Hyksos
The Jewish historian Josephus maintains that the Hyksos were in fact the children of Jacob who joined his son Joseph in Egypt to escape a famine in the land of Canaan. The Hyksos first appeared in Egypt during the eleventh dynasty. They came out of the second intermediate period in control of Avaris and the nile delta and ruled Lower Egypt as semite kings (fifteenth dynasty). Kamose, the last king of the Theban 17th Dynasty, refers to the Hyksos King Apophis as a Chieftain of Retjenu (Canaan). At the end of the Seventeenth dynasty of Egypt, they were expelled by an Egyptian pharaoh. The term "Hyksos" derives from the Egyptian expression heka khasewet ("rulers of foreign lands"). Josephus records the false etymology that the Greek phrase Hyksos stood for the Egyptian phrase Hekw Shasu meaning the Shepherd Kings, which scholars have only recently shown means "rulers of foreign lands."