Two years passed since Joseph interpreted the dreams of the Butler and Baker and he was still in prison. I wonder if his own dreams had died?
Now, it was Pharoah’s turn to dream. Standing by a river, Pharoah saw seven health cows eating in a meadow beside the river. Then seven ugly, gaunt cows came out of the river and ate them.
Troubled, he woke up. He slept and dreamed a second time; and suddenly seven heads of grain came up on one stalk, plump and good. Then behold, seven thin heads, blighted by the east wind, sprang up after them. And the seven thin heads devoured the seven plump and full heads.
What did it mean? The wise men and magicians of Egypt couldn’t interpret the two dreams. The chief butler finally remembered Joseph.
Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him quickly out of the dungeon; and he shaved, changed his clothing, and came to Pharaoh.
Joseph was able to interpret the dreams; “The dreams of Pharaoh are one; God has shown Pharaoh what He is about to do: The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good heads are seven years; the dreams are one. And the seven thin and ugly cows which came up after them are seven years, and the seven empty heads blighted by the east wind are seven years of famine.”
Telling Pharaoh the famine would be severe and would deplete the land, Joseph advised Pharaoh to select a discerning and wise man, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, to collect one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt in the seven plentiful years.
The grain would be stored up under the authority of Pharaoh, and that food would be kept in the cities as a reserve for the seven years of famine, that the land may not perish during the famine.
Because God had shown Joseph this, Pharaoh set Joseph up as his second in command over Egypt, saying, “only in regard to the throne will I be greater than you.”
Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt. Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphnath-Paaneah. And he gave him as a wife Asenath, the daughter of Poti-Pherah priest of On. So Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt.
Two sons were born before the years of famine came, Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: “For God has made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house.” And the name of the second he called Ephraim: “For God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.”
Spending the seven good years storing food in the cities; Joseph gathered so much grain he stopped counting it. When the famine hit Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians. The famine affected many countries, not just Egypt. So all the countries came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain.
When God Repeats Himself
Have you ever experienced a confirmation of something you’ve seen or read? That’s God. Joseph knew that too, as he told Pharaoh; “And the dream was repeated to Pharaoh twice because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass. Genesis 41:32
Evidence of Joseph
Joseph lived thousands of years ago. Is there anything of him left in Egypt?
Bahr Yusuf
First, there’s a canal called the ‘Bahr Yussef, or ‘Bahr Yusuf’ meaning the ‘Joseph canal.’ Yusuf is not an arabic name. The canal still supplies the Faiyum with irrigation water. There are around 200 waterwheels scattered across the area that redistribute the water from Bahr Yussef, which is responsible for giving the region its fertility and identity.
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Famine Stela
This stele is an Egyptian record of a seven year famine.
Famine Stela at Sehel Island in the Nile, Aswan, Upper Egypt.
In 1890 Charles Wilbour discovered this boulder on the island of Sahal at the Nile, telling a story of Imhotep. It is thought that the stele was inscribed during the Ptolemaic Kingdom, which ruled from 332 to 31 BC. This stele commemorates a famine in the era of King Djoser, King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Neterkhet and founder of the Third Dynasty in the Old Kingdom. A shortage of the Nile flood in 2,700 BC led to a seven-year famine, leaving Egypt in a state of extreme distress.
Grain Silo, Saqqara, Egypt
The oldest pyramid in Egypt is located at Saqqara, in Giza near Cairo.
Saqqara contains numerous pyramids, including the Step pyramid of Djoser, sometimes referred to as the Step Tomb, and a number of mastaba tombs (or flat-topped rectangular tombs.)
Source: Wikipedia
Mastabas became the foundation — literally — for the step pyramid where several mastabas were stacked on top of each other, building up into the sky.
What was the complex built for? Conventional thinking is that the complex was built as a place to bury their dead. But could the structures have been used first for something besides a burial complex?
Ben Carson, one of the Republican frontrunners in the race to be U.S. president, believes archeologists got it wrong about Egypt’s pyramids. The huge stone structures were built to store massive quantities of grain, not to serve as tombs for rulers, according to what Carson said in a 1998 graduation speech at Michigan’s Andrews University.
He was laughed at for mooting that idea. We look at ancient history through the lens we’re given, a tomb or grain silo. Why couldn’t the grain silos have become tombs later? Were there remains of grain?
Have a look for yourself and choose your own lens.
Exclusive: Inside the First Pyramid in History After 14 Years of Restoration
Egyptian Pyramids: The first pyramid to be built was the Step Pyramid in Sakara (see figure). Around this pyramid, and the parts pertaining to it, is a big wall (see figure). In comparison, the pyramids in Giza, including the mighty Cheops pyramid, are not surrounded by a wall. The Sakkara complex had only one entrance, which implies that there were reasons for security (see figure).
At the main entrance in the eastern wall one comes into a long hall with 40 columns, 20 on each side. When one has passed these columns, one comes to a number of very large shafts going deep down into the ground (see figure). The hypotesis of today claims that these shafts are burial chambers, but they are exceptionally large, far bigger than any other burial chamber, and diferent in shape and function. All these shafts are conected to each other by a central tunnel. The shafts reach up above the surface of the ground, and one shaft has a stairway that goes right down to the bottom (see figure). Remains of grain have been found at the bottom of these shafts. The Bible shows how Joseph acted and organized the grain storage throughout the country: “And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number.” (Gen. 41:49)
The 11 shafts which are just inside the columns are extremely large, with a volume that meant they could hold about 40.000 cubic metres of grain altogether, corresponding to approximately 4.000 trucks each loaded with 10 cubic metres. In all probability, Pharaoh Djoser´s minister of state, Imhotep, had at least 11 huge shafts built in which to store grain, or silos as we call them today. This amount of grain was more than an individual town needed. Since there is a large area around the Step Pyramid which has not yet been excavated, one can speculate that there were even more silos in the area.
CPS.org Egyptian Pyramids
Ramses
Joseph is associated with the land of Ramses according to Genesis 47:11. The place wasn’t named that in Joseph’s day, there’s an earlier settlement under Ramses called Avaris, where the archeologists have found the remains of a palace and twelve tombs. One of the tombs was a pyramid shape, with the remains of a smashed up statue of an important man with red hair, a mushroom hairstyle and a striped coat. The body had been removed … and we know that Joseph’s body was taken back to Canaan.
Links
The Joseph Canal
Avaris
Avaris was the Hyksos capital of Egypt located at the modern site of Tell el-Dab’a in the northeastern region of the Nile Delta. Avaris was reoccupied when Pharaoh Ramses 1 founded his new capital city at the old site and renamed Ramses.
Hyksos
Hyksos is used ethnically to designate people of probable West Semitic, Levantine origin. While Manetho portrayed the Hyksos as invaders and oppressors, this interpretation is questioned in modern Egyptology. Instead, Hyksos rule might have been preceded by groups of Canaanite peoples who gradually settled in the Nile delta from the end of the Twelfth Dynasty onwards and who may have seceded from the crumbling and unstable Egyptian control at some point during the Thirteenth Dynasty.
Hyksos – Wikipedia
The Seal of Joseph in His Palace at Tell Ed-Daba (Re-edited)
The symbolism on a cylinder seal impression found in the ruins of the Middle Bronze Age palace at Tell ed-Daba, dated to what some understand to be the ‘early Israelite period’ at Avaris, is given a fresh, thorough examination. A new interpretation is presented that replaces the inferior, Canaanite interpretation currently accepted by academia. This adds considerable weight to the already profound evidence linking the palace to the Israelites of the early Sojourn. When viewed through a biblical lens, the bulla clearly depicts early symbols of the Israelite tribes, evoking themes found in the blessings of Jacob to his sons in Genesis chapter 49, with motifs that would have been well understood among ancient Egyptians of the late 12th and early 13th Dynasties. The arrangement of the symbols indicates a strong, Joseph-centered bias. Accordingly, it seems likely that the owner of the seal, most likely the high official that owned the estate, may have been none other than the figure behind the biblical traditions of Joseph, or a chief among his heirs.
Academia: The Seal of Joseph in His Palace at Tell Ed-Daba (Re-edited)
by Michael Shelomo Bar-Ron
Date added: 12/28/17
Joseph
Joseph’s Zaphenath Paaneah—a chronological key
Is the Biblical story of Joseph in Egypt verified?
Archaeological Evidences Of Joseph In Egypt
Grain silos
Grain silos were the Hall mark of Joseph
Archaeologists find silos and administration center from early Egyptian city
Saqqara – The location where Joseph, son of Israel, built grain silos that are still there
Egyptian Records for Joseph
One would expect to find evidence for Joseph in Egyptian records given the enormity of his achievements.
Egyptian records, however, have not been as well preserved as one would hope. In fact many of the most useful historical documents were deliberately destroyed eg the works of Manetho which were lost when the Alexandrian Library was burnt down. Various wars, erosion and earthquakes have resulted in many of Egypts monuments being destroyed or defaced. Some pharaohs have even tried to whitewash their predecessors records leaving no trace of them.
In order to find evidence for the Israelites in Egypt, one needs to look in the right place in the right time period.
The only lasting legacy of the Israelites mentioned in the Bible may just be ‘grain silos’, ‘mud bricks’ and the embalmed bodies of Jacob and Joseph.
If the Egyptian identities of these Biblical figures were known, we may be surprised to learn what else they did that was not recorded in the Bible.
The truth is not always convenient or what we would have liked, but if it supports scripture, then Christians should celebrate because history and the Bible agree with one another.
Creation Wiki: Evidence for the Israelite Sojourn in Egypt
The Kingdom 