Chronologically, therefore, the Biblical narrative fits in with the requirements of Egyptian history, and allows us to see in the Hebrew captive the powerful minister of a race of kings who, like himself, had come from the highlands of Asia. But it must be remembered that it was only in the north of Egypt that Hyksos rule made itself actually visible to the eyes of the people. Southern Egypt was nominally governed by its native princes, though they did not assume the title of king or Pharaoh. They were _hiqu_, “hereditary chieftains,” the last representatives of the royal families of earlier days. They acknowledged the supremacy of the Hyksos Pharaoh, and tribute was sent to him from Thebes and El-Kab.
Though Memphis, the ancient capital of the country, was in the hands of the strangers, Zoan, the Tanis of classical geography, was rather the seat of Hyksos power. Protected by the marshes which surrounded it, Zoan, the modern Sân, lay on the eastern side of the Delta at no great distance from the frontier of Asia and the great Hyksos fortress of Avaris. From Zoan, the “road of the Philistines,” as it is called in the Pentateuch, ran almost in a straight line to Pelusium and the south of Palestine, skirting on one side the Mediterranean Sea, and leaving to the right the lofty fortress-rock of El-Arîsh on the waterless “river of Egypt.” Tanis had existed in the days of the Old Empire, but either the Hyksos conquest or earlier invasions had caused it to decay, and when the Hyksos court was established there its ancient temple was already in ruins. The restoration of the city was due to the Hyksos kings, who have left in it memorials of themselves. The Hyksos sphinxes in the Museum of Gizeh, on one of which the name of Apopi is engraved, were found there by Mariette, as well as a curious group of two persons with enormous wigs holding fish and water-fowl in their laps. When it is stated in the book of Numbers (xiii. 22) that “Hebron was built seven years before Zoan,” it is probable that the building of Zoan by the Shepherd kings is meant.
In journeying from southern Palestine to Zoan, Jacob and his sons had no very long distance to traverse. Nor had they to pass through a long tract of Egyptian territory. From the desert, with its roving bands of kindred Bedouin, to the Pharaoh’s court at Zoan, was hardly more than a day’s journey. There was little fear that the Semitic traveller would meet with insult or opposition from the Egyptian _fellahin_ on the way. The _fellahin_ themselves were doubtless then, as now, mixed with Semitic elements; it was needful to go westward of Zoan in order to find Egyptians of pure blood.