Explain how Egyptian governmental policy toward Semitic immigrants may have been influenced by the historical expulsion of the Hyksos?

Answer 1

The Hyksos were a foreign people, of possibly Semitic origin, who ruled parts of the Nile delta region and northern Egypt early in the second millennium BCE.

Egyptian records and archaeological evidence date the Hyksos expulsion to around 1570 BCE. Although the majority of modern scholars no longer accept the historicity of the Israelite enslavement in Egypt and the subsequent Exodus, the biblical account would suggest that the Israelites settled in Egypt from around 1890 BCE to 1490 BCE - during which period the Hyksos arrived and were eventually expelled. There is no suggestion in the biblical story that the pharoahs either encouraged or discouraged Joseph and his family from entering Egypt, or that the policy towards the Israelites was influenced by the presence of the Hyksos.

It is hard to know how the expulsion of the Hyksos would have influenced Egyptian policy. From what we now know, the later Egyptians allowed people from the Levant region to enter the Nile delta during times of drought, allowing them to return to their homelands during better seasons. There was no evidence that they feared re-invasion by the Hyksos or by the economic refugees who visited Egypt from time to time. The Egyptian army occupied the Levant, north to as far as Syria, and received tribute from the local chiefs and rulers. They were a confident regional power.