The Testimony, December 2003 459 of the capital Baghdad (founded by the Arab government arranged flights to Israel, and from rulers of the area in 762) were Jews. They played August 1949 to the end of 1952 120,000 Jews a prominent role in the establishment of Iraq as a emigrated from Iraq to Israel, mostly on these nation; according to Mordecai Ben-Porat, chair- flights, the project being named ‘Operation Ezra man of the Babylonian Jewish Heritage Centre in and Nehemiah’. Only 17,000 Jews remained in Israel, as quoted by the Jerusalem Report, “Iraq’s Iraq. first minister of finance, Yehezkel Sasson, was a Iraqi Jews flourished in Israel, despite initial Jew, as was the deputy president of the Supreme difficulties caused by the infant nation having to Court. Jews played a key role in establishing the absorb large numbers of immigrants from vari- Iraqi judicial and postal systems, the railways, ous countries. A few years later eleven per cent the customs bureau, and they were dominant in of Israel’s teachers and seventeen per cent of the chamber of commerce”. Israel’s doctors were Iraqi Jews. After the over- Things began to be less favourable for the throw of the monarchy in Iraq in 1958, things Jews, however, after Iraq became independent, worsened for the remaining Jews in Iraq, espe- especially as conflict between Jews and Arabs cially after Saddam Hussein seized control in developed in Palestine. After the establishment 1979. Numbers gradually reduced as they died of the State of Israel in 1948 things rapidly wors- out or escaped. After the overthrow of the ened. In 1950 the government revoked the im- Saddam régime, a reporter for the Jerusalem Post port and export licences of Jewish trading firms, visited Baghdad and looked for surviving Jews. devastating them, Jews in public service posi- He found a pitiful remnant, desperately poor tions lost their jobs, and Jewish communities were and mostly elderly, but still retaining sabbath the subject of several bomb attacks. The Israeli worship in an obscure synagogue. The Amalekites 2. Were they the Hyksos?* Debbie Hurn MMANUEL VELIKOVSKY, perhaps the most scriptions of the Amalekites, Velikovsky high- famous revisionist of the chronology of an- lights some strong parallels. Manetho was an cient times, proposed that the Amalekites were anti-Semitic Egyptian historian who wrote in I 1 the notorious Hyksos invaders of Egypt. He col- Greek. His work did not survive, but on the lated ancient records of great upheavals in Ara- subject of the Hyksos invasion he was cited at bia that may have been the cause of a westward length by Josephus: migration of the Amalekite tribes, and pro- “Tutimaeus [a Pharaoh]. In his reign, I know pounded the theory that they entered Egypt just not why, a blast of God’s displeasure broke after the Hebrews left. This would certainly have upon us . A people of ignoble origin from been an ideal opportunity to invade, for Egypt the east, whose coming was unforeseen, had was ruined (Ex. 10:7) and leaderless (Ps. 136:15) the audacity to invade the country, which in the aftermath of the ten plagues and the Exo- they mastered by main force without diffi- dus. In an age when neighbouring countries soon culty or even a battle”; dominated any nation that showed signs of weak- “Some say that they were Arabians”; ness, it is unlikely that Egypt was allowed to “Their race bore the generic name of Hycsos recover in peace. Such a chance to overrun the [Hyksos], which means ‘king-shepherds’. For perennially fertile delta, and plunder the treas- Hyc in the sacred language denotes ‘king’, ures of the usually impregnable Egyptian em- and sos in the common dialect means ‘shep- pire, was indeed a rare windfall. herd’ or ‘shepherds’; the combined words form ‘Hycsos’”; The Hyksos and the Amalekites compared By comparing Egyptian literature regarding the * Quotations from the RSV unless stated otherwise. Hyksos invaders with Arabian historians’ de- 1. Ages in Chaos, 1952, ch. 2. 460 The Testimony, December 2003 “[The Hyksos] savagely burned the cities, Egypt in eclipse razed the temples of the gods to the ground, The Scriptures furnish no information about what and treated the whole native population with happened in Egypt after the Israelites departed. the utmost cruelty”.2 It is likely, however, that Egypt’s empire, ecol- In the remnants of Egyptian literature the Hyk- ogy and economy were severely damaged, and sos invaders are called ‘Amu’, and it is stated in took many years to recover. From the conquest the Ipuwer Papyrus that they came from Asia. until the time of King Solomon, the only ‘south- They were a people imbued to the core with a ern’ enemies of Israel were Amalek and Midian. spirit of destruction. As far as is known, no monu- There are no Biblical references to military expe- ments of any historical or artistic value were ditions by the pharaohs, or even to an Egyptian erected under their rule, and no literary works political presence. Yet during all this long era, survived their dominion in Egypt, with the ex- according to the conventional chronology, Ca- ception of lamentations by their Egyptian vic- naan was dominated by Egypt. Velikovsky’s re- tims, such as those contained in the Ipuwer vised chronology places the Israelite wanderings, Papyrus. the conquest and the judges in the same period The memory of the wickedness of these no- as the Hyksos/Amalekite rule over Egypt. If this mads is preserved by Manetho (see above). He is a correct association, then Amalek was indeed provides the information that after the Hyksos the main southern power during the era of the invaded the country—murdering, raping, pillag- Judges, as the Bible record indicates (see below). ing and burning—they established a dynasty of The pattern of devastation that the Amalekites Hyksos pharaohs, the King-Shepherds. pressed upon rural Israel during the time of the Several Arabian writers record an invasion of Judges (Judg. 6:4-6) is very similar to the King- Egypt by the Amalekites. The oral traditions that Shepherds’ exploitation of Egypt’s resources: survived were written down in the ninth to the “The Amu approach in their might and their twelfth centuries A.D. Some of these accounts hearts rage against those who are gathering in are patently fanciful or historically garbled, but the harvest, and they take away [their] kine from the essence remains: that at some point in his- the ploughing . The land is utterly perished, tory there were Amalekite Pharaohs who ex- and naught remains”.4 ploited and debased the wealth and might of By accepting this theory for the present, some Egypt. further insights arise from the Biblical records. Velikovsky quotes excerpts from the works of Velikovsky believed that Israel and Amalek several of these historians to demonstrate the passed each other in the Sinai, both nations hur- similarities with Egyptian accounts of the Hyk- riedly migrating in a time of widespread up- sos: heaval. But, as shown in Part 1, the Amalekites “The Amalekites reached Syria and Egypt and had been active near the borders of Egypt for took possession of these lands, and the ty- quite some time before the Exodus (Gen. 14:7). rants of Syria and the Pharaohs of Egypt were During Israel’s march through the Sinai Penin- of their origin”; sula, Amalek made persistent raids upon the “An Amalekite king, el-Welid, son of Douma, stragglers, culminating in a full war at Mount arrived from Syria, invaded Egypt, conquered Sinai. This pattern does not describe two dis- it, seized the throne and occupied it without placed companies passing each other, but Israel opposition, his life long”; invading the territory of Amalek. “When this conqueror came to Syria, he heard About a century before the Exodus, the phar- rumors about Egypt. He sent there one of his aoh who “did not know Joseph” and enslaved servants named Ouna, with a great host of the Hebrews was afraid of an invasion by un- warriors. El-Welid oppressed the inhabitants, named enemies: “Come, let us deal shrewdly seized their possessions and drew forth all with them, lest . if war befall us, they join our the treasures he could find”; enemies and fight against us” (Ex. 1:8,10). He “The Amalekites invaded Egypt, the frontier may well have been referring to the Amalekite of which they had already crossed, and started to ravage the country . to smash the objects 2. All quotations from Ages in Chaos, ch. 2. of art, to ruin the monuments”; 3. All quotations from Ages in Chaos, ch. 2. “There were Egyptian Pharaohs of Amalek- 4. Papyrus Ermitage 1116b, cited by Velikovsky, op. cit., ite descent”.3 p. 74. The Testimony, December 2003 461 tribes who were active along the routes through retranslated a verse in Psalm 78 referring to the the Sinai and the Negev. Perhaps they seemed to plagues upon Egypt: “He [Yahweh] cast upon be likely allies of Israel because of their nomadic them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, and in- origin and common Semitic ancestry. Pharaoh dignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels and the people were uneasy (v. 12), for by then among them” (v. 49, AV). By a change in one the regional advantage gained for Egypt by letter this can read, “sending king-shepherds Joseph’s policies had nearly abated. After the ten among them”. plagues and Egypt’s spectacular decline, the op- portunistic Amalekites, who before had not been Forty years of change quite strong enough to challenge Egypt, could During the period of the wilderness wanderings simply ‘expand’ into the Nile delta from their and the conquest it appears that there was a territory in Sinai without a fight.