once on a stela in Cairo Museum, attributed to the 21st Dynasty (=ca. 1070–945 BC), but quite possibly later (Hamada 1939:273–76, pl. 39).

efore the 19th Dynasty (13th century BC) and could be current long after. The name-form Pa-di-DEITY (and in the feminine, Ta-di(t)-DEITY) is simply a modernized Late-Egyptian form of an earlier type of name: Dd(w)-DEITY, feminine Ddt-DEITY, “gift of (DEITY).”30 In the early 18th Dynasty, in the 16th-15th centuries BC, we have a transitional form of name in this category, attested (so far) only in the feminine version: Ta-didi(t)-es, “The one that she [=goddess] has given,” lit. “the gift of her” [=goddess].31 The masculine would be: *Pa-didi-(DEITY or pronoun-suffix). Given the clear existence of the sequence of types of name with the same meaning: Didi-X, then *Padidi-X Ta-didi(t)-X, then Pa-di-X, it is possible to suggest that in fact Joseph’s father-in-law was originally called *Didj..Re a name which became later (if not *Pa-didi-(P)Re) the present Pa-di-Pre.To sum up, Zaphenath-pa’aneah (Joseph) could either derive from a purely theoretical name of a known type, but of unsuitable application (12th-fifth centuries BC) or from a commonly and solidly attested link-word and name having no problems (link-word, Middle/New Kingdoms, and one variant still later; name, overwhelmingly Middle Kingdom). The best suggestion for Asenath has a very close relative in the Middle Kingdom, the second best (type, Asen-Neit) would occur in the Middle and New Kingdoms in principle; the Late-Period equivalent, *(N)es-Neit is in every way inferior (unattested; wrong vocalization, etc.). Potiphera is of a form that began in the New Kingdom, going on through the Late Period; it is simply the modernized form of an older type of name with the same meaning (going back massively to the Middle Kingdom.)Other News in BriefSemites in High Office in EgyptNot all Levantines in Egypt remained on the bottom rungs of its society. With particular skills, some climbed into broadly “middle-class” niches. Such were an “Asiatic and Chief Craftsman, Tawti” (=“David”) and his colleague “the Chief Craftsman Epir” (cf. Ephron) from a 19th/18th century BC stela in Rio de Janeiro.32 Half a millennium later, ca. 1280 BC, we have a family of seven generations of Chief Draughtsmen of (the Temple of) Amun, whose founder Pada-Baal (“Baal has redeemed”) entered Egypt ca. 1450 BC. He married a lady with a Hurrian name (Ibri-kul), his male descendants married girls sometimes of Semitic background, sometimes Egyptian, down to Didia whose own mother and mother-in-law were each called Tal, “Dewdrop,” in good West-Semitic.33 In the New Kingdom, at the highest levels, we find such people as (e.g.) Urhiya (Hurrian for “True one”), a general under Sethos I, and his son Yupa (Canaanite, “fine/handsome”) (Ruffle 1979 and Kitchen 1979). Going back to the late Middle Kingdom, still higher, we have the Superintendent of the (Royal) Seal or “Chancellor,” Hur, well-known from numerous scarab-seals ca. 17th/16th centuries BC.34 Joseph’s appointment would be at this level, as a supremo, personally responsible to the pharaoh, or as a vizier.



In New-Kingdom times
we have scenes of presentations of the royal seal to the highest dignitaries, or their mention of this—so, Huy, Viceroy of Nubia (under Tutankhamun), and Nebwenenef, High Priest of Amun (under Ramesses II).35 And from early times (third millennium BC onward), many royal officials bore the title “Seal-bearer of the King.”36 And some Semites even ascended the throne briefly in the 18th century BC before the Hyksos kings took over. Such were “Ameny the Asiatic” and the kings Khandjer (name, Semitic hanzir, “boar”).Asiatic and Nubian slaves making bricks for the Temple of Amun at Karnak. From the Tomb of Rekh-Mi-Re, a vizier, at Thebes, ca. 1470-1445 B.C.“Death comes as the End”Both Jacob (Gn 50:2–3) and Joseph (Gn 50:26) were reportedly embalmed at their deaths in Egypt. But the old man requested that he be buried in the ancestral family tomb, back in Canaan—in effect, to be gathered to his fathers, like so many people there in the Middle Bronze Age,37 in the Late Bronze Age,38 and into the Iron Age under the Hebrew kingdoms (Bloch-Smith 1992). However, of Joseph it is stated that “he was put in a coffin in Egypt” (with a deferred hope of being reburied in Canaan). He and his family thus appear as being more assimilated to Egyptian cultural usages than old Jacob. Other Semites, too, ended up “in a coffin in Egypt”—from the late Middle Kingdom/Hyksos epoch, one thinks of the coffin of that indubitable Semite ‘Abdu, of the 17th/16th centuries BC, containing also a handsome dagger of one Nahman (another good West-Semitic name) bearing the cartouche of the Hyksos king Apopi.39 In later periods, most especially the New Kingdom, other foreigners entered even more fully into Egyptian ways, and had completely Egyptian tombs; one thinks again (at random) of general Urhiya mentioned above (Malek 1979:661, “Iurokhy”). And, of course, much later—witness Carian tombstones in Saite and Persian-period Egypt (Boardman 1980:137/8, and figs. 158–59).Reproduced by permission from He Swore an Oath: Biblical Themes from Genesis 12–50, ed. R.S. Hess, P.E. Satterthwaite and G.J. Wenham, Tyndale House, Cambridge, England, 1993, pages 77–89.Recommended Resources for Further StudyBible and SpadeCD-ROMArchaeology andthe Old Testament Moses andthe Gods of EgyptFootnotes:1. Cf. Posener 1957: 151-52, citing the Illahun papyri of ca.1800 BC.2. References in Posener 1957: 154, 155, citing various stelae. 3. Hayes 1955; for a discussion of its foreign personal names, see Albright 1954: 222-23; see also Posener 1957: 147-63; and for a brief note on the possible relevance of the papyrus for OT studies, see Kitchen 1957: 1-2.4. E.g. domestic servants (hery-per) (cf. Gn 39:2); brewers, cooks, tutors/guardians; women as cloth-makers, hairdressers and storekeepers; cf. Hayes 1955: 103-108 and table.5. Details, see Albright 1954; Posener 1957: 148-50.6. For a convenient brief account, see Bietak 1986: 236-63, 283-88, 291-95. On subsequent work there, cf. Bietak 1991.7. Altenmüller and Moussa 1991; supplemented by Malek and Quirke 1992.8. See the list of prices (from extremes of 2/3 shekel up to 55 shekels) in Falkenstein 1956: 88-90; here two-thirds of the examples are of 8 to 10 shekels. Similarly for the earlier empire of Akkad, cf. Mendelsohn 1949: 117 and n. 164; for an examination of particular classes, 10 cases of 9-15 shekels, 4 of 20 shekels, 2 in between, plus a few very cheap or very dear, cf. Edzard 1968: 87, Table 5 and the references there.9. Translations, e.g. in Meek 1969: 170, 175, 176.10. See, e.g. Van De Mieroop 1987: 10, 11. References for Old-Babylonian slave-prices within a 15-30 shekel span (averaging just over 22 shekels) may be found in Falkenstein 1956: 88, n. 5 end; cf. the earlier study of Meissner 1936: 34 and the references there.11. Cf. Eichler 1973: 16 and n. 35, and the texts listed, 17-18.12. Briefly dealt with by Mendelsohn 1949: 118 and n. 181.13. Cf. the list in Johns 1924: 542-46. For tEnglish Rosetta Stone