---
created_at: '2016-12-30T19:28:00.000Z'
title: How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs (2010)
url: http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=36&Issue=2&ArticleID=6
author: Mz
points: 70
story_text: 
comment_text: 
num_comments: 13
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1483126080
_tags:
- story
- author_Mz
- story_13286657
objectID: '13286657'
year: 2010

---
036

038

To the Asiatics, as they were called, the lush Nile Delta, with its open
marshlands rich with fish and fowl, was a veritable Garden of Eden. From
earliest times, Canaanites and other Asiatics would come and settle
here. Indeed, this is the background of the Biblical story of the famine
in Canaan that led to Jacob’s descent into Egypt (Genesis 46:1–7).

By the beginning of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (a few years after 2000
B.C.E.), the pressure of immigrants on the eastern Delta was so strong
that the Egyptian authorities built a series of forts at strategic
points to “repel the Asiatics,” as the story of Sinuhe tells
us.[1](/biblical-archaeology-review/36/2/6/en/1?width=600)

More than a century later, however, Egyptian policy toward the Asiatics
changed. Instead of trying to prevent them from coming in, the Egyptians
cultivated close relations with strong Canaanite city-states on the
Mediterranean coast and allowed select Asiatic populations to settle in
the eastern Delta. The last of the great pharaohs of the XIIth Dynasty,
Amenemhet III (c. 1853–1808 B.C.E.) and Amenemhet IV (c. 1808–1799
B.C.E.), even established a new town for them.
