Exodus - Joseph Lived Near Or At Avaris (part 4)

FACT #3: Joseph Lived Near Or At Avaris

• Gen. 37:25 “And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.”
• Gen. 43:19 “When they drew near to the steward of Joseph’s house.
• Gen. 43:26 And when Joseph came home, [his brothers] brought him the present which was in their hand into the house and bowed down before him to the earth.
• Gen. 43:30 Now his heart yearned for his brother; so Joseph made haste and sought somewhere to weep. And he went into his chamber and wept there.
• Gen. 45:10 “You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near to me, you and your children, your children’s children, your flocks and your herds, and all that you have. There I will provide for you. . . .
• Gen. 46:28 And he sent Judah before him unto Joseph, to direct his face unto Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen. [29] And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and presented himself unto him; and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while.
• Gen. 47:11 “And Joseph situated his father and his brothers, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt in the best of the land of Ramses, as Pharaoh had commanded.

The Ishmaelites would have followed the traders’ route from Canaan into the Nile Delta of Egypt. The route known as Via Maris or ‘The Way of the Philistines’ would have made stops at Pelusium, Tanis, Avaris, Heliopolis, and Memphis. It would have been in one of these Egyptian cities that Joseph was sold, and in one of these Egyptian cities that Joseph’s brothers would have bought grain.

Excavations at Tell El-Dab'a in 1986-1988 (AD), uncovered a mini-pyramid and, inside, a statue of a non-Egyptian ruler with yellow skin--the color of Asiatics. The statue was sculpted in a robe of multicolor: red, black and white. Across the upper shoulder a remnant of a scepter can be identified; in this case a ‘throw stick’, a symbol of Asiatics. The ‘mushroom’ styled hair, unique to native Egyptians, had evidence of “flame red” paint, indicating the ruler was a ginger. However, within the pyramid-esque tomb, no bones were found.

On the premises, however, were eleven other burial tombs. One of the bodies which had been exhumed was lain on its side, typical of Canaanite burial practices, and with the body was a chieftain belt and a dagger.

David Rohl and some of his contemporaries believe the statue found represents the patriarch Joseph. Even the name ‘Avaris’, is not Egyptian. The Egyptians called the settlement ‘Ha’at-Wurat’, meaning ‘Great House’, denoting a capital of an administrative Nome or division within the Nile Delta. The Greeks called it by the name Avaris.

Avaris is a compound of two words:

• ‘Avar’ = Iver or Ever or Eber or Hebrew; and
• ‘is’ or ‘ish’ the Hebrew word for ‘man’.

The settlement was therefore named ‘Hebrew Man’. Why should an administrative capital in Egypt bear this name unless a Hebrew Man lived there?

If we assume Avaris, which is located near Ramesses, was where Joseph’s personal home was, then when Joseph ‘goes up’ to see his father, he is going ‘upstream’. Remember, the Nile runs south to north. Upstream would therefore be southward. Joseph’s family would have been settled south of Joseph’s dwelling place.

Not much else needs to be said to support the idea that Joseph lived in the Nile Delta. The scriptures quoted above confirm the notion quite adequately.