the incident in Exodus 14, at the point of entry into the corridor in the sea (23), it is a host of chariots, horses, and horsemen; and it does not say specifically that the King himself went with them, nor that his body was among those lying on the shore in the aftermath (30).  It is only in Psalm 136:15 that "Pharaoh and his army" are engulfed in the sea, and some sort of poetic licence may be operating here.
    This act of largely depopulating Canaan, seems to show that Amenhotep II had unwittingly assisted in preparing the ground for Israel to enter the Promised Land; but his action also leaves a hapless horde of Hebrews imprisoned in Egypt. A repeat performance of the Exodus would seem to be required. This could have been much later, under Ramesses II, or sooner, in the time of the successor of Amenhotep II.

   The son and successor of Amenhotep II, namely Thutmose IV, is offered as the ill-fated Pharaoh in this quest, if we can prove that the Exodus occurred at the end of his reign. His mummy has no feet (accidentally removed in a car crash at the Reed Sea, or after mummification?).

   Perhaps we have to allow for some sort of poetic embroidering in Psalm 136:15, "He drowned Pharaoh and his army" (in the Yam Sup, v. 13), and then Amenhotep II can dry himself off and sit on his throne again, and, in Wayne's words, "was able to go on a military campaign into the Levant with an army large enough to take captive 100,000 Asiatics and bring them back to Egypt". That campaign in the winter, I suggest was his "Winter's Tale"; the account of it is fictional; I have already mentioned this possibility, above, and I am almost at the stage of affirming it: this proud young warrior was not one to admit a defeat in battle against a greater warrior (Exodus 15 is the victory hymn of that encounter), and so he concocts an improbable story of a world-shaking campaign made in an unfavourable season of the year. Decoding his text, we learn that he has lost 100,000 Asiatics, who constituted his labour-force. The record of this mass exodus is here: The children of Israel went forth... "about six thousand men", and "a mixed multitude" went with them (Exodus 12:37-38).

   The reign of Thutmose IV does not count against this: Deuteronomy 11:4 was spoken just before the Israelian Conquest of Canaan in ca. 1406 BC, and states that after the Yam Suph event Egypt remained destroyed “even to this day.”

    I wonder whether some of these Habiru/`apiru/`ibrim had been mercenaries in the Egyptian army; Israel rapidly mustered a band of fighting men, when they were attacked by Amalek (Exodus 17:8-13).

   The Petrovich solution is very seductive and satisfying, to my mind, but a number of people that I know are not  satisfied with it, and have told him about difficulties in it, but he remains unmoved. At present, December 2023, he is promoting a new printing of it, though not a completely revised edition, which would take acount of all the material I am offering here, correcting his interpretations  of the Sinai Semitic inscriptions, and adding Manasseh's son Abi`ezer (Api) to his discovery of Shekem (another son),  and perhaps also Asri'el, appearing as Asi in four Sinai Semitic inscriptions.
    Here now is another book on the dating of the Exodus:
S. Collins, Let My People Go! Using Historical Synchronisms to Identify the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Albuquerque (2022).
I have not seen this, but its purport has been conveyed to me by Wayne Mitchell, who is co-author of this new monograph:  
Wayne A. Mitchell and David F. Lappin, Thutmose IV as the Exodus Pharaoh: Chronological and Astronomica Considerations  (2024, 2nd Revised Edition 2025) . WAM has given this summary:

1. Historical synchronisms. In a study of the biblical and Egyptian records, archaeologist Prof. Steven Collins (2005) located alignments which suggest that “only an Exodus contemporaneous with the end of the reign of Tuthmosis IV provides an adequate context for the predicted impacts of the Exodus core events upon Egypt.”  This movement of Thutmose IV 55 years earlier than the conventional low chronology was tested.

2. Solar eclipse. In the Annals of the Hittite king Muršili II a solar eclipse was observed in his year 9/10 as he marched with his army from Ḫattuša to Azzi. Military campaigns were often in the spring. The Annals of Mursili II have a synchronism with Pharaoh Ay in year 8/9. Only the 0.96-0.99 magnitude spring eclipse of 3 May 1375 BC would have been noticed in a 100 year window (1390-1290 BC). This solar eclipse candidate results in the accession of Ay at 1376 BC. Candidate solar eclipses have not been studied previous to ca. 1360 BC. Adding the previous highest attested reigns of the Pharaohs (70 years, cf. R. Gautschy) to 1376 BC results in Thutmose IV ca. 1455-1446 BC.

3. Year 21 Lunar record of Amenhotep III. The movement of Thutmose IV 55 years earlier requires that the conventional reconstructed Egyptian calendar is off by + 14 to +18 days. With a correction of -14 days the year 21 lunar record of Amenhotep III has a solution (III šmw 1 = 28th May, 1426 BC) placing the accession of Amenhotep III at exactly 1446 BC, the likely biblical year of the Exodus. The accession of Amenhotep III marks the approximate death of Thutmose IV. The remaining Sothic and lunar records have solutions with a -14 day calendar correction.

4. Pharaoh's daughter. Unknown to Collins was that the movement of Thutmose IV 55 years earlier results in a candidate for the Pharaoh's daughter mentioned in Exodus 2:5-10, viz. Princess Neferure. According to the possible Sothic and lunar records studied with Thutmose IV terminus 1446 BC, Princess Neferure would have been between 15 and 29 years of age when Moses was born in ca. 1526 BC. No other candidate has been suggested that would have been in this age range.

Pharaoh Hatshepsut, the mother of Princess Neferure, built a palatial complex at Avaris in the area of biblical Goshen using slaves, and the new palatial complex is the probable reason why Princess Neferure was at Avaris during the birth of Moses.

5. Archaeology of Tell el-Dab'a. This site was abandoned by the slaves at some point between the end of the reign of Amenhotep II and before the last quarter of the reign of Amenhotep III. Thutmose IV followed Amenhotep II with a reign of only 8-10 years, and the above research into historical synchronisms, lunar, solar eclipse and Sothic evidence places the ending reign of Thutmose IV at 1446 BC, the most probable year of the exodus of the slaves from Egypt.            

   While he yet spake another book arrived, treating the same subject, and bearing the same publication date as the Collins treatise (2022):
Pieter Gert van der Veen and Uwe Zerbst, In Search of the Biblical Patriarchs  (2022).
Extracts have been released on the Academia site: https://www.academia.edu/84550731/In_Search_of_the_Biblical_Patriarchs_Book_excerpt?email_work_card=title
A  detailed table of contents, a final summary, and an appendix on the new chronology that the authors have constructed, give us an insight into their system: Israel's sojourn in Egypt lasted about 2 centuries (Petrovich has four centuries, 1876-1446). Joseph held high office during  the reigns of Senwosret III and Amenemhat III (c. 1878-1797, the dates of Veen and Zerbst are not available to me), but apparently they do not go as far as Petrovich in making identifications of the Israelian Hebrew Patriarchs, as reiterated by me here in this essay; some credence is granted to a claim by the Jewish historian named  Artapanus of Alexandria that Moses was educated in the palace of Pharaoh Khenefres, understood as Khaneferre Sobekhotep IV (c. 1730-1720) of the 13th Dynasty {(this does not fit well with my idea that some Sobekhoteps were Israelian)}. This dating system (1730 + 80 = 1630) would seem to put the Exodus (when Moses was eighty years old) in the time of the Hyksos 15th Dynasty (c. 1640-1532), and thus exclude the idea of the Jewish historian Josephus, that the expulsion of the Hyksos Semites was actually the Exodus of the Hebrews, though the departure of Israel is generally regarded as an escape from slavery, not an eviction. 

   This suggests to my mind, incidentally but not directly,  that the new king who oppressed Israel might have been the Hyksos founder of the 15th Dynasty; but the first ruler of the 18th Dynasy seems far more likely; and this would certainly not fit the Veen-Zerbst hypothesis, which seems to support the Genesis statement that Israel flourished in the time of Joseph and his sons Ephraim and Manasseh, and their children (50:22-24),  but not the Exodus report that following Joseph's death they were fruitful and multiplied, and became immensely powerful in Egypt (1:7); in this scenario they were abruptly enslaved by the 13th Dynasty, and prevented from being the 14th Dynasty and the 16th Dynasty, and Moses is denied the pleasure of having Hatshepsut as his princess, and seeing the Egyptian army discomfited and destroyed in the sea.

Brian Edric Colless, PhD ThD
Honorary Research Associate
Massey University,
Aotearoa New Zealand 
Can any good thing come out of Noo Zeeland? 
The answer is, in a word, Rutherford, "a force of nature", who unveiled the secret life of the atom, and who said: "In New Zealand we don't have money, so we have to think". Like Ernest Rutherford, I use stubby pencils to write down my thoughts (on the back of supermarket checkout receipts, held together by bulldog clips). He said that "the process of scientific discovery may be regarded as a form of art" ... and so the theory of relativity of Einstein is "a magnificent work of art".  For my part, funded by my old age pension, I practise "articultiral science", in my quest for the origins of the alphabet.   That new technical term is copyright, meaning that you have the right to copy correctly any of my original ideas, and this will make up for all the plagiarism I perpetrated in the four years of my Bachelor of Arts Degree at Sydney University.  My grand unified theory of the evolution of the alphabet bears the name "Quadrinity", and its formula is E = (2M + 2C) squared  (Early Alphabet = 2 monosyllabaries and 2 consonantaries put into a square box). QED (Quadrinity evolution defined)

https://www.academia.edu/30372805/The_Early_History_of_the_Alphabet_The_Proto_Sinaitic_Inscriptions_2_0_Canaanite_not_Hebrew

Here we have the old academic fallacy, which allows only one answer to a question (unlike quadratic equations, which have two solutions). You can blame me for this conundrum, about the language in the Sinai proto-alphabetic inscriptions, if there is actually a failing or fault involved. When Douglas Petrovich was framing the theory that is here being criticized (that "Hebrew" was the language in those texts, not "Canaanite"), he asked me to define "Hebrew", and I suggested that it is/was the West Semitic language (actually a cluster of dialects) spoken by the descendants of Ya`qob Yisra'el (Jacob Israel). This "tongue" is called "the lip of Canaan", and that designation is approved by YHWH (Isaiah 18:19). So, there is no difference between these two entities! The prophet is saying that this language will be spoken in some of the cities of Egypt, and if we think back to Avaris in Goshen in the Nile Delta, Petrovich has made an amazing discovery, that the proto-alphabet (a modification of the already existing West Semitic proto-syllabary) was devised by the children of Israel, specifically by the two sons of Yosep, who would have been educated in all the lore of Egypt, as well as knowing their own WS language and writing system, and they would have realized from their knowledge of Hieroglyphic writing that vowels could be ignored, hence the proto-consonantary. Epraim and Menasshe are both found in the Egyptian inscriptions at the turquoise mines. My contribution is being constructed here, under the title "Israel in Goshen", and has a WS inscription mentioning Goshen. https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/gebel-tingar-statue

   Was there more than one Hebrew exodus from Egypt? If Amenhotep II was the Pharaoh of the Exodus under Moses, it is recorded that he stormed into the Levant and captured 36oo `Apiru (Hebrews), presumably to take the place of the escapees, as slaves on the building sites; these would also need to be liberated in the era of the Ramessides....

    The problem of identifying the Pharaoh of the Exodus is simply this: no King of Egypt would have recorded this momentous event, unless it could be reported falsely as a victory. But the case presented by Douglas Petrovich comes close to unmasking Amenhotep II, a great boaster of his prowess.

   Here is a tentative view, noting several items that I am exploring with my inquisitive tentacles (I am reading 3 books about octopus curiosity at the moment). Reference are to COS (The Context of Scripture, ed. Hallo, translations by Hoffmeier).

   Amenhotep II had 2 campaigns in the Levant: year 7 in first month of summer, year 9 in third month of winter.

Making war in winter was unusual (though his father Th III did so in Retenu, p. 19)

   There must have been some urgency in year 9, such as a heavy loss of chariotry and a massive escape of slaves, since he brought back 60+1032 chariots (730 in year 7), and myriads of prisoners, including 3600 Apiru (presumably to replace the Hebrews who had made their exodus in the spring of the same year).

   In the record for year 7, he crossed the Orontes River on water, wading like Resheph, showing that in his dealings with waters he was like a god, and he did not drown (he walked on water, but Th III "ferried "across the Euphrates).

   In his exploits (as also with Th III and Ramesses II) there was no one with him except himself, with his valiant, powerful arm, and he guarded a host of prisoners and their possessions (including chariots), all through the night till the break of day, all alone, with his battle ax in his right hand . This is like YHWH fighting alone to save Israel at the crossing of the sea, with his outstretched right hand (Exodus 15), and placing his cloud over the enemy through the night (14:19-20).

   After YHWH's victory, the nations trembled (Ex 15), and similarly all the foreign lands were (allegedly) quick to make peace with Amenhotep II, "divine ruler of Heliopolis, ruler of rulers, a panther who rages in every foreign land and in this land forever".

And Ex 15:19 seems to say that Pharaoh's chariotry and cavalry went into the sea, with the possible implication that he stayed behind.
    The King was not always at the forefront: In year 7, Amenhotep II was viewing the REAR GUARD of his army, and he noticed some Asiatics preparing to attack his army; he swooped on them like a divine falcon; their hearts became weak (the sort of panic that Yhwh instills in enemies in divine warfare) and they fell on one another; he slew them with arrows; and there was no one with him except himself with his powerful arm.

   The trouble is that in the extant records no Egyptian king has owned up to losing this confrontation with his slave labourers, and his army, too. For some earnest and honest scholars the explanation is simply that his voice was silenced by being drowned in a local sea.

So here I sit on my seesaw, and on the seat at the other end of the board the various parties on the merry-go-round (carousel) place their chosen pharaoh for me to weigh their suitability for this presidential role in the ancient United States of Misr(ayim).

   We started with Ramesses II of 19D, but Ramesses I (founder of that dynasty) is immediately pushed forward (by Ahmed Osman, 2014 book).
  Thutmose IV shows promise (he may have been drowned-dead). But Manetho the historian was not alone in naming the slave-pursuer as Amenophis, so Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) could rise up, though his Habiru were classified under "foreign affairs". His father Amenhotep III might fill the bill, but Amenophis II had dealings with 'Apiru, 3600 of them rounded up abroad and brought back to Egypt from Retenu (the Levant) together with other people, and dignitaries, and plunder. This looks like a tacit admission of an earlier loss of Habiru, in the springtime of the same year, round about the 14th of Nisan, perhaps. Indeed, this reported expedition of slave-raiding, may not have happened at all, but it was a veil covering the embarrassing truth. Either way, I see from the Bible that Israel was liberated and went forth as a mixed multitude (with other related prisoners and their own nobles, descendants of Ya`qob and Yosep) which had "plundered" the Egyptians (a moral problem for later generations), and this record of Amenhotep II provides confirmation of all these aspects of the Exodus.

    Remember, you have seen it here first, and probably last, as oblivion engulfs anything with my name attached to it.

Mchael Smith (https://independent.academia.edu/MichaelSmith101) responded to this:
The standard high chronology for the 18th Dynasty encountered in older publications has Amenhotep II beginning his reign in 1452 BC but still has Amenhotep III reigning from 1390 - 1352 BC (due to the synchronism with Burnaburiash II) and assumes longer reigns for Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV (due to references to celebrations of heb sed and renewal sed festivals during their reigns). But this has its own issues.

Regarding the Pharaoh of the Exodus and the timing of the Conquest I would argue that it is problematic to place the Israelite Conquest under Joshua too close to the Amarna period, as it leads to a number of mismatches and misalignments. This is demonstrated by the content of many of the relevant Amarna texts.

Note that Joshua 5:9 reads "Then the Lord said to Joshua, 'Today I have rolled away the shame of Egypt from you.' So the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day" (NASB).

And in Joshua 9:9 the inhabitants of Gibeon say, in their reply to Joshua, "“Your servants have come from a very distant country because of the fame of the Lord your God; for we have heard the report about Him and all that He did in Egypt" (NASB).

All of this would be very odd if there was still a significant Egyptian administrative presence in Canaan.

There was clearly an Egyptian administrative and military presence in Canaan from the time of the conquests of Thutmose III through the reign of Akhenaten.

Burna-buriash II even wrote to Akhenaten in EA 8 "Canaan is your country and its kings are your servants" (Moran, 16).

And EA 162, sent by Akhenaten to Aziru of Amurru, shows that Akhenaten had significant Egyptian military forces to send to the Levant if the need arose or if he chose to do so:

"If for any reason whatsoever you prefer to do evil, and if you plot evil, treacherous things, then you, together with your entire family, shall die by the axe of the king.....So perform your service for the king, your lord, and you will live. You yourself know that the king does not fail when he rages against all of Canaan.....And know that the king is hale like the Sun in the sky. For his troops and his chariots in multitude, from the Upper Land to the Lower Land, the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun, all goes very well" (Moran, 249-250).

In EA 324 Yidya the ruler of Ashkelon writes to Akhenaten "I have indeed prepared food, strong drink, oil, grain, oxen, sheep, goats, before the arrival of the troops of the king, my lord. I have [s]tored everything for the troops of the king, my lord" (Moran, 352).

And in EA 367 Akhenaten writes to Endaruta, ruler of Aksapa "And may you prepare before the arrival of the archers of the king food in abundance, wine (and) everything else in abundance. Indeed he (Hanni, Akhenaten's stable overseer in Canaan) is going to reach you very quickly, and he will cut of the heads of the enemies of the king" (Moran, 365).

Marc Van De Mieroop writes "Scholars used to read the vassals' letters literally and saw them as evidence that under Akhenaten Egypt lost interest in its foreign territories. That is probably a mistake . Local rulers painted dire situations because they thought this would convince the pharaoh to give them support. But the Egyptian king was not interested in the day-to-day affairs of these rulers and tolerated their rivalries as long as his access to the region's resources was safe" (Van De Mieroop, 181, 2021).

Also, a king of Hazor wrote two letters to Pharaoh (either Amenhotep III or Akhenaten), EA 227 and EA 228. Had the Israelite Conquest been a recent event then there must have been a quick rebuild of the city of Hazor, which then immediately resumed correspondence with Pharaoh, which also doesn't fit with the passages from the Book of Joshua quoted above.

It is highly unlikely that Hazor would have been rebuilt so quickly following a destruction by the Israelites under Joshua, regained its status, and resumed correspondence with Egypt as if nothing had happened. There’s nothing in EA 227 or EA 228 to indicate that Hazor had recently been destroyed, and in another Amarna letter the ruler of Hazor is said to have aligned himself with the Apiru (the opposite of what occurs in the Conquest narrative).

Abdi-Heba, ruler of Jerusalem, wrote several correspondence letters to Egypt. He writes in EA 286 "neither my father nor my mother put me in this place, but the strong arm of the king brought me into my fathers house" (Moran, 326).

However, according to Joshua 10 the Israelites defeated the Jerusalem coalition led by Adoni-Zedek, who was killed along with the four kings who were his allies. But now a king of Jerusalem has been reinstated by either Amenhotep III or Akhenaten? It doesn't fit.

In addition, a thorough reading of the relevant Amarna vassal correspondence letters makes clear that the Apiru refer to disconnected groups considered rebels and traitors to the Egyptian authorities, often hired by one Canaanite ruler against another, and operating as far north as Sumur and Irqata. The Israelite Conquest didn’t extend this far north.

Ergo, there must be a significant chronological distance between the Israelite Conquest and the Amarna period to avoid these mismatches and misalignments.

Regards,

Michael

 Incidentally, if the volcano in Arabia was one of the YHWH mountains visited by Israel in their wanderings (a consummation devoutly to be wished), they could get there by a land route (unrecorded). 

8/12/2024
Presumably, I am not the first to suggest that the movement of Israel into Sinai was on a path between the Great Green Sea (Mediterranean) and a lake (a sea with reeds). However, I would offer this scenario: there is mention of a wind blowing back the waters, but if there was an earthquake at the time then the sea might have receded and returned as a tidal wave, leaving bodies strewn on the shore; such a destructive tsunami is recorded by Strabo (xvi, p. 758) after a battle between Tyre and Ptolemais (Akko). 

(  ) Addenda Storeroom
November-December 2024
Early in my life I acquired a recording of Handel;s oratorio ISRAEL IN EGYPT (Malcolm Sargent) and I have even sung bass  in a performance of it, conducted by Peter Godfrey. Recently, I and other scholars are discovering archaeological evidence for this story of Jacob and his sons in the land of Goshen, in the Nile Delta, and exercising  great power in their commercial corporation engaged in international trade and mining expeditions (even in America) in the Bronze Age.

    Lately I have been deeply immersed in the hieroglyphic inscriptions at the Sinai turquoise and copper mines.

Time-travel is feasible, as I have been spending my days in ancient Egypt

(actually in the back bedroom, with my late wife  Helen's ironing board as a desk,

and the bed as a table for books and papers, and photographs of the inscriptions),

searching for more references to Yosep and his family, under their various aliases.

    On the sojourn of Israel in Egypt, Douglas Petrovich has collected a set of Egyptian references to Yosep,
under the name Sobekemhat, for example, during the reign of Senwosret III.

David Rohl identifies Yosep as the Vizier `Ankhu in the reign of Amenemhat III.

In Genesis 41:45, an Egyptian king gives Yosep the names S.PNT and P`NKh.

In Sinai 71 and 72 'Ankh-ib (cp. P`nkh) alias Sobek-didi (cp. S.pnt = Sobekemh.at) is depicted (!)
presenting turquoise to Amenemhat II. So we now know which king first appointed Yosep as his vizier.

Looking for Asnat, his Egyptian wife, I have spotted a woman Ast or Eset (which is the original Eg'n form

of the name of the goddess that the Greeks called Isis), and she was the mother of "Iti";

this is possibly a pet-name of Epraim, who appears in another inscription (Sinai 90) as "Ii" ('i'i), "jackal",

together with his father Yosep as Sobekemhat, his official "crocodile" name given to him by the Pharaoh Amenemhat II,

which appears in Genesis 41:45 in shortened form as Sapnat (I suggest). The crocodile-god Sobek was considered to be the protector of Horus, the King, and that was Yosep's role, as the Vizier.

   On Saturday 23/11/2024 I looked further in the Sinai collection, and concentrated on inscriptions 90-99.

" I found him as Ameny Seshen in that collection, with Seshen stated to be his rn nfr ("beautiful name).

Presumably Joseph's wife Asnat would have been the one who gave Menasshé (whose Hebrew name means "making forget", 

referring to all Yosep's past troubles) his Egyptian pet-name Seshen (my little Lotus flower).

On the Sinai monument  90, I had wondered why he was missing, when his father Yosep (Sobekemhat, "crocodile")

and his brother Epraim ('I'i "jackal") were registered there in a long list; but on Saturday I had recognized him as Seshen.n

in various inscriptions, and then discovered him as Seshen ("lotus", with a plant determinative) in that line of dignitaries; 

and I think they are some of his uncles, sons of Ya`qob Har ("Jacob of the Mountain")."
The seal of Ya`qob-Har was accompanied by a crocodile image, in an extant clay sealing.

Besides the picture of Yosep with the King, and the elaborate seal of Yosep,

I will have statues to show, and pictures of them riding donkeys, and also the seal of Epraim (Di-Sobekemhat);

and Sinai 179 portrays Princess Neferure (daughter of Hatshepsut), who may have been the foster-mother of Moses.

What a treasure trove we have, to prove that the stories in the Bible are reliable history.

Michael Shelomo Bar-Ron
https://www.academia.edu/35532146/The_Seal_of_Joseph_in_His_Palace_at_Tell_Ed_Daba_Re_edited_
I certainly like his interpretation of the Yosep seal, and have had sessions on it with my "fellow-students".

The top line starts on the right with Yosep the bull,
with unstable Reuben, the vulture Lewi, and Yehuda the lion below him;
next along the top line is Binyamin, an armed man striding, who is possibly the General BIBI attested in the Wadi el-Hol, and the PPY overseer of the MSh` ("expeditionary force") on Sinai 85;
third is Asher (olive branch), the blessed one, and the favoured among his brothers (Deut 33:24) .
These three brothers are at the top because they are the favoured ones in the family of Ya`qob, I propose

On the sojourn of Israel in Egypt, Douglas Petrovich has collected a set of Egyptian references to Yosep,
under the name Sobekemhat, for example, during the reign of Senwosret III.

David Rohl identifies Yosep as the Vizier `Ankhu in the reign of Amenemhat III.

In Genesis 41:45, an Egyptian king gives Yosep the names S.PNT and P`NKh.

In Sinai 71 and 72 'Ankh-ib (cp. P`nkh) alias Sobek-didi (cp. S.pnt = Sobekemh.at) is depicted (!)
presenting turquoise to Amenemhat II. So we now know which king first appointed Yosep as his vizier.

https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2025/05/israel-in-egypt.html

I had been sharing my versions of the Sinai proto-alphabetic inscriptions for Bar-Ron to read on the Pieter Veen fb page,

but apparently he is clinging to his errors in an online presentation (Sunday 8/12/24.

357 in Mine L could not have been written by Moshe at the time of the Exodus, because it does have Baal and Asherah (the Mother) in it.

Douglas N Petrovich

Doug, I am glad this question has come up, as I might have some new data to add to the case.

In your 2021 book (The Origin of the Hebrews, which I treasure; it is like the Tomb of Tutankhamon, full of "wonderful things")

you are able to show that Yosep son of Ya`qob was an official of Egyptian kings of the 12th Dynasty.

You tacitly accept (p. 236, and the table on 215) that his descendants were the 14th Dynasty, which gave way to the Hyksos 15th D,

and the children of Israel were still in the Nile Delta (at Goshen, and Avaris) when the Hyksos ruled in Memphis for a century;

possibly they were the mysterious 16th D, as vassals to the 15th D;

the Hyksos were driven out from their refuge citadel at Avaris by the Theban 17th D and the new 18th D, but Israel stayed as slaves;

Avaris was abandoned around 1450, so Israel had made their exit, the Exodus.

My evidence shows that Yosep first served under Amenemhet II, and you argue strongly for Amenhotep II as the ruler from whom Israel escaped.

So the Eisodos (starting with Yosep) was around 1920, and the Exodos was around 1450.

1920 minus 1450 = 470 years

This is comparable to the 430 years calculated from the Bible,

and if we make the starting point when Ya`qob arrived in Egypt,

and allow that we do not have a perfect chronology for the Egyptian kings,

the total 470 can be reduced to 430.

My evidence for Yosep as an important functionary of Amenemhet II is Sinai inscription 72:

`Ankh-ib is pictured presenting cones of turquoise to that king, in year 24 of his reign.

In 71 and 72 `Ankh-ib is treasurer of the King, and governor (the one in charge of) Lower Egypt,

and this fits Yosep as the prince in the palace at Avaris.

In Sinai 47 and 48 it is a Mentuhotep (likewise treasurer of the King, and "his beloved") who opens a new mine in that same year.

A graffito from Nubia by a Mentuhotep has him as a ruler of Goshen (one of two occurrences of this name) as proto-alphabetic GShN.

Please find a moment to glance at this work in progress on open access, in case I suddenly depart to higher realms (born 1936):

https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2025/05/israel-in-egypt.html

If Israel did return to the copper and turquoise mines at that time, they worked in Mine M, which is devoted to El.

I have delivered a lecture on the origin of the ABT here in Palmerston North,

and I cited the opinion that Colless is the greatest cryptologist of the era, to add to the general merriment of the occasion.

My theory can now be stated mathematically and diagrammatically

https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/04/another-lakish-inscription.html

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