The Israelites Enter Egypt

Deuteronomy 26:5-10:

“My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us. We cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery and our oppression. The Lord freed us from Egypt by a might hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Wherefore I now bring the first fruits of the soil which you, Lord, have given me.”

An Egyptian nobleman was proud of the day, about 1900 BCE, when he introduced a party of foreigners to the Egyptian court. He had the scene painted on the wall of his tomb at Beni Hasan.  A dark-skinned Egyptian scribe (to the right of the picture shown here) holds a placard announcing the visitors as Asiatics from the region of Shut, bringing galena for the black eye-paint Egyptians liked.  The leader is named “foreign chief Abushar.”  This group from Sinai or southern Canaan gives a visual description of the way Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could have appeared.

An Egyptian leads Semites depicted on the Tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan, Egypt, 19^th Century BCE