Abstract
A spell of a warm and arid climate at ca. 1800 B.C. brought the Hyksos invasion of Egypt and at about 1700 B.C. a king of Hyksos origin occupied the throne. At the same time officials of Apiru (Hebrew?) origin reached high posts in the government of Egypt enabling their clans still living in drought-stricken Canaan to enter Egypt and settle on irrigated land in the delta area in the land of Goshen. The Hyksos were overthrown in 1558 B.C. by the Egyptian Ahmose and the Apiru were enslaved. Toward the end of this dynasty king Akhenaten brought about a religious revolution by shifting the seniority in the Egyptian pantheon from Amun to Aten, the sun god. A cold humid climate, which started about 1300 B.C., had a negative environmental impact on Egypt, which forms the core of the story of the ‘Ten Plagues’. The cold humid spell caused the greening of the Sinai Desert, which encouraged the Hebrews to leave Egypt.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bar-Matthews M, Ayalon A et al (1997) Late Quaternary Paleoclimate in the Eeastern Mediterranean region from stable isotope analysis of Speleothems at Soreq Cave, Israel. Quatern Res 47(2):155–168
Dansgaard W (1985) Greenland Ice Core Studies. Paleogeog Paleoclimatol Paleoecol 50:185–187
Hammer CU, Clausen HB et al (1980) Greenland Ice Sheet Evidence of Post-Glacial Volcanism and its Climatic Impact. Nature 288:230–235
Pachur HJ, Roper HP (1984) The Libyan (western) Desert and Northern Sudan; during the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Berliner Geowiss. A.50
Wilson I (1985) The Exodus enigma. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Issar, A.S. (2014). Foreign Rulers: The Hyksos. Foreign Climate: The Ten Plagues. In: Strike the Rock and There Shall Come Water. SpringerBriefs in Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01937-6_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01937-6_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-01936-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-01937-6
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)