Jacob was born during Amenhophis the Third's twelfth or thirteenth year of reign and that he moved to Egypt 67 years later, give or take 2 years. Over this great span of time, the following Pharaohs came to the throne of Egypt: Akenhaton, Smenkare, Tutankhamen, Ay and Haremhab. The length of the reigns of Tutankhamen, Ay, and Haremhab are not known with certainty, and the duration of the co-regency of Amenhophis the Third and Akenhaton is one big question mark--some historians do not even consider it, while C. Aldred gives it as much as eleven years. Biblical data are consistent with this second theory, to which we also adhere. The story of Joseph, therefore, occurs during the reign of Haremhab.
Haremhab was a soldier, not of royal blood, who had spent most of his career in the Asian provinces of the Empire. When he took over the throne, he swept away corrupt functionaries and those associated with the previous pro-Hittite policy, installing new men, some of whom came from these Asian provinces. This is exactly what happens in the story of Joseph, wherein high-ranking officials are put on trial and a non-Egyptian is raised to a position of authority.
It does not seem, however, that the two events can be seen as related to each other because of a time gap which is difficult to justify. Haremhab certainly made substitutions for the old officials in the first years of his reign, while Joseph, according to the conclusions reached previously, was nominated Vizier towards the end--to be precise, between the nineteenth and twenty-first years. Furthermore, reasons of geography lead to a conclusion that when Genesis speaks of the “Pharaoh” this does not refer to Haremhab.
The sovereign resided at Thebes with all his ministers and the entire Court. From the Genesis narrative we learn that Joseph was initially a slave, sent to work in the prison (Gen 39, 22-23) where he made the acquaintance of two ministers held in custody “awaiting trial,” and whose dreams he interpreted correctly. In Egypt prison was not a place of detention for those condemned, but only for those awaiting trial. So it is clear that the prison in which Joseph served could not have been the same one used by Haremhab to imprison his officials.
Two years after these two officials were tried (Gen 41 ,1), Joseph was brought to the attention of the “Pharaoh” who was impressed by his interpretation of the remarkable dream of the seven fat and seven lean cows. For this, he elevated Joseph to the office of Vizier: “You shall be in charge of my palace and all of my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.' So Pharaoh said to Joseph, 'I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt.' Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his finger and put it on Joseph's finger. He dressed him in robes of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck. He had him ride in the second chariot of honor that he had (...). Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, 'I am the Pharaoh, but without your word no one will lift hand or foot in all Egypt” (Gen 41, 41-44).
The fact that Joseph, a foreigner, could have been elevated all of a sudden from a mere slave to such a high office, simply because Haremhab liked his interpretation of a dream, seemsa beautiful fable. The Egyptians accorded great importance to dreams, so much so that the Court was full of specialists in their interpretation. It is exactly for this reason that it is extremely unlikely that Joseph could have become Grand Vizier, simply because his interpretation of a dream appeared to be more brilliant than that of others. This story is without doubt highly romanticized, with embellished details and some obvious exaggeration.
But the exaggeration lies not so much with Joseph's powerS, which may be considered close enough to that described, as it does with the extension of the territory within which these powers were exercised. The true Pharaoh, Haremhab, and his Court resided at Thebes, a great distance from the Nile Delta. On the other hand, there is no doubt, according to the biblical account, that Joseph resided in the north-eastern part of the Delta. When his brothers came to Egypt to buy grain, they obviously followed the Palestine track; the first large Egyptian center they came to, which controlled the road through which all the trade to and from Egypt passed, was Avaris on the eastern branch of the Nile. “It was there that Syrian goods which sailed up the Nile as far as Memphis were taken on board. It was there that the donkey caravans from the Sinai arrived. In the markets, on the streets, and in the offices of Avaris from time immemorial, a throng of foreign languages echoed.” It is certain that they stopped at Avaris to make their purchases.
Joseph resided there--in Gen 45,10, in fact, he says to his father, “You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me”--and, according to the biblical account, he was the highest local authority, meaning that he was either vizier of Avaris or his representative. Viziers were local authorities who governed in the name of Pharaoh and each one in his district exercised absolute power, subject only to the supervision of the Central Power. It was a very important office to which only men in whom the Pharaoh or his Grand Vizier placed great trust could accede. This Grand Vizier was a sort of Prime Minister plenipotentiary, who was chief of all the State's officials.
The prison, which Genesis speaks of, was certainly located in the same city in which Joseph was sold as a slave, and of which he subsequently became Governor--Avaris. It is just not possible that Haremhab had imprisoned the ministers who were under suspicion, at Avaris, hundreds of miles distant from Thebes. The biblical story refers, therefore, to the local representative of the Pharaoh, that is, the Vizier of the “Northern Country” (the northern part of Egypt), who was then Prameses. Or, it refers to the vizier of the city of Avaris, whose name in that exact period is engraved on the so-called “stele of the year 400,” discovered by Auguste Mariette in 1865: “The year 400, the 4th day of the 4th month (...) Seti, son of the Lord Prince of the city, the vizier Prameses ...;”this, then, is one the same person.
Who was this Prameses? He was the son of a certain Seti of Avaris, a person whom some historians consider to be of humble origins and who had enjoyed a fairly good career in the Army, reaching the rank of “Troop Commander.” His son followed in father's footsteps, and entered the service of Haremhab. During the reign of Ay, the young officer Prameses most probably saw service in the Asiatic provinces, in Syria, or in Palestine.
When Haremhab came to the throne, Prameses followed him to Thebes. He must have given him very valuable service, since his career was a rapid one, during which he was assigned a prodigious number of very high offices: “Vizier of the Northern Country, Supervisor of the Horses, Commander of the Fortresses, Supervisor of the River Mouth, General of the Army of the Lord of the Two Countries, as well as a number of religious offices.” In brief, Prameses became the highest authority in the Empire after the Pharaoh himself--so much so that he became associated with the throne of Haremhab, whom he succeeded with the name Rameses the First, thereby beginning the glorious 19th Dynasty.
It was exactly during the last years of Haremhab that Joseph became vizier of the Avaris district, an office to which only someone who was trusted absolutely by Prameses himself could accede. Later, when Jacob moved to Egypt, he was assigned the region of Goshen, which was part of Avaris’ district and, therefore, was in the feudal area belonging to Prameses. This fact is made clear by Genesis itself, which, in 47,11, says: “So Joseph settled his father and his brothers in Egypt and gave them property in the best part of the land, the district of Rameses.” In the tradition of current usage in the Bible, the territory is here named after the owner.
The same mention made in the Bible, “You shall be in charge of my palace and all my people are to submit to your orders” is an indirect confirmation that it was just this Prameses who elevated Joseph to the rank of vizier. Since Joseph governed in the district of Avaris, over the “palace and the people of the Pharaoh,” the latter could be none other than Prameses. Further confirmation is in Genesis 41,45: “...and he gave him Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of Heliopolis, to be his wife.” Potiphera was a priest of the temple of Rah , of which Prameses, among other things, was High Priest since he was the representative of the Pharaoh, and Lord over all. So only he could organize such a marriage. Everything, therefore, supports and confirms that Joseph was an official in the service of Prameses, Vizier of the Northern Country and future Pharaoh with the name of Rameses.
Now we have to establish exactly in what year Joseph's meeting with his brothers occurred. Genesis gives a very precise reference when speaking of the famine, which was the main reason for Joseph's brothers’ journey to Egypt. The biblical account is not reliable when it refers to seven years of plenty and seven of famine. These figures mean nothing, having merely an aesthetic value within an episode that was invented from scratch, or at least romanticized. In Genesis 41,50 in fact, “the year of famine” is expressly noted as if there had been only one. Later on, in Genesis 47,18, we may deduce that the years of famine were two consecutive ones. In any case, there is no indication in the narrative that the famine was protracted beyond that figure.
Egypt was subject to recurring famine, due to the failure of the level of the Nile waters to rise. Therefore, the country was prepared, and had been for thousands of years, to overcome these temporary difficulties by storing quantities of cereals during the years of plenty. What the biblical narrative relates, therefore, falls within the norm in the sense that Joseph did nothing more than follow what was typical practice. Storing food during the years of plenty to redistribute it during the lean years was simply part of the duties of the viziers.
What is not by any means normal is that the famine which Genesis refers to cannot be attributed to a failure of the Nile to rise, but rather was due to an irregularity in climatic conditions. This, in fact, not only struck Egypt, but other countries at the same time which had no dependence on the Nile, such as the Palestine in which Jacob lived. It was, thus, a phenomenon of vast proportions that affected the entire Palestinian area in addition to Egypt. Such phenomena are not very frequent, but not at all uncommon; they have occurred even in periods close to ours. But let us leave the causes of the famine for now, since they are irrelevant to the scope of this analysis, or at least not as relevant as the year in which the famine occurred: it was the year preceding the Jacob’s arrival in Egypt.
Given the seriousness of the famine, there should have been some trace of it in the Egyptian chronicles of that time. These would be able to confirm the exact date of Israel's arrival in Egypt which, on the basis of Benjamin's age, we have judged to be between the third and fifth years after Joseph's nomination to vizier--that is, between the twenty-fourth and twenty-sixth years of Haremhab's reign. According to some historians Haremhab reigned for twenty-five years. Most of them, however, give him twenty-eight, with the exception of Aldred who takes the number to thirty years. If the theory of the first figure is correct, Jacob’s arrival in Goshen, “the best land in all Egypt,” could have happened during the extremely brief reign of Rameses the First, soon after his coronation. If not, then it happened during the last years of Haremhab’s reign.
Anyway the question is irrelevant regarding Israel, since there is no doubt that it was Rameses who authorized him to reside in Egypt. He was, of course, the true owner of Goshen and we will see a little further on that he had personal motives for conceding a part of Egyptian territory to a foreigner like Jacob. There are also certain objective elements that confirm that the “Pharaoh” to whom Jacob was introduced as soon as he arrived in Egypt (Gen 47,7) was not Haremhab, but Prameses himself. There is no indication, in fact, that the Patriarch made a long river journey in order to introduce himself to the “Pharaoh,” so the meeting certainly took place in the Avaris area and not at Thebes; therefore, the person to whom he reported must have been the highest local authority. When we consider that this was an individual to whom Joseph had immediate access and with whom he had a relationship of a fairly confidential nature, it seems evident that this person would have been his direct superior, the Vizier of the Northern Country, Prameses.