(DKM 2023-02) Velikovsky and The Amalekites

VELIKOVSKY AND
THE AMALEKITES
DONALD KEITH MILLS
ACADEMIA.edu
2023
Copyright © Donald Keith Mills 2023
VELIKOVSKY AND THE AMALEKITES
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VELIKOVSKY AND THE AMALEKITES............................................................... 1

Preface ............................................................................................................................ 7
Part 1: Then Came Amalek … ..................................................................................... 9
First Encounter: Amalekites in Genesis? .................................................................... 9
Were there two tribes of Amalekites? ................................................................................. 9
The Genesis Amalekites in context ................................................................................... 11
The Battle at Rephidim ............................................................................................. 11
Israel encounters Amalek .................................................................................................. 11
Why a special enmity between Israel and Amalek? .......................................................... 12
When was the Battle at Rephidim? ................................................................................... 13
Where was Rephidim? ...................................................................................................... 14
Amalek’s Hegemony over the Middle East .............................................................. 16
Commanders of a very great empire ................................................................................. 16
Amalek in Joshua and Judges ........................................................................................... 18
Targum Yerushalmi on Numbers 21 ................................................................................. 18
Targum Yerushalmi on Numbers 33 ................................................................................. 20
Ginzberg’s “Legends of the Jews” .................................................................................... 21
Amalek in the Book of Judges .................................................................................. 22
Judges 10:12: Israel delivered from various enemies ....................................................... 22
Judges 5:14: “Out of Ephraim their root is in Amalek” .................................................... 22
Judges 12:15: The “Amalekite garrison” at Pirathon ........................................................ 23
Judges 3:13: Moab seizes Jericho ..................................................................................... 25
Judges 6:3, 6:33, and 7:12: The tale of Gideon................................................................. 25
“Higher Than Agag” ................................................................................................. 27
1 Samuel 30: The Amalekite raid on Ziklag ..................................................................... 27
1 Samuel 15: From Havilah until thou comest to Shur ..................................................... 28
1 Samuel 15: The City of the Amalekites ......................................................................... 30
Numbers 24:20: Amalek, the first of the nations .............................................................. 32
Numbers 24:7: Higher than Agag ..................................................................................... 33
Summary and Conclusions: Then Came Amalek ..................................................... 35
Part 2: Amalek in Arabia ........................................................................................... 39
Introduction ............................................................................................................... 39
Velikovsky’s Thesis and Pre-Islamic Arab “History” .............................................. 40
Three aspects ..................................................................................................................... 40
Historicity of Islamic Pre-History ..................................................................................... 40
Linguistic argument: Amalekite names............................................................................. 41
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Historical argument: lack of Arab history ........................................................................ 42

“An Old Arabian Tribe”: The origin of Amalek ....................................................... 45
Amalek son of Lud son of Shem ...................................................................................... 45
Lud in the Bible ................................................................................................................ 45
Other origin myths ............................................................................................................ 46
Amalek and the founding of Mecca.................................................................................. 48
Did Mecca exist in 1450 B.C.? ......................................................................................... 49
“The Upheaval In Arabia”......................................................................................... 52
Velikovsky’s claims ......................................................................................................... 52
“The Amalekites ruled in Mecca” .................................................................................... 52
“The Amalekites were put to flight”................................................................................. 55
“Mecca was destroyed in a single night … . The land became a desert” ......................... 57
“Many Amalekites … were swept away by the flood” .................................................... 61
Part 3: Amalek in Egypt ............................................................................................. 65
“The Arabian Traditions about the Amalekite Pharaohs” ......................................... 65
Who wrote “the Arabian traditions”? ............................................................................... 65
What Velikovsky made of this ......................................................................................... 67
Historical difficulties ................................................................................................. 68
The savagery of the Amalekites ....................................................................................... 68
“The Summary of The Wonders”: What Velikovsky didn’t tell us.................................. 69
The Amalekites as slavers ................................................................................................ 72
The city of the Amalekite rulers ....................................................................................... 72
The end of the Amalekites ................................................................................................ 75
Contrary Arabic traditions concerning Arab pharaohs ............................................. 76
A kernel of historic truth? ................................................................................................. 77
Words of Warning ............................................................................................................ 78
Summary: The Amalekites in Arabia and Egypt ...................................................... 79
The scientific method ....................................................................................................... 79
Velikovsky’s Model in Ages in Chaos ............................................................................. 80
Evaluating the model against the data .............................................................................. 82
Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 84
Access to sources .............................................................................................................. 84
Research bias .................................................................................................................... 84
Misrepresentation of sources ............................................................................................ 84
Empty references .............................................................................................................. 85
Overall conclusion ............................................................................................................ 86
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Part 4: “Malakhei Roim — King Shepherds” .......................................................... 88

Introduction ............................................................................................................... 88
Velikovsky’s Case ..................................................................................................... 88
The Word “Hyksos” .................................................................................................. 89
A “Silent Letter”? ...................................................................................................... 91
A Matter of Grammar: Adjectives and Nouns .......................................................... 92
A Matter of Grammar: Construct State ..................................................................... 92
A Matter of Grammar: Singular and Plural ............................................................... 93
A Matter of Grammar: Adjectives as Nouns ............................................................ 94
“Angels of Evil Things” ............................................................................................ 94
Enter the “Angels of Destruction” ............................................................................ 95
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 96
Part 5: The Amalekites in the Sinaitic Inscriptions ................................................. 99
Translator’s Preface................................................................................................... 99
Velikovsky, the Hyksos, and the Amalekites .................................................................... 99
The Sinaitic Inscriptions ................................................................................................. 100
Velikovsky, Tuch, and “Amu” ........................................................................................ 101
The Egyptian “Amu”....................................................................................................... 102
The Arabic “Amu” .......................................................................................................... 103
Summary and Conclusions.............................................................................................. 103
Tuch: The Name of an Amalekite Man (Extract) ................................................... 104
Addendum: L’Abrégé Des Merveilles ..................................................................... 107
[FROM CARRA DE VAUX’S] INTRODUCTION .............................................. 107
[CONTENTS OF PART ONE: BEINGS AND NATIONS] .................................. 108
[PART TWO: THE MARVELS OF EGYPT] ........................................................ 108
[HISTORY OF THE AMALEKITE PHARAOHS] ................................................... 109
CHAPTER VIII: THE INVASION OF THE AMALEKITES AND THE END OF
THE DYNASTY OF SA ................................................................................. 109
HURIA. ........................................................................................................................... 109
CHAPTER IX: THE AMALEKITE DYNASTY. - EL-WELID SON OF DUMA'.
......................................................................................................................... 114
Aïmin of Atrib. ................................................................................................................ 114
EL-WELID SON OF DUMA’ ........................................................................................ 115
CHAPTER X: THE PHARAOH OF MOSES ........................................................ 119
ER-RAYÂN .................................................................................................................... 119
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DÂRIM ............................................................................................................................. 124

MA‘ADIUS ....................................................................................................................... 126
CHAPTER XI: THE PHARAOH OF MOSES ....................................................... 126
AḲSAMIS ......................................................................................................................... 126
LÂTIS .............................................................................................................................. 127
TALMA ............................................................................................................................ 128
Bibliography of Works Referenced ......................................................................... 133
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Preface
It is likely that most readers of this volume will know already that, in Immanuel
Velikovsky’s reconstruction of ancient history1, the exodus of the Israelites from slavery
in Egypt coincided with the invasion of Egypt by “the Hyksos”, and that the Hyksos are
to be identified with the Biblical Amalekites. The Amalekites whom the Israelites
encountered, fought, and bested as they left Egypt were the Hyksos people heading
westward to conquer Egypt.
Velikovsky regarded this identification as crucial. “If … the Hyksos and the
Amalekites are one,” he wrote, “then world history, as it really occurred, is entirely
different from what we have been taught”—because world history as we have been taught
it tells us that the Hyksos invasion occurred around 1650 B.C., whereas the Israelite
Exodus took place around 1250 B.C., according to the theory most popular at the time
Ages in Chaos was published2.
For his evidence dealing with the Hyksos, Velikovsky appealed to Egyptian sources,
including those parts of Manetho’s “History of Egypt” preserved in the works of Flavius
Josephus3. For his evidence dealing with the Amalekites, he relied on two main sources:
the Bible, on the one hand, and what he called “Arab historians” on the other.
In this volume, I examine Velikovsky’s evidence for the “Hyksos–Amalekites”
equation by examining the sources that he cited in Ages in Chaos, and his use of those
sources. The work is assembled from four essays that were originally presented
separately in issues of the Chronology and Catastrophism Review, published by the
Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, as follows4:
• Part 1, “Then Came Amalek” was originally published in the 2015:1 issue of the
Review.
• Part 2, “Amalek in Arabia”, first appeared in the 2015:2 issue;
• Part 3, “Amalek in Egypt”, was first published in the 2015:3 issue;
• Part 4, “Malakhei Roim – King Shepherds”, appeared in the 2017:2 issue.
To these, I have added the following:

• Part 5, “The Amalekites in the Sinaitic Inscriptions”, originally published in 2015 to
my own web site.
Finally, as an addendum to Part 3, I have provided a translation of relevant extracts

from al-Miṣri’s Summary of Wonders, one of Velikovsky’s primary sources for the
supposed history of the Amalekites in Egypt.
1
I. Velikovsky, Ages in Chaos, Volume 1: From the Exodus to King Akhnaton, Doubleday & Company,
New York, 1952.
I shall follow the common custom of using the title of the “Ages in Chaos” series as the title of its first
volume: In references, the abbreviation, AiC, will refer to the same edition of the same volume.
2
W.F. Albright, The Old Testament and Modern Study, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1951.
3
The fullest fragments of Manetho’s history are preserved in Josephus’ polemic, Against Apion.
4
The parts were also formerly published separately on the Academia web site.
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In all cases, minor changes have been made in order to accommodate this compendium
format. This includes replacement of end notes with footnotes. Additionally, a small
number of typos and stylistic inconcinnities have been corrected. Otherwise, the text of
each part is as originally published.
Donald Keith Mills
Waikanae, New Zealand
February 2023
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Part 1: Then Came Amalek …
A review of the Biblical evidence cited by Velikovsky in favour of his

assertion that the Amalekites who troubled the Israelites for over 400
years were the same as the Hyksos who invaded Egypt and ruled it for a
similar period1. It is concluded that the Biblical evidence provides little
or no support for the hypothesis. Bible quotations are from the Revised
Standard Version (“RSV”), except where quoted by other authors from
other versions, or where otherwise indicated.
First Encounter: Amalekites in Genesis?

Were there two tribes of Amalekites?
Abraham was not an Israelite, but the ancestor of the Israelites, through his grandson
Jacob, also named “Israel”. According to Biblical tradition, Abraham was also the
ancestor of the Israelites’ south-eastern neighbours, the Edomites, through Jacob’s brother
Esau, also called “Edom”. Just as the Israelites were divided into twelve tribes named
after Jacob’s (Israel’s) sons and grandsons, so were the Edomites divided into twelve
tribes named after Esau’s (Edom’s) sons and grandsons; and among them was a tribe
called the “Amalekites”.
Their ancestor Amalek was the illegitimate son of Esau’s son Eliphaz, and thus was
Abraham’s great-great-grandson. In Hebrew tradition, he was the first “chief” of the
Amalekites:
These are the chiefs of the sons [i.e., descendants] of Esau. The sons of Eliphaz the
firstborn of Esau; the chiefs Teman, Omar, Zepho, Kenaz, Korah, Gatam, and Amalek:
these are the chiefs of Eliphaz in the land of Edom [Genesis 36:15-16].
According to an earlier passage:
Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters, and all the members of his household, his
cattle, all his beasts, and all his property which he had acquired in the land of Canaan; and
he went into a land2 away from his brother Jacob. So Esau dwelt in the hill country of Seir;
Esau is Edom. [Genesis 36:6, 8].
As the accompanying map shows, the land of Edom lay to the south-east of the Dead
Sea, with the “mountain of Seir”—the Shara Range, in modern parlance—forming its ap-
1
It is no part of this work to debate whether there was a “Hyksos invasion” of Egypt, or whether Hyksos
rule continued for 400 years, as Velikovsky claimed. Both propositions are denied by the majority of
modern scholars in the subject.
2
The Syriac Peshitta reads, “into the land [of] Seir”, which commentators regard as likely to be the original
reading (Driver, The Book of Genesis; Westminster Commentaries, 1916 edition; page 314; Skinner, A
Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis, in The International Critical Commentary, Scribner’s,
1910, page 430).
proximate western border, insofar as nomadic peoples can be said to live within borders3.
It was in this area that the Amalekite descendants of Esau apparently rose to prominence
over other Edomite tribes4, in the generations following the time of their eponymous
ancestor, Abraham’s descendant. The question arises, therefore: how could there also be
Amalekites who, in the Bible, were Abraham’s contemporaries?
This issue was import-
ant to Velikovsky’s chro-
nological reconstruction,
in which the Amalekites
were the Hyksos rulers of
Egypt. He relied for this
concept on Arab scholars,
some of whom (but by no Negeb Desert
means all) described the • Kadesh-
Barnea
Amalekites as having been
the original occupants of
the district of Mecca at the
time the city was founded • Eloth / Ailah / Eilat
by Abraham and his son
Ishmael. Some Arab • Elim?
schoolars (but again by no Mount
means all) further describ- Sinai?
•
ed those same Amalekites
Rephidim?
as having furnished
pharaohs at some period of
Map of Exodus locations; traditional but dubiously
Egypt’s history.
identified locations indicated with question-marks
The latter are factors of
great importance in Velikovsky’s chronological reconstruction, and I will examine them
in detail in Parts 2 and 3. In Ages in Chaos, he addressed the issue of the “Abrahamic”
Amalekites as follows:
In the Book of Genesis, in a genealogical table, Amalek is said to have been an offspring of
Eliphaz, son of Esau, Isaac's son. But obviously this statement does not refer to the Amalek
who was father of the tribe [because] the Book of Genesis also has another record: as early
as before the destruction of Sodom the Amalekites were at war with the kings of the Two-
Stream Land [Mesopotamia], a mighty coalition. The Amalekites who participated in these
battles in the days of Abraham could not have been descendants of Amalek, descendant of
Esau, himself a descendant of Abraham. The Amalekites were thus of an older clan and no
kinsmen of the Twelve Tribes.5
3
The name “Mount Seir” refers not only to a specific peak, but more generally to “the mountainous country
S. of the Dead Sea, and E. of the great gorge now called the Wâdy el-ˁArăbah” (Driver, ibid., page 160).
4
This pre-eminence of the Amalekites is deduced from the disappearance of the other distinct tribes of
Edomites from the Biblical record.
5
Ages in Chaos (op. cit.), p. 60 (chapter II, section 2, “The Israelites Meet the Hyksos”).
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PART 1: “THEN CAME AMALEK”
Velikovsky does not address what became of the descendants of Amalek, Esau’s
grandson. Is he justified in his conclusion that the Book of Genesis describes how “the
Amalekites were at war with the kings of the Two-Stream Land”, several generations
before the birth of Amalek?
The Genesis Amalekites in context
The actual wording of the Book of Genesis says that, in the time of Abraham—
… Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him came and subdued the Rephaim in
Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in
their mount Seir as far as El-paran on the border of the wilderness; then they turned back
and came to En-mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and subdued all the country of the Amalekites,
and also the Amorites who dwelt in Hazazon-tamar [Genesis 14:5-7].
It is interesting to look at the peoples who are specifically named as having been
“subdued” by the coalition of northern kings. They are the Rephaim, the Zuzim, the
Emim, the Horites, and the Amorites. The text does not say, though, that the Four Kings
subdued “the Amalekites”, but rather “all the country of the Amalekites”. This suggests
that the Biblical author in this case is not identifying a people but a region named after a
people.
I suggest that the name “Amalekites” is here being used proleptically to identify, not
the land that the people occupied in Abraham’s time, but land that would become
associated with them in later times. There are numerous Biblical examples of the
proleptic use of names of people and places; another occurs a little later in the same story
with a reference to the northern city of Dan (Genesis 14:14). At that time, however, Dan
bore the name “Laish”, unless it was known by some other, even earlier, name. At all
events, seven hundred years were to pass before the Danites conquered the city and
renamed it after themselves (Judges 18).
There is no compelling reason to accept that there was an Amalekite people in
southern Palestine in the time of Abraham, and no reason to accept Velikovsky’s
judgment, that their existence proves that the Amalekites were a different (and far more
ancient) tribe from the descendants of Amalek, the son of Eliphaz, the son of Esau.
The Battle at Rephidim

Israel encounters Amalek
By some interpretations of Biblical chronology, the Chedorlaomer episode took place
around 2085 B.C.6 Almost 650 years passed, during which Abraham’s Israelite
descendants entered and escaped slavery in Egypt. Having made their way to the vicinity
of Mount Sinai (wherever that might have been7), the Israelites made camp at a place
called “Rephidim”, near the Wilderness of Sin (a name related to that of Sinai). The
Book of Exodus records:
6
I am using the Bible Hub Old Testament Timeline at http://biblehub.com/timeline/old.htm .
7
I shall pursue below several indications that it was actually Mt Seir, the home territory of those
Amalekites who were descended from Esau.
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Then came Amalek and fought with Israel at Rephidim. And Moses said to Joshua,
“Choose for us men, and go out, fight with Amalek; tomorrow I will stand on the top of the
hill with the rod of God in my hand.” So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with
Amalek; and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. … And Joshua mowed
down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.
And the LORD said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of
Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” And
Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The LORD is my banner, saying, “A hand
upon the banner of the LORD! The LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to
generation” [Exodus 17:8-16].
Why a special enmity between Israel and Amalek?
There are different conjectures as to why this especial enmity existed from Israel
towards Amalek. It is generally connected with the understanding that the Amalekites in
some way ambushed the Israelites, as recalled in Deuteronomy 25:17-18:
Remember what Amalek did to you by the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked
you on the way, when you were faint and weary, and cut off at your rear all who lagged
behind you; and he did not fear God.
However, this seems at odds with the account in Exodus 17. When the Amalekites
“came” on the Israelites, the latter were not “on the way”, but had already been camped
for some days (as discussed below). Commentators such as Driver note that the details of
the Israelites’ weariness at the time of the attack, and the Amalekites’ concentration on
“those whom sickness or exhaustion compelled to follow on slowly behind”, do not
correspond with this or any extant record of the interactions between Israel and Amalek8.
Jewish and Arab traditions provide two different motivations for the enmity of the
Amalekites towards the Israelites. On the Jewish side, the Targum Pseudo-Yonathan
(which Velikovsky used repeatedly for its “historical” content under the name, Targum
Yerushalmi) provides this motivation, here highlighted in boldface (Exodus 7:8):
And Amalek came from the land of the south and leaped on that night a thousand and six
hundred miles; and on account of the disagreement which had been between Esau and
Jakob, he came and waged war with Israel in Rephidim, and took and killed (some of the)
men of the house of Dan; for the cloud [which concealed the Israelites] did not embrace
them [the Danites], because of the strange worship that was among them.
It would be interesting to know where the Amalekites had leapt from across 1600 miles
in a single night (not to mention how), but we are not told. What is plain, though, is that
the writer of the Targum knew of no other Amalekites than the Edomite descendants of
Amalek, the grandson of Esau.
The recorders of the Arab tradition provide a different motivation. According to
Masudi9, the battle was for possession of the Amalekite kingdom, which was “in the
8
S.R. Driver, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (International Critical Commentary,
Vol. 5), 1896, pp. 286-287.
9
El-Mas’ûdî’s Historical Encyclopædia entitled Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, Translated from the
Arabic by Aloys Sprenger, M.D. (1841), Vol. 1, page 97.
Page 12 of 136
country of Ailah [Eilat], towards Madyan [Midian]”. It is impossible to identify clear

borders for these ancient territories, especially given that they were inhabited by nomadic
or semi-nomadic peoples; but Eilat, at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, would be at
about the southern limit of Edom, and the northern limit of Midian (see the map above).
The central peak of Mt Seir, which the Song of Deborah associates with Sinai as God’s
abode10, stands a few miles to the north-east of Eilat itself.
According to Masudi, the Amalekite king was named “es-Somaˀidaˀ Ben Hauber Ben
Malik”. Masudi wrote:
Yushaˀ [Joshua] opened his military operations [to take the land of Canaan] with the war
against the Amalekite king … ˁAuf Ben Saˀid el-Jorhomi says, in allusion to this:
“Doest thou not see Ibn Hauber the ˁAmalekite at Ailah: he is heated and thin on account of
the agitation which he is in, being invaded by an army of eighty thousand Israelites, partly
without, partly with armour.”
When was the Battle at Rephidim?
Masudi’s account places the battle in the same general region as I suggested in the
previous section, as opposed to its usual location in the Sinai Peninsula; and it depicts the
Amalekites as the current inhabitants of the land, with a settled “kingdom” or “dominion”
much like the Canaanites and other pre-Israelite tribes in the accounts of Exodus,
Numbers, and Joshua. This accords with the Amalekites being Edomite descendants of
Esau, rather than very recent immigrants. Like the Bible account (on the face of it),
Masudi’s narrative makes the Israelites and not the Amalekites the aggressors.
In the Bible text as it stands, the Battle at Rephidim took place early in the Israelites’
desert wanderings, less than three months after the crossing of the Yam Suph. The exact
location of Rephidim is unknown, but traditional scholarship locates it in the deep south
of the Sinai Peninsula, close to Mt Sinai itself. However, “Various scholars have noted
that all other extant records about the Amalekites place them normally in the northern
Sinai or Midian or the Negev of Canaan, making the battle at Rephidim their most
southerly foray on record.”11 Unless, of course, the Battle at Rephidim took place neither
when nor where tradition locates it in space and time.
10
Judges 5:3b-5: “To the LORD I will sing, I will make melody to the LORD God of Israel. LORD, when
thou didst go forth from Seir, when thou didst march from the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the
heavens dropped, yea, the clouds dropped water. The mountains quaked before the L ORD, yon Sinai
before the LORD, the God of Israel”. An apparent equation of Mt Sinai with Mt Seir as the home of
Yahweh also appears in Deuteronomy 33:2.
11
D.K. Stuart, Exodus: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture (New American
Commentary, 2006), page 393. The issue also puzzles more conservative commentators, whose tentative
explanations are summarised by J.H. Dobson (A Guide to the Book of Exodus [TEF Study Guide 13],
SPCK 1977):
a) “Perhaps on this occasion a large number of Amalekites had travelled far from their homes;
b) “Perhaps the writer made a mistake; the Amalekites may have attacked Israel later on, when they
were nearer to Palestine;
c) “The attack happened later, but the writer of Exodus chose to put the story at this point in the book
because he saw that it gave an answer to the question asked by the Israelites, ‘Is the LORD with us
or not?
“We cannot be sure which of these explanations is nearest to being correct”.
Page 13 of 136
There are several indications that this “first encounter” with Amalek took place much
later than within weeks of the departure from Egypt. The most important of these is the
role of Joshua, who is here introduced for the first time in the Biblical narrative, and who
appears as a full-grown warrior capable of leading an army. Yet sixteen chapters later (at
Exodus 33:11) he is presented to us, as though for the first time, as a young man, Moses’
private servant:
When Moses turned again into the camp, his servant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man,
did not depart from the tent.
This suggests that the Battle at Rephidim took place at a later time than this, rather
than an earlier; and indeed, there is a further indication in Exodus 24, where—seven
chapters after the battle with the Amalekites—Joshua re-appears as if he is someone we
already know, but who is still Moses’ personal servant, not yet his commander in chief:
And Moses rose up, and his servant Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God
[Exodus 24:13].
It seems also significant that, in Numbers 13:16—at a time more than two years after
the crossing of the Yam Suph, by the chronology provided—we learn that Joshua was
still named “Hoshea the son of Nun”. This was on the occasion on which Joshua was
sent, with eleven others, to “spy out the land” of Canaan. In 13:4–15, where the “spies”
are introduced one by one (one per tribe), Joshua appears without explanation as
“Hoshea, the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim”. The summary of the commissioning
of the spies says,
These were the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called
Hoshea [“Salvation”] the son of Nun Joshua [“Yêhôshuaˁ”, “Yahweh Saves”; Numbers
13:16].
If the text is disordered, and the Battle at Rephidim occurred at some time later than
the spying expedition into Canaan, at a time after the “young man” Joshua first received
his new name, and had matured into Moses’ general, then logically it would have taken
place south-eastward from Canaan—around the territory of the Edomites—and not
toward the south-west and the Sinai Peninsula. This same area is also signposted by
geographical indications in the text.
Where was Rephidim?
The events in the Wilderness of Sin which immediately precede the Battle at Rephidim
seem to duplicate events set 40 years later in the Wilderness of Zin (Numbers 20). In
both accounts, the people complain to Moses that they have no water to drink. In both
accounts, God tells Moses to take his staff and bring water from a rock. In both accounts,
the place is named Meribah (“Contention”), “because of the faultfinding of the children
of Israel” (Exodus 17) in the place “where the people of Israel contended with the LORD”
(Numbers 29).
In Exodus 17, Rephidim is close to Mount Horeb; in Numbers 20, Meribah is close to
Mount Hor (which simply means, “Mount Mountain”). Mt Horeb is often taken to be
synonymous with Mt Sinai, which the Song of Deborah may show to have been Mt Seir
Page 14 of 136
in Edom (see footnote 10); Mt Hor was situated “on the edge of the land of Edom”
(Numbers 30:33). In Exodus 17, the story of the water from the rock is followed
immediately by battle with the Amalekites, who are Edomites. In Exodus 20, the story of
the water from the rock is followed immediately by battle with the Edomites. The
circumstances bear interesting comparison with Masudi’s account of the Battle at
Rephidim:
Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom, “Thus says your brother Israel:
You know all the adversity that has befallen us: how our fathers went down to Egypt, and
we dwelt in Egypt a long time; and the Egyptians dealt harshly with us and our fathers; and
when we cried to the LORD, he heard our voice, and sent an angel and brought us forth out
of Egypt; and here we are in Kadesh, a city on the edge of your territory. Now let us pass
through your land. We will not pass through field or vineyard, neither will we drink water
from a well; we will go along the King’s Highway, we will not turn aside to the right hand
or to the left, until we have passed through your territory.” But Edom said to him, “You
shall not pass through, lest I come out with the sword against you.” And the people of
Israel said to him, “We will go up by the highway; and if we drink of your water, I and my
cattle, then I will pay for it; let me only pass through on foot, nothing more.” But he said,
“You shall not pass through.” And Edom came out against them with many men, and with
a strong force. Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his territory; so Israel
turned away from him [Numbers 20:14-21].
The source of the Edomite king’s opposition is obvious, and one is reminded of el-
Jorhomi’s words about the king of the Amalekites, “Doest thou not see Ibn Hauber the
ˁAmalekite at Ailah: he is heated and thin on account of the agitation which he is in, being
invaded by an army of eighty thousand Israelites, partly without, partly with armour.”
From the Israelite perspective, however, they had come in peace, at a time of need, and
been received with conflict by their kinsmen; and this would surely account for the
perpetual enmity the Israelites felt thereafter.
It was in Mt Seir (the mountain range running from the south end of the Dead Sea to
the Gulf of Aqaba) that the final remnant of the Amalekites was destroyed by the
Simeonites “in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah” (1 Chronicles 4:39-43). There are
further indications that the Battle at Rephidim also took place in the vicinity of Mt Seir.
El-Johormi locates the Amalekites “at Ailah”, which is Ailath (2 Kings 16:6), also called
Elath or Eloth (‫ ;אילת‬Deuteronomy 2:8). The principal peak of the “Mount Seir” range is
located just a few miles north east of Eloth at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, which
is roughly where Edomite and Midianite territory met. In Exodus 17, the Israelites come
to Rephidim directly from “Elim” (‫אילם‬, Exodus 16:1); “Elim” and “Eloth” are both plural
nouns meaning “palm grove”. McNeile notes in his Commentary, “There is much to be
said for identifying Elim with the place described by the different names Elath, Eloth …
In [Numbers 33] an encampment ‘by the Yam Sūph’ is mentioned (v. 10) between Elim
and the Wilderness of Sin. [Yam Suph] is usually supposed to refer to the Gulf of Suez;
but the name can also, as we have seen, be employed to describe the Gulf of Aḳaba”12.
12
A.H. McNeile, The Book of Exodus, Methuen & Co., 1908, page xcix.
Page 15 of 136
Eloth appears in Deuteronomy 2, where Moses recounts what followed the repulse by
the Edomites: the Israelites turned northward and skirted the borders of Edom, travelling
“away from [their] brethren the sons of Esau who live in Seir, away from the Arabah road
from Elath and Ezion-geber. And [they] turned and went in the direction of the
wilderness of Moab” (Deuteronomy 2:8).
South of Elath/Eloth, and running down the eastern side of the Gulf of Aqaba, was the
territory of Midian. Immediately following the Battle at Rephidim, “Jethro, the priest of
Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel his
people, … and … came with his sons and his wife to Moses in the wilderness where he
was encamped at the mountain of God” (Exodus 18:1, 5). In the traditional interpretation
of the text, Jethro and his family made a long and fearsome journey through waterless
country to the southern Sinai Peninsula and back. But if Rephidim and “the mountain of
God” were in the vicinity of Mt Seir, they lay only a few miles from the (fuzzy) border
with Midian. Jethro’s having heard of events involving his son-in-law, and his journey to
the Israelite camp and back, then seem much more feasible.
In Numbers 20, it was while the Israelites were camped at Kadesh (Kadesh-Barnea)
that the Edomites “came out against them with many men, and with a strong force” (verse
20). In Genesis 14, it was from “En-mishpat (that is, Kadesh)” that the Four Kings
“subdued all the country of the Amalekites”. That country was the territory of the
Amalekite descendants of Esau, around Mt Seir. As I have shown, there is no need to
suppose, with Velikovsky (and, it must be admitted, most commentators) that “The
Amalekites … participated in these battles in the days of Abraham”; it is merely their
territory that is named. There is thus, also, no need to look for a tribe of Amalekites
separate from the descendants of Esau, or to follow Velikovsky in the astonishing
unexplained inconsistency, that although the Amalekites had been present in the
wildernesses of southern Palestine since before Abraham’s time13, yet in the time of
Moses “they had only recently occupied that area”14, having been forced out of their
home in Arabia by the same cosmic catastrophes that were experienced in Egypt as the
Ten Plagues.
Amalek’s Hegemony over the Middle East

In the first part of this essay, I have sought to show that there is no need to suppose
that the Amalekites encountered by the Israelites at Rephidim were any other than the
Israelites’ kinsmen, the descendants of Esau, inhabiting their home territory in the region
of Mt Seir. In the second part, I turn my attention to Velikovsky’s claims for the
Amalekites as masters of all Palestine and Syria.
Commanders of a very great empire
Over a period of time, the Israelites won control of the land of Canaan, as recounted in
the books of Joshua and Judges. But were they really in control? During the same
period, by Velikovsky’s reconstruction, the Amalekites—their successive leaders known
13
Ages in Chaos (op. cit.), page 60 (chapter II, section 2, “The Israelites Meet the Hyksos”).
14
Ibid., page 60 (chapter II, section 2, “The Israelites Meet the Hyksos”).
Page 16 of 136
to the Egyptians as “Hyksos”, meaning “foreign chieftains”15—won control of most of

Egypt. Velikovsky emphasised that their conquest of Egypt was also a conquest of
Palestine, Syria, and indeed the whole of the eastern Mediterranean:
The Amu-Hyksos held Egypt in submission from their fortress Auaris, which they built
near the border of the country. Throughout the land they maintained garrisons (Manetho)16.
The dominion of the Amu-Hyksos was not confined to Egypt. … … … [Through] the
finding in distant countries of objects bearing the names of Apop and Khian … some
historians have found themselves compelled to believe that the Hyksos, if only for a
transient period, commanded a very great empire … 17.
Some historians, such as Redford and Ryholt, still maintain that view of the Hyksos,
though it has been more generally rejected by others. Regardless of its accuracy,
however, the question here is whether the Amalekites can be shown to have played a
corresponding dominant role in Palestinian affairs throughout the period covered by the
books of Joshua and Judges. Velikovsky wrote18:
The problem of why, in the Books of Joshua and Judges, which cover more than four
hundred years, there is no mention of Egyptian domination over Canaan or any allusion to
military expeditions headed by pharaohs has remained unsolved. Yet during this long
period of time, according to the conventional chronology, Palestine was dominated by
Egypt.
The revision presented here places the time of wandering, of Joshua, and of Judges in the
period of the Hyksos-Amalekite rule over Egypt. In harmony with this revised scheme the
Amalekites must have been regarded at that time as the mightiest among the nations.19
They often invaded the land of Israel just before the harvest.
Re-reading these words recently, several decades after I read them for the first time, I
wondered: What account was there in the Bible, in the books of Joshua and Judges, of this
total dominion and these frequent raids? As Velikovsky noted, the two books together
recount the events of over four centuries. Surely those records must show strong
evidence of Amalekite dominion?
15
Velikovsky accepts Josephus’ claim, on behalf of Manetho, that Hyksos meant “king-shepherds” (Ages in
Chaos page 56—chapter II, section 1, “Who were the Hyksos?”); Josephus, Against Apion, I, 82).
However, Manetho is explicit that his etymology for the term is derived partly from Ancient Egyptian
(“the sacred language”), but partly from contemporary Coptic (“the common dialect”). It is clear from
hieroglyphic texts that Manetho’s etymology was mistaken, and that the correct term is ḥqꜢ ḫꜢst,
“chieftain of a foreign land” (vowels being omitted in hieroglyphic script); even some of the Hyksos
rulers referred to themselves explicitly by this title. “Hyksos” was the generic Egyptian term for a ruler
over any of the Semitic tribes of south-west Asia. The Egyptians rarely distinguished one tribe from
another, but tended to call them all ˁˀmw (or ˁꜢmw in standard Egyptian transcription), usually written in
modern texts as A’amu or (as preferred by Velikovsky) Amu. The singular is ˁˀm (ˁꜢm), A’am.
Velikovsky’s “Amu-Hyksos” thus refers to the tribes and their rulers.
16
Ages in Chaos (op. cit.), page 72 (chapter II, section 7, “Palestine at the Time of the Hyksos
Domination”).
17
Ibid., page 68 (chapter II, section 6, “Hyksos in Egypt”).
18
Ibid., page 73 (chapter II, section 7, “Palestine at the Time of the Hyksos Domination”).
19
Ibid., page 71 (chapter II, section 7, “Palestine at the Time of the Hyksos Domination”).
Page 17 of 136
Amalek in Joshua and Judges

Consulting Strong’s concordance, I was surprised to find that there is no reference
whatsoever to “Amalek” or “Amalekites” throughout the 24 chapters of Joshua. Even
more telling, in the whole of the Book of Judges there were only five references to
“Amalekites” (Judges 6:3, 33; 7:12; 10:12; 12:15), and two more to “Amalek” (Judges
3:13; 5:14). Of these:
1) 10:12 is a passing mention of “oppression” by various peoples, including Amalekites;
2) 5:14 is a puzzling reference to Ephraim’s root in Amalek;
3) 12:15 mentions a geographical location, the “mount of the Amalekites”, but not the
Amalekites themselves;
4) 3:13 describes the Amalekites as subordinate allies of Moab;
5) 6:3 and 33, and 7:12, all belong to the story of Gideon, in which the Amalekites are
subordinate allies of the Midianites.
Only (4) and (5) in the list above describe “invasions” by Amalekites, and in both
cases the Amalekites are subsidiaries to other kings and play a role so minor as to be
virtually non-existent. This is meagre evidence indeed of their utter dominance of the
Middle East in this 400-year period, and of their “often” invading Israel “just before the
harvest”. But the evidence is even further weakened if we examine the Biblical text and
context for each reference, which I shall do in the section below, “Amalek in the Book of
Judges”.
First, however, I will consider Velikovsky’s explanation for why Biblical references to
the Amalekites are sparse. Velikovsky never comments explicitly on this scarcity, but he
provides the following explanation nevertheless:
The Amalekites ruled over vast territories and in their colonial politics allied themselves
with kindred nations. This is the ground for the Hebrew tradition that the Amalekites posed
as Moabites, Canaanites, and other peoples, and in these disguises carried on war against
Israel, or that they supported the Canaanites in their war against the Israelites. [Footnote:
Targum Yerushalmi, Numbers 21:1 and 33:4. Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 114.]20
There is no source, so far as I know, which identifies the Amalekites as a “kindred
nation” to the “Moabites, Canaanites, and other peoples” who inhabited Palestine. The
Bible identifies them as kindred to the Israelites; Arab tradition identifies them as kindred
to the peoples of the southern Arabian Peninsula. But more to the point, the support for
Velikovsky found in the Targum Yerushalmi is late and weak.
Targum Yerushalmi on Numbers 21
A Targum (Aramaic for “translation”) is a specifically Aramaic paraphrase or
elucidation of some part of the Hebrew scriptures. Aramaic, the language of Syria
(Aram), was acquired by the Jews during the Babylonian captivity. The Targums were
created to compensate for the fact that the Jewish people were increasingly unable to
20
Domination”).
Page 18 of 136
understand their own ancestral language21. At first preserved by oral tradition, they began
to be committed to writing from about A.D. 100 onward.
There is a difficulty in tracing Velikovsky’s reference in that a variety of western
targums on the Torah were traditionally each called Targum Yerushalmi (“Jerusalem
Targum”). Bowker, in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions22, describes
Targum Yerushalmi as “a largely midrashic translation (or interpretation) of the
Hagiographa” (Ruth, Psalms, and Job), but without indicating which Yerushalmi he is
referring to. The Targum Pseudo-Yonathan, on the other hand, also known as Targum
Yerushalmi I, he describes as “a late targum on the whole Pentateuch”, and it is the one
Velikovsky refers to. Bowker illustrates its “late” nature with a reference to the
paraphrase of Genesis 15:4, which “mentions the wives of Muḥammad as the wives of
Ishmael”. The earliest date for that material is around the middle of the 7th century A.D.
An English translation of the Pseudo-Yonathan can be found on the Internet23,
incorporating also the relevant portions of the so-called Fragment Targums formerly
known as Targum Yerushalmi II. Velikovsky’s references do not refer to verse numbers
of the Bible, but to chapter and paragraph numbers of the Targum. Here is the Pseudo-
Yonathan text for Numbers XXI:1-2, corresponding to Numbers 21:1-3 in the Biblical
text, with the older Yerushalmi II text fragments alongside to the right:
XXI.1 And Amalek, who had dwelt in the south, and And when the Kenaanite, king Arad, who
changed, and came and reigned in Arad, heard that the dwelt in the south, heard that Aharon was
soul of Aharon was at rest, that the pillar of the Cloud dead, that holy man on account of whose
which for his sake had led the people of the house of merit the Cloud of Glory had protected
Israel had been taken up, and that Israel was coming by Israel; that the pillar of the Cloud had been
the way of the explorers to the place where they had taken up; and that the prophetess Miriam
rebelled against the Lord of the world. For, when the was dead, on whose account the well had
explorers had returned, the children of Israel abode in flowed, but had (since) been hidden; he
Rekem, but afterward returned from Rekem to answered and said, Ye servants of war,
Motseroth, in six encampments during forty years, come and let us set battle in line against
when they journeyed from Motseroth, and returned to Israel; for we shall find the way by which
Rekem by the way of the explorers, and came unto the explorers came up. Therefore they set
Mount Umanom, where Aharon died; (and,) behold, he battle in line against Israel, and carried
came and arrayed battle against Israel, and captured away some of them with a great captivity.
some of them with a great captivity.
2. And Israel vowed a vow before the Lord and said, If [Not preserved]
Thou wilt indeed deliver this people into my hand, I
will destroy their cities. And the Lord heard Israel's
prayer, and delivered up the Kenaanites, and he
destroyed them and their cities. And he called the
name of the place Hormah.
21
The development of Targums began during the repopulation of Jerusalem following the period of the
Babylonian exile. “Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who
could hear with understanding … . And he read from it … in the presence of the men and the women and
those who could understand … . The Levites helped the people to understand the law … ; and they gave
the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (Nehemiah 8: 2-8).
22
J. Bowker, ed., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, OUP 2000, 2003.
23
See http://targum.info/targumic-texts/pentateuchal-targumim/ . The translation is by J.W. Etheridge,
1862.
Page 19 of 136
On its own, Pseudo-Yonathan XXI:1 apparently supports Velikovsky’s idea that the
Amalekites disguised themselves as other tribes: “And Amalek, who had dwelt in the
south, and changed, and came and reigned in Arad …”. Notice, however, that the
Amalekites do not feature in the older Yerushalmi II version, where the opponents of
Israel are named simply as “Kenaanites” (Canaanites), as in the Biblical text. Even
Pseudo-Yonathan, in the very next paragraph, forgets the Amalekites and reverts to his
underlying text (“Kenaanites”).
The recurrence of some phrases from Yerushalmi II in the Pseudo-Yonathan reveals
the latter’s editorial hand at work: Amalek “had dwelt in the south”, just as, in Yerushalmi
II, the Canaanite king “dwelt in the south”; Amalek “came and arrayed battle against
Israel, and captured some of them with a great captivity”, just as the Canaanites “set
battle in line against Israel, and carried away some of them with a great captivity”.
Between those two sentences, the Pseudo-Yonathan editor has inserted an extremely
turgid and irrelevant account of the Israelites’ movements preceding Aaron’s death, in
place of the more relevant account of the significance of Aaron’s death found in the
Yerushalmi II.
Targum Yerushalmi on Numbers 33
Velikovsky’s second reference was to Targum Yerushalmi, Numbers 33:4,
corresponding to Numbers 33:39-41 of the Biblical text. The latter reads:
And Aaron was a hundred and twenty-three years old when he died on Mount Hor. And
the Canaanite, the king of Arad, who dwelt in the Negeb in the land of Canaan, heard of the
coming of the people of Israel. And [the Israelites] set out from Mount Hor, and encamped
at Zalmonah.
The isolated sentence of verse 40 (the second sentence), inserted into the list of the
stations of the Israelites in their wanderings, with no relevance and no upshot, has the
appearance of a scribal error—perhaps a marginal gloss, of which only the first line was
adopted into the text. There is no Yerushalmi II fragment for this, but the Pseudo-
Yonathan says (XXXIII:3c – 5a):
And Aharon was one hundred and twenty three years old when he died on Mount Umano.
And Amalek the wicked, who was combined with the Kenaanites, and reigned in Arad, the
house of his abode was in the land of the south, heard that the sons of Israel were coming to
wage war against them, and utterly to destroy their cities.
And they removed from Mount Umano, and encamped in Zalmona, a place of thorns, and
narrow (or squalid), in the land of the Edomaee; and there the soul of the people was
distressed on account of the way …
The middle sentence again lends Velikovsky support, but the construction is clumsy
and ungrammatical, with every sign of interpolation.24 Moreover, as mentioned, clues in
the Pseudo-Yonathan text, such as Ishmael’s wife bearing the legendary Arabic name
Fatimah, lead to its being dated no earlier than the time of the Arab Conquest of the
Middle East. The change of “Canaanites” to “Amalekites” in both instances reveals a
24
On the other hand, it does lend support to the Arab view on Amalek’s motivation in attacking Israel.
Page 20 of 136
tendenz on the part of the author or editor, which does not appear in earlier Targums of
the same passage. And if there was a genuine ancient tradition that “the Canaanites”
were really “the Amalekites”, why is there no trace of it in the Bible?
On the whole, I conclude that the Targum references provided by Velikovsky do little
to support his case. They are late, legendary in nature, mixed up with details that clearly
cannot be historical, and unsupported by other authorities, and they provide only vague
indications of what he is trying to establish. They certainly do not point clearly to Hyksos
domination of the whole of Palestine, and certainly offer only the weakest evidence for
the existence of a “Hebrew tradition that the Amalekites posed as Moabites, Canaanites,
and other peoples”.
However, Velikovsky relied on other extra-Biblical traditions as well as the Targums
in constructing his picture of Amalekite dominion in the Middle East.
Ginzberg’s “Legends of the Jews”
Sportingly, in the same footnote on page 73 of Ages in Chaos that pointed us to the
Targum Yerushalmi, Velikovsky supplies a third reference. It is to “Ginzberg, Legends,
VI, 114”. Volume 6 of Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews25 provides references and notes
for his Volumes 3 and 4. Our concern here is with Volume 3, which relates Jewish
legendary history for the period “from the Exodus to the death of Moses”.
In Chapter 5 of Volume 3, Ginzberg repeats the account given above from Pseudo-
Yonathan, in an elaborated form which on the face of it strongly supports Velikovsky’s
position. For example, it includes statements such as, “The Amalekites disguised
themselves in Canaanite costume and spoke the speech of the latter, so that the Israelites
might not be able to tell if they had before them Amalekites, as their personal appearance
seemed to show, or Canaanites, as their dress and speech indicated.” However, a reason
is given for this (apparently one-off) deception which has nothing to do with Amalekite
supremacy:
The reason for this disguise was that Amalek knew that Israel had inherited the legacy from
their ancestor Isaac that God always answered their prayer, hence Amalek said: “If we now
appear as Canaanites, they will implore God to send them aid against the Canaanites, and
we shall slay them.”
The passage as a whole certainly doesn’t support the idea that it was normal Amalekite
policy to disguise themselves as other nations. Turning to the page indicated in
Velikovsky’s footnote (page 114 of Volume 6), we find a flurry of references as sources
for Ginzberg’s synthesised account. Central to them is the comment Velikovsky wished
us to read:
Targum Yerushalmi Num. 21.1, and somewhat differently on 33.4, where it is stated that
Amalek joined Canaan in his attack on Israel.
25
L. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, published in German in 1909; English translation by Szold and others,
Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913.
Page 21 of 136
However, Ginzberg then enjoins his readers to “comp[are]. the preceding note” on
page 113, where he comments on the same passage:
Only in this passage and in the sources dependent upon it is Arad identified with Amalek.
All of Ginzberg’s other sources for the passage concerned seem to post-date the
Targum Pseudo-Yonathan, with the additional details such as those I have cited above
added as pious midrashic expansions at uncertain dates from the 8th century A.D. onward.
Their reliability as historical sources is at least as questionable as that of Pseudo-
Yonathan.
Amalek in the Book of Judges

Velikovsky relied on Biblical tradition as well as the Targums and Jewish legends in
constructing his picture of Amalekite dominion in the Middle East. Here I turn my
attention to the seven references to “Amalek” and “Amalekites” in the Book of Judges,
listed above.
Judges 10:12: Israel delivered from various enemies
In reviewing the references to Amalek and Amalekites in the Book of Judges, I begin
with what is almost the last. In context, the passage reads:
The LORD said to the people of Israel, “Did I not deliver you from the Egyptians and from
the Amorites, from the Ammonites and from the Philistines? The Sidonians also, and the
Amalekites, and the Maonites, oppressed you; and you cried to me, and I delivered you out
of their hand. Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods … [Judges 10:11-13]
This is a simple list of some of the peoples whom the Israelites fought in the course of
the Conquest of Canaan. There is no indication that the Amalekites exercised dominion
over the other groups or were otherwise distinguished from them, or that they allied
themselves with or disguised themselves as any others of the peoples mentioned. It
contributes nothing to Velikovsky’s argument, and he made no use of it.
Judges 5:14: “Out of Ephraim their root is in Amalek”
To illustrate the supposed relationship between the Amalekites and other opponents of
Israel, Velikovsky wrote:
The Song of Deborah, like the blessing of Balaam, is an old fragment. An obscure verse
reads: “Out of Ephraim their root is in Amalek” (Judges 5:14).
“Their” obviously refers to the Canaanites, and to Jabin, king of Canaan, who reigned in
Hazor, and to his captain Sisera, who commanded nine hundred chariots of iron. They
oppressed Israel.26
Velikovsky describes the verse as “obscure”, and so it is. The Israelite spies sent by
Moses had reported that, “The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south” (Numbers
13:29, Authorised Version). How should we explain their apparent presence in central
Israel?
26
Domination”).
Page 22 of 136
Before attempting an answer, I must restore the verse to its context. Doing so
immediately disposes of Velikovsky’s interpretation, that “‘their’ obviously refers to the
Canaanites”. The Song describes a mustering of the tribes of Israel against the
Canaanites and Jabin their king. In a modern translation (NIV):
… the people of the LORD came to me [Deborah] with the mighty. Some came from
Ephraim, whose roots were in Amalek; Benjamin was with the people who followed you.
From Makir captains came down, from Zebulun those who bear a commander’s staff. The
princes of Issachar were with Deborah … [Judges 5:13-15]
In this passage, Deborah praises the Israelite tribes who helped in the fight against
Jabin; Makir (Machir) was part of the tribe of Manasseh. In the verses that follow those
quoted, she heaps shame on the tribes who stayed away. The people who came from
“Ephraim, whose roots [were] in Amalek” (the Hebrew text has no verb, so the tense
must be inferred) were not the Canaanite foes of Israel, but were the Israelite tribe of
Ephraim, who are mentioned first among the “people of the LORD” because they were
Deborah’s own tribe.
The reference to “roots in Amalek” is obscure, and capable of several interpretations
(see the Bible commentaries)27. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the Ephraimites were of
Amalekite descent, or had occupied land formerly held by the Amalekites. The RSV
editors followed the Septuagint translation, έν κοιλάδι, “in the valley”, which would
represent Hebrew b ˁmq in place of the “apparently incomprehensible” b ˁmlq actually in
the Hebrew text — a difference of a single consonant.
However, there is more than one obscurity in the ancient vocabulary of the passage,
and Soggin28 incorporates another emendation, also attested in Septuagint manuscripts, to
render verse 14a as, “From Ephraim the captains arrived at the valley”, meaning the
Plain or Valley of Jezreel where the battle was fought. If either interpretation is correct,
then the five references to Amalek and Amalekites across the 400-year span of Joshua
and Judges are reduced to four.
Judges 12:15: The “Amalekite garrison” at Pirathon
Velikovsky supported his appeal to “Ephraim, whose roots were in Amalek” with a
further detail:
The Amu-Hyksos held Egypt in submission from their fortress Auaris, which they built
near the border of the country. Throughout the land they maintained garrisons (Manetho).
In Palestine there was likewise a fort which the Amalekites built for a garrison; it was
strategically situated in the heart of the country, in the land of Ephraim.
… The verse cited [above, from the Song of Deborah, Judges 5:14] seems to mean that the
strength of the Canaanites was based upon the support they received from the Amalekite
citadel in the land of Ephraim.
27
E.g., Moore says, “In the first two lines nothing is certain but the names, Ephraim and Benjamin. ‘From
Ephraim their root (is) in Amalek — after thee Benjamin among thy peoples’—is nonsense which must
give the most courageous translator pause” (G.F. Moore, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on
Judges, T & T Clark, 1895).
28
J.A. Soggin, Judges: A Commentary, SCM Press, 1981, page 88.
Page 23 of 136
This citadel is also mentioned in another verse of the Book of Judges: “Pirathon in the land
of Ephraim, in the mount of the Amalekites” (Judges 12:15).29
Even in the corrupt form that we find in the Masoretic Text, the Song of Deborah
contains no reference to a citadel, except by a very long stretch of the imagination. What
of Pirathon?
Once again, we should first see what the verse cited by Velikovsky says when read in
context. Judges 12:8-15 provides a list of “minor judges”, of whom the last was Abdon,
the son of Hillel. The notice of him reads:
After [Elon the Zebulonite,] Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite judged Israel. He had
forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy asses; and he judged Israel eight
years. Then Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite died, and was buried at Pirathon in the
land of Ephraim, in the hill country of the Amalekites.
In apparent confirmation of the Masoretic text of Judges 5:14, we see that “the hill
country of the Amalekites” is the territory now occupied by the tribe of Ephraim. But
there is no hint that Pirathon (“Princely”) is a “citadel”; there is no hint that Amalekites
now occupy the territory, or exercise sovereignty. There are no grounds in the text for
Velikovsky’s claim that Pirathon was “a fort which the Amalekites built for a garrison”.
The reason that the place was the chosen burial site for Abdon, the eleventh Judge of
Israel, appears to be that it was his home town.
Pirathon was also the home of Benaiah the Pirathonite, one of David’s heroes (2
Samuel 23:30). The image we gain from both Josephus and the Bible fails to accord with
Velikovsky’s picture of a fortress controlled by a supremely cruel foe.
Here, as in the Song of Deborah, the mention of the Amalekites presents difficulties.
The conservative view (which assumes the correctness of the Masoretic Text) is
summarised by Moore30:
The presence of the name in this part of Mt. Ephraim [may be] explained by supposing,
either that the region was an older seat of the Amalekites, from which they had been
expelled by the growing power of the Canaanites, or that in the early part of the period of
the judges Amalekites from the south had intruded into this part of the highlands, and
occupied it long enough to fasten their name upon it, but had been driven out again before
the time of Saul.
In either case, the city seems to have been a peaceful seat of the Ephraimite tribe, at
the very time when (in Velikovsky’s scenario) it was an Amalekite stronghold.
Moreover, doubt is cast on the Amalekite connection by a number of early Greek
manuscripts which read, ἐν ὄρει Ἐφραίμ, εν γή Σελλήμ—“in the Mountain of Ephraim, in
the region of Sellem”31. In the Hebrew form “Shaalim”, “Sellem” is mentioned in
connection with Mt Ephraim in 1 Samuel 9:4.
29
Ages in Chaos (op. cit.), pages 72-73 (chapter II, section 7, “Palestine at the Time of the Hyksos
Domination”).
30
Moore, op. cit., page 311.
31
Soggin, op.cit., page 224.
Page 24 of 136
If “Sellem” is the correct reading, then the five references to Amalek or Amalekites in
the Book of Judges are now reduced to three (including Judges 10:12), and we may begin
to suspect—as with the Targum Pseudo-Yonathan—a tendency by editors of the
Masoretic Text to insert Amalekites where they do not really belong, both here and in the
Song of Deborah.
Judges 3:13: Moab seizes Jericho
Of the remaining three references to Amalekites in the Book of Judges—one of which
(Judges 10:12) I have already dealt with—the earliest also passes unmentioned by
Velikovsky. This may be because it represents the Amalekites as subordinates, rather
than in the superordinate role he proposes:
And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD
strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done what was evil in
the sight of the LORD. He gathered to himself the Ammonites and the Amalekites, and
went and defeated Israel; and they took possession of the city of palms. And the people of
Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years [Judges 3:12 – 14].
This is the first mention of the Amalekites in Judges. They do not appear here as the
rulers of the Middle East, but as subsidiary allies of the king of Moab. The Moabite
oppression is ended when the Benjaminite Ehud, a man crippled in his right hand, stabs
Eglon with a short sword concealed in his left hand (3:29); the Israelites fall on the
leaderless Moabites and slaughter “about ten thousand” of them (3:29). The tale occupies
nineteen verses, in which “Moab” or “Moabite(s)” appear six times, but “Amalekites”
only in the single verse cited above. Readers must judge for themselves whether this
account of an eighteen-year military occupation of Jericho by the Moabites counts as one
of the Amalekite raids on Israel which, according to Velikovsky, occurred repeatedly
“just before the harvest”.
Judges 6:3, 6:33, and 7:12: The tale of Gideon
So far, the Books of Joshua and Judges have revealed no support for Velikovsky’s
depiction of frequent Amalekite raids into Israel at harvest time. It’s a different story,
however, with the remaining passage featuring Amalekites in Judges, in that it does
appear to depict an Amalekite raid at harvest-time, and possibly repeated raids. We are
looking at the story of the hero Gideon, told in Judges chapters 6 to 8, but as in the
preceding passage concerning Moab, the role of the Amalekites is so subsidiary that they
might as well not have been involved.
Inconclusive as it is, however, this single story forms the Biblical basis for
Velikovsky’s claim that the Amalekites “often invaded the land of Israel just before the
harvest” during the 400-year period of Joshua and Judges. The story begins:
The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD gave them
into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian prevailed over Israel; … For
whenever the Israelites put in seed the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the
East would come up and attack them; they would encamp against them and destroy the
produce of the land … [Judges 6:1-4a]
Page 25 of 136
What stands out even in this short extract is the dominant role of the Midianites. God
delivers Israel into their hand. They “prevail over Israel”. This predominance continues
throughout the three chapters, where Midian and the Midianites, their camp, their
warriors, and their leaders, are mentioned nineteen more times, until “Midian was
subdued before the people of Israel, and they lifted up their heads no more” (8:28).
However, the Amalekites appear briefly at the beginning of the account (6:3), and
immediately all but disappear from it for its remaining three chapters, re-emerging at only
two more points. Here are the verses concerned (we have already seen the first):
• the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up and
attack them (6:3)
• the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East came together, and
crossing the Jordan they encamped in the valley of Jezreel (6:33)
• the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the East lay along in the
valley like grasshoppers for multitude (7:12)
“The Amalekites and the Children of the East” (bene Qedem) play no role whatsoever
in the narrative. They only appear in those three verses, each consisting of the same
formulaic expression, “the Midianites and the Amalekites and [all] the people of the
East”. All activity lies with the Midianites, and the Amalekites assume a purely
subsidiary role, playing no active part at any point. They have no camp, they have no
king, they have no warriors; they do not fight, they neither slay nor are slain. The angel
of Yahweh never mentions them, nor does Gideon, nor does any other participant in the
narrative. They undertake no actions outside of the three verses above.
Concerning their first appearance (verses 3-5 of chapter 6), Moore wrote32:
The verses are not a unit, as appears not only from the awkward surplusage, but from the
false sequence of tenses. … The disorder of the text is sufficiently shown by a literal
translation : Whenever Israel had sown, Midian used to come up, and Amalek and the Bene
Qedem, and (they) used to come up against it (Israel). And they encamped against them
(Israel) and destroyed, &c. The confusion of tenses, which in English is only awkward, is
in Hebrew ungrammatical. The Amalekites are Bedawin whom we generally meet in the
deserts south of Palestine; the Bene Qedem, as their name imports, come from the east, the
great Syrian desert. The introduction of the names here is very likely an exaggeration of the
editor; cf. on 313.
Judges 3:13 is part of the story of Ehud and Eglon the Moabite king which I have
already quoted above. Like the Gideon story, it includes the Amalekites in a minor
subsidiary role, in which they undertake no action; there, it is the Moabites who defeat
Israel, and whom Israel serve; here, it is the Midianites. In both instances, commentators
suspect that an editorial hand inserted the Amalekites where they did not originally
belong.
Whether or not that analysis is correct, only the Gideon story supports Velikovsky’s
picture of repeated raids at harvest time, but this oppression lasted only “seven years”,
32
Moore, op. cit., page 179.
Page 26 of 136
and the principal raiders are not the Amalekites. However, the grammatical irregularities
noted by Moore not only cast doubt on the unity of the text, but undermine the picture of
a repeated activity. Repetition is supported solely by the first half of verse 3, which uses
a past continuous tense (“Midian used to come up”) where the rest of the narrative uses
simple past tense (“they encamped against them, they destroyed their produce,” etc.),
implying a single occurrence rather than repetition.
“Higher Than Agag”

1 Samuel 30: The Amalekite raid on Ziklag
Apart from an important passage in the Book of Numbers, which I will turn to in due
course, there remain three more accounts of the activities of the Amalekites in the Old
Testament33. One I have already mentioned: the final slaughter of the remnant of the
Amalekites (1 Chronicles 4:41-43). The text reads:
[Some of the tribe of Simeon] came in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah 34, … five
hundred men, [and] went to mount Seir, having as their leaders Pelatiah, Neariah,
Rephaiah, and Uzziel, the sons of Ishi; and they destroyed the remnant of the Amalekites
that had escaped, and they have dwelt there to this day.
These are assumed to be Amalekites who had escaped slaughter by Saul and David35.
The account of David’s massacre is the last major involvement of Israel and Amalek, and
on the face of it supports Velikovsky’s theory of frequent Amalekite raids. He wrote:
After the capture of the Amalekite city and Saul's overwhelming victory, the Amalekites
were not wholly destroyed. Those who escaped with their lives fell back to the hill country
of southern Palestine.
From there they undertook a raid on the neighboring cities. This was still during the reign
of Saul, and David was one of his officers.
I SAMUEL 30:1-3 ... the Amalekites had invaded the south, and Ziklag, and smitten
Ziklag, and burned it with fire; . . . and went on their way.
So David and his men came to the city, and behold, it was burned with fire; and their
wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives.
… … David with four hundred men pursued the Amalekite band that had carried off his
wives. In the desert they found an unconscious man who “had eaten no bread nor drank any
water three days and three nights.”
I SAMUEL 30:11-13 And they found an Egyptian in the field, and brought him to David
. . . and when he had eaten, his spirit came again to him. . . .
33
I am omitting a handful of minor mentions such as the Amalekite who claimed to have slain Saul (2
Samuel 1), or passing mention in the Book of Psalms.
34
It is uncertain from the Hebrew text whether the raid occurred in the time of Hezekiah, or was only
recorded in the time of Hezekiah, but the first seems more likely (Curtis and Madsen, A Critical and
Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Chronicles, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910; pages 116-117).
35
Compare 1 Samuel 30:17b: “Not a man of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who mounted
camels and fled.”
Page 27 of 136
And David said unto him, To whom belongest thou? . . . And he said, I am a young
man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite; and my master left me, because three days
agone I fell sick.
… … This episode is most instructive. It shows that the Amalekites invaded the south of
Palestine after they had lost their stronghold on the border of Egypt. It reveals also a very
striking detail: the Egyptian young man said that he was a slave to an Amalekite master.
… … What does it mean that an Egyptian, a son of the ruling and proud nation, is a
servant of an Amalekite, a poor nomad? This man, in identifying himself, spoke of his
being a '"servant" and the Amalekite being the "master" as of something that was the order
of the day.
The answer to Velikovsky’s question may be simply that the young Egyptian had been
a peasant lad captured on one of the many “A’amu” raids into Egypt from the desert to its
east. Such raids had gone on for millennia, according to Egyptian records. What interests
me here, besides David’s success in slaughtering the Amalekites and rescuing the
captured women and children, is that this is the only clear and indisputable occasion in
the post-Exodus narratives on which the Amalekites “raided” the Israelites; but even so,
there are peculiarities to the story. Ziklag, though occupied by David and his men at the
time, was a Philistine town, not Israelite, a gift to David from the king of Gath36. There is
no indication that the raid took place at harvest-time. And this Amalekite raid—the only
one unequivocally described as such throughout the post-Exodus period—followed hard
on the heels of Saul’s genocide at the “city of the Amalekites” (1 Samuel 15:5, 8) and
Samuel’s slaughter of their king (1 Samuel 15:32). It might reasonably be seen as a
revenge attack.
1 Samuel 15: From Havilah until thou comest to Shur
At the time Velikovsky wrote Ages in Chaos, Egyptologists had not identified a
location which definitely corresponded with the Hyksos capital city, Auaris (Avaris).
Velikovsky commented:37:
Auaris can be located in the following way:
Saul conquered “the Amalekite city,” the residence of the king Agog (I Samuel 15). The
capture of this city terminated the domination of Amalekites over “the land from Havilah
until thou comest to Shur, that is over against Egypt.”
By comparing the last sentence with one in I Samuel (27:8)— “. . . and the Amalekites ... of
old the inhabitants of the land, as thou goest to Shur, even unto the land of Egypt”—we
find a clue to the location of the Amalekite city on the border of Egypt, but not in Egypt
proper.
A discussion of the actual location of Avaris would be the subject of another essay.
That essay would also consider the role of Pharaoh Ahmose I in the city’s overthrow, the
meaning of the hieroglyphic inscriptions describing the campaign, and the true
identification of the “one” who, in Velikovsky’s reading, played the dominant role.
36
Velikovsky was incorrect to write that “David was one of [Saul’s] officers” at this time; he had actually
been employed “for days and years” by Achish, the Philistine king of Gath (1 Samuel 29:3).
37
Ages in Chaos (op. cit.), page 87 (chapter II, section 11, “The Location of Auaris”).
Page 28 of 136
I examine the nature of the Amalekite “city”, and whether it might correspond to the
Hyksos capital, in the section immediately following. Here, I wish merely to consider
briefly the geographical implications of 1 Samuel 15:7 and 27:8. The first verse reads,
“Saul defeated the Amalekites, from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt”. The
second says, “…the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites … were the inhabitants
of the land from of old, as far as Shur, to the land of Egypt.”.
Velikovsky did not discuss the location of either Havilah or Shur, but there is little or
no controversy regarding the latter. “Shur” is Hebrew for “wall”, and while there are
dissenting voices, almost all commentators associate it with the “Wall of the Prince” (or
“Walls of the Ruler”), the chain of fortifications erected on Egypt’s eastern border by
Amenemhat I in the Twelfth Dynasty (early Middle Kingdom), as a defence against raids
by the A’amu38. The Biblical name denotes “the desert of Jifar, i.e. that portion of the
desert of Arabia which borders upon Egypt”39. Although the tribal homeland of the
Amalekites was evidently in Edom and the vicinity of Mt Seir, there is no reason to
suppose that such a nomadic people would not roam as far west as the borders of Egypt.
“Havilah” is more problematic, and the different notices of it in the Bible suggest more
than one locality—at least one in Arabia, and one possibly in Africa. In Genesis 25:18,
the territory apparently described as Amalekite in 1 Samuel 15:7 is assigned instead as the
homeland of the Ishmaelites, who dwelt “from Havilah to Shur, which is opposite
Egypt”40. (“Opposite” translates a Hebrew phrase meaning “in front of”, which in terms
of geography means “to the East of …”.). The Ishmaelite tribes listed in Genesis 25 can
be identified with Arabian places or tribes named by Classical and pre-Classical authors,
and from their historical locations, Driver concluded, “If Havilah … be in NE. Arabia,
and Shur is the part of the Sinaitic Peninsula bordering on Egypt …, the positions, so far
as they have been determined above, of the Ishmaelite tribes would fall mostly within the
limits assigned”41.
Other commentators, however, locate Havilah as far south as in the Yemen, towards
the south-western tip of the Arabian peninsula, or somewhat northwards in the Hijaz,
where (according to the Qurˀan) Ishmael founded Mecca with his father, Abraham.
Havilah was identified by Bochart and Niebuhr with Khaulan in Tehamah, between Mecca
and Sana; by Gesenius with the Khaulotæi of Strabo in northern Arabia; and by Kautzsch
with Ḥuwailah on the Persian Gulf; while the supposed African Havilah has been found in
the Aualis of Ptolemy and Pliny, now Zeila. Glaser places it in Yemama (central and
38
See e.g. Bierbrier, Historical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (Second Edition), The Scarecrow Press, 1998,
page 13.
39
Keil and Delitzsch, The Books of Samuel, T&T Clark, 1872, page 182.
40
The RSV, like most translations, adds, “… in the direction of Assyria”, which on the face of it must refer
to a different Shur, somewhere to the north-east of Palestine rather than the south-west. It would seem to
allocate to the Ishmaelites all of the territory claimed by the Israelites, and perhaps more. A location in
Arabia would make more sense, since Ishmael is supposed to be the ancestor of the Arab tribes (though
the Arabs themselves dispute this). Commentators in general agree that “Assyria” must be an error:
“Either the name is that of some place, or people, otherwise unknown, in the direction of Egypt (? the
Asshurim of v. 3), or the words … are a misplaced variant of “unto Shur” (Driver, Genesis, op. cit., page
243. Skinner, Genesis, op. cit., page 354, commented similarly).
41
Driver, Genesis, op. cit., page 243.
Page 29 of 136
northeastern Arabia), from which gold was “almost exclusively” brought in ancient times.
Ball has pointed out a statement of the Arabic writer Yaḳut that Ḥawil was the dialect
spoken not only by the people of Mahrah in the south, but also by “the descendants of
Midian, the son of Abraham.”42
Text-critical commentators generally dispute the reading of “Havilah” in 1 Samuel
15:7, partly because no other text associates it with Amalek, and partly because it seems
unlikely that two such powerful tribes as the Amalekites and the Ishmaelites, only
distantly related, would occupy the identical territory. There is no textual support in any
of the early versions for a different reading, but at least two plausible proposals have been
put forward. The first, originating with McCarter, is that “Havilah” is an accidental
change from the original nakal, the wadi or “valley” in which Saul hid before attacking
the Amalekites43. Bergen, while not accepting this proposal, notes that it “has some
semantic merit”44. According to Smith45, Wellhausen “conjectures Telam to be the
original reading. But this does not commend itself, because Saul had advanced beyond
Telam when the attack was made.” A more meritorious proposal, which Smith (ibid.)
attributes to Glaser, seems to be that Havilah, Hebrew hwylh, is a mis-transcription of
“Hakilah”, Hebrew hkylh, a place-name of the south Judaean desert occurring in variant
forms in 1 Samuel 23:10, 26:1, 3. The palaeo-Hebrew forms of the letters waw ( ) and
kaph ( ) bear some resemblance to one another. It is quite possible, as Smith also notes,
“that our author, whose geography is not very distinct, borrowed the whole phrase from.
Genesis”—or that the formulaic phrase in Genesis influenced the hand of an early copyist
of 1 Samuel.
1 Samuel 15: The City of the Amalekites
Apart from the Egyptian slave of the Amalekite master, Velikovsky stressed two
aspects of the Biblical account of the Amalekites which are supposed to have created
difficulties for Bible scholars: one in the Book of Numbers, and the other in 1 Samuel.
Here is how Velikovsky deals with the latter:
Samuel, the priest and prophet, said to Saul, whom he had anointed to be king over Israel:
I SAMUEL 15:2-3 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did
to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have.
Saul gathered “two hundred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of Judah.”
I SAMUEL 15:5 And Saul came to [the] city of Amalek, and laid wait in [the bed
of] the stream [nakhal].
42
Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906 edition, article “Havilah”.
43
P.K. McCarter Jr, I Samuel: A New Translation with Introduction, Notes, and Commentary, Doubleday,
1980, pages 258, 261.
44
R.D. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel, The New American Commentary, vol. 7; B&H Publishing, 1996, page 170,
footnote 6.
45
H.P. Smith, Samuel, New International Commentary, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899, page 134.
Page 30 of 136
These words, “city of Amalek,” have always been a stumbling block for commentators and
Bible students. The Amalekites are supposed to have been a small tribe of unsettled
Bedouins; therefore, what does the “city of Amalek” mean?46
For Velikovsky, the answer was to equate “the city of Amalek” with the Hyksos
capital of Avaris. “The Amalekite city was Auaris”47, and Saul’s destruction of “the city
of Amalek”, recounted in the Bible, was the same as Pharaoh Ahmose’s overthrow of
Avaris recounted in the records of Ancient Egypt.
There is not space here to consider the many objections to this equation which emerge
from a reading of the full native-Egyptian account of the capture of Avaris. My concern
is with the Biblical side of the story and the Amalekites, rather than the Egyptian side and
the Hyksos. So what other answer is there to Velikovsky’s question, “What does the ‘city
of Amalek’ mean?”
The first thing to note is that his treatment of the Biblical text is somewhat misleading.
The consonantal Hebrew text for Samuel 15:5a says in transcription:
Wjb’ š’wl ‘d- ‘jr ‘mlq
Although several modern translators similarly insert “the” in this verse48, the King
James Version renders this more accurately as:
And Saul came to a city of Amalek …
The indefinite article implies that the Amalekites had more than one “city”, whereas
the substitution of the definite article, and Velikovsky’s subsequent discussion of “the
city”, create the impression that there was only one such49. More important, though, is
the meaning of the Hebrew word ‘jr, translated as “city”. To modern readers, the English
word implies a large, permanent settlement of substantial buildings, hardly appropriate—
as Velikovsky noted—to a “tribe of unsettled Bedouins”. But in Strong’s Concordance
(Hebrew entry #5892), ‘jr means “a place guarded by waking or a watch … even if a
mere encampment or post”. The entry in Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon says:
This word also included camps, and also small fortified places, as towers, watch-towers.
What the extent of its signification is, may be learned from the following … Num. 13:19,
“and what the cities [‘jrjm] are in which they [the people] dwell, whether [they dwell] in
camps [mḥnjm], or in fenced cities [mbṣrjm]?”
The picture that emerges is not one of a fortified stronghold such as Avaris was, but
one of several or many encampments, over which—in that land and time of hostile
raiders—a watch was kept. The grandeur of the Amalekites may have been far less than
Velikovsky supposed.
Which brings me finally to Balaam’s prophecy. I shall deal with it in two parts.
46
Ages in Chaos (op. cit.), pages 78-79 (chapter II, section 8, “The Expulsion of the Hyksos in the Egyptian
and Hebrew Records”).
47
Ibid., page 79. Velikovsky’s spelling, “Auaris”, better reflects the spelling and pronunciation of the
Greek form of the name than does the conventional English “Avaris”.
48
For example, the English Standard Version, the American Standard Version, and the New English Bible.
49
The Septuagint has, “ἦλθεν Σαουλ ἕως τῶν πόλεων Αμαληκ”, “Saul came to the cities of Amalek”.
Page 31 of 136
Numbers 24:20: Amalek, the first of the nations

At the time of the Exodus, Velikovsky tells us50:
Balaam, the sorcerer, was called upon to curse the Israelites approaching Moab on their
way from the desert. He set his face toward the wilderness, but instead of cursing, he
blessed Israel … .
Standing on the edge of the mountain, Balaam turned his face in another direction:
NUMBERS 24:20 And when he looked on Amalek, he took up his parable, and he
said, Amalek [is] the first of [among] the nations; but his latter end shall be that
he perish for ever.
These verses did not seem clear. The Amalekites are supposed to have been an unimportant
band of robbers; why were they called “the first among the nations”… ? No satisfactory
explanation was presented.
The Amalekites were at that time the first among the nations.
Velikovsky interpreted this to mean that they were foremost among nations, in
accordance with his depiction of them as Hyksos masters of Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and the
east Mediterranean islands. But an alternative explanation may emerge when we consider
the Hebrew text of the oracle; in transcription:
r’sjt gwjm ‘mlq
w’ḥrjtw ‘rj ‘kd
—a literal translation of which runs:

First[-of] nations Amalek,
But-his-last unto destruction.
There are no verbs, and it is a matter of judgment as to whether the first line represents
the present tense, as in Velikovsky’s version (“Amalek [is] the first …”), or the past tense
as in the RSV (“Amalek was the first …”), or even the future tense as implied in the
second line. More important, however, is the play on the words “first” and “last”, which
make it clear that “first” is not intended in any hierarchical sense, but temporally51.
Ellicott commented:
The word reshith, which is here rendered “first,” may denote priority in rank, but more
frequently denotes priority in time. The corresponding word in the second clause of the
verse, aharith (latter end), may be thought to denote that the reference is to time, not to
rank.52
Amalek was not the “foremost among nations” (Velikovsky’s interpretation), but, in
some sense, “the first of the nations”. The question is, what does Amalek’s priority apply
to?
50
Domination”).
51
In Amos 6:1, there is a parallel construction in which Israel and Judah are condemned for, amongst other
things, accounting themselves as “first of the nations”. In that case, there can be no doubt that superiority
is intended, rather than temporal priority: the locution lacks the balancing “last”.
52
C.J. Ellicott in C.J. Ellicott, ed., A Bible Commentary for English Readers, Cassell and Company 1897,
Vol 1: Genesis to Numbers, page 648.
Page 32 of 136
“First” may also be read as “the beginning”, meaning that Amalek was the most
ancient of nations; but this runs counter to the genealogies in Genesis and 1 Chronicles
which make them descendants of Abraham’s great-great-grandson. The most likely
alternative theory is that of Keil, which is that the Amalekites, at the Battle at Rephidim,
were the first people to fight against the Israelites as they sought to enter Canaan. Ellicott
noted53: “the Amalekites were the first nation which attacked Israel when they had come
out of Egypt (Exodus 17:8)”. The compressed mode of expression in Balaam’s oracles
means that this should be understood by implication, as in the RSV translation: “Amalek
was the first of the nations”.
Numbers 24:7: Higher than Agag
Before cursing Amalek, Balaam pronounced a blessing on Israel in an oracle which
included these words, as quoted by Velikovsky54:
NUMBERS 24:7 ... his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag,
and his kingdom shall be exalted.
“Agag [Agog],” Velikovsky claims, “was the name of the Amalekite king.” Given the
supposed status of the Amalekites as wandering herdsmen and raiders, “what could the
blessing ‘higher than Agag’ mean?”
“The Amalekites were at that time the first among the nations,” he explained. “The
highest degree of power was expressed by comparison with the power of the Amalekite
king Agog. He was the ruler over Arabia and Egypt.”
The name of the king Agog is the only Amalekite name that the Scriptures have
preserved.55 Besides the king Agog mentioned in the Book of Numbers, there was another
Amalekite king Agog, their last king, who reigned some four hundred years later and was a
contemporary of Saul.
Note Velikovsky’s use of the form “Agog”, which he introduced in square brackets in
his comment immediately following his quote of Number 24:7, and used thereafter. It is
a significant change, as we shall see; but what explanation did Velikovsky give for
making it? He appended a footnote to the first (bracketed) use of “[Agog]”, which reads:
Cf. the vowels in the Massorete Bible, Numbers 24:7, and I Samuel 15, and Esther 3.56
This footnote is puzzling in that it provides no explanation for the change from “Agag”
to “Agog”. There is no occurrence of “Agog” anywhere in the Masoretic Text; it is
“Agag” in Numbers 24:7 and 1 Samuel 15, and “Haman the Agagite” in the Book of
Esther. There is no textual basis in the MT for the change, so, again, why did Velikovsky
make it?
An answer emerges from the paragraph of Ages in Chaos that immediately follows:
53
Ellicott, loc. cit. supra.
54
Domination”).
55
Velikovsky inserts a footnote reference to 1 Samuel 15.
56
Domination”), footnote 1.
Page 33 of 136
In the history of Egypt the most frequently mentioned name of the Hyksos kings is Apop.
One of the first and most prominent of the Hyksos rulers was Apop; the last king of the
Hyksos was also Apop.
By an ingenious appeal to the shapes of ancient Hebrew letters, Velikovsky equates the
two names, “Agog” (apparently his own invention) and “Apop”. Again, it is not my
purpose here to perform a detailed review of the Egyptian evidence, though it is against
Velikovsky’s case57, 58. Is it true, however, that the first and last recorded name of
Amalekite kings was “Agag” (or “Agog”)?
Some Bible commentators have tended to accept this position. For example, the Pulpit
Commentary says, “It may safely be assumed that [Agag] was the official title of all the
kings of Amalek, resembling in this ‘Abimelech’ and ‘Pharaoh.’ Here it seems to stand
for the dynasty and the nation of the Amalekites …”59.
We should recognise, however, that Balaam was engaged in prophecy in its secondary
sense of “foretelling the future”. His oracles contain clear references to David: “a star
57
The names and numbers of Hyksos rulers are disputed. Conventional Egyptology generally recognises
only one by the name of Apop (Apep, Apepi, Apophis); he was the third of the four Hyksos pharaohs
known from Egyptian records, whose names were Seker-Hor, Khyan, Apepi, and Khamudi. A fifth,
Salitis, is sometimes added at the start of the list, on the authority of Manetho, but lacks attestation in any
other source, and is usually equated with Sekher-Hor.
Older scholars (e.g., Sayce, The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotus) identify two Apepis rather than one;
but Ryholt has argued successfully that this is due to the use of multiple prenomina by the same Hyksos
king, at varying times in his long reign: Awoserre, Aqenenre, Nebkhepeshre, and possibly others (Apepi
being his “birth name”). There are parallel instances of other Egyptian kings changing their prenomina in
the course of their reigns, most notably Ramses II and Seti II.
Note that the last Hyksos pharaoh, defeated by Ahmose I in the battle for Avaris, probably was not Apepi
but Khamudi. Apepi seems to have died perhaps a decade or more earlier.
58
Consonantal Hebrew “Agag” in transcription is ’gg, where the initial character (’)represents the glottal
stop. The hieroglyphs for Egyptian “Apep(i)”, in standard modern transcription, are represented as jpp(j)
or ỉpp(ỉ). In both cases, the original script did not indicate vowels, and their values are ultimately
unknown; the vowels in “Apep(i)” are inserted to make the name pronounceable, not to represent original
pronunciation.
With regard to the actual letters, the value of the consonant represented as <j> or <ỉ>is disputed among
phoneticians of Ancient Egyptian. Peust (Egyptian Phonology, Göttingen, 1999, page 49) and Allen (The
Ancient Egyptian Language, Cambridge, 2013, pages 37-38) both note that the available evidence has
given rise to opposing interpretations. Peust holds that Ancient Egyptian had no glottal stop, and the
pronunciation of <j> “was originally /j/”, representing the sound of English consonantal “ y”, but was lost
before the Late Egyptian period when Manetho recorded the name as “Apophis”. Allen, on the other
hand, prefers the interpretation, that “j was phonemically bivalent, representing both /ˀ/ and /y/”.
The final consonant of jppj is generally regarded as part of the name. For example, it is present on a red
granite jar from Bubastis (Berlin 20366), and in the second stele of Apepi’s Egyptian foe, Kamose. This
might be regarded as opposing Velikovsky’s thesis, since “Agag” lacks a corresponding final consonant.
The final <j> is absent in some Egyptian inscriptions, though usually inserted by Egyptologists, and
supported by the spellings in Africanus, Eusebius, and Josephus, despite variations in their use of
consonants (“Aphobis”, “Aphophis”, and “Apophis” respectively).
With regard to the vowels, those in the MT are always “ă – ā” for “Agag” (short and long respectively),
while the Greek and Roman historians vary between “ă – ŏ – ĭ” (all short vowels; Africanus) and “ă – ō –
ĭ” (long “o”; Eusebius, Josephus). The evidence here is ambiguous with respect to Velikovsky’s case, but
the “o” (short or long) in place of Hebrew “ā”, and the final “i" of all the Greco-Roman writers, absent
from the Hebrew, tilt it away from full support. Overall, therefore, the phonetic evidence regarding a
possible equivalence between “Agag” and “Apep(i) (“yăpōpi”, if Peust is correct) is ambivalent at best.
59
H.D.M. Spence & J.S. Exell, The Pulpit Commentary, Funk & Wagnalls, 1909-1919, Vol 5 (Numbers),
page 816.
Page 34 of 136
shall come forth out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the
forehead of Moab, and break down all the sons of Sheth” (Numbers 24:17b, c). David
was the first king of Israel to reduce Moab to subjection (2 Samuel 8:2), and
accomplished the near-extirpation of the Amalekites. Although it was Saul who defeated
Agag, and Samuel who executed him, David most certainly was “higher then Agag”, and
there is no need to suppose that Balaam, in the ecstasy of prophetic trance, was referring
to a king of that name who was contemporary with himself. Gill thought similarly, citing
Jewish authorities as being of the same opinion:
According to Jarchi and Aben Ezra, this is a prophecy of the first king of Israel, Saul, and
of his conquering Agag king of Amalek, for there was one of this name in his time60.
The second thing to note is that there is doubt over the name “Agag” in this text. “If
the readings can be trusted,” wrote Kennedy61, “this reference provides a terminus a quo
[earliest time] for the date of the poem”62; but (he interjected) “the oldest Versions read
otherwise”. Both the Greek Septuagint translation, and the Samaritan Pentateuch, read
“higher than Gog”, where the later Masoretic Text has “higher than Agag” 63. The earliest
textual witness to the Masoretic Text dates to the 10th Century A.D., whereas the earliest
surviving Septuagint witness for Numbers 17 dates to the 4th64, the translation itself
having been made in the 3rd Century BC. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, 4Q121 alone
includes part of Num. 24:7, but the crucial words, “higher than Agag”, are missing.
Thus, there are two explanations besides Velikovsky’s for the presence of the name
“Agag” in Balaam’s oracle. The Septuagint reading creates problems of its own, and my
personal belief is that Balaam (or the author of his prophecies) was projecting to a future
time when the Amalekites and Agag their king would be brought low, and the Israelite
kingdom would rise above them.
Summary and Conclusions: Then Came Amalek

One of the “pillars” of Velikovsky’s chronological revision, as also that of David
Rohl65, is the contention that the Israelite exodus from Egypt recorded in the Bible, and
the Hyksos conquest of Egypt recounted in Manetho’s history, instead of being separated
by centuries, were contemporaneous events. In Velikovsky’s revised chronology, the
Israelites fleeing Egypt encountered the Hyksos (or rather, the A’amu peoples whom the
60
J. Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, Matthews & Leigh, 1810.
61
A.R.S. Kennedy, The Century Bible: Leviticus and Numbers, TC and EC Jack, 1900; page 329).
62
Kennedy assumes here that the “Agag” referred to must be that of 1 Samuel 15, and that the oracle in
Numbers 24 must therefore postdate Saul’s extirpation of the Amalekites. I am suggesting that he is
correct in the first part, but not necessarily so in the second part, for those who accept the reality of
predictive prophecy.
63
G. B. Gray, Numbers, in The International Critical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments, page 366. See the New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS, 2009) version of
Numbers at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/04-num-nets.pdf , page 130.
64
The earliest extant manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch are mediaeval. Frustratingly, the fragments
of the Book of Numbers found among the Dead Sea Scrolls include scattered words from verse 7, but lack
the crucial phrase. See Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, Harper San Francisco,
1999, page 129.
65
D. Rohl, A Test of Time, Arrow Books, 2001.
Page 35 of 136
Hyksos ruled) as the Amalekites, whose repeated conflicts with Israel are recorded in the
books of Exodus, Judges, and 1 Samuel.
In the preceding essay, I have examined Velikovsky’s use of Bible passages in
constructing and defending this thesis, and found that, when examined in context and in
detail, they tend to undermine it rather than support it. In summary:
1) The reference to “the land of the Amalekites” in Genesis 14:5-7 does not prove
(as Velikovsky supposed) the existence of an Amalekite people, separate from
the descendants of Esau, in the time of Abraham. It merely serves to identify
the general territory which Esau’s Amalekite descendants occupied at a later
date. Establishing that “the Amalekites” were “of an older clan” than Esau’s
grandson, “and no kinsmen of the Twelve Tribes” of Israel, was important for
Velikovsky because it opened the way to his proposal that the Amalekites were
actually a primordial Arabian tribe, a hypothesis which I shall review in my
second essay.
2) There are good reasons in the Biblical text to equate the battle against the
Amalekites at Rephidim, with the Edomites coming out in arms against Israel
when the Israelites wished to cross their lands to get to Canaan. Rather than
new arrivals in the area, as depicted by Velikovsky, the Amalekites were an
Edomite clan—possibly the foremost of the primitive tribes of Edom—who
had occupied the region of Mount Seir (which may have been Sinai) for
centuries before the time of the Exodus. The Amalekites saw the advance of
the huge and armed Israelite populace as a threat. The Israelites saw their
kinsmen’s hostile reaction to their plight as an unforgivable betrayal.
3) Velikovsky sought to demonstrate that the Amalekites, alias the Hyksos,
rapidly became the dominant power throughout Syria and Palestine, as well as
in Egypt. In particular, the Amalekites, in alliance with local Palestinian
powers, were the masters of the land throughout the centuries-long period of
the Judges. He wrote, “The dark age in the Near East continued as long as the
supremacy of the Amalekites endured”66; but their power was broken by Saul
and their nationhood destroyed by David. Yet the books of Joshua and Judges
together include only three references to or accounts of “oppression” by
Amalekites across more than four hundred years, and the Books of Samuel
only one more.
4) Attempting to explain this scarcity of references, Velikovsky appealed to two
passages of one of the Targums, Targum Yerushalmi I (Targum Pseudo-
Yonathan), as proving that the Amalekites habitually operated disguised as
other tribes or peoples. But the Targum is demonstrably post-Islamic in
character and content, and not a reliable source for the history of events 2,000
years earlier. For one of the two passages Velikovsky cites, comparison with
an earlier Targum on which Pseudo-Yonathan is based shows the reference to
the Amalekites to have been interpolated in place of the original “Canaanites”.
66
AiC, page 74 (chapter II, section 7, “Palestine at the Time of the Hyksos Domination”).
Page 36 of 136
Although Velikovsky’s second passage is lacking from the earlier Targum, the
Amalekite reference again appears to be an interpolation, an ungrammatical
and clumsily-worded emendation to the text. These two passages from the
same late document (plus even later documents derivative from them) support
the claim that “Hebrew tradition [records] that the Amalekites posed as
Moabites, Canaanites, and other peoples”, but are very weak support for any
idea that the traditions have a basis in history.
5) Amalekite mastery in Syria-Palestine was maintained, in Velikovsky’s view,
via a string of fortresses, of which the Bible names one as “Pirathon” (Judges
12:15). Read in context, the verse provides no indication that Pirathon “in the
hill country of the Amalekites” was a fortress, or that it was actually occupied
by Amalekites at the time. Rather, it was an Ephraimite (Israelite) city, in
which (according to Josephus) public affairs were peaceable and the
Ephraimites lived in security. The connection with the Amalekites is obscure,
and in a number of early Greek manuscripts, their name does not even appear,
its place being taken by the name of a nearby region also known from other
Old Testament passages.
6) As further proof of an equation between “Canaanites” and “Amalekites”,
Velikovsky cites Judges 5:14, “out of Ephraim their root is in Amalek”. “Their
root” he interprets as meaning “the Canaanites’ root”. There are two major
problems with this interpretation, however. Firstly, the passage concerned is
one of the oldest and most textually corrupt passages of the Bible; the
Masoretic text is almost completely meaningless. The Septuagint translators,
in a version centuries older than the earliest surviving Masoretic manuscripts,
provide the reading, “From Ephraim the captains arrived at the valley” (where
battle took place), in which the Hebrew word for “valley” closely resembles the
name “Amalek”. Secondly, seen in context, the passage identifies the Israelite
tribes who, starting with Deborah’s own tribe, Ephraim, answered her call-to-
arms against Jabin the Canaanite; it can hardly have identified the Canaanites
themselves as having done so.
7) Velikovsky stated that, following the Israelites’ settlement in Canaan, the
Amalekites often subjected them to raids at harvest time, a practice he also
attributes to the A’amu-Hyksos in relation to Egypt67. He placed no
qualifications against this statement, so it is natural for readers to suppose that
such raids “often” occurred throughout the period from the Exodus to David’s
kingship. However, only one extended passage in the Book of Judges—the
story of Gideon, chapters 6 to 8—supports this view, and only in relation to a
specific seven-year period. Again, though, the particular passage (Judges 6:1-
4) is textually difficult, with verbal tenses conflicting with one another in an
ungrammatical manner that points towards interpolation within the passage.
Throughout the story, the Midianites alone are represented as active opponents
67
AiC, page 74 (chapter II, section 7, “Palestine at the Time of the Hyksos Domination”). In support of
this claim, Velikovsky quotes a single statement from the Ermitage Papyrus, which does not in itself
imply repeated raiding by the A’amu.
Page 37 of 136
of the Israelites, under the command of their two kings, Zebah and Zalmunna.
“The Amalekites and the people of the East” appear only three times, in a
repeated stylised phrase; they are never mentioned by any of the characters,
and never participate in the story as active protagonists. No other Biblical
passage offers any support for Velikovsky’s claim that the Amalekites “often
invaded the land of Israel just before the harvest”.
8) Velikovsky wrote, “The Amalekites are supposed to have been a small tribe of
unsettled Bedouins; therefore, what does the ‘city of Amalek’ mean?”
Similarly, “why were they called ‘the first among the nations’” in the prophecy
of Balaam, “and what could the blessing ‘higher than Agag’ mean?” I have
shown that the translation, “city of Amalek”, understood in modern terms,
carries connotations that the corresponding Hebrew word lacks. Where for us a
city is a permanent establishment of substantial buildings, the Hebrew word
merely means some sort of settlement, large or small, permanent or temporary,
made of stone, wood, or goatskins, over which a watch is kept. The full text of
1 Samuel 15:5 implies that the “city” attacked by Saul was only one of several
such settlements, not some sort of “capital city”, like the Hyksos fortified city
Avaris which Velikovsky supposed it to be. I have also shown that, in
Balaam’s prophecy, “the first of nations” should be understood as “earliest”
rather than “greatest”, and even that the name “Agag” is not necessarily
original (the oldest Biblical manuscripts have “Gog”). But even if “Agag” is
original and correct, the passage is a prophecy of the future career of either
Saul or David, each of whom proved himself “higher than” the Agag of the
time recorded in 1 Samuel 15. There is no need to follow Velikovsky’s
interpretation, whereby “Agag” was the name of the Amalekite king at the time
of the Exodus.
None of these considerations completely extinguishes Velikovsky’s contention, that

the Amalekites exercised supremacy in the interval between the Exodus and the kingships
of Saul and David. However, they show that the Bible passages he cited provide no
effective support for the idea. We should question the value of a hypothesis for which all
the evidence is at least ambiguous, if not directly contrary.
In Parts 2 and 3, “Amalek in Arabia” and “Amalek in Egypt”, I turn my attention to
Velikovsky’s additional hypothesis: that the Amalekites, “no kinsmen of the Twelve
Tribes” of Israel, were originally an Arab tribe from the deep south of Arabia; that they
were forced out of their homeland by cataclysms recorded in the Book of Exodus as the
Plagues of Egypt; that they then invaded and conquered an Egypt reeling and helpless as
a result of those cataclysms; and that they ruled it for “over four hundred and forty years”
as the Hyksos pharaohs.
Page 38 of 136
Part 2: Amalek in Arabia
Introduction
In Ages in Chaos, Volume 1: From the Exodus to King Akhnaton1, Immanuel
Velikovsky proposed the removal of around half a millennium from Ancient Egyptian
history in order to align it with the events recorded in the first half of the Old Testament.
The latter detailed numerous interactions between Egypt and Israel, often momentous, but
with no apparent corresponding records in Egyptian history. Through this realignment,
he equated the Ten Plagues of Egypt recorded in the Book of Exodus with upheavals in
Egypt dated, by his reckoning, to the start of that period of Egyptian history known as the
Second Intermediate Period, when Semitic tribesmen from the Eastern Desert overran
Lower Egypt (the Delta region) and established themselves as kings. He equated these
invaders, known collectively from Egyptian records as A’amu or “Amu” (singular A’am)
with the Amalekites whom the Israelites encountered and fought as they fled towards the
east from Egypt. Their leaders, called Hyksos (“foreign rulers”), were Amalekite kings.
In Part 1, “Then Came Amalek …”, I considered the Biblical evidence which
Velikovsky adduced in support of his theory, and found that it largely depended on
dubious interpretations of a surprisingly small number of Bible verses. In Part 2, I turn
my attention to Velikovsky’s use of Arab sources, which he treated as providing a history
of the origin of the Amalekites in Arabia and their experience of the Biblical plagues as
natural disasters.
Sadly, I am unable to read Arabic, so, like Velikovsky, must make use of translations
into European languages (English, French, and German). Unless otherwise stated, or
except where included in quotations
from AiC, translations from French and
German are my own. The accompany-
ing map is provided to assist in under-
standing geographical relationships
between various locations mentioned in
the text.
Works consulted and quoted appear
as footnote references. Page references
for material in AiC refer to the 1952
Doubleday hardback edition (footnote 1
in Part 1). For readers wishing to follow
them up in other editions with different pagination, they are supported by references to
the named section within the numbered chapter. For example, “AiC II.2: “The Israelites
meet the Hyksos”, p. 61” refers to material on page 61 of the 1952 Doubleday hardback
1
AiC, op. cit.
edition, which appears in the second section of Chapter II, titled “The Israelites meet the
Hyksos”.
Velikovsky’s Thesis and Pre-Islamic Arab “History”

Three aspects
In equating the Amu and their Hyksos rulers with the Amalekites and their chieftains,
Velikovsky drew on written Arabic sources for three specific aspects, which may be
summarised as follows:
1) “The Amalekites were an old Arabian tribe who, from ancient days, … ruled in Mecca
and … dominated other Arabian tribes”2.
2) “The Amalekites were put to flight [from Mecca] by plagues that fell upon them in
Arabia, and in their escape they followed swift clouds. Meanwhile Mecca was
destroyed in a single night filled with a terrible din. The land became a desert. … In
tumult and disorder, fleeing the ominous signs and plagues and driving their herds of
animals infuriated by earthquakes and evil portents, the fugitive bands of Amalekites
reached the shores of the Red Sea”3.
3) “Autochthonous [narratives] transmitted from generation to generation on the Arabian
peninsula … told that Syria and Egypt came simultaneously under the domination of
the Amalekites … . … After the Amalekites invaded Syria and Egypt they
established a dynasty of their pharaohs. … The Amu of the Egyptian sources and the
Amalekites of the Hebrew and Arab sources were not two different peoples, but one
and the same nation”4.
Chapter II of AiC, “The Hyksos”, lays forth this set of hypotheses in detail, including a
number of direct quotations from Arabic sources. As selected and woven together by
Velikovsky, and augmented by his own vivid prose, the quotations create the impression
that the Arab writers were able to tap into authentic history concerning events supposed to
have happened between 2,300 and 2,800 years earlier than their own times:
The Arabian traditions that have survived to our time were written down by authors of the
ninth to the fourteenth centuries.5
Those authors, Velikovsky noted, “refer to these ancient traditions and also to older
authors, sometimes naming them.” The question is, how reliable are those traditions,
from an historical perspective?
Historicity of Islamic Pre-History
Velikovsky was aware that the historicity of these traditions might be open to
challenge. “The historical background of their stories about Amalekite pharaohs in Egypt
was regarded with distrust,” he wrote6. He quoted Theodor Nöldeke:
2
AiC, II.2: “The Israelites meet the Hyksos”, pp. 60 – 61.
3
AiC, II.3: “The Upheaval in Arabia”, p. 62.
4
AiC, II.4: “The Arabian Traditions about the Amalekite Pharaohs”, pp. 63 – 64; II.13: “Hyksos and
Amalekite Parallels”, p. 93.
5
AiC, II.4: “The Arabian traditions about the Amalekite pharaohs”, pp. 63-64.
6
AiC, II.5: “Malakhei-roim King-shepherds”, p. 66.
Page 40 of 136
PART 2: AMALEK IN ARABIA
„Wer nun Etwas auf das Amalekiterthum der Pharaonen geben wollte, der wäre nicht viel
kritischer, als wer sie, auf die letzteren Angaben gestützt, für Römer oder Perser hielte.“7
“Anyone who wished to credit the pharaohs as ‘Amalekite’ would be not much more
critical than those who, supported by the latter information, held them to be Romans or
Persians.”
(We shall see the context of this statement, and consider its significance, later on.)
The reason for this disparagement, Velikovsky wrote, was “that the name of the Amalek
tribe was never mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions.”
The last part of that comment is true, and the rebuttal to it is simple: the Egyptians
rarely distinguished one Semitic people from another, and the term “A’amu” would have
covered the Amalekites just as much as any other tribe of the Eastern Desert. Velikovsky
was correct in that. However, despite Velikovsky’s comment, it was not part of
Nöldeke’s actual argument—which Velikovsky failed to provide,, offering instead the
following comment in a footnote: “[Nöldeke’s] argument was: The Arab reports are of no
value. Only that is true which was appropriated by the Arab writers from the Old
Testament.” Nöldeke did not articulate that argument in his monograph. Rather, his line
of reasoning combined several strands, including both linguistic and historical elements.
Linguistic argument: Amalekite names
On the linguistic side, Nöldeke drew attention to the fact that Arab writers depicted the
Amalekites as the most ancient of Arab peoples. Velikovsky himself emphasised that
“the Islamic historians consider Amalek as one of the most ancient of the Arab tribes” 8.
Caussin de Perceval discussed the matter in his Essai sur l’histoire des Arabes9:
Ariba as a name among Arabs denotes the first, the most ancient inhabitants of Arabia.
Among those primitive races, the principal ones are: the people of Amlik or the Amâlika …
The language of the primitive stock, the historians say, was Arabic, al-Arabiya …
This information is suspect for numerous historical and linguistic reasons: “Yâqut
noted in that same passage, that these Proto-Arabs had spoken the Almusnad language
(sic), which is known to be the name of the Himyaritic (South Arabian) script in use a
long time after the birth of Christ”10. These “traditions” about the language of people
who supposedly lived 2,500 years before the writers, but who spoke the writers’
contemporary dialect, can hardly have historical merit.
According to native Arab scholars, the Ariba were the peoples “to whom God himself
taught the Arabic language immediately after the confusion of tongues”11. Yet, Nöldeke
pointed out, “If we now look first at Amalekite names among the Arabs, … the form is
not Arabic, but Hebrew. [He provides several examples in Hebrew and Arabic script.]
7
T. Nöldeke, Ueber die Amalekiter und einige andere Nachbarvölker der Israeliten, Göttingen, 1864, p. 35.
8
AiC, II.2: “The Israelites meet the Hyksos”, p. 60.
9
A. P. Caussin de Perceval, Essai sur l’histoire des Arabes avant l’Islamisme (etc), Paris, 1847, Vol. 1, pp.
7 and 9.
10
T. Nöldeke, op. cit., p. 32.
11
T. Nöldeke, op. cit., p. 32, quoting the Arabic writer Yâqut.
Page 41 of 136
These forms have not had the same history as genuine Arabic words, but were taken up
into Arabic only from the Hebrew”12.
This phenomenon applied, not only to the names of individual Amalekites, but to the
name of the people themselves. Earlier writers used the Hebrew form, but later writers
gradually transformed it to an Arabic form.
In a paragraph partially quoted by Velikovsky (see above, “Historicity of Islamic Pre-
History”), Nöldeke addressed the names of the supposed Amalekite pharaohs13:
Now the Arabs even give us entire lists of Amalekite pharaohs, who, strangely enough, all
bear Arab names. In particular, almost all agree in the account already given by the
theologian Wahb14 … , that the Pharaoh of Moses was called Al Walîd b. Muṣ‘ab.
Admittedly Alqurṭubî provides a different indication, [that] this Pharaoh was called Caius
…; and Assuhailî (in the same place) declares the Pharaoh a Persian from Persepolis
(Iṣṭachr). Anyone who wished to lend credit to the pharaohs as “Amalekite” would be little
more critical than those who, with the support of the latter information, held them to be
Romans or Persians.
Read in context, the point is well-made, despite Velikovsky’s disparagement: Why
should Arab writers, who knew only contemporary Arabic names for rulers supposedly
more than 2,000 years in the past, know any more about Amalekite pharaohs, than those
who thought the very same pharaohs were Roman or Persian?
Historical argument: lack of Arab history
On the historical side, the Arab logographers (writers of traditional history in prose)
erected the earliest parts of their history, at least, round the scaffolding of the continuous
historical narrative they found in the Bible. Their dating of events prior to the foundation
of Islam was in general extremely vague, and for the most part relied on genealogies, or
on cross-referencing between supposedly contemporaneous Biblical events. The potential
problems of the latter may be illustrated from at-Tabari’s The History of the Prophets and
Kings (known also as “The Annals”), quoting in particular Ibn Isḥâq as an authority.
There, the account of the life of Abraham is interlaced with tales of how the cruel tyrant
Nimrod tried in vain to prevent Abraham’s birth by killing all boys born in the prophesied
period, and later tried to have him burnt to death15. Nimrod belongs to the third
generation after Noah (Genesis 10:8), but Abraham to the eleventh (Genesis 11:10-26).
(Nonetheless, the association between Nimrod and Abraham is a feature of extra-
Biblical Jewish traditions, some of which can be dated with some probability to the first
century A.D.)
Nöldeke noted that the main originator of the Islamic traditions of pre-Islamic history
was a cousin of Mohammed, Ibn Abbas, who died in AD 690. “From his school emerged
12
13
14
W. M. Thackston (tr.): Wahb ibn Munabbih (c. 640-730 A.D.), Tales of the Prophets: Oisas al-Anbiya,
Kazi, USA, 1997, pp. 226 ff.
15
W. Brinner (tr.): Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, The History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 02,
“Prophets & Patriarchs”, State University of New York Press, 1987, pp. 51, 53, 58 – 59
Page 42 of 136
the two men who particularly completed the system of Arab prehistory, Muhammed
Alkalbi (d. 146, AD 768) and his son Hisham, usually called Ibn Alkalbi (d. 204, AD
826)”16. These Arab writers and their successors “give us many accounts of the
Amalekites, which agree neither with each other nor with the details of the OT”17. We
shall see examples of “lack of agreement” between these accounts below, which in
themselves call into doubt their historicity; but in any case, Nöldeke saw them as not
being ancient and genuine traditions, but as fictions that originated after the establishment
of Islam in the 7th Century AD. “Neither the Quran, nor, so far as I recall, the tradition of
the Prophet, knows of the Amalekites,” he wrote18, “and no more so does pre-Islamic
poetry”; they first appear in known Arab tradition in the decades “soon after
Muhammad”. Allied with the Hebrew form of “Amalekite” names in the earliest
writings, the suspicion is natural that the Arabic traditions of Amalekites were not native,
but were learned originally from the Jews who lived in Arabia in Mohammed’s own time,
and then elaborated upon to help fill the void of Islamic pre-history.
Did the pre-Islamic Arabs have no written history of their own? It appears they did,
but only monumental (stone-carved) fragments of it survived the fire-storm of Islam.
According to a standard reference work19: “The new creed had the greatest interest in
obliterating all recollection of the pagan period, not only in stone monuments which still
survived the natural weathering—these were destroyed to provide material for new
buildings, or burned for lime or sometimes out of sheer vandalism—but also in literature,
and even in consigning the ancient language to oblivion.” In any case, pre-Islamic
literacy was limited to the relatively few centres of settled population; the vast bulk of the
Arab peoples lived in nomadic tribes with no concept of national identity, for whom
“history” consisted of personal genealogies and orally-transmitted poems and ballads.
Nöldeke illustrates the un-reliability of Arabic authors on their remote antiquity by
demonstrating their ignorance of events and conditions of their much more recent past.
We know of these from contemporary classical, Jewish, and Christian sources, as well as
from numerous archaeological remains. For example:
Among the inhabitants of North-Western Arabia in the first centuries of our era, two
peoples stand out, the Nabataeans and the Thamudites. Of the former, whose qualities fill
the ancient writers, whose wonderful buildings travellers marvel at today, the Arabs know
absolutely nothing. … And they know little more about the Thamudites, who lived much
closer still to the later centre of Arabian life.20
Just as the Anglo-Saxons mistook the ruins of Roman cities for “the work of ancient
giants”, so the Arabs projected the ruins of Petra and Al-Hijr, both built by Arab peoples
and occupied by them into Christian times, onto the Ariba tribes who are supposed to
have lived thousands of years earlier.
16
17
T. Nöldeke, op. cit., p. 25
18
19
F. Babinger, First Encyclopaedia of Islam 1913-1936, Leiden, 1987, Vol. VII, p. 15.
20
T. Nöldeke, op. cit., pp. 25 – 26.
Page 43 of 136
Al-Mâs‘ûdi dated the Thamudites of Northern Arabia to the third generation after the
Flood (Prairies, Vol. 3, p. 84). They were of the same ancient, long-vanished, “pure
Arab” stock as the Amalekites, and he recorded their disappearance around the time that
the Jurhumites were expelled from Mecca, somewhere between c. 2000 and 1500 BC
(Prairies, Vol. 3, p. 298. The dates are computed in relation to the time of Abraham).
“Recent archaeological work has revealed numerous Thamudic rock writings and
pictures not only on Jabal Athlab [by al-Hijr in NW Arabia], but also throughout Central
Arabia”21. From Assyrian sources, from Greco-Roman Classical writings, and from their
own inscriptions, the historical Thamudites are known across the period from the eighth
century BC to the fifth century AD22, at which time they disappear from history: a couple
of centuries before the logographers wrote, rather than a couple of millennia.
Mohammed himself “held them to be apparently a people of the most ancient times,
and had no idea that the people of Thamûd existed only shortly before …”23. Unable to
read their inscriptions, he described their rock-hewn tombs as houses which they had cut
for themselves (Qur’an 7:74)24. Accordingly, this became the orthodoxy of Arabic pre-
Islamic “history”; and al-Mâs‘ûdi dates the Thamûdite kingdom to the sixth and seventh
generations after Noah25.
A far more recent source, Greg Fisher, discusses several important contacts between
the Arabic and Imperial Roman and early and Christian worlds, recorded by Roman
authors26. None of them appears to have been known to the Arab writers of pre-Islamic
history.
The Arab writers whom Velikovsky quoted wrote at periods ranging from the 9th
century A.D. (at-Tabari) to the 15th (al-Samhudi). Nöldeke concluded:
If the Arabs now can give us no certain knowledge of these two nations, both flourishing in
Arabia in the Christian era, so should we be somewhat suspicious of the historical memory
of a nomadic people, which is unsupported by any written document. We should no longer
expect them to know specifics of a nation which existed more than a millennium earlier.27
With this warning ringing in our ears, let us now turn to examination of the Arab
sources themselves, both those Velikovsky cited in Ages in Chaos, and other contrary
traditions that he chose not to cite.
21
Hârun Yahya, Perished Nations, Ta-Ha Publishers, London 2006; 6th English edition, p. 88.
22
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Thamud ; J. Retso, The Arabs in Antiquity, Routledge Curzon, 2003, p.
36.
23
24
R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, Scribner’s, New York, 1907, p. 3.
25
C. B. de Meynard and P. de Courteille, Maçoudi. Livre des prairies d’or et des mines de pierres
précieuses, Société Asiatique (Paris), 1844, 1869, Vol. 3, pp. 84 – 85.
26
G. Fisher, “Kingdoms or Dynasties? Arabs, History and Identity before Islam” Journal of Late Antiquity,
4.2 (Fall 2011), pp. 245 – 267.
27
Nöldeke, op. cit., p. 28.
Page 44 of 136
“An Old Arabian Tribe”: The origin of Amalek

Amalek son of Lud son of Shem
The Book of Genesis recounts how, in the days of Abraham (Abram), a coalition of
Mesopotamian kings “smote all the country of the Amalekites” (Genesis 14:7, AV). As I
showed in Part 1 (“Then Came Amalek …”), there is no need to suppose from this
reference that there were Amalekites actually present at that time. It is part of
Velikovsky’s thesis, however, to suppose that there were, and he deals with the subject
thus:
The Amalekites who participated in these battles in the days of Abraham could not have
been descendants of Amalek, descendant of Esau, himself a descendant of Abraham. The
Amalekites were thus of an older clan and no kinsmen of the Twelve Tribes.
The Islamic historians consider Amalek as one of the most ancient of the Arab tribes.
Abulfeda, an Arab scholar of the thirteenth century, wrote: “Shem [son of Noah] had
several sons, among them Laud, to whom were born Pharis, Djordjan, Tasm, and Amalek,”
thus ascribing to these tribes a primeval existence.28
“Laud” is better known from English translations of the Bible as “Lud” (Genesis
10:22). The Bible does not record his descendants, but Arabic tradition names a son,
Amalek, as the supposed ancestor of one of the primitive Ariba tribes of “true Arabs”: the
Amalekites.
Velikovsky’s thesis required the Amalekites to have erupted from Arabia at the time of
the Exodus plagues, and to be only “recently settled” in the Sinai region at the time of the
Battle at Rephidim. This may be why he saw fit not to continue his quotation from
Abulfeda, whose text runs:
The Amalekites were descendants of Amlek, son of Lud, son of Shem. After the confusion
of tongues, they settled at Sanna, a Yemeni town, whence they migrated to the district of
Mecca and completely wiped out a tribe that was hostile to them. But a part of the
Amalekites remained in Syria: against whom Moses, and Joshua after him, conducted war
…. 29
We can assume that Velikovsky read this passage, since he referred explicitly not only
to its first sentence, but also to the sentence that immediately follows it in the same
paragraph:
Their lineal descendants were the Pharaohs of Egypt.30
Lud in the Bible
Shem’s offspring are listed in Genesis 10:22 (AV):
The children of Shem; Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram.
28
AiC, II.2: “The Israelites meet the Hyksos”, p. 60. Velikovsky’s footnote reference to Abulfeda’s p, 17,
is a misprint for “p. 179”.
29
H. O. Fleischer, Abulfedae Historica anteislamicae, arabice, Paris, 1831, p. 179.
30
AiC, II.2: “The Arabian traditions about the Amalekite pharaohs”, p. 65; H. G. Fleischer, op. cit., p. 179.
Page 45 of 136
The names of Shem’s sons correspond to an uninterrupted arc of ancient peoples,

stretching anti-clockwise round Israel from the south-east to the northwest. Josephus in
the first century AD31, and the Book of Jubilees, which dates from before 100 B.C32, both
connect Lud and his descendants with the Anatolian people called Lydians (Assyrian
Luddu). The geographical location is about right for the Genesis passage, but neither the
Lydians nor their predecessors, the Luwians, were Semites. That is why the inclusion of
the non-Semitic Elamites as a brother people is important: both Elam and Lud were
included as sons of Shem because of geographic contiguity, not because of being
ethnically or linguistically related.
Although the Bible does not list the descendants of Lud, the precedent illustrated in the
“sons” of Aram and of many other eponyms would lead to the conclusion that they lived
in the same general location as their eponymous ancestor. If Josephus and the Book of
Jubilees are correct, this was some 3,000 kilometres north of the region in the extreme
south of the Arabian peninsula which Velikovsky and some Arab scholars identified as
the homeland of the Amalekites.
Arab “tradition” appears to know nothing of any Amalekite connection to Anatolia.
According to Ibn Sâid, quoted by at-Tabari and Ibn-Haldun, the Amalekites “were
expelled from Chaldea by the Nimrods, which is to say, by the first Assyrian princes. So
they entered Arabia, and spread into Bahrain, Omân, Yemen, then into the Ḥijaz, and
finally into Palestine and Syria. They also entered Egypt, and several Pharaohs were of
their nation”33.
According to Velikovsky, the Amalekites only erupted from Arabia “into Palestine and
Syria” under the impetus of the catastrophe that preceded and accompanied the Israelite
exodus from Egypt: “Although southern Palestine had not originally been their home, still
they had recently settled there” (AiC II.2: “The Israelites meet the Hyksos”, p. 58)
He used their supposed presence in southern Palestine in the days of Abraham, 600
years earlier, as proof of their ancient origins, but he did not attempt to resolve the
incongruity of their also being new arrivals in the time of Moses.
Other origin myths
It is not clear why Arab writers of the post-Mohammedan era should wish to project
the Amalekites into so distant a past, though Nöldeke hypothesised that, via the Jews, the
Arabs had come to regard them as the archetype of “an ancient, godless people”34. It may
be, also, that they picked up the false clue of Genesis 14:7 (the Abramic “land of the
Amalekites”). According to some “Arab accounts”,
The oldest inhabitants of certain lands were always Amalekites, so that … Amalekites
should once have been not only in all Semitic countries, but also in some ancient time in
some neighbouring countries. To keep these details straight … , one must accept either that
31
Josephus, Antiquities (tr. H. St. J. Thackeray), Vol. IV, Heineman, 1961, pp. 70-71.
32
Book of Jubilees, 9.6-8 (R.H. Charles. The Book of Jubilees or the Little Genesis, Translated from the
Editor's Ethiopic Text, and Edited with Introduction, Notes, and Indices, SPCK London, 1902).
33
A. P. Caussin de Perceval, op. cit., pp. 18 – 19.
34
Page 46 of 136
their time falls into the most remote prehistory, of which even the OT knows nothing
definite; or that (on occasions when mention of the Amalekites could not really be avoided)
the OT still gives no details, whether from ignorance or any other reason; but that the Arabs
… retained the knowledge of ancient events through long, long centuries35 —
—all without the benefit of written records other than the Old Testament, and whatever
Jewish targumim had been written down from the first century A.D. onwards.
Early Islamic writers, trying to establish a pre-Islamic history for what they now
perceived as “their country”, Arabia, found it necessary to create a genealogy for Amalek.
As we have seen, Abulfeda, cited by Velikovsky, saw him as the son of Lud, son of Shem
but other Arab logographers thought differently. Yaqut (12th-13th centuries) and others
“make Amalek the son of Arphaxad”36, one of Lud’s brothers, while still others “derive
Amalek from Ham”, the brother of Shem, and appoint him (Amalek) ancestor of “the
peoples of the East and those of ‘Uman [Oman], of the Hijaz, of Syria, and of Egypt”37.
But there is no more reason to place reliance on any one of these theories (for they surely
are no more than such) than on any other, and little reason to place reliance on any of
them at all: “No rational scholar will attribute any historical value to these fantasies;”
such, at least, was Nöldeke’s judgment38.
Arabic family genealogies provide much of the framework of pre-Islamic Arab
history, yet their reliability is very questionable. Ibn Isḥâq (AD 704-761 or 767) collected
oral traditions about the life of Mohammed and dictated them to his pupils. All original
collections of his narrations are lost, but much is preserved in works by later writers,
notably those of Ibn Hisham (died AD 833) and at-Tabari (AD 839-923). In Ibn Isḥâq’s
introductory chapters describing pre-Islamic Arabia we find the earliest genealogies, but
the author transparently created them by inserting “Arabic names into the [Hebrew]
genealogies which we find in Genesis”:
For example, Ibn Ishak inserted the Arabic name “Ya’rab,” which comes from the word
“Arab,” listing him as the son of Khahtan. Ibn Ishak then replaced Khahtan for Joktan,
mentioned in the book of Genesis as the son of Eber, the son of Arphaxad, and the third son
of Shem, the son of Noah … 39
Ibn Isḥâq reworked the names of the Hebrew patriarchs into Arabic form, naming
“ˁImlâq [Amalek] and ’Umaym” as “the sons of Lâwidh [Lud] b. Sâm [Shem] b. Nûḥ
[Noah]”, and claiming in the same sentence that they “are all Arabs”40. Amari reports:
… He then made Amalek’s original name “Arib,” just to connect him with the Arabs … .
Indirectly, through these false genealogies, Ibn Ishak claimed that Mecca existed at the time
35
36
37
W. Brinner, op. cit., p. 12.
38
39
R. Amari, Islam: In Light of History, Religion Research Institute, 2004, chapter IV.3, “Refuting the
Islamic Claim About Mohammed as Descendant of Ishmael”.
40
A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad – a translation of Ibn Isḥâq’s ‘Sirat Rasul Allah’, Oxford
University Press, 1955, p. 4.
Page 47 of 136
of Noah and his grandson, Lud. This directly contradicts the historical [data] showing that
Mecca didn’t exist until the 4th century A.D.41
At a later point, I will pursue the question of whether Mecca actually existed at the
time of the exodus. Meanwhile, Ibn Isḥâq’s history and genealogies underlie those of
“others who came after him”, including the subsequent histories of al-Mâs‘ûdi, Halabieh,
and Tarikh at-Tabari, as shown in Dr Amari’s extensive footnotes (omitted from the
quotes above). These are authorities whom Velikovsky relied on; yet the “ancient” names
those historians used for the ancestors and descendants of Amalek are, according to
Amari (and reflecting Nöldeke’s comments) “characteristic of Arabic-style names used at
the time of Ibn Ishak”. The names found on the genuinely ancient inscriptions of
southern and northern Arabia “are totally different from the style of the names given in
Ibn Ishak’s genealogies, which reflect the names of his generation”42.
Amalek and the founding of Mecca
According to Velikovsky, “The Amalekites ruled in Mecca and from their central
position on the great peninsula dominated other Arabian tribes”43. Some Arab writers
claimed that Mecca was the first and most important city in the world, founded by
Adam44, and that it is referred to in Psalm 84:6 as “Baca”, supposedly the original name
for Mecca. (More specifically, “Bakkah” is said to have been the ancient name for the
valley Mecca lies in. To support the claim requires ignoring the context of the verse,
which concerns a pilgrimage through the temple courts and sacred places (vv. 1–4, 10) of
Zion (v. 7).)
Most of the Arab logographers, however, provide versions of a story whereby Mecca
was founded by Abraham for his concubine Hagar and her son Ishmael, or by Abraham
and Ishmael together (Qur’an, 2:125-127), or by Hagar and Ishmael themselves. In most
accounts, but not all, the Amalekites are participants in this story, though in varying roles.
The earliest surviving history of pre-Islamic Mecca was set down by Ibn Isḥâq in his
lengthy introduction to his biography of Mohammed. Notably, the Amalekites as a
people do not occur in it at any point. They were introduced by later writers, such as al-
Mâs‘ûdi, an author much relied on by Velikovsky. In al-Mâs‘ûdi’s account45, the
Amalekites and some other tribes, notably the Jurhumites, were living in the far south of
the Arabian Peninsula at the time Mecca was founded by Hagar and Ishmael. “The
country of al-Shihr and Yemen were afflicted with drought” (which al-Faraj recorded as
the consequence of the bursting of the Mar’ib Dam in Sheba), and the Amalekites and
Jurhumites travelled north to seek relief. The Amalekites arrived first, and Ishmael
married one of their daughters. Subsequently, the Jurhumites arrived and camped
opposite the Amalekites.
41
R. Amari, loc. cit.
42
R. Amari, loc. cit.
43
AiC, op. cit. [0], II.2: “The Israelites meet the Hyksos”, p. 61.
44
F. E. Peters, Mecca: A Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 5.
45
C. B. de Meynard and P. de Courteille, op. cit., pp. 91 – 93.
Page 48 of 136
However, Ibn al-Kalbi received a different tradition “from [his] father and others”, by
which the Amalekites were the “original inhabitants” of the city, before Hagar and
Ishmael ever arrived on the scene46. Similarly, at-Tabari recorded that “there was a
people called the Amalekites outside Mecca and its surroundings” when Abraham, Hagar,
and Ishmael arrived there; but also that the Jurhumites too were already present “in a
valley near Mecca”. The Jurhumites approached Hagar before the Amalekites, and one of
their daughters was first to marry Ishmael47.
In Ibn Isḥâq’s account, written earlier than either al-Mâs‘ûdi’s or at-Tabari’s, the
Amalekites do not appear; their role is taken by the Qatura’, a different tribe. Rather than
being present at the founding of Mecca, the Jurhumites and Qaturites, travelling together
from the Yemen and arriving together at Mecca, found “a town blessed with water and
trees”, already established by Ishmael, “and, delighted with it, they settled there”48.
In sum, the Arab “historians” display great confusion over the foundation and building
of Mecca, over whether the Amalekites played any role, and if so, what. Yet the evidence
is that Mecca did not even exist in those remote times.
Did Mecca exist in 1450 B.C.?
Arab kingdoms that surrounded the area of Mecca in the early Christian centuries
acknowledged one another’s existence in monumental inscriptions. Mecca lies on what
were several famous caravan routes through the region, and now commands what was
always the major north-south trade route. Islamic logographers stress that, in ancient
times, Mecca was a centre of commerce with Yemen and the Sabaeans to the south, and
with Dedan and Qedar to the north on the same trade route. Saba, Dedan, Qedar, and the
other ancient cities of Arabia provide “thousands of inscriptions and other archaeological
findings”, from which “historians and archaeologists have identified a series of rulers and
kings for every Arabian kingdom before the 7th century B.C., and continuing through
subsequent centuries”49. But among the multitude of historic inscriptions surviving from
the ancient cities of Arabia, not one mentions trade with, or the existence of, Mecca.
Turning from the Arabs, what can we learn of Mecca from Classical authors?
Alexander the Great sent four expeditions to survey the Arabian peninsula by sea. Most
of the records are long lost, but we know that Hieron’s expedition, having sailed
clockwise from the head of the Persian Gulf, turned back halfway up the western coast of
Arabia because the region where we now find Mecca was so desperately dry and sterile
that, had the expedition sailed further, “it would not have returned in safety”50. An earlier
expedition from Alexandria under Anaxicrates “surveyed the whole of the Western coast
of Arabia as far as the Bab-al-Mandeb”51 at the south-western tip of Yemen, providing
detailed descriptions and measures of distance. Strabo, Agatharchides, and other
46
N. A. Faris (tr.), The Book of Idols ... by Hisham Ibn-al-Kalbi, Princeton University Press, 1952, p. 10.
47
W. Brinner, op. cit., pp. 73, 77
48
A. Guillaume, op. cit., p. 46.
49
R. Amari, op. cit., chapter II: “True History of Mecca”.
50
Arrian, Anabasis, book vii, 20:10.
51
H. P. Ray, The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia, University of Cambridge Press, 2003, pp.
169 – 170.
Page 49 of 136
geographers of Arabia drew extensively on his account52. The Ptolemies also sent at least
three expeditions, those of Satyrus, Simmias, and Ariston, who “began in the north,
describing the peoples and tribes of northwestern Arabia, until they reached Yemen”53.
According to the Arab logographers, Mecca was the most important city in Arabia at
this time, yet none of these expeditions left word of its existence. The detailed survey of
Theophrastus (late 3rd century B.C.), and the geography of Eratosthenes (same
approximate period), drawing on many writers who had visited Arabia, similarly omitted
all mention of Mecca. On Eratosthenes’ map, the barren region which Mecca now
occupies is bare of cities or villages. Claudius Ptolemy and Stephanus Byzantinus made
no mention of Mecca, or of a city that might be Mecca, though they both noted the
existence of Medina under its pre-Islamic name of Yathrib54.
In 25 B.C., or a year to either side, the Roman general Aelius Gallus conducted an
expedition to western and southern Arabia, of which Strabo provides the fullest account55.
Gallus travelled from the spectacular Nabataean city of al-Ḥijr in north-western Arabia,
down the main trade route to Mar’ib, the capital of the south-western Kingdom of Saba.
His mission was to protect trade from the piracy that was rife along the trade route, by
occupying all the cities along it. The expedition recorded the names of each city they
came to, but after leaving Egra (about 325 km NW of Mecca), they recorded no cities
until they reached “Negrani” (Najran) on the northern border of the Yemen, more than
800 km SE of Mecca. A fifty-day march (“for want of roads”) had taken them straight
through the location of Mecca, but Strabo reported of the region only that it “belonged to
nomads, and was in great part a complete desert”56.
(It is sometimes argued that “Negrani” was Mecca. At a normal rate of march along a
Roman road, a troop would typically cover about 30 to 40 km per day. Gallus’ march
through the desert was slow, perhaps no more than 15 to 20 km per day, but fifty days at
even the slower rate would have brought the expedition to a point double the distance
from Egra to Mecca. 20 km per day would bring it to Najran. In any case, Strabo’s
description of “Negrani”—“in a country which was both peaceable and fertile,” situated
near to a river and the city Asca, which is modern Nasq—scarcely fits Mecca.)
Other sources such as early Christian literature further undermine the notion of
Mecca’s being an ancient city. For example, the Byzantine Christians sought to
evangelise Arabia, and sent missionaries to establish churches in the main cities. Several
Byzantine emperors participated in this process; but even though some missions were
52
S. M. Burstein, Agatharchides of Cnidus, On The Erythraean Sea, The Hakluyt Society, London, 1989;
passim.
53
S. M. Burstein, ibid, p. 31.
54
E. C. Bosworth (ed.), Historic Cities of the Islamic World, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2007, article “Medina”,
p. 380.
55
S. E. Sidebotham, “Aelius Gallus and Arabia”, in Latomus Vol. 4 Fasc 3 (July-Sept. 1986), pp. 590 –
602.
56
Strabo, Geographia, 6.iv.24.
Page 50 of 136
specifically targeted on the Hijaz, where Mecca now lies, it is claimed that the name of
the city never appears in Christian documents of the third and fourth centuries A.D.57
Cosmas Indicopleustes, an early 6th-century Greek merchant from Alexandria, left a
detailed record of “Christian Topography”58 based on his mercantile travels in the Red
Sea and Indian Ocean. He discussed trading opportunities throughout that region, yet
never mentioned what is supposed to have been the most important mercantile city of the
time. “Even in the Qur’an itself, the [name] appears just once. ‘In the belly of Mecca, it
was God who held their hands back from you’ — an allusion that might as well be to a
valley as to a city”59. Not until 741 does the name “Mecca” enter independent history, in
the Continuatio Byzantia-Arabica, the earliest known Spanish work from the period of
Arab occupation. But the author’s ignorance of its location is not a good advertisement
for the city’s international significance:
… Macca — as they consider it, the home of Abraham, which lies in the desert between Ur
of the Chaldeans and Carra the city of Mesopotamia.60
We may sum up the situation in the words of the Islamic scholar Reza Aslan:
… Not a single non-Arabic source has been discovered to corroborate the theory of Mecca
as the hub of an international trading zone. “Of Quraysh and their trading centre there is no
mention at all, be it in the Greek, Latin, Syrian, Aramaic, Coptic, or other literature
composed outside Arabia before the conquests,” Patricia Crone writes in Meccan Trade
and the Rise of Islam. “This silence is striking and significant.”61
Although Velikovsky, following the Arab logographers, depicts Mecca as a thriving
city in the mid-second millennium B.C., the fact is that “there is no historical or
archaeological evidence that suggests that Mecca ever existed before around the 4th
century A.D., when immigrants from Yemen settled the area and built their Kaaba”62.
The latter is associated with the Khuzaaite monarch (variously called the “Tub’a” and
“the Tubba‘”), As‘ad Abû Karib, who reigned in Yemen from 410 to 435 AD63 (or from
390 to 420, according to Wikipedia). Arab historians identify him as “the first man to
dress the temple” of Mecca64.
57
R. Amari, op. cit. [37], chapter II.2, “Studies by Classical Writers Show That Mecca Could not Have
Been Built Before the 4th Century A.D”.
58
J.W. McCrindle, Cosmas Indicopleustes, The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk:
Translated from the Greek, and Edited with Notes and Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 2010.
59
T. Holland; In the Shadow of the Sword; Little, Brown, 2012, p. 471.
60
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, The Byzantine-Arabic Chronicle: Full Translation and Analysis, 2019,
https://tinyurl.com/ByzantineArabicChronicle .
61
R. Aslan, No God but God, Heinemann, London, 2006, p. 27.
62
Anon., “The History of Mecca”, http://www.historyofmecca.com/
63
A. Jamme, Sabaean Inscriptions from Mahram Bilqis (Ma’rib), Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962,
Vol. III, p. 387.
64
Page 51 of 136
“The Upheaval In Arabia”

Velikovsky’s claims
Despite the above considerations, the Arab writers depicted a thriving millennia-old
city at Mecca, originating in the time of Abraham or even of Adam. Velikovsky wrote:
The Amalekites ruled in Mecca and from their central position on the great peninsula
dominated other Arabian tribes. All parts of Arabia Felix, Arabia Petraea, and Arabia
Deserta alike were within reach of their bows. And then came the upheaval. 65
There was a flood, an immense wave. People were swept away by a blast. The earth
quaked violently. The catastrophe was preceded by plagues.66
These disasters, Velikovsky concluded, like those recorded in the Egyptian Ermitage
and Ipuwer papyruses and El Arish shrine inscription, were local manifestations of the
global catastrophes recorded in the Book of Exodus as the Ten Plagues. He wrote:
Saba (Sheba) in the south of Arabia, Mecca, and all the thousand miles of the Tehama coast
were shattered. All the tribes on the peninsula suffered similar horrifying experiences.
… Many perished in Mecca. A turbulent torrent overwhelmed the land of Djohainah, and
the whole population drowned in a single night.
… The Amalekites were put to flight by plagues that fell upon them in Arabia, and in their
escape they followed swift clouds. Meanwhile Mecca was destroyed in a single night filled
with a terrible din. The land became a desert.67
(“Djohaïnah” is the French spelling using by Velikovsky’s source, Caussin de Perce-
val68. The accepted English spelling is “Juhainah”. Caussin de Perceval used the phrase,
pays de Djohaïnah, but this is not the name of a country, as Velikovsky apparently
understood it to be. It identifies the territory of the Juhainah tribe, near Medina.69 “The
land of the Djohainah” would have been more accurate.)
The literature of the Arab logographers is extensive and not easily accessed, and given
that Velikovsky failed to supply references for some of these claims, I have not been able
to compare all of them with his sources. In particular, I have found no specific sources
for his statements: “The Amalekites … dominated other Arabian tribes”; “all the thousand
miles of the Tehama coast were shattered”; and “All the tribes on the peninsula suffered
similar horrifying experiences”. Velikovsky provided neither quotations nor references
for any of these claims. However, where I have been able to follow up his explicit
sources and examine his quotes in context, they have made very interesting reading.
“The Amalekites ruled in Mecca”
There is no consensus among the accounts of Arab logographers of the pre-Islamic
history of Mecca as to when the Amalekites arrived there, or which other tribes were also
65
AiC, II.2: “The Israelites meet the Hyksos”, p. 61.
66
AiC, II.3: “The upheaval in Arabia”, p. 61.
67
AiC, II.3: “The upheaval in Arabia”, pp. 61 – 62.
68
A. P, Caussin de Perceval, op. cit., p. 101.
69
See e.g. D.S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, Putnam’s Sons 1905, p. 243.
Page 52 of 136
present, or even whether the Amalekites were ever at Mecca at all. What is the truth
behind Velikovsky’s claim that they “ruled in Mecca”? To gauge the reliability of the
ancient accounts on which Velikovsky based his claim, we will have to survey several
versions of the early history of the city.
The Arabic logographers whose works I have been able to consult all agree that
guardianship of Mecca’s sanctuary (the Ḥaram) was vested initially with Ishmael and,
after Ishmael’s death, with his son Nâbit (Biblical Nebaioth, Genesis 25:13). After
Nâbit’s death, care of the temple fell to Mudâd ibn ‘Amr al-Jurhumi, the long-lived father
of Ishmael’s Jurhumite wife; or so Ibn Isḥâq recorded70. The Jurhumites “settled in the
upper part of Mecca in Qu‘ayqi‘ân”, where Mudâd forced levies on pilgrims to the
temple, while their cousins the Qatûrâ’ites, led by Sumayda’, occupied the lower area
(Ajiad) and did likewise71. But the Jurhumites and Qatûrâ’ites “quarrelled and contended
for the supremacy of Mecca” in a series of battles from which various features of the
Meccan landscape supposedly received their names. Mudâd was the winner, and the
Jurhumites were established as “rulers of the temple and judges in Mecca” [66].
Subsequently, however, they abused their positions, and another tribe, the Khuzâites,
fought them and “expelled them from Mecca”. The loss of their position caused the
Jurhumites bitter grief, which they commemorated in a song composed by Mudâd’s
grandson, ‘Amr ibn al-Hârith72; we shall come across this song again. Thereafter, the
Khuzâ‘a tribe controlled Mecca “from son to son” until the arrival and ascendancy of the
Quraysh tribe under Qusayy ibn Kilâb73. That event occurred five generations before
Mohammed, who was himself a Qurayshi, and so c. 450 A.D.74
According to the earliest historian of Mecca, therefore, the Amalekites were never
present in Mecca, never ruled there, and in fact seem never even to have existed. (A word
of caution is necessary, however: Ibn Isḥâq’s original history is lost, and Guillaume’s text
is assembled from quotations preserved by other writers, some of which Guillaume
excluded as inauthentic.) But later writers told different stories. In Ibn al-Kalbi’s Book of
Idols75, the Amalekites were the original inhabitants of Mecca, but Ishmael “begot many
children” who “multiplied so much that they crowded the city and supplanted its original
inhabitants, the Amalekites”. Nonetheless, and as in Ibn Isḥâq’s history, the Jurhumites
controlled the city and temple, but were expelled by a coalition of the Khuz ‘aites and
Ishmaelites. Ibn al-Kalbi failed to say what happened to the “supplanted” Amalekites.
Like Ibn al-Kalbi, at-Tabari, in his Annals, identified the Amalekites as already
inhabiting the country around Mecca at the time Ishmael settled there76, but added the
Jurhumites as also being already there. He made no other reference to the Amalekites in
70
71
Ibid., p. 46.
72
Ibid.
73
Ibid.
74
Ibid., pp. 46 – 47.
75
N. A. Faris, op. cit..
76
W. M. Watt and M. V. McDonald (trs.), Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, Vol. 6:
“Muhammad at Mecca”, State University of New York Press, 1988, p. 52.
Page 53 of 136
relation to Mecca, but in his account of the expulsion of the Jurhumites, he introduced a
new motif of Divine vengeance. God Himself “sent bleeding of the nose and a plague of
ants against the Jurhum and destroyed them, while Khuza’ah joined together to expel
those of them who survived”77.
At-Tabari was one of the Arab writers whom Velikovsky quoted; al-Mâs‘ûdi was
another. The latter recorded how, about the time that Hagar and Ishmael settled at Mecca,
the Amalekites and Jurhumites, with other tribes, dispersed from the drought-stricken
Yemen and travelled north in search of water. Both tribes settled at Mecca, the
Amalekites arriving first78.
In Ibn Isḥâq’s history, the Jurhumites battled the Qatûrâ’ites for control of the city. In
al-Mâs‘ûdi’s later version, the Amalekites are named in place of the Qatûrâ’ites. Apart
from that change, numerous details of the war are the same in both accounts:
• The opposing forces occupied the same respective locations in Upper Mecca and
Lower Mecca;
• Their leaders bore the same names, though al-Mâs‘ûdi’s king as-Sameydâh was an
Amalekite ruler, rather than a Qatûra’ite prince as in ibn Isḥâq;
• Al-Mâs‘ûdi gives the very same explanations for Meccan place-names that Ibn Isḥâq
gave for the Jurhumite-Qatûrâ’ite war.79
In al-Mâs‘ûdi’s later version, however, the Jurhumites, rather than winning, “were
conquered and covered with shame”, and the Amalekites were the victors. Now at last
we have an account in which the Amalekites were masters in Mecca80. But their triumph
was short-lived. “The temple guard [passed] to the Amalekites; [but] then the Jurhumites
recaptured it and kept it for about three hundred years”81.
Al-Mâs‘ûdi did not say what happened to the Amalekites in Mecca. In place of
pursuing their fate, he continued with Ibn Isḥâq’s story of the Jurhumites’ impiety and
expulsion82. To at-Tabari’s plague of ants, he added “swift clouds” and “other evidence
of [God’s] anger, such that many of [the Jurhumites] perished”. But it was not these
discomforts that drove out the Jurhumites. Instead, the Ishmaelites (replacing Ibn Isḥâq’s
Khuza‘aites), “having multiplied, drove the Jurhumites from Mecca”. The expulsion was
commemorated in a lament which al-Mâs‘ûdi ascribed to al-Hârith, the son of Mudâd; it
is a version of the dirge which Ibn Isḥâq attributed to al-Hârith’s son ‘Amr. “It was at
this time,” al-Mâs‘ûdi wrote, “that the Arabs of pure origin were wiped out, such as the
Adites, Abil, Thamudites, Jadis, Tasm, Amalekites, Webar, and Jurhumites … Amalek
was delivered up to chaos on earth; God subjected them to the power of foreign kings,
who annihilated them”83.
77
W. M. Watt and M. V. McDonald, op. cit., p. 53.
78
C. B. de Meynard and P. de Courteille, op. cit., p. 92,
79
Ibid., pp. 99 – 100.
80
B. C. Carra De Vaux (tr.), Maçoudi: Le Livre de l’Avertissment et de la Révision, Paris, 1897, pp. 98 ff.
81
C. B. de Meynard and P, de Courteille, op. cit., pp. 99 – 100.
82
Ibid., pp. 100 – 101.
83
Ibid, pp. 103 – 104.
Page 54 of 136
As a footnote to this section on the Amalekites in Mecca, it should be noted that they
are more often associated with Medina (see map). In Bosworth’s encyclopaedic Historic
Cities of the Islamic World84, the Amalekites are prominent in the article “MEDINA” (pp.
380 – 395), but they pass completely without mention in the extensive article on
“MECCA” (pp. 342 – 379). Ibn Zabala’s History of Medina, now lost but drawn on by
Ibn Isḥâq, reported that the Amalekites lived at Medina from ancient times85, though
according to Yâqût, quoted by al-Samhudi, they first drove out the tribe of Yathrib before
themselves settling and “putting the fields in order, planting palm trees and building
houses and castles” in the city86. In the same paragraph, al-Samhudi records that it was
from Medina, not from Mecca, that the Amalekites “spread out and took possession of the
land between al-Baḥrein and ’Omân and all the Ḥijaz as far as Syria and Egypt, and the
tyrants of Syria and the Pharaohs of Egypt descended from them.” But al-Samhudi, still
citing Yâqût, recorded that “when Moses, with many Israelites, undertook the pilgrimage
to Mecca, few [Amalekites] were left in Medina on the return journey”. Ibn Zabala
reported that it was not a pilgrimage, but a military expedition to exterminate the
Amalekites, and that every one of the Medina Amalekites was slaughtered, except that the
army “could not bring themselves to kill the Amalekite king’s handsome son”87.
“The Amalekites were put to flight”
It was a later writer still than al-Mâs‘ûdi, Abu’l-Faraj—also quoted by Velikovsky—
who finally described an expulsion of the Amalekites from Mecca88; but the
circumstances are peculiar. Like his predecessors, al-Faraj recorded how the Jurhumites
gained control of the temple and its precincts following the death of Ishmael’s son Nâbit.
As in the other accounts, the Jurhumites fell into impiety after only a few generations.
“When … the [Jurhumite] desecrations were multiplied in Mecca, the prince who reigned
in that time, Mudâd, … the great-grandson of the father[-in-law] of Ishmael, harangued
the people he ruled in these terms:
“O my people! Keep yourselves from lying; for lies never last. Remember what happened
to the Amalekites in the days of your fathers. They treated the Haram [Footnote: “The
inviolable sites, [the] sacred territory” of Mecca] with contempt; they showed no respect
for what is Holy; also discord entered in their camp, so much so that in the end your fathers
[the Jurhumites] became the strongest and drove them from our land. After that, God
scattered them around the world.”
Quite when this happened is unclear, but it must have been during the four or five
generations between the creation of the Ḥaram by Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael, and
Mudâd’s own time. More importantly, where Velikovsky had the Amalekites driven out
by natural catastrophes which completely destroyed the city, al-Faraj says that it was the
84
E. C. Bosworth, op. cit.
85
P. Wood, History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East, Oxford University Press, USA, 2013, p.
107.
86
F. Wüstenfeld (tr.), Ali ibn Ahmad al-Samhudi, The History of the City of Medina, Göttingen, 1860, p. 26
(3.1). The Yathribi then perished in a deluge—a familiar theme with expelled tribes.
87
P. Wood, op. cit., p. 107.
88
F. Fresnel (tr.), Abu’l-Faraj, « Tradition relative à Moudâd, fils d’Amr, et roi de la Mecque », Journal
asiatique, 3rd Series, Vol. VI, 1838, pp. 205 – 206.
Page 55 of 136
Jurhumites who expelled them, and that the Jurhumites continued to live in Mecca
afterward. And there is still no hint that the Amalekites ever “ruled” in Mecca before
they were expelled.
To make confusion worse confounded, however, al-Faraj recorded an alternative
tradition about the Amalekites’ departure from Mecca. This was the one Velikovsky
selected:
The tradition reports that the Amalekites [rather than the Jurhumites] violated the privileges
of the sacred territory and that the Almighty God sent against them ants of the smallest
variety which forced them to desert Mecca.
Afterwards the Lord sent drought and famine and showed them the clouded sky at the
horizon. They marched without rest toward those clouds which they saw near them, but
were not able to reach them; they were pursued by the drought which was always at their
heels.
The Lord led them to their native land, where He sent against them “toufan”—a deluge.89
Regarding the “clouded sky”, Fresnel’s translation says, “God sent drought and
famine, showing them verdant pastures on the horizon. They walked constantly towards
these pastures, and saw them before them without ever being able to reach them”90.
Fresnel noted that the Arabic word ghaith can mean both “pasture” and “rain and the
cloud that brings it”. Velikovsky opted for “clouds” to harmonise with the “cover of
thick clouds” that accompanied the Exodus, according to his interpretation of Jeremiah
2:691. Fresnel opted for “pasture” because, as he wrote, “I do not think that there is any
doubt here that mirage is meant”.
The account is transparently a reapplication and heightening of the plagues visited
(according to the earlier writers, at-Tabari and al-Mâs‘ûdi) on the Jurhumites. The
Jurhumites’ ultimate fate after leaving Mecca was also to be swept away by a deluge
(“They settled near the land of Juhainah, where a wild torrent carried them all away all in
one night”92. Velikovsky alludes to this event93).
But when did the Amalekite expulsion happen? Given Mudâd’s familial relationship
to Ishmael, the date of his speech must have been around 2,000 BC by Bible chronology,
and the expulsion of the Amalekites must have occurred prior to that—i.e., more than 500
years before Velikovsky’s date for the Exodus.
However, there is a different basis for dating the otherwise undated events in Arab pre-
history, by working backwards through the genealogies from the Mohammedan era. On
this basis (and following other historical indications), Peters wrote:
The Jurhum era in Mecca appears to have lasted three generations, from sometime about
100 C.E. … to the first half of the third century [A.D.]. The Khuza‘a may have ruled the
city for about the same span of time, from the middle of the second century to early in the
89
F. Fresnel, op. cit.. p.207; Velikovsky’s translation.
90
F. Fresnel, op. cit., p 207.
91
AiC, I.6: “Egypt In Upheaval”, page 29.
92
C. B. de Meynard and P. de Courteille, op.cit., p. 101.
93
Page 56 of 136
fifth century, when they were displaced by the Quraysh [who ruled Mecca in Mohammed’s
time].94
It is a difficulty, from Velikovsky’s perspective, that none of the earliest historians of
pre-Islamic Mecca describes any Amalekite ascendancy in the city, or—until al-Faraj—
an Amalekite expulsion. To this obstacle, we must add a dating discrepancy, of the order
of a couple of thousand years, for the account which does describe their expulsion.
Al-Faraj went on to describe, in style we are now familiar with, how Mudâd’s
Jurhumites fell into impiety and were routed in war by the Khuza’ites (as in Ibn Isḥâq),
“and few of them escaped death”95. Mudâd and his family fled in defeat to the Yemen,
where (as al-Faraj tells it) Mudâd composed yet a third version of the lament ascribed by
al-Mâs‘ûdi to Mudâd’s son al-Harith, and by Ibn Isḥâq to Mudâd’s grandson ‘Amr.
Velikovsky’s tale of the flight of the Amalekites from Mecca, originating with al-
Faraj, relies for much of its detail on al-Mâs‘ûdi’s earlier account of the expulsion of a
quite different people, the Jurhumites. There can be little doubt that the two stories are
related to one another, despite their strong differences, or that they are related to Ibn
Isḥâq’s and Tabari’s still earlier versions, from which the Amalekites are also absent.
Reading the Arab logographers’ discrepant accounts, it is easy to lose track of which
ancient tribe is supposed to have done what. Velikovsky must surely have been confused
when he claimed that “Masudi … wrote about … the flight of the Amalekites from
Mecca”96, for in fact, al-Mâs‘ûdi did not. Velikovsky was explicit: “Masudi,” he wrote,
“also relates the tradition of this catastrophe and tells of ‘swift clouds, ants, and other
signs of the Lord's rage,’ when many perished in Mecca”97. Presumably, he was working
from memory rather than consulting his source, since al-Mâs‘ûdi was also quite explicit:
God sent against the Jurhumites swift clouds, ants, and other evidence of his anger, such
that many of them perished;
—and, in the very next sentence, “Ismail’s children, having multiplied, drove the
Jurhumites from Mecca”.
From the differences in their accounts, and the ways in which they copied from and
enlarged on one another over the centuries following the death of Mohammed, it seems
plain that the Arab logographers lacked any genuine primitive history of Mecca. It seems
plain also that they indulged in free invention to make up for the lack, elaborating on brief
hints in the Qur’an, incorporating fragments of ancient ballads from a variety of epochs,
and borrowing from one another when other resources failed.
“Mecca was destroyed in a single night … . The land became a desert”
In preceding sections, I referred to a lament supposedly composed by the Jurhumite
king ‘Amr ibn al-Hârith ibn Mudâd (according to the earliest account, Ibn Isḥâq’s), or by
his father, al-Hârith ibn Mudâd (according to al-Mâs‘ûdi’s later account), or by their
94
F. E. Peters, op. cit., p. 9.
95
F. Fresnel, op. cit., pp. 211 – 212.
96
AiC, II.4: “The Arabian traditions about the Amalekite pharaohs”, p. 64.
97
Page 57 of 136
common ancestor Mudâd himself (according to the still later version of Abu’l-Faraj). The
poem is important because Velikovsky quoted al-Mâs‘ûdi’s version as the basis for his
claim that, in the night that the Amalekites fled from Mecca, the city was destroyed by
earthquake:
The Amalekites were put to flight by plagues that fell upon them in Arabia [he wrote], and
in their escape they followed swift clouds. Meanwhile Mecca was destroyed in a single
night filled with a terrible din. The land became a desert.
MASUDI: From al-Hadjoun up to Safa all became desert; in Mecca the nights are silent,
no voice of pleasant talk. We dwelt there, but in a most tumultuous night in the most
terrible of devastations we were destroyed.98
“In these lines,” Velikovsky wrote, “Masudi quotes al-Harit, an ancient poet.”
However, al-Mâs‘ûdi quoted only part of the song, and Velikovsky chose to translate only
the first couplet, and to provide a rather tendentious translation. Here is al-Mâs‘ûdi’s
fuller text, in the French translation by de Meynard and de Courteille which Velikovsky
used, with my own English translation below:
Ne dirait-on pas que, depuis al-Hadjoun jusqu'à Safa, tout est désert,
et qu'on n'entend plus à la Mecque de conversations nocturnes ?
Et cependant nous l'avons habitée, mais la plus retentissante des nuits
et la plus terrible des calamités nous ont fait périr.
Nous avons été parents et voisins d'Ismaïl, alors que les jours de malheur
n'étaient pas encore arrivés sur nous.
Nous présidions à la garde du temple après Nabit, et nous accomplissions
ostensiblement les tournées autour du temple et de son enceinte.99
Is it not said that, from Al-Hajun to Safa, all is deserted,

And that no longer are night-time conversations heard in Mecca?
And yet we lived there; but the most resounding of nights
and the most terrible of calamities caused us to perish.
We were relatives and neighbours of Ismail, as the days of misfortune
had not yet fallen upon us.
We commanded the temple guard after Nabit, and in sight of everyone
we did the circuits of the temple and its precincts.
“Tout est désert …”: “all became desert”, or “all is deserted”? Velikovsky’s
enthusiasm seems to have got the better of him here; the verb “est” is surely “is”, and not
“became”. “Is [a] desert” might be acceptable, but there is good reason to prefer the
translation, “all is deserted”, and it lies not only in French idiom (where “all became
desert” would be tout est devenu désert), but in the places named:
• Al-Hajun, otherwise known as Jannat ul-Mualla (The Mullah’s Garden), is one of
Mecca’s two ancient cemeteries.
98
99
C. B. de Meynard and P. de Courteille, op. cit., pp. 101 – 102.
Page 58 of 136
• As-Safa is the hill within Mecca, about 300 yards from the Ka’aba, where (according
to tradition) Hagar first looked for water after being abandoned in the desert by
Abraham.
The straight-line distance between the two locations is only about one and a half
kilometres. This indicates the small extent of the “desert”: not the entire “land” of
Arabia, as in Velikovsky’s interpretation, but the central area of Mecca, which the
Jurhumites had patrolled when they were responsible for the security of the sacred
precinct. In the poem, it is seen as “deserted” from the perspective of a people who once
owned it and rejoiced in it, but who are now dispossessed of it.
Velikovsky’s treatment of the passage is just as tendentious in at least three other
respects. Firstly, he interprets it to say, “Mecca was destroyed in a single night”, though
it is very clear from all accounts that Mecca had not been destroyed, but continued in the
hands of the victorious tribe (the Ishmaelites, in al-Mâs‘ûdi’s version).
Secondly, the “single night” was “filled with a terrible din”, which is Velikovsky’s
interpretation of “la plus retentissante des nuits”. For Velikovsky, this awful noise was a
constant symptom of the natural catastrophes apparently described in the Ipuwer Papyrus,
the El Arish inscription, and the Book of Exodus. In his essay, “The ‘Great and Terrible
Wilderness’”, he wrote:
Loud sounds often accompany an earthquake. Din and roaring became linguistic
substitutes for the phenomenon itself. Mecca was abandoned by the Amalekites when … it
was shattered by earthquakes. This was the same catastrophe that ruined the Middle
Kingdom of Egypt.100
However, the French translators’ word “retentissant” means “ringing”, “resounding”;
and has the same figurative connotations as its English equivalents. In an earlier passage,
al-Mâs‘ûdi tells us that the battle-ground of the Jurhumites and Amalekites “resounded
with the noise of their spears and shields”101, whence the area was named “Qu‘ayqi‘ân”,
which Barbier de Meynard and de Courteille translate as “retentissement” (“Koaïkiân”, in
their French transliteration).
Finally and most importantly, when the lines Velikovsky quoted are put into context in
al-Mâs‘ûdi’s account, it is clear that the poem or song concerns the Jurhumite expulsion
from Mecca by the Ishmaelites. It is a dirge over lost place and privilege, as may be seen
by comparison with the versions preserved by Ibn Isḥâq and al-Faraj respectively:
IBN ISḤÂQ:
Many a woman crying bitterly,

Her eyes swollen with weeping, said
’Tis as though between al-Hajun and al-Safa there was
No friend and none to beguile the night’s long hours in Mecca.
I said to her, while my heart within me palpitated
100
I. Velikovsky, “The ‘Great and Terrible Wilderness’”, Velikovsky Archive,
http://www.varchive.org/ce/baalbek/desert.htm.
101
C. B. de Meynard and P. de Courteille, op. cit., p. 99.
Page 59 of 136
As though a bird fluttered between my ribs:

‘Of a surety we were its people,
And grievous misfortunes have brought us to nought … 102
AL-FARAJ:
It’s as though there were never any residents happy in their homes between Hajun
and Safa! As though there were never night-time conversations in Mecca!
As though there were never people at Wakit and the surrounding area, to the point
where the Arakah Valley bends!
It was us, it was we who lived in those places, my dears! But the vicissitudes of the
nights and fortune opposed us, we were expelled from there.
………
So who has replaced us on Mount Ajiad, and at the edge of the ravine, and on the
surrounding heights?
The Valley of Mina is deserted; it seems that Mudad and the two tribes of Adiy never
enliven it with their presence.
………
Time has overwhelmed us with its rigours, it has crushed us; and we are no more
today than the scattered members of a body that has perished.
And yet we were the Kings of the nations, and we lived in the sacred territory before
you; we were the hosts and the masters.103
The last line is addressed to the new King of Mecca, ‘Amr bin Luhai, and his people
the Khuzaites, “the victorious tribe [who] refused to receive [Mudâd] and forbade him,
his family, and what remained of the Jurhumites, entrance to the sacred territory”104.
If Velikovsky is correct, and this poem records events contemporary with or just
preceding the Israelite exodus from Egypt, then they occurred about 1450 B.C. Al-Faraj
gives a quite different date, however. He tells how some Qurayshi tribesmen encountered
a “frail old man” on the road, who asked them, in the course of conversation, if they knew
the composer of the above song. They did not. “I am he,” the old man replied; “I am
‘Amr, son of Hârith, son of Mudâd the Jurhumite”. This took place “shortly before
Islam” arrived in the seventh century A.D.105, illustrating again how the “Arab historians”
had only the poorest grasp of pre-Islamic history: for they all agree that the Jurhumite
expulsion happened only a few generations after Abraham (though according to al-
Mâs‘ûdi, those few generations stretched to 660 years).
It is quite clear that Ibn Isḥâq, al-Mâs‘ûdi, and al-Faraj give three different versions of
the one lament. The versions show the same sorts of correspondence and difference as
102
103
F. Fresnel, op. cit., pp. 213-215 (abbreviated).
104
F. Fresnel, op. cit., p. 212.
105
Ibid., pp. 214 – 216.
Page 60 of 136
any set of orally-transmitted verses106. They all explicitly commemorate the third century
A.D expulsion of the Jurhumites from Mecca. That said, their historical basis may be no
firmer than for the ballads of Robin Hood or Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the
Kings of Britain, but they have no relevance to a supposed second-millennium B.C.
Amalekite flight from a city supposedly destroyed by earthquake.
“Many Amalekites … were swept away by the flood”
Velikovsky recounted how, driven from Mecca by plague and earthquake, and under a
cover of dense cloud, the Amalekites made their way northwards, “fleeing the ominous
signs and plagues and driving their herds of animals” through the now desert land in
search of water. Eventually, with the world still literally quaking under the onslaught of
natural catastrophe, they “reached the shores of the Red Sea”, where:
Not only the Egyptians but also many Amalekites perished … . Other tribes, too
Djorhomites and Katan (Yaktan) were swept away by the flood and perished in great
numbers.107
The reference that Velikovsky provided for the Amalekites perishing in a flood is to
Abul-Faraj’s Kitāb al-Aghānī. After their expulsion from Mecca, the Amalekites
travelled “to their native land, where [the Lord] sent against them ‘toufan’—a deluge”108.
Al-Faraj’s French translator, Fresnel, renders it as “the Tufan”, and remarks that Abul-
Faraj himself “pointed out that this word here means death”, though “it is usually taken in
the sense, flood”109. Where, however, was the “native land” of the Amalekites? There is
no real agreement on the issue. As we have seen, al-Mâs‘ûdi, with some other writers,
placed it in the very far south of Arabia, in the Yemen, whereas others, such as Ibn Sâid,
Tabari, and Ibn-Haldun, made Chaldea their homeland, and yet others originated them
from either the region of Mecca itself, or Medina about 340 km to its north.
Velikovsky wrote:
Plagues of insects, drought, earthquake in the night, “the most terrible devastation,” clouds
sweeping the ground, a tidal flood carrying away entire tribes—these disturbances and
upheavals were experienced in Arabia and Egypt alike.
This succession of phenomena helps us to recognize that they occurred at the time of the
Israelites’ escape from Egypt, also visited by plagues.110
Thus, Velikovsky represented the earthquake which destroyed Mecca as the same as
that which killed the firstborn of Egypt, and “the destructive flood” which smashed “all
the thousand miles of the Tehama coast” as the same as that which overwhelmed Pharaoh
and his army. But a desert journey of something like 1200 kilometres separates Mecca
from the approximate location of Rephidim. Assuming that the Amalekites with their
106
Compare the variant texts of traditional ballads published in Frances James Child’s The English and
Scottish Popular Ballads (Little, Brown and company, 1860) and their wayward relationship to then-
recent history.
107
AiC, II.3, “The Upheaval in Arabia”, p. 62.
108
109
F. Fresnel, op. cit., p. 206.
110
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women, children, and herds were able to travel in a dead straight line, I suggest that this
journey must have taken something approaching 2 years to complete. Were the Meccan
plagues and earthquake which supposedly initiated this flight truly the same as the
Exodus events, which culminated only “a few days” before the Encounter at
Rephidim111? The timescales do not fit.
However, according to Velikovsky, “Saba (Sheba) in the south of Arabia, Mecca, and
all the thousand miles of the Tehama coast were shattered” in the same event, and “All
the tribes on the peninsula suffered similar horrifying experiences.” Bold claims, yet his
references for this, besides Abul-Faraj’s highly ambiguous statement, were limited to
three: the supposed desertification of the land on the night the Jurhumites were expelled
from Mecca; and references to two floods, one that overtook the Jurhumites in “the land
of Djohainah”, and another that swept away the Qaḥṭânites (“Yaktanites”, Joktanites),
who were ancient legendary inhabitants of the Yemen.
“Djohaina” or Juhaina was a tribe resident near Medina, and not a place. Medina lies
in a bowl in the Hejaz mountains, and is subject to frequent deadly floods.
He gave no reference at all for the latter event, but here as elsewhere, Velikovsky was
linking together separate occurrences, reported by the original authors as belonging to
different epochs, into a single flood event. He linked this event with the collapse of the
Marˀib Dam in the Yemen, particularly in his essay, “The ‘Great and Terrible
Wilderness’”, already cited. In Velikovsky’s scenario, the dam failed within days of the
destruction of Mecca and the Amalekites’ flight from the city, though as we have seen, in
almost all accounts, it was the Jurhumites and not the Amalekites who fled Mecca and
were subsequently overwhelmed by flood. Moreover, the dating flies in the face of the
testimony of several Arab historians, that the drought which followed on from the dam’s
collapse was the cause of the Jurhumites, Qatûrâ’ites, Amalekites, and other tribes having
come to Mecca in the first place.
Velikovsky’s attempt to conflate many legendary or semi-historical Arabian floods
into the same singular event founders on the following fact: that devastating flash floods
have been a perennial feature of the peninsular climate for around 5,000 years. To this
day they are the Number One public safety hazard in Sa’udi Arabia112. By Tabari’s
account, the Mar’ib Dam was built to control the periodic flash floods the Yemeni region
was subject to, but was also the basis of the Yemeni irrigation system. Inscriptional and
archaeological indications date the building of the Mar’ib Dam to the 8th century B.C.,
following several much smaller structures, and its fatal collapse to 542 A.D.113 “The
consequent failure of the irrigation system provoked the migration of up to 50,000 people
from Yemen to other areas of the Arabian Peninsula, and even to Syria and Iraq”
(Wikipedia). In al-Mâs‘ûdi’s history, the same drought brought the Amalekites and
Jurhumites from the Yemen to Mecca; see above, “Amalek and the founding of Mecca”.
111
112
Y. A. Alamri, Emergency Management in Saudi Arabia: Past Present and Future, University of Otago,
New Zealand, 2014.
113
See, for example, M. Moiraghi, Civil Protection, Maggioli S.p.A., 2007, pp. 53-54.
Page 62 of 136
Velikovsky understood the Arabian Amalekites and the Amalekite descendants of Esau
to be two essentially unrelated peoples. Of the two peoples, he fixated on the Arabian
Amalekites because they were said to have invaded Egypt and reigned as Pharaohs.
Associated with them were other traditions which he was able to interpret in terms of the
sequence of colossal natural disasters he had already associated with the Exodus event.
In Part 2 of this essay, I have shown how the Islamic authors he drew upon were
unreliable witnesses of their own past in the first place, and how Velikovsky’s use of their
materials to establish his background of a single vast and devastating natural upheaval
was more unreliable still. In Part 3, I turn my attention to his use of the Islamic authors’
accounts of the Amalekite Pharaohs themselves.
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Page 64 of 136
PART 3: AMALEK IN EGYPT
Part 3: Amalek in Egypt

In Part 2 of this essay, I showed how the Islamic authors Velikovsky drew upon in
writing Ages in Chaos were unreliable witnesses of their own people’s history, and how
Velikovsky’s use of their materials to establish his background of a single vast and
devastating natural upheaval was more unreliable still. In Part 3, I turn my attention to
his use of the Islamic authors’ accounts of the Amalekite Pharaohs. This edition has been
lightly edited, for clarity and to remove occasional typographic errors.
“The Arabian Traditions about the Amalekite Pharaohs”

Who wrote “the Arabian traditions”?
On the face of it, Velikovsky’s key concept, that the Amalekites invaded and
conquered Pharaonic Egypt from Arabia, and thus were identical with the Hyksos, is the
strongest part of his evidence, for it is undeniable that (as he wrote), “Many ancient Arab
writers recorded the invasion of Egypt by the Amalekites.” Of those, he used seven,
listed here in historical sequence of their A.D. dates:
1) Ibn ‘Abd al-Ḥakam 803 – 871
2) At-Tabari 829 – 923
3) Al-Mâs‘ûdi 896 – 956
4) Al-Miṣri d. 1203
5) Yâqût 1179 – 1229
6) Abu’l Fida’ (Abulfeda) 1273 – 1331
7) Ibn Ahmad al-Samhudi 1438 – 1505
Ibrahîm ibn Wasîf-Shâh, known as “al-Miṣri”, “the Egyptian”, wrote a full history of
Egypt which is now lost, but also produced a condensation under the title, The Summary
of The Wonders. Al-Miṣri’s French translator, the Baron Carra De Vaux, failed to
identify the original author of the work, which Velikovsky mistakenly attributed to al-
Mâs‘ûdi.1
Al-Ḥakam seems to have originated the “Amalekite Pharaohs” tradition. At the time
he was writing, Arabia had already been Islamic for around 200 years, with all that that
implies regarding continuity of historical data from pre-Islamic (“pagan”) times.
Although various pre-Islamic Arab peoples were literate, there is no evidence that any of
them created written histories. When Islamic scholars of the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries
sought to create an “Arab history”, they were forced to rely on conflicting orally-
transmitted genealogies and poems, liberally intermixed with Biblical traditions, all of
1
AiC, II.4: “The Arabian traditions about the Amalekite pharaohs”, footnote 4 on p. 64.
The authorship of the Summary is disputed. Gottheil noted: “According to Ḥājī Khalifa, Ibn Waṣīf Shāh
“Al-Miṣri” wrote a history of Egypt, which he himself shortened into a compendium”, known as The
Summary of The Wonders; R. Gottheil, “Al-Ḥasan ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Zūlāḳ”, Journal of the American
Oriental Society, Vol. 28 (1907), p. 260.
Page 65 of 136
which they reworked to accommodate the doctrine that Mohammedan “Islam” and its
prophets had always been active in the world and, especially, in Arabia, however
benightedly the Arabs may have ignored their prophets2. To this end, they also made
liberal — and conflicting — use of imagination.
The sources which Velikovsky used to document the Amalekite mastery of Egypt are
all more-or-less late, a condition compounded by the fact that, as Velikovsky admitted,
successive authors simply copied from one another. We must surely question the
historical value of the testimony of these “many ancient writers” as independent
witnesses.
Velikovsky did not directly use al-Ḥakam, the earliest writer listed above, either in
reference or quotation. I assume that this is because, like myself, he was unable to locate
a copy of al-Ḥakam’s The Conquests of Egypt, North Africa, and Spain in a language he
was familiar with. However, Banschikova was able to draw on a Russian translation
published in 19853, and it is clear from her account that al-Ḥakam’s story was essentially
repeated by Velikovsky’s main sources, al-Mâs‘ûdi and at-Tabari, with some differences
in the names and lineages of the Amalekite pharaohs. The first of this line was one “al-
Walîd”, the son (according to various of the three sources) of “Tharwan” or of “Mus‘ab”
or of “Dûma’”. He was succeeded by between three and six further Amalekite pharaohs,
depending on which Islamic source one reads.
Despite differences of detail, Banschikova showed that al-Mâs‘ûdi, parts of whose
account were quoted by Velikovsky, preserved al-Ḥakam’s general outline. Al-Mâs‘ûdi
wrote:
All the people of Egypt acknowledge their descent from Misr, son of Baïsar, son of Ham,
son of Noah. After the death of Kobt, the kings who successively ruled Egypt were:
Akhmûn son of Misr; Sa, son of Misr; Atrib, son of Misr; Malik, son of Daris; Maraya, son
of Malik; Kalaki, son of Maraya. He reigned about a hundred years, and left the crown to
his brother Malaya, son of Maraya. Lûtas son of Malaya reigned nearly seventy years, and
was succeeded by his daughter Hûrya, whose reign lasted nearly thirty years. She passed
the throne to another woman named Mamûm. The sons of Baïsar ben Ham had multiplied
and spread throughout Egypt; they were obedient to women; and so various kings tried to
enslave them.4
An Amalekite king, al-Walîd, son of Dûma’, came from Syria, invaded Egypt, conquered
it, seized the throne, and occupied it unchallenged until his death.
He was succeeded by his son ar-Rayân, the Amalekite, who was Pharaoh in the time of
Joseph, whom God mentions in telling the story of Joseph in the Qur’an. (For details, see
our Middle History.)
2
Harry Munt et al., “Arabic and Persian Sources for Pre-Islamic Arabia”, in Greg Fisher, ed., Arabs &
Empires Before Islam, OUP 2015.
3
A.A. Banschikova, “The Topos of Amalecite Supremacy over Egypt in Arab Historical Tradition (I
Millenium A.D.)”, Buletinul Cercurilor Stiintifice Studentesti (Romania). 2008. No. 14, pp. 39-45.
4
C. B. de Meynard and P. de Courteille, Maçoudi. Livre des prairies d’or et des mines de pierres
précieuses, Société Asiatique (Paris) 1844, 1869; pp. 396 – 398.
Page 66 of 136
The Egyptian kings thereafter were: Dârem, son of Rayân the Amalekite; Qames, son of
Madan the Amalekite, and al-Walîd, son of Mos‘ab and the Pharaoh of Moses; but there is
disagreement on his origins: some see him as an Amalekite, others make him come from
Lakhm, a Syrian city; and finally, others rank him among the Copts descended from Misr,
son of Baisar. His nickname was Zulmi (“the Tyrant”), as we have said in our Middle
History. This Pharaoh was drowned in pursuing the Israelites, who, led out of Egypt under
the guidance of Moses, through a miracle crossed the Red Sea dry-foot.
What Velikovsky made of this
The outlines of the reigns of the Amalekite pharaohs created an uncomfortable
problem for Velikovsky. The Amalekites were supposed to have invaded Egypt after the
exodus had begun, but al-Mâs‘ûdi and the other writers all agreed that the invasion
occurred before the time of the Israelite Descent into Egypt, thus preceding the exodus by
hundreds of years. Velikovsky “resolved” the issue as follows5:
There is a great deal of fancy in some of these stories. In several instances they are spoiled
by the clumsy attempts of these authors to adapt their Arab traditions to the traditions of the
Hebrews, but not to the correct ones. So it happens that Joseph was sold into Egypt when
an Amalekite was the pharaoh, or that Moses left Egypt when an Amalekite was the
pharaoh. … … …
We shall disregard these attempts of some Arabian authors to insert stories culled from the
biblical narrative into stories indigenous to the Arabian peninsula, and we shall devote our
attention only to the narratives which did not have their source in the Bible or the Haggada.
They must have been autochthonous and transmitted from generation to generation on the
Arabian peninsula.
We should note first of all the logical fallacy in the final sentence there. It appears to
be the case that a succession of Arab authors, starting in the mid-9th century A.D., copied
and modified one another’s accounts of Amalekite pharaohs, thus either creating or
perpetuating a tradition. This tradition is unknown outside of those same sources, and so
does indeed appear to be “autochthonous”; but where is the evidence that it was
“transmitted from generation to generation” over a period of more than 2,000 years before
it first appeared in writing? That is an interval of something like 100 generations (or 50,
if one accepts a 40-year generation) from which there is no historical record of the
tradition Velikovsky alleged. There is no “must” about it; there is not a scrap of evidence
that Ibn ‘Abd al-Ḥakam’s Amalekite pharaohs were not his own invention.
Moreover, what Velikovsky dismissed as “attempts of some Arabian authors” was
actually the unanimous opinion of all seven of the sources he cited in this connection. All
agreed that an Amalekite pharaoh reigned when Joseph entered Egypt, and all agreed that
an Amalekite pharaoh reigned when Moses and the Israelites left Egypt (though as we
saw above, al-Mâs‘ûdi expressed doubts over the Amalekite ancestry of Moses’ pharaoh.)
Using his criterion of contamination from Jewish sources, Velikovsky concealed this
unanimity of testimony, but overlooked the fact that his criterion cuts both ways. There
are many aspects of the reigns of the “Amalekite pharaohs” which are not derived from
5
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any known Jewish account, and even some that are explicitly attributed to native Egyptian
(“Coptic”) tradition—for example:
The Copts say that in the time of this King [ar-Rayân, the second Amalekite king of Egypt],
a young man of Syria was brought into the land of Egypt … . … It was Joseph the Just;
may the salvation of God be upon him!6
Using the Velikovsky Criterion, these elements of the “tradition” are surely as worthy
to be considered “history”, as the mere existence of Amalekite pharaohs. Yet accepting
them as such creates numerous historical difficulties.
Historical difficulties
What context of known Egyptian history does the Amalekite conquest of Egypt fit
into, if we ignore the unanimous testimony of Velikovsky’s witnesses, that it began
before the time of Joseph, and ended in Moses’ time?
Velikovsky represents it as the occupation of a land prostrate before immense natural
disasters, which had also caused the invaders themselves to flee from their own lands.
Yet the Arab accounts of the Amalekite invasion offer no hint of such disasters, either in
Arabia, Syria or in Egypt. What we see is the subjugation by foreigners of an Egypt
weakened, not by natural disaster, but by two generations of female rule, concluded by
civil war between the last queen, Dolîfah, and the usurper Aîmin, who defeats her. At the
other end of the Amalekite period, according to at least some of Velikovsky’s authorities,
the Egyptians elected as ruler another queen, who reigned for 400 years.
These Arabic tales are not based on any Hebrew tradition, and so presumably are to be
judged “autochthonous Arab tradition”, and thus candidates for historic fact. Yet we
cannot fit them into any known period of Egyptian history. Furthermore (as we shall
see), other Arab writers provided accounts of the context of the Amalekite conquest of
Egypt that were quite different from those Velikovsky drew on. Those, too, are
“autochthonous Arab traditions”, but directly contradict important elements of
Velikovsky’s narrative.
The savagery of the Amalekites
It was important to his case for Velikovsky to demonstrate that the Amalekite rule of
Egypt was as savage and destructive as the period of Hyksos rule (as he portrayed it). It
is very notable, therefore, that, in his summary section in AiC, “Hyksos and Amalekite
Parallels”, the worst excesses of the Amalekites are recorded only from Jewish sources
(items 4, 5, 6, and 8 in the list in the section below, “Velikovsky’s Model in Ages in
Chaos”). However, Velikovsky did provide one example from an Arab source, as
follows:
Masudi tells of strife among the Amalekites and of the invasion of Egypt by a second wave
of this people led by Alkan, surnamed Abou-Kabous.
6
Carra De Vaux (tr.), L’Abrégé des Merveilles (“The Summary of The Wonders”, by Ibrâhim ibn Wasîf-
Shâh “al Miṣri”), Paris 1898, p. 370, p. 370.
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The Amalekites entered Egypt, destroyed many monuments and objects of art. . . . The
Amalekites invaded Egypt, the frontier of which they had already crossed, and started
to ravage the country ... to smash the objects of art, to ruin the monuments.
These words recall those of Manetho as cited by Josephus in Against Apion and quoted
above:
[The Hyksos] savagely burned the cities, razed the temples of the gods to the ground,
and treated the whole native population with the utmost cruelty.
The words of Masudi accord with the mention of the destruction of monuments in the
inscription of Queen Hatshepsut, a ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty.7
What does Velikovsky’s cited source actually tell us regarding this Amalekite pharaoh
“Abu-Qabus” and his callousness?
“The Summary of The Wonders”: What Velikovsky didn’t tell us
The passage which Velikovsky describes as “the words of Masudi” is quoted from
L’Abrégé des Merveilles (“The Summary of The Wonders”), though as we have seen, it
was actually written by Ibrâhim ibn Wasîf-Shâh “al-Miṣri” (“the Egyptian”). Here is al-
Miṣri’s own account of the initial invasion. The words Velikovsky quoted are highlighted
in boldface):
An Amalekite named “Alkan”, the son of Sajum, surnamed Abu-Qabus, advanced to the
very border of Egypt with the intention of invading. [Pharaoh’s vizier] sent out an army
against him, commanded by a general named Bernâsh; he [Bernâsh] was beaten and his
troops put to flight. The Amalekite entered Egypt, destroyed many monuments and
works of art, and his desire to take Memphis and its province was boundless. The people
of Memphis, learning of his approach, … set about wailing and imploring the sovereign’s
aid. [Pharaoh] heard them, and … learnt from them that the Amalekites were invading
Egypt, that already they had crossed its borders and started to ravage the country, to
spoil its harvests, to break its works of art, to ruin its monuments. They added that the
enemy army was approaching and was marching on the King’s Palace.8
Velikovsky was correct to portray this as a “second wave” of Amalekite invasion
leading to “strife among the Amalekites”. Although it is not obvious from the extract
quoted immediately above, “Pharaoh” was not a native Egyptian king, but the second
Amalekite pharaoh, er-Rayân. Al-Miṣri records that, “The Egyptians say that … he
gathered his troops, equipped them, and led them to meet the enemy. He drove them to
the borders of Syria, killed a large number of men, … invaded the country of the
Amalekites, sacked crops and cut down trees, and crucified all the enemy soldiers he had
made prisoners …”
Why did Velikovsky choose to illustrate the rapacity of the Amalekite pharaohs by
quoting the ferocity of a secondary invasion, which an Amalekite pharaoh repelled? The
answer is that (as we shall see in detail below) the Muslim logographers documented
7
8
Carra De Vaux, op. cit., pp. 361 – 362.
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nothing about anti-Egyptian savagery on the part of the Amalekite pharaohs themselves;
it was recorded only for Alkan’s unsuccessful secondary invasion.
Contrary to the picture of Hyksos-Amalekite rapacity that Velikovsky paints, er-Rayân
“began his reign in a most praiseworthy manner”, promising to treat his subjects fairly
and discharging them of taxes for three years. After repelling Alkan’s invasion, he “did
everything possible to increase crop yields, improve roads, restore bridges, and drain the
waters so that they poured out favourably on all lands. As a result of this work, Egypt’s
income surpassed all previous figures”. He led his armies in the conquest not only of
Syria, but also of Spain and France, and of the whole of North Africa to the Gulf of
Guinea, even taking ship on the Atlantic Ocean (the “Unfathomable Sea”). He lived 120
years, and in his old age empowered his vizier to “divert the watercourses, normalise their
flows, establish causeways, fill depressions, and transform the wetlands into a vast, rich
and fertile land called the land of the Fayum”9.
This scarcely accords with Velikovsky’s depiction of the Amalekite-Hyksos period:
“The rule of the Hyksos was cruel. They knew no mercy”10. Was the second Amalekite
pharaoh, er-Rayân, an exception?
Al-Masˁudi listed only four, or possibly five, Amalekite pharaohs. He expressed
uncertainty regarding the ancestry of the last, “the Pharaoh of Moses”; but al-Miṣri wrote
regarding him, “The Egyptian historians … believe he was an Amalekite; they say that
there were seven Amalekite pharaohs”11. Abulfeda similarly recorded that it was
“established as probable that he was an Amalekite”12.
The Amalekite pharaohs’ recorded careers make interesting reading, against
Velikovsky’s allegations of cruelty, rapacity, and ruthless destruction. According to al-
Miṣri:
• The first, el-Welîd, besides spending 20 years discovering the source of the Nile in the
Mountains of the Moon, seems an exemplar for Velikovsky’s case. He “ruled over
Egypt, oppressing its people, insulting their women and seizing their property, for one
hundred and twenty years. All the people hated and cursed him”13; but he is not
charged with having “ravaged the country, spoilt its harvests, broken its works of art,
ruined its monuments”.
• His son, er-Rayân, was of very different stuff, and “constantly exerted himself to
exercise justice and to obtain the benefit of the people”. It was during his reign that
Joseph was vizier and the Israelites entered Egypt14.
• Er-Rayân’s son, Dârim, fell under the influence of a wicked vizier. He “seized the
people’s women and stole their property, and permitted the nobles and the principal
9
Carra De Vaux, op. cit., pp. 361 – 362, 369 – 380.
10
AiC, II.6: “Hyksos in Egypt”, p.68.
11
Carra De Vaux, op. cit., p. 388.
But who were these “Egyptian”, or “Coptic”, historians, and what has happened to their works?
12
H.O. Fleischer, Abulfedae Historica anteislamicae, arabice, Paris, 1831, p. 101.
13
Carra De Vaux, op. cit., pp. 344, 359.
14
Ibid., p. 360.
Page 70 of 136
Egyptians to take the Israelites as slaves”. But he is never accused of attacking

Egyptian harvests, culture, buildings, or monuments15.
• His successor, Ma‘âdius, treated his subjects with fairness, lifting taxes (“as his father
had done”) and returning their wives to them. He devoted himself to the Egyptian cult
and temples, so that “the people surrounded him with great veneration”. He resettled
the Israelites into territory of their own, allowing them to build a temple “opposite
Memphis”16.
• Ma‘âdius’ son Aqsâmis (al-Mâs‘ûdi’s “Qames”) “filled vacant offices, delimited the
nomes and districts, encouraged Egyptian culture, and spread largesse among the
people. … He maintained the prosperity of the Kingdom, and its peoples loved him.
He erected many monuments, cultivated fallow land, and founded cities. … He also
built temples. It is said that the lighthouse of Alexandria was built in the time of
Aqsâmis”17, though we shall see a quite different tradition from another logographer.
• Aqsâmis was succeeded by Thalmâ. Nothing is recorded of his eleven-year reign
except that, accused of having poisoned his predecessor, he abdicated in favour of his
son18.
• Thalmâ’s son Lâthis “occupied himself with rebuilding monuments, restoring temples,
and building cities”19.
• But Lâthis was eventually overthrown by his own father, Thalmâ, who is also known
by the name of the first Amalekite pharaoh, el-Welîd. Thalmâ, “according to the
Egyptians, … exerted every effort to establish men according to their rank, to
strengthen monuments, to found towns, and to excavate irrigation ditches. He put his
treasures to use in building towns, in spreading culture, and driving numerous canals.
… They say he was the first to institute a police force”20. He was also the last
Amalekite pharaoh, and “the Pharaoh of Moses”.
Alkan’s secondary invasion occupies about forty words of al-Miṣri’s chapters on the
Amalekite pharaohs. Its context is fourteen thousand words describing their rule,
according to “autochthonous Arab tradition”, from which Velikovsky avoided quoting.
When viewed in the round rather than via that single brief, isolated extract, the Arab
“tradition” which he drew on almost entirely contradicts his depiction of life in Egypt
under Amalekite rule. In fact, the sole Amalekite whose destructiveness he specifically
quoted was never one of the Amalekite pharaohs.
Although there are exceptions (two out of seven Amalekite pharaohs), the picture
painted by Velikovsky’s source, al-Miṣri, is of general benevolence, prosperity, and
economic and cultural growth. This image was precisely what Velikvosky didn’t need,
for his case was of a dynasty devoted to cruel rapacity. What of his allegation, that the
Amalekites enslaved the Egyptian populace?
15
Carra De Vaux, op. cit., pp. 382 – 383.
16
Ibid., pp. 383 – 384.
17
Ibid., pp. 383 – 385.
18
Ibid., p. 386.
19
Ibid., p. 387.
20
Ibid., pp. 388 – 389.
Page 71 of 136
The Amalekites as slavers

We should first note that enslavement of a conquered people was a common practice
in ancient times. Solomon, for example, enslaved many Canaanites to work as corvée
labour on the construction of his Palace and Temple (l Kings 9:15–28). It was common
practice, also, for impoverished parents to sell their children into slavery (though the
Hebrews were forbidden to sell their own children).
Velikovsky provided two references for Amalekite slavery practices21. The second
was to I Samuel 30:13; I discussed it in Part 1 “Then Came Amalek”, where I pointed out
that a single slave of unknown original status, who might have been an Egyptian peasant
lad stolen by a raiding party, or even purchased legally from his parents, hardly proves
the case for mass slavery.
The other reference says, vaguely enough, “The above Arabian sources of the ninth to
the thirteenth centuries”22. Among the Arab logographers, there are occasional casual
mentions of slaves and slavery in almost every epoch. However, among the sources I
have been able to trace (six of the seven used by Velikovsky in this connection), there is
almost no reference to slavery in the reigns of the Amalekite pharaohs. The exceptions
are only two in number:
• In the reign of ar-Rayân, Joseph was bought and sold into Egypt by Syrian slavers23.
• The wicked king Dârim “allowed the nobles and leading Egyptians (“Copts”) to take
the Israelites as slaves”24.
There is nothing among Velikovsky’s sources to support his allegation that the
Amalekites “used the Egyptians as slaves”.
The city of the Amalekite rulers
One further allegation of Velikovsky’s needs to be examined, namely, that the
Amalekites “built a city-fortress on the northeastern border of Egypt” from which they
exercised rule as pharaohs25.
For the city itself, Velikovsky referred readers to L’Abrégé des Merveilles26. The
passage concerned recounts how the first Amalekite pharaoh, el-Welîd, before his
invasion and conquest of Egypt, wooed the then Egyptian Queen, Ḥuriâ. In response, she
invited him to enter Egypt and build a city “which would serve them as a rendez-vous”.
It is obvious that Velikovsky’s “city-fortress on the northeastern border of Egypt” was
intended to denote Avaris, which he located on the wadi el-’Arish on Egypt’s north-
eastern border with Israel. There are several reasons why this is an impossible location
21
AiC, II.13: “Hyksos and Amalekite Parallels”; p. 92.
22
Ibid.
23
24
Ibid., pp. 382-383.
25
AiC, II.13: “Hyksos and Amalekite parallels”; p. 92.
26
Ibid., footnote 29: “Samuel 15:5 and 7; cf. Maçoudi, L'Abregé, I, 331.”; see Carra De Vaux, op. cit., p.
331.
Page 72 of 136
for Avaris27, but in any case, unfortunately for this conclusion, L’Abrege says explicitly
that the project was to rebuild the city of Alexandria, which “lay in ruins following the
departure of the ‘Adites”, an earlier tribe of Arab invaders about whom I shall say more
below.
It is difficult to see how Velikovsky could have mistaken the reconstruction of
Alexandria as a pleasure city, at the command of the Egyptian monarch, for the building
of Avaris as a “city-fortress” by the Amalekite invaders. But in any case, the setting of
the story in his source, L’Abrége des Merveilles, is as an excursus on what the latter sees
as the “historically correct” version: the city was restored a generation earlier than in the
“incorrect” version, not by an Amalekite king, but by a Syrian general named Jîrun. In
this “historical” version, a preceding queen, Doleifah, mounts the throne of Egypt before
el-Walîd the Amalekite comes onto the stage28.
Velikovsky provided other references in support for his statement that the Amalekite
“chieftains were pharaohs and ruled from their fortress” on Egypt’s north-eastern border.
The second was to a subsequent page of L’Abrégé29, where on inspection, we read how
the Egyptian queen Ḥuriâ defeated the Amalekite general Jîrun and his schemes, and took
possession of the rebuilt Alexandria. There “she built the Pharos of Alexandria,
inscribing beneath her name the name of that general, and the treatment she had made
him submit to, with the date of those events”.
Again, it is difficult to see how Velikovsky could interpret this as referring to the
Amalekites ruling from Avaris. However, he also provided references to Abulfeda’s
History of Pre-Islamic Arabia30. Pages 101–103 give brief accounts of the Amalekite
pharaohs, with little detail of their reigns, and with differences from al-Miṣri’s list (he
omits Ma‘âdius, for example). The nearest thing to Velikovsky’s contention that the
passage describes “a city-fortress on the northeastern border of Egypt”—the only
reference to a city, in fact—is the statement that er-Rayân “set his royal throne in the city
of ’Ain-Shams”. ’Ain-Shams is now a suburb of Cairo, far from Egypt’s north-eastern
border.
In the same footnote, Velikovsky also referenced Abulfeda’s page 179, which provides
a lengthy summary paragraph “Concerning the Amalekites”. I find it impossible to see
what Velikovsky discerned of relevance to the “city-fortress on the northeastern border”
in this passage, which mentions no other cities than Yathrib (Medina) in Arabia.
Velikovsky also pointed to at-Tabari’s Chronicle in respect of the Amalekite rule from
what he surely intended us to recognise as Avaris. The page apparently referred to31 tells
how Joseph arrived in Egypt when “there was an Amalekite king”, and was put up for
sale as a slave. The continuation on the next page tells how he was bought by Potiphar,
27
The wadi is broad and (except in flood) very shallow; it would not hide Saul’s soldiers in their approach
to the city (1 Sam. 15), nor would it support the naval battle described by Ahmose sa-Ebana.
28
29
AiC, II.13: “Hyksos and Amalekite parallels”; p. 92, footnote 40, referencing Carra De Vaux, op. cit. , p.
338.
30
H.O. Fleischer, op. cit., pp. 101 ff. and 179.
31
L. Dubeux (tr.), Chronique d’Abou-Djafar Mohammed Tabari, Vol. 01, Paris 1886 p. 209.
Page 73 of 136
whose wife was “the most beautiful woman in all Egypt”. Neither page makes any
mention of a city.
Velikovsky’s final references in support of his statement, “Their chieftains were
pharaohs and ruled from their fortress”, were to commentaries on the Qur’an, Surat II “al-
Baqârah”, Āyat 46, by Al-Qurtubi, ‘Abd al-Ḥakam, and Yâqût. The āyat is very short
(“Who are certain that they will meet their Lord and that they will return to Him”), and
neither it nor the commentaries mention cities at all.
It is possible that the Qur’an reference contains a typo, though it is given twice.
Perhaps, also, the references to L’Abrégé are faulty. The page references given by
Velikovsky are to pp. 331 and 338. More relevant would have been page 362 of the
translation he referred to, Carra De Vaux’s, where we read that the second Amalekite
pharaoh, Er-Rayân (also called Nehrâus), “built a very large city near el-’Arish”. There is
no further detail on this city, but it is not described as a fortress, nor are Er-Rayân and the
other Amalekite pharaohs said to have ruled from there. The name “el-’Arish” does not
appear elsewhere in L’Abrégé.
It remains to consider one further passage regarding the Amalekite city. Quoting Ages
in Chaos:
As a supplementary bit of evidence I cite the following passage from Masudi about a
sovereign of the First Dynasty of Amalekite pharaohs.
In the neighborhood of el-Arish he constructed a fortress.32
On the same page, Velikovsky provided a footnote to the quotation, as follows:
Maçoudi, L'Abrégé des merveilles, p. 388. The Amalekite pharaoh is called by Masudi
Talma successor to Latis. The Hyksos king who built Auaris is called Salitis or Salatis
(Cambridge Ancient History, I, 233) by Manetho. The two forms, Latis and Salatis, handed
down through two such different channels, are nevertheless noticeably similar.
In this case, Velikovsky’s reference is essentially correct, though it should have been
to pp. 388–389. The full sentence reads: “In the vicinity of el-‘Arish, he built a fortress,
and placed others along the frontiers of Egypt.”33
This seems like a hit, but Velikovsky’s comments are misleading in at least two
respects. The name of the first Hyksos pharaoh in Manetho-Josephus is not “Salatis” but
“Salitis” (or, according to other versions, “Saites”)34. Velikovsky used the first series of
the Cambridge Ancient History (published 1924–1939), in which the name does indeed
appear as “Salatis” on the page he noted. However, this single occurrence is apparently a
32
AiC, II.12: “The Location of Auaris”; p. 89.
33
This suggestion of a chain of border fortresses is reminiscent of the “Walls of the Prince” built by
Amenemhet I, the founder of the pre-Hyksos 12th Dynasty, “to prevent Asiatics (‘Ꜣmw) from going down
into Egypt” (J.K. Hoffmeier, “‘The Walls of the Ruler’ in Egyptian Literature and the Archaeological
Record”, BASOR 343, Aug. 2006, p. 8, quoting “the so-called prophecy of Neferti”). However, these
fortresses seem to have run along the north-western and western edges of the Sinai Peninsula, rather than
in the vicinity of el-’Arish.
34
Josephus, Against Apion, tr. and comment. J.M.G. Barclay, Brill 2007, p. 53, and footnote 300.
Page 74 of 136
misprint, and Salitis is the only form used in the discussion of the Hyksos rule in Volume
VIII35. The current series (1970–2001) also uses only the form “Salitis”36.
This somewhat reduces the resemblance Velikovsky remarked on, especially when we
consider that the form Salitis is in any case a Graecised version of an Egyptian original.
The latter, as the CAH author, Hayes, notes, seems to have been “the King Sharek, or
Shalek, who in the genealogical table of Memphite priests is placed one generation before
the well-known Hyksos pharaoh, Apophis (I)”37.
Finally, but most importantly, where Manetho identifies Salitis as the very first Hyksos
pharaoh, Talma “successor to Latis”, was the last Amalekite pharaoh in al-Miṣri’s
scheme38.
The reduced resemblance in the name, and the separation between Manetho’s Salitis as
the first Hyksos pharaoh, and al-Miṣri’s Latis as the penultimate Amalekite pharaoh,
together create another severe problem for Velikovsky’s interpretation regarding the
construction of Avaris.
The end of the Amalekites
In Chapter II of Ages in Chaos, Velikovsky included a section with the title, “The
expulsion of the Hyksos in the Egyptian and Hebrew records”39. His scenario is that the
Hyksos were defeated by a coalition of Egyptian and Israelite forces, led by the Israelite
king, Saul. The title Velikovsky gave to the section is most telling. What do the Arab
records have to say of “the expulsion of the Amalekites” from Egypt?
The answer is: Nothing. In any case, the “historical” setting of the Amalekite
pharaohs is very different from Velikovsky’s, encompassing a period that ends with the
Israelite Exodus, rather than beginning with it. In this scenario, the Amalekite reign ends
either because Qames, last of the Amalekite line, was succeeded peacefully by a native
Egyptian king, el-Welîd, “the pharaoh of Moses” (thus al-Mâs‘ûdi); or because el-Welîd
himself was the last Amalekite pharaoh, but drowned in the Israelites’ Sea of Passage
(thus al-Miṣri and Abulfeda). Either way, the Arab history of Amalekite Egypt comes to
a complete stop at one of those two points—although the Arab history of the Amalekites
themselves continues, beginning with their version of the encounter at Rephidim, which
occurs after instead of before the period of the Amalekite pharaohs.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in Velikovsky’s summary section on “Hyksos and
Amalekite parallels”40, all but one of the several footnote references to the end of the rule
of the Hyksos-Amalekites point to Jewish traditional material (Biblical passages, plus two
35
J.B. Bury, S.A. Cook, and F.E. Adock (eds), The Cambridge Ancient History (first series), Cambridge
University Press, 1924, Vol. VIII, II, p. 313.
36
L.E.S. Edwards, C.J. Gadd, N.G.L. Hammond (eds), The Cambridge Ancient History (second series),
Vols. I and II, Cambridge University Press, 1970 - 1971 Vol I, pp. 183, 185; Vol II, Part II, pp. 52, 58-59.
37
Ibid., p. 59.
38
39
AiC, II.9: “The expulsion of the Hyksos in the Egyptian and Hebrew records”; p. 76.
40
AiC, II.13: “Hyksos and Amalekite parallels”; p. 89.
Page 75 of 136
references to Ginzberg’s Legends). The exception is a reference to al-Samhudi’s History

of the City of Medina.
Velikovsky provided the reference to al-Samhudi in support of his own statement,
“Their remnants moved into mountainous southern Palestine”. I have already reviewed
the referenced page41 in the section of Part 2 headed, “The Amalekites ruled in Mecca”.
It describes the origin of the Amalekites, and their spread throughout the Middle East
from Medina (not from Mecca) in early times. It also describes, on the authority of
Yaqût, how, following the end of the Egyptian Amalekite empire, Moses and several
Israelites made a pilgrimage to Medina (“where according to the writings of the Torah,
the last of the Prophets would appear”) and destroyed the Amalekite population that
remained there. I can see nothing remotely relevant to the supposed dispersal of the
Amalekites from Egypt in the time of King Saul.
It appears that the Arab authorities whom Velikovsky drew on were entirely ignorant
of the war against the last Amalekite pharaohs, of the expulsion of the Hyksos from
Avaris, of their escape to Sharuhen, and of their dispersal among the southern highlands
of Palestine and northern Arabia.
Contrary Arabic traditions concerning Arab pharaohs

“Many ancient Arab writers recorded the invasion of Egypt by the Amalekites,” as
Velikovsky wrote; but others did not. According to Michael Cook, the mediaeval
historians Hârûn and Idrîsî denied that the Amalekites had ever been in Egypt42.
Conversely, Caussin de Perceval, in the section on “Amâliqa” in his monumental Essay
on Arab Pre-History, recorded the following:
If the traditions are to be believed, the Amâliqa were called and admitted into Egypt by a
Coptic king, who hoped to be rescued by them from a formidable enemy. They profited
from that situation by carrying out their own conquest of the country, and their dominion
there lasted well beyond the end of the period assigned to the Hyksos; for the Arab
historians claim that not only the Pharaoh under whose reign Abraham went into Egypt
with Sarah was an Amâliqa king, but also the Pharaohs of Joseph’s era and that of Moses.43
Already we discern significant differences between the Arab authorities quoted by
Velikovsky, and those cited by de Perceval. They at least agree on the existence of
Amalekite pharaohs, but in de Perceval’s source, Ibn Haldûn, they entered Egypt by
invitation and not by invasion, and as far back as the time of Abraham or even earlier, at
least 600 years before the Exodus.
Yet de Perceval reports a completely different tradition in his section on the “Adites, or
People of Ad”44, in which the Arab pharaohs are not from the tribe of the Amalekites but
of the ’Adites, whose king Ḥeddâd reigned in the sixth generation after the Flood
(roughly 2400 to 2500 BC):
41
F. Wüstenfeld (tr.): Ali ibn Ahmad al-Samhudi, The History of the City of Medina, Göttingen 1860, p. 26.
42
M. Cook, Studies in the origins of early Islamic culture and tradition, Variorum, 2004, p. 43.
43
A.P. Caussin de Perceval, Essai sur l’histoire des Arabes avant l’Islamisme (etc.), Paris, 1847, Vol. 1, pp.
18 – 19.
44
Ibid., pp. 12 – 13. Caussin de Perceval’s footnote at this point reads, “Ibn-Ḥaldûn, f. 12”.
Page 76 of 136
Ḥeddâd is credited with great conquests. He subjugated Iraq, and overran and conquered
India45 … [then] led his armies westward, subjugated the Egyptians or Copts46, and pushed
on as far as the Maghreb Sea47 (the Atlantic Ocean). He remained in the conquered country
… for more than 200 years48. The place of residence of [the ’Adites’] chief or king was an
Egyptian town named Aour or Awar, located in the general region where Alexandria would
later be built. Eventually the Copts, with the aid of their brothers the black peoples, chased
the Adites from Egypt49.
In Arab tradition, the ’Adites were an entirely separate people from the Amalekites,
descended from a different son of Shem. The Bible records an Amalek and Amalekites,
but is completely ignorant of “’Ād” or “’Ādi”. Surely, by Velikovsky’s criterion, under
which nothing that smacks of possible contamination with Hebrew tradition may be
admitted, this ’Adite conquest three or four generations before the time of Abraham
would be a better contender for the Hyksos conquest. De Perceval makes the obvious
point:
In reading these details, however uncertain their source may be, it seems impossible not to
see there a hint of the shepherds or Hyksos who seized Egypt around twenty centuries
before Christ. Attacked afterwards by the princes of the Thebaid, reunited with those of the
other Egyptian provinces, they were progressively driven out of the land, then forced to
evacuate Avaris, the last place which remained under their power, and at last completely
expelled, around 260 years after their entry into Egypt.50
A kernel of historic truth?
De Perceval and others have made the point that seeing the Amalekites of the Arab
tradition as a placeholder for all the Semitic tribes who anciently inhabited Arabia and
Syria, conforms with our other information, from Biblical and extra-Biblical sources:
We can recognise here the Canaanites living at first in Arabia Felix, as witnessed by
Herodotus, passing thereafter into Arabia Petraea, and proceeding to settle in Phoenicia.
We see that oriental traditions place Amâliqa, as well as the Adites, among the shepherds or
Hyksos, whom one can regard generally as hordes of Arabs and Phoenicians, otherwise
[called] Canaanites.51
If this view is correct, then the name ‘Amâliqa can be seen to resemble in meaning the
Egyptian word ‘A’am (ˁꜢm), “a south-west Asiatic person”, “a Semitic nomad herdsman”;
but it is unlikely for several technical reasons that the words are etymologically related.
In the account of the expulsion of the ’Adite pharaohs, it is notable that there is no
assistance from Palestine (Israel), such as Velikovsky proposed. Also, this tradition
locates Avaris within the Delta, rather than at the Wadi el-Arish as he hypothesised.
There are sound reasons for seeing the Arabic ’Adites, as well as the Amalekites and
45
Footnote: Ibn-Ḥaldûn, f. 8, vo.
46
Footnote: Ibn Saîd al-Maghrebi, cited by Ibn-Ḥaldûn, f. 9.
47
Footnote: Kitab ul-Jumân.
48
Footnote: Kitab ul-Jumân.
49
Footnote: Ibn-Ḥaldûn, f. 9-
50
Caussin de Perceval, op. cit,, pp. 13–14.
51
Ibid., p. 19.
Page 77 of 136
other Ariba tribes, as essentially mythical. Nonetheless, can we see in these traditions,
whatever their origin, a dim reflection of history?
Banschikova finds the succession of Amalekite pharaohs historically compelling,
though not the details of their individual reigns. It seems possible that ibn Ḥaldûn, and
possibly al-Ḥakam, had direct or indirect knowledge of Manetho’s history, probably via
Josephus.
In Volume 2 of his encyclopaedic Meadows of Gold, al-Mâs‘ûdi gave the following
summary of rulership in Egypt:
The chronicles, despite their differences, agree on the number of Egyptian kings, namely,
thirty-two Pharaohs: five Babylonian kings; four kings from among the kings of Mareb, or
Amalekites, from Syria; seven from the country of Rome; and finally ten Greek kings.
Thus it was in the times before the Messiah, not to mention the Persian kings who occupied
Egypt before Chosroes. The total duration of the reign of all these kings, pharaohs,
Persians, Romans, Amalekites, and Greeks, is two thousand three hundred years.52
Banschikova comments, “It is well-established that the reference to thirty two proper
Egyptian pharaohs corresponds almost precisely to the number of historic dynasties,
misunderstood or simplified”53. The individual kings are said to have reigned for, in
some cases, several hundred years. If we regard each as representing a whole dynasty—
or in some cases, dynasties—then al-Ḥakam’s and al-Mâs‘ûdi’s pharaohs, from Miṣr ibn
Baisar who founded Egypt, to Queen Delukeh who followed the Amalekite Dynasty, can
be lined up one-by-one with the Egyptian dynasties from D3 to D21 respectively, with
400 years of Delukeh’s descendants representing D24 and D25.
In Banschikova’s scheme, the last Amalekite pharaoh, Kames ibn Madan, corresponds
to the last Hyksos-period dynasty, D17. According to al-Mâs‘ûdi, his successor, el-Welîd
b. Mus‘ab (the pharaoh of Moses and the Exodus), was not an Amalekite but a native
Egyptian (though al-Mâs‘ûdi acknowledged that there were contrary opinions). His reign
of 400 to 500 years represents the whole of the 18th, 19th, and 20th dynasties.
Words of Warning
Banschikova uses genealogical and other information in al-Ḥakam’s text to deduce a
date of around 1500 B.C. for the end (rather than the beginning) of the Amalekite period,
and comments:
The figure of the Pharaoh of Moses, who ruled alone for almost half [a] millennium,
represents the New Kingdom period (1554-1075 B.C.) and absorbed all its rulers, being a
collective, assembled image. The New Kingdom begins with the expulsion of the Hyksos
by the kings of the seventeenth dynasty, respectively with the substitution of foreign rule
into native one.54
It may be dangerous to press the details, however. There are several weaknesses in
this interpretation, including the fact that while some pharaohs are equated to a single
52
De Meynard and de Courteille, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 431.
53
Banschikova, op. cit., p. 41.
54
Ibid,, p. 42.
Page 78 of 136
dynasty, others correspond to three or four. Particularly striking is the interpretation of

el-Welîd b. Mus‘ab on his own as representing the whole of the New Kingdom period,
including the 18th, 19th, and 20th Dynasties.
An earlier defect in the scheme is the decision to start it with D3. Why did the Arab
logographers not begin Egyptian history with Manetho’s D1, and what happens to
Banschikova’s interpretation if it is realigned to do so? And why do the logographers
record that Miṣr and his three sons, whom Benschikova sees as representing D3, D4, D5,
and D6, reigned simultaneously rather than successively, dividing the land between
them55? Moreover (as we have seen), different writers provide different numbers of
Amalekite pharaohs; al-Miṣri has eight (including the second el-Welîd), rather than al-
Mâs‘ûdi’s four (excluding the second el-Welîd).
Banschikova continues:
It is remarkable that the Pharaoh of Moses is not ascribed precisely Amalekite provenance
– this version is just one of quite equal versions, while another version provides his proper
Egyptian origin, corresponding thus unquestionably to the native origin of the New
Kingdom dynasties.56
Here, Banschikova is simply picking as the “proper” version the one which suits her
pre-formed hypothesis: that “the Pharaoh of Moses” should have a “proper Egyptian
origin”. Al-Mâs‘ûdi was ambivalent on this, but al-Miṣri was quite clear: “This is the
prince who, according to the Egyptians, was the pharaoh of Moses. The historians name
him as el-Welîd ibn Moṣ‘ab, and believe he was an Amalekite”57; I have already quoted
Abulfeda to the same effect in Part 2, “Amalek son of Lud son of Shem”.
Summary: The Amalekites in Arabia and Egypt

In Parts 2 and 3, I have sought to establish two main points:
1) That the Arab logographers whom Velikovsky quoted and referenced were unreliable
witnesses to history; and
2) That Velikovsky himself was an unreliable witness to their testimony.
From a legal perspective, in effect, what Velikovsky offered was hearsay; what I
sought out was the actual words of the original witnesses he called on. Now it is time to
summarise what we have learnt from this interrogation of Velikovsky’s sources.
The scientific method
It is useful to consider the above mass of evidence from the perspective of “the
scientific method”. The scientific method begins with the collection and organisation of
data about some matter of interest (a “system”), followed by the construction of a
“model”, based on the data, which represents the scientist’s understanding of how the
system “works”. The next stage is to test the accuracy of this model by acquiring further
55
56
Banschikova, loc. cit. I have lightly edited the text of both quotations, to reduce the “translated from
Rumanian” flavour of the author’s original English.
57
Ibid. , p. 388.
Page 79 of 136
data, and seeing whether the additional data fits the model (and so tends to corroborate it),
or does not fit it (and so tends to undermine or even invalidate it). This may be done by
designing and conducting experiments that predict how the system should behave under
conditions that have not been observed until now, or simply by gathering additional data
by further observation of the system.
Velikovsky’s Ages in Chaos provides such a model, consisting of a set of interlocking
“sub-models” for restructuring ancient history. His model enabled him to make
“predictions” which, at first sight, spectacularly verified the accuracy of the model—such
as the “prediction” that the time of King Solomon should coincide with the reign of an
Egyptian queen (Hatshepsut) instead of the usual male pharaohs.
This essay is not the place to consider how genuine the accuracy of that particular
“prediction” was in reality, though the work has been done by others. What I have done
here in Parts 2 and 3 of this essay is to gather a large amount of original data specifically
relevant to part of Velikovsky’s “system”—the sub-model which equates the Hyksos with
the Amalekites—and to evaluate whether they tend to verify or invalidate that sub-model.
Velikovsky’s Model in Ages in Chaos
Velikovsky constructed his model of the Amalekite Hyksos in Chapter II of Ages in
Chaos, titled simply “THE HYKSOS”. Towards the end of the chapter, he provided a
convenient summary of his main points58, supported with footnote references.
The model consists essentially of three parts, the first of which59 presents the Egyptian
side of the evidence. The footnotes in that section all refer to Manetho-Josephus, and to a
variety of native Egyptian sources, and are out of scope (and not in dispute) for the
current context.
The remaining two parts of the model intertwine data from Jewish and Arabic sources,
also supported by footnote references60. On the basis of those references, we can sort the
data points into two groups of ten points each, which summarise the data in Velikovsky’s
sub-model equating the Biblical and Arabic Amalekites with the Egyptian ‘A’amu-
Hyksos.
The first group of data points consists of the following, all of which—with one
exception—are supported only by references to the Bible or to post-Biblical Jewish
legends, as given here in braces:
1) [The Amalekites] sighted the Israelites coming out of Egypt, which was laid in
ruins by a great catastrophe {Exodus 15:7-12; 17:8-16; Numbers 14:43-45}
2) In this catastrophe the water in the river turned red as blood, the earth shook,
the sea rose in a sudden tidal wave {Exodus 7:20; 12:29; 14:27}
3) They were a nation of herdsmen and roamed with their large herds from field to
field {Judges 6:3, 33; 7:12; I Samuel 15:9, 14}
58
AiC, II.13: “Hyksos and Amalekite Parallels”; pp. 89 – 93.
59
Ibid., pp. 89 – 90.
60
Ibid., pp. 90 – 93.
Page 80 of 136
4) They mutilated the wounded and the prisoners, cut off limbs, and were
unspeakably cruel in many other ways {Deuteronomy 25:15f.; Numbers 11:1;
Targum Yerushalmi of Exodus 17:8; Midrash Tannaim, 170; Pirkei Rabbi
Elieser 44; and many other sources}
5) They stole children and carried off women {Numbers 14:3; I Samuel 30:15}
6) They burned cities {I Samuel 30:1}
7) They held sway over western Asia and northern Africa and had no peer in their
time {Literature in Ginzberg, Legends, III, 63; Numbers 24:20; 24:7; I Samuel
15:7}
8) They kept the Egyptian population in bondage, and their tribesmen used the
Egyptians as slaves {The above Arabian sources of the ninth to the thirteenth
centuries; I Samuel 30:13}
9) They also built smaller strongholds in Syria-Palestine {Judges 5:14; 12:15}
10) By periodically invading the country with their herds before harvest time, they
impoverished the people of Israel. {Judges 6 and 7; I Samuel 14:48}
The exception mentioned above, of course, is with point (8); I dealt with it in the
earlier section, “The savagery of the Amalekites”, but must reiterate here that I have
found no mention of enslavement of the Egyptian populace among Velikovsky’s sources.
The second group consists of a further ten points for which Velikovsky provided
references to Arab authorities, again reproduced in braces below, as follows:
11) The … Amalekites … left Arabia after a series of plagues … {Maçoudi, Les
Prairies d'or, III, 101; Kitab-Alaghaniy (trans. Fresnel), pp. 206ff.}
12) … and immediately after a violent earthquake {El-Harit, cited by Maçoudi, Les
Prairies d’or, III, 101; compare Exodus 12}
13) Many of them perished during the migration in a sudden flood that swept the
land of Arabia {Kitab-Alaghaniy (trans. Fresnel), p. 207}
14) The invaders from Arabia occupied the south of Palestine and simultaneously
moved toward Egypt {Tabari, Chronique (trans. Dubeux), p. 261; Abulfeda,
Historia anteislamica, ed. Fleischer, p. 179}
15) They conquered Egypt without meeting resistance {Maçoudi, Les Prairies d’or,
II, 397}
16) The Amalekite conquerors came from Arabia, but apparently they had Hamitic
blood in their veins {See “Amalik,” The Encyclopedia of Islam}
17) They destroyed monuments and objects of art that had survived the catastrophe,
and despoiled Egypt of her wealth {Maçoudi,, L’Abrégé, pp. 342, 361}
18) They were contemptuous of the religious feelings of the Egyptians. {Kitab-
Alaghaniy (trans. Fresnel), p. 206}
19) The Amalekites built a city-fortress on the northeastern border of Egypt. {I
Samuel 15:5 and 7; cf. Maçoudi, L'Abrégé, I, 331}
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20) Their chieftains were pharaohs and ruled from their fortress {Maçoudi,
L’Abrégé, I, 331f., 338; Abulfeda, Historia anteislamica, ed. Fleischer, pp.
101ff. and 179; Tabari, Chronique (trans. Dubeux), p. 209; Ibn Abd-Alhakam,
Yaqut, Qur’an Commentary to Sura II, 46; Alkurtubi, Qur’an Commentary to
Sura II, 46 (Leiden Ms.)}
Evaluating the model against the data
Velikovsky’s references serve as the equivalent of “predictions” by which, in terms of
the scientific method, his model may be verified or falsified. The great majority of the
references in the first group, I exposed as spurious in Part 1, “Then Came Amalek”. I
showed, for example, that the Amalekite “strongholds in Syria-Palestine” (point 9 above)
were based entirely on an unnatural interpretation of a textually corrupt passage (Judges
5:14), and a misreading of a reference to the peaceful Ephraimite city of Pirathon (Judges
12:15).
However, my concern here is with the second series of points in Velikovsky’s model
(11 to 20), and the source references he provided for them.
Points (11), (12), and (13) I have exposed as spurious in Part 2, in the section, “The
Amalekites were put to flight”. Only one of the Arab writers cited by Velikovsky
described an affliction of plagues on the Amalekites in Mecca, in an obvious pastiche of a
tale told by several earlier writers about a different tribe, the Jurhumites—a pastiche
which the author himself repudiated in a directly contradictory account of the Amalekites’
military expulsion61. The “violent earthquake” supposed to have destroyed Mecca was
completely imaginary, and the “flood that swept the land of Arabia” was stitched together
from several separate localised occurrences, occurring at different times.
Points (14) and (16) are incidental to the main themes, but point (15) is a
misrepresentation of al-Mâs‘ûdi, as he was translated by de Meynard and de Courteille.
In Velikovsky’s words:
They conquered Egypt without meeting resistance …
In al-Mâs‘ûdi’s text:
Al-Walîd … invaded Egypt, conquered it, seized the throne, and occupied it without
opposition until his death.62
Thus, al-Masudi did not say that the conquest itself met with no resistance, only that
al-Walîd’s subsequent reign met none.
Points (17) and (18) claim that the Amalekites “destroyed monuments and objects of
art that had survived the catastrophe, and despoiled Egypt of her wealth,” and “were
contemptuous of the religious feelings of the Egyptians”.
The references for the first claim are to el-Miṣri’s The Summary of The Wonders. The
first reference63 describes how the first Amalekite pharaoh, el-Welîd, “oppressed the
61
F. Fresnel, tr., Abu’l-Faraj, “Tradition relative a Moudad, fils d’Amr, roi de la Mecque”, Journal
asiatique, 3rd Series, Vol VI (1838) p.207, contra ibid. pp. 205 – 206.
62
De Meynard and de Courteille, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 397.
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inhabitants” of Egypt, “seized their wealth, sought to extract all the treasures he could
discover”. But as we have seen, there is no record that he was destructive of monuments
or artworks, or that he was contemptuous of native Egyptian religion.
Pursuing the second reference64, we find that in er-Rayân’s reign, “The empire was
prosperous and its revenues grew.” Er-Rayân’s Chief Minister (who “constantly exerted
himself to exercise justice and to obtain the benefit of the people”) “distributed the
revenues. His own part … he had borne to his house. The part that was intended for the
maintenance of the armies, the priests, philosophers, leaders of craftsmen, supervisors of
the country, the stewards of buildings, crops and plantations, and the masters of the
various trades, he had delivered in detail to each of their houses. What was left over and
above these two portions, he collected as treasure in the King's Palace.”
Er-Rayân amassed his wealth by invading and conquering other countries: the
Carthaginians, for example (centuries before the foundation of Carthage), “requested
peace at the cost of money and works of art”, the kings of France and Spain (millennia
before those countries came into existence) “pleaded for peace at the cost of a high price
in gold, which they promised to pay annually”65. Nothing in el-Miṣri’s account would
lead to the supposition that the royal wealth was created by “despoiling Egypt of her
wealth”.
We have already seen that the allegation that the Amalekite pharaohs “destroyed
monuments and objects of art” (point 17) and “were contemptuous of the religious
feelings of the Egyptians” (point 18) are generally refuted (with exceptions) by ibn
Washîf-Shâh’s detailed account (see above, “The Summary of The Wonders”: What
Velikovsky didn’t tell us”). Now we see that the claim of rapaciousness is similarly
refuted, except in the specific case of the first Amalekite pharaoh.
There remain points (19) and (20), claiming that “The Amalekites built a city-fortress
on the northeastern border of Egypt”, from which their chieftains ruled. Velikovsky’s
reference to 1 Samuel 15 does not locate the Amalekite “city”, and I showed in Part 1
that, in any case, it probably was an encampment rather than a city as we understand it.
His reference to L’Abrégé is to a page containing nothing relevant. As I showed above
(“The city of the Amalekite rulers”), only two of the several references that he cited for
his claim of an Amalekite-Hyksos “city-fortress” at el-‘Arish come close, but it is only
described as a fortress in the one case, and a city in the other, and in L’Abrégé, the
Amalekite pharaohs ruled from Memphis or Cairo, not from a fortress on the Egyptian
border.
63
64
Ibid,, pp. 360 – 361.
65
Ibid. , pp. 363 – 364.
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Conclusions
Access to sources
In Ages in Chaos, Velikovsky made numerous detailed claims which he supported by
footnote references to his sources. Those sources were of two kinds: those that would be
easily available to most of his readers, such as the Bible and the works of Josephus; and
those that would be difficult or impossible for most readers to access, including technical
journals and the works of mediaeval Arabian, Persian, and Egyptian writers.
Access to such materials began to change in the late 20th Century, and I have been able
to download almost all of Velikovsky’s “Arabic” sources from the Internet Archive
Digital Library (https://archive.org/ ), together with some he didn’t explicitly use. Those
original sources, in the same editions as he cited, revealed that his uses of allusions,
references, and quotations often failed to agree with what the sources actually said.
Research bias
Scholars faced with conflicting data should always be wary of simply selecting only
those which provide the answer they are already looking for, and ignoring the rest—the
well-known phenomenon of “research bias”. This tendency seems to have afflicted
Banschikova’s analysis of the Arabic accounts of the Amalekite Pharaohs, as I have
illustrated above. The criticism seems to apply even more strongly in the case of Ages in
Chaos, not least in respect of Velikovsky’s claims regarding the Amalekites and the
supposed Amalekite pharaohs.
Repeatedly, when faced with conflicting accounts of pre-Islamic (and essentially pre-
historic) events, Velikovsky selected only those that met his purposes. The damaging
aspect of this criticism is the fact that, almost without exception, he did so without
discussing the alternatives, without providing reasons for rejecting them, and without
even acknowledging their existence.
Almost the only exemption from this pattern was his allusion to the “attempts of some
Arabian authors to insert stories culled from the biblical narrative into stories indigenous
to the Arabian peninsula”66. This assertion carried the clear implication that the majority
of Arabian authors (i.e., a number greater than “some”) avoided such “attempts”. The
reality is that every one of his Arab sources on the Amalekite Pharaohs included the same
“biblical” stories: they all began the Amalekite dynasty just before the Israelite Descent
into Egypt, and ended it with the Exodus. Those stories were not “inserted into” the
accounts of the Amalekite pharaohs, but rather provided their essential historical
framework.
Misrepresentation of sources
We have seen that there are numerous points of Velikovsky’s thesis that rely on an
unnatural interpretation of the original accounts, often arrived at by extracting a few
words from their context and ignoring the context itself. Take, for example, the song or
66
AiC, II.4: “The Arabian Traditions about the Amalekite Pharaohs”, p. 63.
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poem variously attributed to Mudâd, el-Harîth, or ˁAmr. Read in its context, it is plain
that it describes the expulsion of the Jurhumites from Mecca by another tribe, and that
Mecca, undamaged, continued to be occupied by the victors. Representing it as
describing the overnight destruction of Mecca in an earthquake is misrepresentation.
Almost the whole of Velikovsky’s treatment of the history of the Amalekites in Arabia
is misrepresentation:
• The plagues that afflicted only the Jurhumites in Mecca are misrepresented as
afflicting the city’s whole population;
• The expulsion of the Jurhumite tribe from Mecca is misrepresented as the flight of its
entire populace;
• The Jurhumite desertion of the city centre is misrepresented as the desertification of
the whole country;
• The noise of battle between the Jurhumites and other tribes is misrepresented as the
noise of a city-destroying earthquake;
• The history of the Jurhumite tribe is misrepresented as being the history of the
Amalekite tribe.
Velikovsky’s misrepresentation of his sources extended also to the Amalekite

pharaohs. For example:
• He misrepresented an Amalekite king rebuilding Alexandria for an Egyptian Queen
who was still on the throne, as the fortification of Avaris after the Hyksos invasion.
• He misrepresented the largely benevolent Amalekite rule of Egypt (as described in his
sources) as a regime of ferocious cruelty.
• He misrepresented the destructiveness of what he himself described as a “second
wave” of Amalekite invasion, as being typical of the whole Hyksos dynasty.
• He misrepresented the Amalekites as enslaving the Egyptian populace, a theme never
touched on by any of his sources.
Empty references
Investigating the Islamic sources which Velikovsky referenced in Chapter II of Ages in
Chaos, I found that few of them said anything at all that was relevant to his claims
regarding them.
In his summary of evidence that the Hyksos were the Arabian Amalekites, he listed ten
specific “proofs” that were supported by twenty footnote references to Islamic authors.
Of those twenty references (as we have seen), only two actually support the claims that
Velikovsky made for them: that the Amalekite pharaohs came from Arabia, and that they
“had Hamitic blood in their veins”. Several had no relevance at all to the points he was
making in his text.
Most notably, he provided as many as seven references to Arabic authors to support
his claim that they built the city of Avaris on the Egypt-Israel border, and ruled from
there. Only two of the referenced sources made any mention of a city built by
Amalekites, and in both cases, it was Alexandria rather than Avaris, while the others said
nothing at all that was relevant to Avaris.
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Overall conclusion
Einstein wrote:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now
know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will
be to know and understand.
It cannot be denied that, in constructing his Ages in Chaos landscape of ancient
history, Velikovsky applied a great deal of imagination, as should any historian or
archaeologist who seeks to interpret “what really happened” from “what we think we
know about what happened”. Where he appears to have departed from historical and
archaeological standards—and from the Scientific Method—was in allowing imagination
to override the data he had to hand. In doing so, he not only discarded, apparently
unexamined, an overwhelming quantity of data that tended to conflict with his hypothesis,
but allowed his imaginative interpretation to lead him into misinterpreting, and even
misrepresenting, the facts that he chose to include.
Readers must draw their own conclusions about what these misrepresentations tell us
regarding Velikovsky’s methods in AiC, as well as what they tell us about his hypothesis
that the Hyksos were Arabian Amalekites driven from their homeland by a vast natural
catastrophe. However, here are some observations.
With regard to the Amalekite Pharaohs, I consider that Velikovsky’s model is almost
completely unsupported by the scaffolding of source data provided by his own references.
I cannot deny that “some Arabian authors” wrote about Amalekite pharaohs, but they
were far from unanimous regarding their numbers and the details of their reigns, while
many details of the narratives—mostly unexamined in this essay—argue against their
historicity. Velikovsky ignored all of the latter, as well as ignoring other Arabic writers,
generally recognised as equally authoritative, who denied that there were Amalekite
pharaohs. In fairness, he may have been unaware of their existence, as also with still
others who provided accounts (possibly more historically compelling) in which the
Amalekite role was played by a different tribe, the ‘Adites. Yet it would be strange, even
providential, if his research in Arabic sources led him exclusively to those sources which
could be read as supporting his views.
Detailed review of Velikovsky’s Arabic sources, in their full contexts, also dispels his
depiction of a series of universal calamities, in close succession, which impelled the
Amalekites out of Mecca and into Egypt. Quite simply, there is no historical evidence for
them in his Arabic sources.
Velikovsky’s imaginative connection of the Biblical Amalekites with the Arabic
Amalekites is so attractive in his presentation as to seem almost inevitable, if his
compression of Egyptian history is accepted. However, what detailed analysis shows is
that his Hebrew and Arab sources simply do not support such an interpretation.
This does not mean that his model is false; but most of the Hebrew and Arabic data
that he incorporated into his model point in a different direction at best, and are shown to
be false at worst. The most optimistic view I can take is that the data he presented, taken
Page 86 of 136
with the much greater volume of data he failed to present, do not support his model of the
Amalekite rule in Egypt and the Middle East, and their equation with the Hyksos
conquest and rule in Egypt.
Page 87 of 136
Part 4: “Malakhei Roim — King

Shepherds”
In the preceding Parts of this volume, I have reviewed Velikovsky’s evidence in Ages
in Chaos for equating the Egyptian Hyksos period with the Biblical period of the
Conquest and Judges, and the Amalakites themselves with the Hyksos. This
supplementary Part examines an element of Velikovsky’s argument that I passed over in
those earlier essays: his contention that the Hyksos are named in Psalm 78, v. 49.
Introduction
On page 69 of Ages in Chaos (first edition), in the section of Chapter II titled
“Malakhei-Roim—King-Shepherds”, Velikovsky raised the following question:
Is there any reference preserved in the old Jewish sources that would hint at the Hyksos
invasion of Egypt immediately after the departure of the Israelites?
His answer, unsurprisingly, was in the affirmative, but (as I shall show) rested on two
misunderstandings: one ancient, which Velikovsky acceded to; and one of his own
devising. The ancient misunderstanding was Manetho’s claim, recorded in Josephus, that
the Ancient Egyptian word “Hyksos” meant “king shepherds”. Velikovsky’s
misunderstanding concerned the subtleties of Biblical Hebrew grammar, and enabled him
to reinterpret a phrase in Psalm 78 to mean “an invasion [of Egypt] by king-shepherds”.
In this essay, I shall discuss both misunderstandings, and show that Velikovsky’s
interpretation of the Psalm is incorrect.
Velikovsky’s Case
Velikovsky wrote:
It is said in the enumeration of the plagues in Egypt:
PSALMS 78:49 He [the Lord] cast [sent forth] upon them fierceness of
his anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels
among them.
What may that mean, evil or bad angels? There is no plague known as the “visit of evil
angels.” There is no expression like “evil angels” to be found elsewhere in the Scriptures.
There is an “angel of death” or “Satan,” but no “evil angels.” It would appear that the text
is corrupted.
This was a bold conclusion to draw so early in his argument, without having
considered either the nature of the translation he was using – the King James Version
(KJV) of 1611 – as compared with more modern translations, or the underlying Hebrew
text. In the event, he ignored the question of whether the KJV translation was accurate.
Mentally prepared by his studies, he spotted a possibly fruitful similarity in the wording:
“Sending of evil angels” is (presumably) mishlakhat malakhei-roim.
“Invasion of king-shepherds” is mishlakhat malkhei-roim.
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PART 4: “MALAKHEI ROIM” — KING SHEPHERDS
The only difference in spelling is one silent letter, aleph, in the first case. It would thus
seem that the second reading is the original.
Velikovsky objected to the concept of “evil angels” on the grounds that there was no
parallel in “the Scriptures”. He didn’t pause to consider that there is no parallel in the
Scriptures for “king-shepherds”, because he had a parallel from elsewhere in mind. On
the other hand, had he looked, he would have found a parallel to “evil angels” in the
Jewish traditions he so often drew on, and a basis for that parallel in the Scriptural
account of the Exodus from Egypt. Instead, however, he tried to justify his abrupt
conclusion by an appeal to Hebrew grammar:
The first reading is not only unusual Hebrew, but it is also contrary to the grammatical
structure of the language. If roim (“evil,” plural) were used as an adjective here, the
preceding word could not take a shortened form; roim must therefore be a noun. But if roim
were a noun, it would be in the singular and not in the plural; and finally, the correct plural
of “evil” is not roim but raoth. “Evil angels” in correct Hebrew would be malakhim roim;
“angels of evils” malakhei raoth. Not only the sense but the grammatical form as well
speaks for the reading, “invasion of king-shepherds.”
In preparing this essay, I consulted seven text-critical commentaries of the Psalms. Not
one identified a difficulty with the grammar of Psalm 78:49. However, one commentary,
by the respected scholars Keil and Delitzsch, remarked on the phrase malakhei-roim (as
Velikovsky spelt it; I will use different spellings below) as an example of the Hebrew
grammatical rule concerning “the genitival subordination of the adjective to the
substantive” (i.e., the noun). Below, I shall invoke this very same rule to challenge
Velikovsky’s grammatical analysis. But first, what point was he actually making
regarding “king-shepherds”?
Most of my readers will be ahead of me there; Velikovsky was correlating the Biblical
text with comments he had made earlier in the same chapter, in the section “Who Were
The Hyksos?” (p. 56):
Manetho, who wrote in Greek, explained their being named Hyksos:
Their race bore the generic name of Hycsos [Hyksos], which means
“king-shepherds.” For Hyc in the sacred language denotes “king,” and
sos in the common dialect means “shepherd” or "shepherds”; the
combined words form “Hycsos.”
A footnote ascribed this quote to “Josephus, Against Apion, I, 82.”
Thus, the Hebrew Scriptures are proved to have referred to the Asiatic conquerors of Egypt
during the Second Intermediate Period by their Egyptian designation, “king shepherds”.
The Word “Hyksos”

In another footnote on the same page, Velikovsky admitted that “At present the
preferred etymology sees in the name Hyk-sos the Egyptian equivalent for ‘the rulers of
foreign countries’.” Despite this, and with no further discussion, he assumed that
Manetho’s etymology was correct; but it is only partly so.
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The problem is indicated in Manetho’s own words: the first half of the word “Hyksos”
derives from “the sacred language”, i.e., classical hieroglyphic Egyptian, but the second
half comes from “the common dialect”, meaning spoken Late Egyptian of Manetho’s own
time. An etymology based on the language as it was in the fourth century BC does not
provide a convincing explanation for a word that was in use more than a thousand years
previously.
Velikovsky’s footnote was correct, of course; and the “preferred etymology” is based
on the very sound fact that not only did the Egyptians use that title in respect of Hyksos
pharaohs,, but some of the latter used it of themselves. Although Josephus presented the
title as “Hyksos”, Eusebius’ epitome of Manetho gave the more correct form Hykoussos,
Hykou preserving in Greek transcription the correct plural ḥḳꜢw of Egyptian ḥḳꜢ, “ruler”.
Since Egyptian hieroglyphs did not generally indicate vowels, an “e” is traditionally
inserted between successive consonants, giving the simplified but pronounceable form
heqau, the plural of heqa.
The full term in Ancient Egyptian is ḥḳꜢ ḫꜢs‧t, heqa haset: “Ruler of a foreign land”: in
the plural, ḥḳꜢw ḫꜢs‧wt, heqau hasut. This was a term used in the singular for rulers of the
“Hyksos Dynasty” in the Turin King-List (though their names are not in royal
cartouches), and was adopted by some Hyksos-era kings in their own inscriptions. There
cannot be absolute certainty, but there is little room for doubt that this is the correct
etymology, given the complete lack of a term for “king-shepherds” in Egyptian literature
prior to Manetho’s Aegyptiaca.
In fact, there is no word for “shepherd” in Budge’s, Gardiner’s, Dickson’s or Vygus’
Egyptian dictionaries that might be its basis. The closest is mnỉ‧w sἰ‧wt, “herders of
sheep”, based on sἰ or sr, “a sheep or ram”, for which the Coptic (given in Budge) is esay
or esooy. The English word-index to Crum’s Coptic Dictionary identifies three entries for
“shepherd”, the first of which incorporates the latter word esooy. Our interest lies with the
third entry, however, which is šôs, “shōs” (with long “o”; Manetho’s Greek text similarly
indicates a long “ō” in “Hyksos”). This is Manetho’s word from “the common dialect”. It
derives from Ancient Egyptian “Shasu” (šꜢsw), meaning “wanderer” (Bedouin”) rather
than “shepherd”, though the Shasu tribes encountered in Ancient Egyptian literature were
certainly herdsmen. Manetho’s “king-shepherds” is almost certainly a piece of folk
etymology, in which shasu in its Late Egyptian form had become confused with the Late-
Period pronunciation shosu for Middle Kingdom haswe, “foreign lands” (hieroglyphic
ḫꜢs‧wt).
Josephus himself rejected Manetho’s etymology. “In another copy [of Manetho],” he
wrote, “‘kings’ is not signified by the word ‘Hyk’, which indicates, on the contrary, that
the shepherds were ‘captives’; for ‘Hyk’ in Egyptian and ‘Hak’ with a rough breathing
mean literally ‘captive’. This seems to me more persuasive and in line with ancient
history.” This possibility was more attractive to Josephus, because he believed that the
Hyksos were actually the Israelites in Egypt. But again this interpretation encounters
difficulties just as great, including the strong suspicion that Josephus originated it himself.
Page 90 of 136
Velikovsky’s starting-point for his argument that the Hyksos are found as “king-
shepherds” in Psalm 78:49, was that the Egyptian word “Hyksos” meant “king-
shepherds”, and would have had that meaning for an Old Testament writer working in
Hebrew. Unfortunately for his argument, such a possibility seems very slight indeed.
A “Silent Letter”?
Here is Psalm 78:49, the verse Velikovsky dwelt on, first in the Hebrew characters of
the Masoretic Text (MT, read right-to-left); then in a transliteration into “Roman” letters
(read left-to-right, “ə” representing the neutral “schewa” vowel); and finally in the King
James translation that Velikovsky used. The Psalmist’s subject is the plagues visited by
God on Egypt, though not all are included. The critical passage is boxed in the Hebrew:
jəšalaḥ-bām ḥarôn ’apô , ‘ebrâ wāza‘am , wəṣārâ , mišlaḥat malə’akê rā‘îm
He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by
sending evil angels among them.
(The italicised words in the Authorised Version were added by King James’
translators to improve clarity.)
In his discussion of this verse, Velikovsky wrote something rather peculiar:
“Sending of evil angels” is (presumably) mishlakhat malakhei-roim.
Why “presumably”? Could he not consult a copy of the Hebrew scriptures and confirm
the reading? The result is a minor unresolved mystery; but astute readers will notice that
the correct transliteration of “evil” in Classical Hebrew is raim (or even more correctly,
rā‘îm, with both vowels long) rather than roim.
A possible explanation for this anomaly may lie in Velikovsky’s choice of substitute
word, “shepherds” in place of “evil”. The Hebrew for “shepherd” is ‫ רעי‬ro‘î; the plural is
ro‘îm. The suffix -îm is the regular way in which masculine nouns in Hebrew are marked
as plural, so rā‘îm actually means “evils”. In Hebrew, “evils” and “shepherds” differ by
the quantity and length of the vowel following the r-.
We may perhaps see this as indicating that Velikovsky’s grasp of Classical Hebrew
was not that of either a grammarian in the language, or a linguistic historian.
He proposed to replace malakhei, “angels” or “messengers” (I use his spelling here)
with malkhei, “kings”. “The only difference,” he explained, “is one silent letter, aleph, in
the first case”. The Hebrew consonants, transliterated into Roman letters, are:
• mlʔkj, “angels”
• mlkj, “kings”.
The symbol “ʔ” is the International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for the sound known as
the “glottal stop”; it transliterates the Hebrew letter ‫א‬, called aleph. Although aleph ‫ א‬is
generally not pronounced in Modern Hebrew (there are exceptions), it is recognised that,
Page 91 of 136
in Old Testament times, it was pronounced as a glottal stop, a sound common even in
Standard English, particularly when a word beginning with a vowel is emphasised: “an
Ɂink blot” versus “an Ɂenormous ink blot!” The glottal stop is not phonemic in English,
meaning that it isn’t a sound that actually distinguishes one word from another, so most
English speakers are unaware of its presence or that it has an actual sound. In Classical
Hebrew, however, it certainly was phonemic, distinguishing the pronunciation of mlʔkj,
“angels”, from that of mlkj, “kings”, for example1.
Velikovsky was technically correct in terms of Modern Hebrew; but the difference
between the two words would have been very evident at the time the Psalm was written:
approximately mala’akey (four syllables) versus malakey (three syllables).
A Matter of Grammar: Adjectives and Nouns

Velikovsky dismissed the aleph difference between the two words with no deep
analysis. The main point he wanted to make was that the Masoretic Text “is not only
unusual Hebrew, but it is also contrary to the grammatical structure of the language”. Is
this true?
There are two types of grammatical relationship involved in this question. One is the
use of some words as adjectives, which “modify” the meanings or applications of nouns.
In the KJV text, the word “evil” is an adjective in the noun phrase, “evil angels”. English
adjectives mostly precede their nouns, but Hebrew adjectives follow the noun—as though
in English, “angels evil”. Additionally, the form of a Hebrew adjective is modified by the
gender and number of the noun. Gender is difficult to illustrate in English, but
“agreement” with a plural noun could be illustrated by “*evils angels” (the asterisk
indicating a hypothetical form). If “angels” (plural) were a feminine noun, and English
nouns and adjectives took an “-a” suffix for feminine gender, then we might have
“*evilas angelas”—or, in Hebrew word-order, “*angelas evilas”.
Velikovsky claimed that, if “evil” (rā‘îm) were an adjective, then “angels” (malə’akey)
“could not take a shortened form”. In that he was correct: the Hebrew should read
malə’kim ra‘im, “evil angels”, i.e., “angels [who are] wicked”. But before we agree or
disagree with whether that was what was intended, we need to discuss a second type of
grammatical relationship between words in Hebrew.
A Matter of Grammar: Construct State

In a phrase such as “the king’s horses”, the word “king’s” is said to be in the genitive
case. This means it has an “ownership” relationship with the following noun. The suffix
“-s” is the regular way of forming the genitive case for both singular and plural nouns in
English. We distinguish between the two by the position of the apostrophe in writing, but
in speech there is no distinction between “the king’s horses” (one king) and “the kings’
horses” (two or more kings).
1
In general transliteration, I am using the “right inverted comma” [’] to represent the glottal stop. The “left
inverted comma” [‘] represents the consonant called in Hebrew ‘ayin, which resembled a French “uvular
r” in Classical Hebrew, though like ’aleph, it is silent in most dialects of Modern Hebrew.
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The equivalent to “genitive case” in Hebrew is known as “construct state”, which is

what Keil and Delitzsch referred to as “genitival subordination” in the commentary on
Psalm 78:49. Unlike English genitives, construct state uses different suffixes for singular
and plural nouns. Also, the rules are different for feminine and masculine nouns, but since
malə’ak is masculine, I shall not discuss the feminine usages.
In construct state, the noun which has “ownership” (the noun which in English would
bear the “-s” genitive suffix) is placed second rather than first, and the “owned” noun is
placed first rather than second: “the horse king” in Hebrew would mean, “the horse of a
king”. However, where the “of” in English genitives is considered to be “attached to” the
“owning” word “king” (“the-horse | of-a-king”), in Hebrew it is mentally “attached to”
the “owned” noun (“the-horse-of | a-king”). The “owned” noun (“horse”) is said to be in
construct state.
Hebrew has no specific way of marking construct state for masculine singular nouns;
the two nouns are simply placed side-by-side, the “owned” noun first: “horse the-king” =
“a-horse-of | the-king”, or (in normal English) “the king’s horse”. In the plural, though,
there is a specific marker of construct state for masculine nouns, and it attaches to the
“owned” noun. “A-horse-of | the-king” in Hebrew is sûs | ha-melek. “Horses” in ordinary
usage is sûsîm. “Horses-of | the-king”, however, is sûsê | ha-melek. The suffix -ê instead
of -îm is what Velikovsky referred to as “a shortened form”.
Mal’akê (or mal’akey, a different way of transliterating the Hebrew) is the correct
construct state of the masculine plural form of mal’ak. But, Velikovsky protested, that
means it must be followed by a noun, not an adjective. The Hebrew word ra‘, “evil”, can
be a noun or an adjective, just as in English; but, Velikovsky further protested, “the
correct plural of ‘evil’ is not roim but raoth.” “Angels-of | evils” in correct Hebrew
would be “malakhei raoth.” Was he correct?
A Matter of Grammar: Singular and Plural

Like English, Hebrew has both regular and irregular plurals. In the great majority of
cases, masculine nouns take -îm in the plural, while feminine nouns take -ôth. Which is
correct for rā‘ ? Is it masculine or feminine?
The standard Hebrew dictionary for Bible students is known as “Brown-Driver-
Briggs” (“BDB”). According to BDB, rā‘ is both a masculine noun, and a feminine noun,
as well as being an adjective. Whether it is masculine or feminine in a given context
seems to be at the whim of the writer.
I wanted to be sure of this, so consulted another authority, Abarim Publications’
Theological Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew, which says, “The masculine noun (‫ רע‬ra‘),
meaning evil (BDB Theological Dictionary counts two separate masculine nouns; HAW
Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament lists one). … The feminine noun ‫ ( רעה‬ra‘a)
is the feminine version of the previous noun”.
If rā‘ / rā‘â takes a regular plural form, then both rā‘îm and rā‘ôth are valid plurals. It
follows that mal’akey rā‘îm and mal’akey rā‘ôth would be equally valid, both meaning
Page 93 of 136
“angels-of | evils”, i.e., “angels-of | evil [things]”, and Velikovsky’s criticism would be
wrong. Mal’akey ra‘îm would be a perfectly regular Hebrew construction involving two
plural nouns, the first in construct state in relation to the second.
A Matter of Grammar: Adjectives as Nouns

I consulted Strong’s Concordance online for rā‘îm. It pointed me to 18 occurrences of
rā‘îm on its own in sentences, mostly used as a masculine plural adjective. However,
Proverbs 4:14 uses it as a noun (“in the way of evils”), where it is usually interpreted as a
nominal adjective (“in the way of evil [men]”). A nominal (or “substantival”) adjective is
an adjective used as a noun, usually to represent a corresponding noun phrase. A familiar
example in English is the adjective “principal” used as a noun to represent the noun
phrase, “principal teacher”.
Proverbs 12:12 is an example of rā‘îm used as a nominal adjective: “the snare of evils
(= of evil [men])”, as are Proverbs 14:9, “The evils (= evil men) will bow down”, and
Jeremiah 15:21, “from the hand of wickeds (= wicked [men])”.
In all those examples, and several not quoted, rā‘îm is technically an adjective, but is
used as a plural noun, the actual noun being inferred by the reader. Sometimes rā‘îm
appears as the subject or object of a verb, behaving exactly as a plural noun. In some
cases, also, it’s in apposition with another noun that’s in construct state, e.g. in Proverbs
4:14, bədereq rā‘îm, “in-[the]-way-of | evils (= evil [men])”. The construction in
Proverbs 12:12 is identical: məṣôd rā‘îm, “[the] snare-of | evils (= evil [men])”.
This use of adjectives as nouns that follow other nouns in construct state is what Keil
and Delitzsch, in their commentary on Psalm 78:49, referred to as “the genitival
subordination of the adjective to the substantive” (i.e., the noun). The examples above
show the same grammatical phenomenon as malˀakhey raˀim in Psalm 78:49; except that
the nouns in construct state are uniformly singular. Among the 18 occurrences of rā‘îm
listed in Strong’s, there is only one case in which it is in apposition to a plural noun. That
is in Psalm 78:49, where the plural noun is in 100% regular construct state.
“Angels of Evil Things”

My research so far had uncovered multiple examples of rā‘îm as either a plural
nominal adjective, or a noun (the two are really indistinguishable), in apposition to
singular nouns that are clearly in construct state (“the-way-of”, “the-snare-of”, etc.). But
can it also be in apposition to a plural noun in construct state, for that is what the verse in
Psalm 78 requires?
It so happens that the Hebrew Scriptures contain one other example of a construction
where ml’k (“angel”) is in plural construct state, taking the regular masculine plural
construct suffix -ey, and definitely is in apposition to a plural noun. It occurs twice in the
first book of the Bible:
• Genesis 28:12: ‫ מלאכי אלהים‬malə’akê ’elōhîm “angels-of God”
• Genesis 32:1: ‫ מלאכי אלהים‬malə’akê ’elōhîm “angels-of God”
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This construction is exactly the same as Velikovsky’s “unusual Hebrew, … contrary to

the grammatical structure of the language”. Psalms 78:49 proves to be good Hebrew:
malə’akê rā‘îm, not “evil angels”, but “angels-of | evil [things]”.
But what does it mean?
Enter the “Angels of Destruction”

The translation which Velikovsky used was published in 1611. It is instructive to look
at some more modern translations of Psalm 78:49—the New International Version, the
NET Bible, the Jewish Publication Society 1917 translation, the Revised Standard
Version, and Young’s Literal Translation:
• He unleashed against them his hot anger, his wrath, indignation and hostility-- a band of
destroying angels.
• His raging anger lashed out against them, He sent fury, rage, and trouble as messengers
who bring disaster.
• He sent forth upon them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble,
a sending of messengers of evil.
• He let loose on them his fierce anger, wrath, indignation, and distress, a company of
destroying angels.
• He sendeth on them the fury of His anger, wrath, and indignation, and distress — a
discharge of messengers of evils.
In the King James Version, the “evil angels” are a mistranslation, but, more
importantly, are represented as the agents of God’s wrath: He “cast upon them [the
Egyptians] the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending
evil angels among them.” The more modern translations stick more closely to the
structure and meaning of the Hebrew text, and it is obvious from them that God’s anger,
wrath, indignation, and hostility are themselves the “angels of evil things”. The Hebrew
word ml’k means “messenger”, not necessarily a spiritual being as we now understand
“angels” to be, while rā‘ has a variety of applications meaning “evil” in a general sense,
but also encompassing unhappiness, misery, hardship, injury, wickedness, malignancy,
and deadliness (I take those synonyms from BDB).
However, “destructiveness” is not explicitly in the list. Where did the NIV and RSV
translators get the idea of “destroying angels”? It is possible that they were influenced by
the mention of a “Destroyer” in Exodus 12:23:
For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the
lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the
destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you.”
Commentators are widely agreed that “the destroyer” was originally intended to denote
the plague which destroyed the Egyptian firstborn, but was later interpreted to mean an
“Angel of Destruction”. This interpretation is found in the New Testament Letter to the
Hebrews, 18:27: “By faith [Moses] kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the
Destroyer of the first-born might not touch them.” Jewish tradition also expanded this
single “angel” into a “band” of angels, as can be seen in Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews,
Page 95 of 136
Vol. II, Chapter IV: “thus did Moses say, ‘In this night God protected Israel against the
Angels of Destruction.’”
These, surely, are the “destroying angels” found in Psalm 78:49 — if they are to be
interpreted as personalities, and not as a metaphor for God’s attributes of “anger, wrath,
and indignation, and trouble”. They may serve to answer Velikovsky’s objection, that
“There is no plague known as the ‘visit of evil angels’”.
Conclusion
The elements of Velikovsky’s argument regarding Psalm 78:49 can be broken down as
follows:
1) The concept of “evil angels” is not otherwise known from Scripture.
2) There is no plague amongst the Ten Plagues of Egypt known as the “sending of
evil angels.”
3) The Hebrew phrase malakhei-roim “evil angels” is grammatically irregular.
4) The Hebrew phrase malkhei-roim “king-shepherds”:
a. is grammatically regular; and
b. harmonises with Manetho’s “king-shepherds” for the meaning of Hyksos.
My argument in this essay is that, of those five points, only 4(b) is truly justified; that
malkhei-roim would be a grammatically regular alternative to malakhei-roim, in the
context. But it is subject to the twin objections: that it also is not “to be found elsewhere
in the Scriptures”; and it does not correspond to the actual meaning of the word Hyksos,
only to a folk-etymological interpretation of “Hyksos” that was current in 4th century BC
Egypt.
It is true that “evil angels” are unknown from Scripture, but the phrase reflects
Velikovsky’s use of a 17th-century translation. Modern translations use terms such as
“messengers of evil,” “evil” here in the sense of “harm” rather than “moral wickedness”
(compare Isaiah 45:7, “I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things”).
These “messengers” were originally a metaphor for God’s anger, but were later seen as
spiritual beings conveying the physical effects of his anger, as we see in the Letter to the
Hebrews and in Jewish Legend. The “Destroyer of the first-born” in the Book of
Exodus may be seen as the same concept, actually found in the Hebrew Scriptures. This
deals effectively with Velikovsky’s second point as well as his first.
Most importantly, though, the original wording of the verse, mal’akey rā‘îm, turns out
to follow perfectly normal rules of Hebrew grammar, in which a nominal adjective rā‘îm,
substituting for a noun phrase such as debərîm rā‘îm, “evil things”, is subordinated to a
plural masculine noun in construct state: “messengers-of | evil [things]”. The usage is
exactly the same as in those verses of Genesis where we encounter the mal’akey ’elohîm,
the “Angels-of | God”.
I cannot fault Velikovsky for the ingenuity of his argument; but unfortunately, its
pertinence and its accuracy leave much to be desired. He asked, “Is there any reference
preserved in the old Jewish sources that would hint at the Hyksos invasion of Egypt
Page 96 of 136
immediately after the departure of the Israelites?” The answer he gave was, “Yes”. But in
this instance (at the very least), the answer must be “No”.
Page 97 of 136
Page 98 of 136
PART 5: THE AMALEKITES IN THE SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS
Part 5:
The Amalekites in the Sinaitic
Inscriptions
This final paper in the series was not published in the SIS Chronology & Catastrophism
Review, but on my own web site, “Velikovsky’s Sources” (still undergoing construction),
in 2015. That version included the complete German Text of Tuch’s original paper on
which this paper was based, but I have omitted it from this edition. Otherwise, except for a
simplification of the original title page, the content is as originally presented.
The Amalekites
in the
Twenty-One Sinaitic Inscriptions
collected and translated into German by
D. Friedrich Tuch
with his
Attempt at Explanation
Originally published in
Deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Volume 3
Leipzig 1849, pages 129 – 215
TRANSLATED BY DONALD KEITH MILLS
Translator’s Preface
Velikovsky, the Hyksos, and the Amalekites
It was Velikovsky’s contention, in Ages In Chaos, that the Amalekite nation who
fought with Israel in the deserts of south Canaan, as the latter were fleeing eastward from
captivity in Egypt, were the same as the Hyksos who invaded Egypt from the same
Western Desert lands, and ruled there for some centuries. 21st Century historians tend to
deny the reality of both events, explaining that both the Hyksos “conquest” of Egypt, and
the Israelite “conquest” of Canaan, were gradual takeovers rather than sudden invasions.
The greater problem, however, is that, at the time Ages In Chaos was written,
conventional history placed perhaps 500 years between the two events.
Velikovsky presented a quantity of evidence in favour of his proposal, which made it
appear inevitable that 500 years must be removed from Egyptian history in order to align
the two invasions historically, and to similarly align specific persons and events from Old
Testament history with what he claimed were parallel persons and events in Egyptian
history. For his contention that the Amalekites and the Hyksos were one and the same,
and that Egypt was once ruled by Amalekite pharaohs, his main source was the writings
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of Islamic scholars dating entirely from late mediaeval and early modern times—i.e.,
around 2,000 or more years after the date he assigned to the Israelite Exodus and the
Hyksos/Amalekite invasion.
I deal elsewhere with Velikovsky’s use of the evidence of the Islamic writers
themselves. In summary (quoting from Ages In Chaos), he represented it as follows1:
4) “The Amalekites were an old Arabian tribe who, from ancient days, … ruled in Mecca
and … dominated other Arabian tribes”.
5) “The Amalekites were put to flight [from Mecca] by plagues that fell upon them in
Arabia, and in their escape they followed swift clouds. Meanwhile Mecca was destroyed
in a single night filled with a terrible din. The land became a desert. … In tumult and
disorder, fleeing the ominous signs and plagues and driving their herds of animals
infuriated by earthquakes and evil portents, the fugitive bands of Amalekites reached the
shores of the Red Sea”.
6) “Autochthonous [narratives] transmitted from generation to generation on the Arabian
peninsula … told that Syria and Egypt came simultaneously under the domination of the
Amalekites … . … After the Amalekites invaded Syria and Egypt they established a
dynasty of their pharaohs. … The Amu of the Egyptian sources and the Amalekites of the
Hebrew and Arab sources were not two different peoples, but one and the same nation”.
The Sinaitic Inscriptions

Although they may have been mentioned by
Diodorus Siculus (1st Century BC), the first
clear description of these writings scratched
into the rocks of the Sinai Peninsula was by
Comas (ca. 535 AD), who thought them to be
Israelite in origin. Beer established that the
alphabet was Nabataean (ancestor of the
modern Arabic script)2 and the language
Arabic. As such, they should not be confused
with the better-known “Proto-Sinaitic
inscriptions” dating from the 2 Century BC, and
nd
not discovered until more than half a century after

Tuch wrote.
The inscriptions in question are found in the
Mukatteb and neighbouring Feiran Valleys, in the south-
west of the Sinai Peninsula, ENE of St Catherine’s
monastery (see map). Their presence at Feiran excited
Tuch’s attention, since he associated the place with the
Biblical Wilderness of Paran, and thus with the Amalekites, speculating (with no
1
The three summary paragraphs are reproduced from part 1 of my essay, Amalek in Arabia and Egypt,
published in Chronology and Catastrophism Review 2015. My detailed critique of Velikovsky’s
“Arabian Amalekite Hyksos” appears in part 2 of the same essay.
2
J.A. Bellamy, “The Arabic Alphabet”, in W.M. Senner (ed), The Origins of Writing (U. of Nebraska,
1989), p. 96.
Page 100 of 136

conclusion) that the inscriptions might even have been left by Amalekites. The Egyptian
historian al-Maqrizi (1364 – 1442), in a passage quoted in part by Tuch from
Burchhardt’s translation, introduced and then denied the connection, in the following
words3:
Between the city of Faran [= Feiran] and Tyh [= et-Tîh, the wilderness of central Sinai] it is
two days’ journey. It is said that Faran is [also] the name of the mountains of Mekka, and
that it is the name of other mountains in the Hedjaz [= Ḥijaz in Western Sa’udi Arabia], and
that it is the place [Paran] mentioned in the books of Moses. But the truth is that Tor [et-
Tor, on the Sinai coast due S of Feiran] and Faran are two districts belonging to the
southern part of Egypt, and that it is not the same as the Faran mentioned in the books of
Moses.
Tuch supposed, instead, that Feiran was settled by Amalekite nomads from Paran, and
named after their homeland. This was the reason for his interest in “the designation of an
Amalekite man” found among them, which we shall look at below.
The inscriptions are generally only one or two lines in length, consisting mostly of
Arabic proper names accompanied by formulae such as “peace”, “in memory”, and
“blessed”. With regard to date, Greek, Latin, and Coptic inscriptions are mingled with
them, and some of the Nabataean inscriptions actually overwrite earlier Greek
inscriptions. Beer dated them no earlier than the 4th Century AD, on the grounds that if
they had been older, then surely someone would have described them before Comas.
Tuch disagreed, fixing them to before the 2nd Century BC. In most cases, they contain no
historic information, although some are dated, and working from them, Ahlström
concluded4 “that they range from around 120 AD to 270 AD”.
The Nabataean kingdom in which the Nabataean alphabet was devised was founded in
the 2nd Century BC and endured until the Roman conquest in AD 1065; so the inscriptions
can scarcely date from earlier than the 2nd Century BC. Any connection to the supposed
Amalekite people of 1,300 to 1,600 years previously must be tenuous.
Velikovsky, Tuch, and “Amu”
Despite the above, the German Orientalist Johann Christian Friedrich Tuch (1806 –
1867) provided Velikovsky with a single snippet of information in support of his case.
Quoting from Ages In Chaos, pp. 93 – 94 (first edition):
On the basis of the foregoing, the conclusion is inescapable that the Amu of the Egyptian
sources and the Amalekites of the Hebrew and Arab sources were not two different
peoples, but one and the same nation. Even the name is the same: Amu, also Omaya, a
frequent name among the Amalekites, was a synonym for Amalekite. Dshauhari
(Djauhari), an Arabian lexicographer of the tenth century of the present era, wrote: "It is
handed down that this name [Amu, or Omaya] was a designation for an Amalekite man."
3
Translation by J. Conder, A Popular Description of Arabia: Geographical, Historical, and Topographical,
James Duncan & Thomas Tegg & Son, 1825, pp. 182-183.
4
G.W. Ahlström, “A Nabatean Inscription from Wadi Mukatteb, Sinai”, in B.Layton (ed.), Studies in the
History of Religions, Vol. 22 (1972), p. 323.
5
J.A. Bellamy, loc. cit.
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By Velikovsky’s interpretation of matters, then, “Amu” was the contemporary Ancient

Egyptian name for the so-called Hyksos people (the Hyksos themselves, properly
speaking, being their rulers); and it was also an Arabic term for an Amalekite man. So,
he explained, “The Amu, or the Hyksos, were the Amalekites” (ibid., p. 94).
Unfortunately for Velikovsky’s evidence, this apparent identification of names, Arabic
“Amu” and Egyptian “Amu”, is open to attack from both directions.
The Egyptian “Amu”
In Velikovsky’s translation of Tuch’s German, the word “Amu” is not a proper noun,
but a generic “designation” for an individual adult male Amalekite. An “Amalekite man”
(singular) was an “Amu” (singular).
In Ancient Egyptian, however, the “-u” suffix is the regular indicator of a plural noun,
not a singular. Among the Egyptians, “Am”, not “Amu”, would be “a designation for a
Hyksos man”.
However, Egyptian “Amu” is a layman’s simplification of ‘A’amu, which in turn is a
simplification of a word which looks rather different in Egyptologists’ standard
transliteration, ˁꜢmw. The Egyptians wrote entirely in consonants, not all of which occur
as sounds in English. The two “inverted comma” characters represent consonants of this
type, both of which exist in Arabic and a number of other modern languages, but neither
of which is recognised in English. ‘A’amu is simply a way of writing the word so it can
be pronounced; non-one knows what the original vowels were, but (using “e” to represent
“any vowel”) they probably followed a pattern rather like this: ˁeꜢemwe. 6
Velikovsky implies, in Ages In Chaos, that “Amu” was specifically the Egyptian name
for the so-called Hyksos; we read on p. 2 that Ancient Egypt saw a …
… period of chaos, exploited by certain invaders known as Amu in Egyptian and called
Hyksos by authors writing in Greek.
The Hyksos period is associated, particularly, with Egypt’s 15th, 16th, and 17th
Dynasties. Nowhere does Velikovsky inform his readers that both peaceful traffic, and
raids across the eastern border by ‘A’amu tribesmen, had been a feature of Egyptian life
since a thousand years earlier, or that they had been peacefully settling in the Delta region
for some centuries before their rise to power.
6
The Ꜣ character is generally taken to represent the “glottal stop” consonant represented in the International
Phonetic Alphabet as [ʔ], which is heard in English speech but not recognised as a letter. However, its
actual sound in the Hyksos period is uncertain. The evidence is that, at an earlier stage, the corresponding
hieroglyphic character represented an r or l sound, but by the end of the Middle Kingdom, “Most
words simply lost the consonant, but in some cases, it was replaced by y or by a ‘glottal stop’” (Allen,
Middle Egyptian, CUP 2000, p. 15). The character shown as ‘ transliterates hieroglyphic , which
represented the sound identified by the IPA letter [ʕ], “A sound made deep in the throat, somewhat like
the r of modern French and German. It exists in Hebrew and Arabic as the consonant named ‘ayin’”
(ibid.). “Originally ‘ probably sounded like English d as in deed, and in Middle Egyptian it may still have
had that sound in some words in some dialects”. Given that the vowels are not known and the first two
consonants uncertain, the authentic Hyksos period pronunciation of ‘Ꜣmw is indeterminate.
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Who were these ‘A’amu? Egyptologists generally translate the word as “Asiatics”. In
the time of Ramses II, at least, they were the inhabitants of Syria and Palestine. To
conceive that “Amu” was specifically the Egyptian name for “an Amalekite” is equivalent
to conceiving that “Europeans” (plural) is the way to describe, say, a specific German
person.
The Arabic “Amu”
Velikovsky referred to “Amu or Omaya” as though they were either the same name in
different forms, or lay side-by-side in Tuch’s text. However, neither name is what we
actually see in Tuch’s monograph (p. 151):
[The name] Fârân ben ‘Amr becomes noteworthy, inasmuch as it identifies

[‘amr] as an Amalekite personal name, and so ‫‘[ עמרו‬mri] appears frequently in the
inscriptions (see. Nr. XXI). Likewise, an Amalekite prince on the throne of Ḥirah bears the
name ‫’[ אושו‬wshw], here common (see Nr. I), according to Abulfelda
op. cit. p. 122, and on the even more common name ‫עמיו‬
[‘myw] (see Nr. IV) = [‘myu], al-Jawhari says , i.e., it is
said that this is the name of an Amalekite man, and also indicates that this is one of those
names heard in the same district.
Tuch used the Hebrew alphabet to transcribe the Nabataean characters in which the
Sinaitic inscriptions were written. Like Ancient Egyptian, both alphabets represent only
consonants. The form he found in the inscriptions was ‘MYW (where ‘ represents a
pharyngeal (“throaty”) consonant named in Hebrew and Arabic ‘ayin), which he equated
to Arabic ‘MYW, ‘Umayyu. Neither can be correctly transliterated as “Amu”.
The personal names preserved in the Sinaitic Nabataean inscriptions are all Arabic,
save for a smattering of Aramaic names. A question must arise as to how frequently the
name ‘Umayyu occurs. In fact, it appears to be the second most frequent name recorded7,
preceded by Wa’ilu and followed by ‘Abd-’alba’li.
But it is still neither “Amu” nor the Egyptian singular, ‘A’am.
Alert readers may have detected an apparent piece of sleight-of-hand on Velikovsky’s
part. According to him, al-Jawhari (d. 1002) wrote that “Amu” was “a designation for an
Amalekite man”, from which Velikovsky concluded that “Amu” was a synonym for
“Amalekite”. But the context in Tuch’s discussion is that of personal names, not generic
“designations”; the German text reads, “dies der Name eines ’amaleqitischen Mannes
sei”—“the name of an Amalekite man”, not some “designation”.
Summary and Conclusions
In a footnote on page 94 of Ages In Chaos, Velikovsky remarked that “Tuch took the
quotation from Djauhari without any thought of the question debated here as to the
identity of the Amalekites and the Hyksos”. However, the potential identity was in his
mind, since he wrote on an earlier page (p. 150):
7
Ahlström, op. cit., p. 328.
Page 103 of 136

What the Arabs understand by [‘amaliq] is vague and lacking focus,

especially in that they fuse memories of the Amalekites with those of the
Canaanite super-people, the Hyksos (Abulf. hist, anteisl. p. 16, ed, Fleischer),
alias the Philistines (Abu-l So’ûd on Sur. 2.247): yet one would not wish to deny
these Arabic traditions an historical core.
Thus, the link between the Sinaitic Nabataean inscriptions, the Amalekites, and the
Hyksos, was there ready-made in Tuch’s monograph.
However, the brief essay above has revealed several reasons to regard it as dubious, to
say the least.
1. Velikovsky equated the personal name “Amu”, which he claimed to be present in Tuch’s
text as “the designation of an Amalekite man”, with the word “Amu”, which the Egyptians
used for the Hyksos. However, the Egyptian word is not a personal name, but is a plural
(singular “Am”) designating a group of peoples—broadly speaking, Semitic nomads of the
deserts on Egypt’s eastern border.
2. The name ‘Umayyu appears in Tuch’s text, but “Amu” does not. One would think that
Velikovsky had misread “Omaya” (‫עמיו‬, ‘Umayyu) as “Amu”, except that he placed both
names side by side, as if both were present in his source.
3. Velikovsky represented an Arabic “Amu” as being a generic designation for “an Amalekite
man”, according to a specific mediaeval Islamic writer, al-Jawhari. What al-Jawhari wrote,
however, was that “Umayyu” was a common name amongst Amalekite men.
4. Velikovsky used the form “Amu” for the Egyptian word, but a better spelling is ‘Aˁamu.
Even that is an accommodation to the modern need to pronounce the word: the first two
letters represent a pair of consonants in Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the actual vowels used
are unknown. The structure of the Egyptian word does not easily accommodate itself to a
later form ‘MYU.
5. The Nabataean script of the inscriptions Tuch was describing, and which he theorised to be
perhaps Amalekite in origin, cannot be dated earlier than the 2nd Century BC, when the
script itself was invented. This leaves a vast gulf of time separating the inscriptions from
the period of Amalekite presence in Sinai theorised by Velikovsky.
The last point is a strong argument against Velikovsky’s equation of the Sinaitic
“Amu” with the Ancient Egyptian “Amu”; but the remaining four are fatal. Not only
does “Amu” fail to give a correct representation of the Egyptian word; not only is the
Egyptian word a plural identifying Semitic nomads rather than a personal name; not only
did al-Jawhari identify “Amu” as a personal name rather than a racial epithet; but the
name “Amu” does not even appear in the text he was citing as his source.
Tuch: The Name of an Amalekite Man (Extract)

[page 149] It can only be regretted that, given all those details of the native population
of the Peninsula, Western writers use only general expressions such as Ismailitae,
Saraceni; or refer to them by mentioning their tribal seats, without taking account of their
actual tribal affiliations. However, Antonius Martyr Chap. 37, when he praises the
language learning of three monks in the monastery on Mount Sinai, who could speak
Greek, Latin, Syriac, Egyptian, and also linguam Bessam (not Bestam), seems to mean by
the last to denote the Arabic dialect of the inscriptions; except we gain nothing more
thereby than a name incomprehensible to us, which apparently has nothing in the least in
common with ‫סלשת‬, or even with (i.e., the people of Budsha on the African coast).
Page 104 of 136

Thus, there remain only flimsy threads, such that any scrutiny to spin them out could
arouse well-placed doubts. But it is certain, from our [page 150] previous discussions,
that we are dealing with a special stratum of Arab tribes.
If we consider the oft-named Φαράν ( ), however, there can be no doubt that, even
if not by the geographical site, yet certainly by name, it coincides completely with ‫פארן‬
[Paran], by which the O.T. denotes the great desert to the north of the mountains of et-
Tîh. The Παρανῖται, Φαρανῖται of the Sinai Peninsula seem therefore to have belonged
originally to the populace of the great wilderness of Paran, and to have separated
themselves at a relatively late time; partly to take up permanent residence in the lush
Feiran valley, and partly (as Strabo reports, loc. cit.) to continue their nomadic life in the
more southerly valleys. This dispersal then resulted in the transference of the more wide-
ranging name onto a particular settlement.
The lords of that Great Desert from ancient times, according to the O.T. (Gen. 14:7),
were the Amalekites. We see them conducting their predatory raids, now on the outskirts
of Egypt, now in Philistia, now on the southern border of Judah (see Winer, RWb. I p.
51). Most important for our purposes, however, is Ex. 17:8 ff., in which the wandering
Israelites entered the very valleys in the neighbourhood of Rephidim where the
inscriptions were found, so that, weapons in hand, they could defend an area which they
regarded as their own property against the intrusion of foreign invaders. It is certain that
the Amalekites had already advanced to the primal rocks of the Sinai in the time of
Moses. Moreover, we find Amalekites here in much later times, when Issṭakari (p. 6) is
not alone in calling the Tîh Desert of the beni Israel geographically , i.e.,
the land of the Amalekites; while Maqrizi, in History of the Copts, p. 48, identifies the city
Faran ( ) explicitly as , i.e., one of the Amalekite cities.
But what the Arabs understand by [‘amaliq] is vague and lacking focus,
especially in that they fuse memories of the Amalekites with those of the Canaanite
super-people, the Hyksos (Abulf. hist, anteisl. p. 16, ed. Fleischer), the Philistines (Abu-l
So’ûd on Sur. 2.247): yet one would not wish to deny these [page 151] Arabic traditions
any historical core.
Consider the origin of the Amalekites at Ṣan’â ( ) in Yemen as one will, it

seems to be a matter of record that they conquered Mecca in the Ḥijaz (Abulf., op. cit. p.
178) and ruled it at the same time as the Adites (Beidhawi on Sur. 7, 70). If we connect
that with the account by Maqrizi at Burchardt p. 617 = 975: “It is said that Fârân is the
name of the mountains of Mecca and other mountains in the Ḥijaz ... and it is said that the
mountains of Mecca take their name from Fârân ibn ’Amr ibn ‘Amaliq (
)”: then not only do we gain a startling connection, but
again we find the name Fârân closely related to the memory of the Amalekites, as on the
peninsula.
Thus, there would seem to be very little risk in at least taking the Φαρανίται to be
Amalekites. If we compare this with the inscriptions, the latter-named Fârân ben ’Amr
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becomes noteworthy, inasmuch as he identifies [‘amri] as an Amalekite personal

name, and so ‫‘[ עמרו‬mry] appears frequently in the inscriptions (see. Nr. XXI). Likewise,
an Amalekite prince on the throne of Ḥirah bears the name ‫’[ אושו‬wshw], here common
(see Nr. I), according to Abulfelda op. cit. p. 122, and on the
even more common name ‫‘[ עמיו‬miw] (see Nr. IV) = , al-Jawhari says
, i.e., it is said that this is the name of an Amalekite man, and
also indicates that this is one of those heard in the same district.
The question now arises: were the Arab authors of the inscriptions, which are local to
the Peninsula, of Amalekite descent? Is the dialect of the inscriptions, with its
peculiarities, the otherwise unknown Amalekite form of language? These questions
cannot be said to be answered, save by a leap in the argument, even if one is determined
to see such an answer as probable. Research must be satisfied here to have come as close
to the stratum of the Arab tribes in question, as is possible in the current state of affairs.
Page 106 of 136

ADDENDUM: L’ABREGE DES MERVEILLES
Addendum: L’Abrégé Des Merveilles

Extracts from
THE SUMMARY OF WONDERS
[written by Ibrâhim Ibn Wasîf-Shâh, ca. 1000 A.D.]
TRANSLATED FROM ARABIC ACCORDING TO THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF PARIS
BY the Bar. Carra De Vaux
PARIS, LIBRAIRIE C. KLINCKSIECK, II, RUE DE LILLE, II

1898
Translated from French by Donald Keith Mills, 2023
[FROM CARRA DE VAUX’S] INTRODUCTION

[page xxvi] The fourth of these [Egyptian] dynasties, that of Sa, fell under the
government of women, which is still a historical feature, and Egypt was conquered by
invaders who were the Amalekites from Canaan. Their invasion evidently corresponds in
history to that of the Shepherds or Hyksos, and it is very remarkable that a strongly
founded hypothesis sees in the Shepherds, Canaanites. These conquerors, like true
Amalekites, advanced into Egypt, sacking everything in their path, ruining cities and
smashing wonders. They were, [page xxvii] moreover, very great princes, and they
rebuilt no lesser wonders. To their lineage belong the Pharaoh of Joseph and the Pharaoh
of Moses, separated by two or three other more obscure Pharaohs. It is not clear to the
Arabs whether the number of Pharaohs was six or seven; but it is certain, according to the
legend, that the only kings of Egypt who were connected with the Israelites are entitled to
this title. The king of Egypt contemporary with Noah counts as a Pharaoh and moreover
bears this name; it is the same with the contemporary of Abraham.
In addition to the Syrians, the kings of Egypt had to fight the Nubians and the Berbers,
a very formidable people because of their magic. They maintained relations with the
Chaldaeans. What is more unexpected is that they had to endure the incursions of the
Franks. In this legend of a Frankish invasion of Egypt, the Franks are probably to be
taken as a type of the Western and barbarian powers beyond the sea. We warn the reader
against looking for a memory of the Crusades in this story.
Page 107 of 136

[CONTENTS OF PART ONE: BEINGS AND NATIONS]

FIRST CHAPTER: OF THE CREATION.
In the Name of God, gracious and merciful —
CHAPTER II: THE NATIONS CREATED BEFORE ADAM
The genies, their kinds and their tribes.
CHAPTER III: OF THE EARTH AND WHAT IT ENCLOSES
CHAPTER IV: OF THE OUTER SEA (OCEAN) AND THE MARVELS
THEREIN
CHAPTER V: HISTORY OF ADAM AND HIS CHILDREN
CHAPTER VI: THE DESCENDENTS OF NOAH
CHAPTER VII: ‘ANAK AND ‘UJ
‘Anak, daughter of Adam.
‘Uj the giant.
CHAPTER VIII: HISTORY OF THE ARAB SOOTHSAYERS
[PART TWO: THE MARVELS OF EGYPT]

FIRST CHAPTER: THE EGYPTIAN PRIESTS
CHAPTER II: THE KINGS OF EGYPT BEFORE THE FLOOD
Nakrâus — Misrâm — ‘Ankâm the Priest; ‘Arbâk — Lujîm — Khaslîm — Harsâl —
Kadrashân — Shamrud — Tusidun — Sarbâk — Sahluk — Surîd — Harjît — Menâus —
Afrâus — Armâlînus — Far‘ân
CHAPTER III: THE KINGS OF EGYPT AFTER THE FLOOD

THE DYNASTY OF KOFTARIM
Misraîm — Koftîm — Koftarîm — El-Budashîr — ‘Adîm — Sheddât —
Menkâus — Menâus — Marinos
CHAPTER IV: THE DYNASTY OF OSHMUN
Oshmun — Menâkius — Markurah — Bilatis
CHAPTER V: THE DYNASTY OF ATRIB

Atrîb — A queen, daughter of Atrîb — Felimun — Kersun
CHAPTER VI: THE DYNASTY OF SA

Sâ, son of Kobtîm, son of Misraim — Markunos — Ansâd — Sâ — Tedâris — Malik —
Khartabâ — Kalkân
CHAPTER VII: THE PHARAOH OF ABRAHAM

Mâliâ — Tutîs
Page 108 of 136

[HISTORY OF THE AMALEKITE PHARAOHS]
CHAPTER VIII: THE INVASION OF THE AMALEKITES AND THE END

OF THE DYNASTY OF SA
HURIA.
After the death of Ṭuṭîs, the Egyptians fell into dispute over the election of a new king.
They said, “No one from his family should be nominated any more.” Some proposed to
put on the throne a prince of the family of Atrîb; but a vizier said, "You know the merit of
Huriâ, the daughter of Ṭutîs, her wisdom, the opposition she made to the crimes of her
father, and the service she rendered us in delivering us from him. Why, then, should we
seek a ruler other than she?” Most of the great officers approved this advice and power
was handed over to Huriâ.
Huriâ took the throne. Her subjects came to pay homage to her, to honour her and to
offer her their wishes. She promised to treat them gently. She set about collecting money
and storing it, so that after a short time she found herself in possession of more money,
jewels, gems and clothes than any king had ever possessed. She held in great honour the
sages, the priests, the chiefs [page 328] of the magicians; she increased their prerogatives,
and had the temples restored and embellished.
Some Egyptians who were dissatisfied with her election gathered in the city of Atrîb,
and they proclaimed as king a descendant of Atrîb called Andâḥos. He put on the diadem
and many of his cousins and relatives joined him. Huriâ sent an army to fight him. When
he saw that she would not give in, he offered her peace and asked for her hand. He
reminded her that kingdoms are usually ruled only by men and suggested to her the fear
that she might lose her empire altogether.
But Huriâ resorted to a stratagem: she ordered her subjects to gather in their houses to
eat and drink as on feast days. She gave them largesse, and then she revealed Andâḥos’
ambition to marry her. Some judged it a good idea, others disapproved, saying: “We do
not want anyone but her to rule over us, for we know her spirit, her wisdom and her
merits. Besides, she is the heir to the kingdom.” And when some refused to share this
opinion, they fell upon them and killed them.
Then the queen’s partisans having assembled a numerous army, advanced against the
army of Atrîb; they overtook it and routed it, after having caused it to suffer very great
losses. Andâḥos fled to Syria, to the land of the Canaanites, descendants of ˁAmlâḳ,
where he sought asylum with the king. He told him of his adventures, and inspired in him
the desire [page 329] to conquer Egypt, it being represented to him as a great and rich
kingdom, the taking of which would be easy; he promised him, moreover, to help him.
Thus the king of Syria equipped a considerable army intended to invade Egypt, and at
its head, alongside Andâḥos, he put an illustrious general. The inhabitants of all the
provinces of Egypt then flocked to Huriâ; she opened her father’s treasures for them and
distributed the greater part of them to them. This liberality made her popular and ensured
the devotion of her subjects. She also showered gifts on the magicians, to whom she
Page 109 of 136

promised greater benefits in the future. Andâḥos advanced with the Syrian army. Huriâ
ordered the magicians to prepare their prodigies against it. This army was commanded by
one of the most illustrious Canaanite generals, named Jîrun1. When this general entered
the land of Egypt, Huriâ sent to him her nurse, who was a woman of rare intelligence.
She had given her a mission to see him, without Andâḥos’ knowledge, and to tell him that
the queen had a great desire to marry him; that she did not want any man of her house for
a husband; that if he slew Andâḥos in any way he pleased, she would give him with her
hand the empire of Egypt, and that she would defend him against his master. This
message moved Jîrun. He conceived a great joy in it, and hastened to have poisoned food
brought to the tent of Andâḥos, as if to honour him according to custom. Andâḥos ate of
it and died.
[page 330] Jîrun immediately asked the queen to fulfil her promise. She answered
him: “It is not possible for me to marry you before you have given proofs of your strength
and wisdom in my own country. Build me a wonderful city.” For it was the custom in
those days to make oneself famous by erecting buildings, putting up towers, erecting
idols, and performing wonders. -The queen added: “From the place where you are, you
shall go to the west of our country and restore some of the ruins which are there in great
number and which are the remains of towers or various monuments.”
Jîrun went to the place she indicated to him and built the city of Endumah2 in the
western deserts. He brought there a canal from the Nile, embellished it with plantations,
and erected a very high lighthouse, at the top of which was a hall which he covered with
gold, silver, copper, coloured marble, and molten glass. He worked wonders in this
construction with the help of the workers and by means of the resources that the queen
had sent him. During this time, Huriâ exchanged letters and gifts with the king of the
Canaanites without his knowledge.
When the city was completed, Jîrun informed the queen. She replied: “We have
another city which was strong in the time of our ancestors. Today it is ruined and its
ramparts are dismantled. Go there and try to rebuild it, to restore it to good condition, to
make it powerful and beautiful. I will take myself to the city which you have built; have
everything necessary placed there, and when you have finished [page 331] building the
other city, let me know. I will go and join you there, for I wish to be far from my city and
my people when I see it; it would displease me to enter your house in the sight of all my
people.” And he set out for the place which she had indicated to him, and began to build
the second Alexandria; for that was the place to which she had sent him.
Some historians do not know of the adventure of Andâḥos; they say that the one who
invaded Egypt was el-Welîd, son of Dumaˀ, the Amalekite, who is the second of the
Pharaohs. The motive which brought him to this expedition was the following: he was
plagued by an ailment from which he had been suffering for a long time, and he had sent
trustworthy servants in every directions to seek for him waters capable of curing him.
1
The legend is different in the Egypt of Murtadi, 138ff. There it is the Adites who invade Egypt, rather
than the Amalekites.
2
[Ms] A; [ms] B, Nedumah; [ms] M, Fidumah or Kidumah; [ms] N, same word as M, but unpointed.
Page 110 of 136

One of these men had come to the land of Egypt and, having been struck by its extent, its
resources and its beauty, he had, on his return, spoken of it to his master with great praise.
He had also brought back to him some waters and some secrets.
It was then that el-Welîd advanced at the head of a considerable army to invade Egypt.
This empire was at that time governed by Queen Huriâ. The Amalekite asked her to
marry him. She sent someone to his camp to get information. This emissary saw
warriors of great stature who would be difficult to defeat. The queen therefore replied to
Welîd that she would marry him; but she imposed on him the condition that he should
build a great city which would testify to his strength and which would serve as a place of
[page 332] rendezvous. He accepted this, and having entered the land of Egypt, he
crossed it to the western regions in order to build the city on the site of Alexandria. The
queen had perfumes and fruits brought to him.
Alexandria had been in ruins since the departure of the ˁAdites. El-Wélîd collected all
the stones and column shafts he could find there, and laid the foundations of a very vast
city. He received from the queen a squad of a thousand workmen and servants. The
work lasted a very long time; he saw all the money he had at his disposal run out. Every
night, after stones had been laid in the foundations during the day, beasts from the sea
came and tore out the stones, ruined the wall and overturned the whole work. This
mishap continued for many months; the founder was violently distressed by it and was
constantly looking for ways to remedy this evil.
Huriâ had sent Wélîd a herd of a thousand head, so that he could have milk for his
kitchen. He had entrusted their care to a shepherd of whom he was sure. This shepherd
led the herd around the ruins. One evening, as he was bringing them back, he saw a
beautiful young slave girl emerge from the sea. He immediately fell in love with her and
confessed to her his desires. She promised him that she would satisfy them if he wrestled
with her and won; but if she won, she would take two beasts of the herd. She returned on
the following days, and as the shepherd’s love for her only increased, he had a burning
desire to defeat her. But the girl always had the upper hand and each time she took two
beasts. After a short time she had taken half the herd; the other [page 333] half withered
away, because the shepherd, completely occupied with his love for the girl, no longer
cared for his cattle. He himself had become thin and pale.
His master passed near by him and seeing him so changed and the animals in such a
bad way, he asked him what was the cause. He also noticed that the herd was reduced
and wanted to know why. The shepherd, fearing his anger, told him the whole truth. He
then asked him: “At what time does she appear” — “When evening approaches,” replied
the shepherd. El-Welid put on the shepherd's clothes and, having taken charge of the
flock, waited until evening. The young slave girl appeared. He expressed his desire to
her and she made her condition. They wrestled together; Wélîd won. He seized her and
chained her tightly. But she said to him: “Now that I am taken, deliver me to my first
lover. He has deserved me well and I have made him wait too long.” So he handed her
over to the shepherd, and said to him, “When you are alone with her, tell her about these
buildings we work on by day and which are knocked down by night. Ask her if she
Page 111 of 136

knows anything about it and if she knows any way to ward off this evil.” After this
instruction, he went away and left them together.
The shepherd questioned the slave girl and she replied: “There are monsters in the sea
that come out at night and ruin your buildings.” — “Do you know,” he asked her, “any
way of keeping them away?” — “Yes,” she said. — “And what is it, then?” She replied:
“I am going to teach you a word that you will have written on sheets of paper attached to
small stones. Some painters will get into boats, furnished with these stones, and they
will go in the middle of the day to such and such a point on the [page 334] sea. They will
stop there, throw the inscribed stones into the water on the right and left, then wait for
about an hour; then all the beasts of the sea will gather in that place, circle about the boat,
and show themselves above the water. The painters will seize this moment to draw their
pictures; they will make them as similar as possible and they will bring back as many as
they can. As soon as they have returned, he will forge statues of gold, copper or stone on
the model of these images, which will be placed between the foundations of the city and
the sea. When the monsters emerging from the waves see these figures, they will flee and
never return.” Then she taught the shepherd the word, until he had memorised it.
At dawn the shepherd went to his master; he reported the whole conversation to him,
had the magic word written down, and el-Wélîd, having acted according to his plan,
finally saw the monsters disappear. He was able to complete the foundation of the
buildings and the construction of the city, which became livable and superb.
According to other historians, the author of these constructions and the owner of the
herd was Jîrun el-Mutafki. This character would have entered Egypt before el-Welid,
who would have come there only after the time of Huriâ, and would then have made
himself master of the country.
All the wealth at the disposal of Jîrun was spent on the construction of this city before
it was completed. He then ordered the shepherd, as [page 335] these historians report, to
ask the slave girl if there were any treasures hidden near that place. She answered, “In
such and such a place in the ruined city is a round circus, around which are erected seven
columns, each surmounted by a golden statue. Offer to each of these statues a fat bull,
sprinkle the column with the blood of the bull, and smear it with the hair of its tail and
with the clippings of its horns and nails, saying: ‘Accept what I offer you and deliver to
me what you possess.’ After performing this rite, measure from the base of each column,
in the direction in which the statue is facing, a length of one hundred cubits, and hollow
out the end. Do this at the time when the moon is full and Saturn is moving right. When
you have sunk fifty cubits, you will find a large slab; grease it with bull’s gall, then
remove it. And under it you will find a door, through which you will enter into an
underground passage fifty cubits long, at the end of which you will see a padlocked door.
The keys of the lock will be on the doorstep. Take them, smear the lock with what is left
of the bull’s gall and blood, and incense it with its hair and the clippings from its nails
and horns. Then open the door and enter, after allowing the air inside to clear. When you
have entered, you will see before you a stone idol bearing a small yellow gold tablet
around its neck, on which will be written a list of all the treasures contained in this place:
Page 112 of 136

coins, jewels, statues, various utensils, remedies, and wonders. You may take as much of
them as you wish. You can do the same thing in front of each column [page 336] and in
front of each statue, and you will find equal riches each time. These are the tombs and
treasures of ancient kings.”
The shepherd repeated to his master all that the young slave girl had told him. Jîrun,
on hearing this, felt great joy, and followed her advice as soon as he could. Having
discovered priceless riches and countless wonders, he was able to complete the
construction of the city. He then told Huriâ that everything was finished. She was very
upset by this, for her sole intention was to weary the invader, to keep him busy and to
exhaust all his resources.
It is said that among the marvels that Jîrun discovered in this place was a golden
arcade in which was sealed an emerald cassette containing a green powder with red
pearls. Anyone who dyed himself with this powder, if he had white hair, became young
again; his hair and beard became black, and his sight was made so keen that he could
distinguish spirits. He also found a stone image of a crow that would screech when
questioned and answer any questions asked. It is said that in each of these treasures there
were ten wonders.
When Jîrun had finished building the city, he sent word to the queen and invited her to
come to him. He complained about the length of time that had passed and all the evils he
had endured with his companions. She sent him a magnificent carpet, saying to him:
“Spread it in the room where we will sit, then divide your army into three corps; send me
the first corps. As soon as they arrive, I will leave. When I have reached such and such a
place on the road, send me the second corps, and when I am two-thirds of the way, have
the third join me [page 337], for I desire that all your men be behind me, so that they will
not see me when I come to your house. I want only children in whom you trust to remain
with you, to serve you. I will bring serving-maids who will give us all the care we need.
In this way, we will not be bothered by anyone.”
Jîrun complied with the queen’s orders. She began to send him her trousseau, with all
sorts of objects, and every day she sent him some, until the moment she told him that she
was ready to leave. He then sent her the first corps of his army. To receive them, she
prepared a considerable quantity of poisoned food and drink, and as soon as these men
arrived, the maids and children hastened to make them eat and drink, to perfume and
adorn them; the next morning there were scarcely any of them left alive; those who were
not dead were finished off; the queen had charged some of her soldiers with this task.
She immediately sent men in all directions to guard and cut off the roads, so that no news
could reach the invader. Then she took the mortal remains of the dead soldiers and
brought them to Memphis3. She set out and met the second corps of Jîrun’s army. She
did with it as she had done with the first, and she wrote to Jîrun that she had sent all the
troops that had reached her to Memphis and to the provinces, to guard the country during
the time that she was with him. Finally the third [page 338] corps presented itself, and
she did the same with it as with the others.
3
In these accounts and until the end of the volume, the mss. sometimes have Miṣr instead of Memphis.
Page 113 of 136

She arrived at the residence of Jirun, accompanied by a troop of devoted men, her
principal intimates and their wives. But she did not show herself to him until her
companions had surrounded the palace that this general had built for himself in
Alexandria. She then entered it with her nurse and her slaves; the nurse blew on Jîrun's
face, with a breath that froze his heart, and she sprinkled him with a liquor she was
carrying with her. All the warrior’s limbs were shaken and his strength left him. “He was
mistaken,” said the queen, “he who thought he could conquer women; it was women who
defeated him.” Then she cut a vein and drank his blood, saying: “The blood of kings
gives health.” Finally she killed him, cut off his head and sent it to her castle, to the top
of which they hoisted it. She brought all his remains back to Memphis. She built the
lighthouse of Alexandria, and inscribed on it her name, the name of this general, and the
treatment she had subjected him to, with the date of these events.
Following this victory, the fame of Huriâ spread among the princes who coveted the
land of Egypt; they feared her, dreaded her cunning, and promised her loyalty; they sent
her gifts and solicited her friendship. She then worked many wonders in Egypt; among
other things, she ordered built on the borders of Egypt, on the Nubian side, a fortress and
a bridge be under which the Nile would flow, which was carried out.
Huriâ fell ill; her subjects gathered round her and begged her to appoint as her
successor someone whom she considered worthy. There was, [page 339] at that time,
none among her father’s children, nor in all his house, who was worthy of the throne. So
she called her uncle’s daughter to power and gave her to them as queen. This was
Doleifah, daughter of Mamun. Doleifah was a young girl of very great intelligence and
who enjoyed great consideration among women, Huriâ received for her the oath of the
people of Memphis and of all the inhabitants of Egypt. They swore not to hand her over
to her enemies and to defend her against anyone who would attack her. Huriâ gave her
the keys of her treasures; she made her mistress of all the wealth she had amassed and
that which her fathers had accumulated. Then she ordered that when she died, her body
should be embalmed in camphor and taken to the city she had built for herself in the
western desert. She had prepared in this city a wonderful tomb where the idols of the
stars had been set up, she had adorned this sepulchre with magnificence, and she had
established servants and slaves there, and she had caused priests and wise men to reside in
the city, with troops to guard it. This city became very prosperous, and it remained in this
state until Bokht-Naṣṣar came to ruin it and seize its treasures.
[page 342]
CHAPTER IX: THE AMALEKITE DYNASTY. - EL-WELID SON OF

DUMA'.
Aïmin of Atrib.
Aïmin of Atrîb reigned over Egypt after the death of Doleïfah. He was proud and
harsh and killed many men who had supported the queen’s party. El-Welîd, son of
Duma’, had now set out with a large army, intending to travel through the various
countries, to overthrow their sovereigns, and to stay for some time in each; he wished to
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seek waters capable of bringing some improvement to his health; this is what we have
already said, when we spoke of his illness. When this conqueror arrived in Syria, he
heard there some talk of Egypt and praise of its beauty; he also heard that this country had
fallen into the hands of women and that the dynasty of its kings was over. So he sent one
of his servants called ʕUnâ, with a powerful body of troops. This man arrived in Egypt at
the time when Amin and Doleifah were at war with each other. He set about conquering
the country, and took considerable wealth and great treasures. He [page 343] refrained,
however, from giving his news to Wélîd, and the latter was persuaded that he had
perished with all his army, for he had heard fearful reports of the science of the Egyptians
and of the magical power of their priests. But after some time he heard that his servant
had made himself master of the country. Then he advanced towards Egypt; he met ʕUnâ,
who had come to meet him, and who told him that he had delayed in sending him news
because he wished first to complete his conquest and pacify the country. El-Welid,
having accepted this excuse, entered Egypt and became its king. He oppressed the
inhabitants, seized their wealth, and extracted all the treasures he could find. Aimin sent
him his submission from the Ṣa’îd, for all the cities in that region; then he aided him in
his conquest and supported him with all his forces, until he himself had taken revenge for
the murder of his uncle Andàḥos. Then he withdrew and authority was concentrated in
the hands of Wélîd.
EL-WELID SON OF DUMA’
The idea occurred to Wélîd to set off again, to try to reach the sources of the Nile, and
at the same time to subjugate all the nations in their vicinity. He spent three years
preparing for this expedition. When he had collected everything he needed, he entrusted
the government of Egypt to his servant ʕUnâ, and he set out accompanied by a powerful
army and a considerable train. He destroyed all the nations he passed through. It is said
that he remained several years on this journey. He passed among negro populations,
crossed them, entered [page 344] the land of gold and saw there in certain places gold
growing in rods. This land forms the extremity of the country of Gànah.
El-Welîd, continuing to advance, reached the lake from which the waters of the Nile
flow; they are brought there by the rivers flowing from the Mountain of the Moon. The
Mountain of the Moon is a steep mountain, very wide and very long. It received this
name because the moon does not rise in relation to it, because of the position it occupies
far behind the circle of the Equator. El-Welîd saw how the Nile emerges from under this
mountain, and how it flows in numerous beds forming small rivers; one part of these
rivers meets in a large basin, the other part meets in another basin, and from each of these
two reservoirs comes out a large river which flows towards the large lake. This lake, into
which the two rivers debouche, lies between the line of the Equator and the limit of the
first climate. The Nile emerges from it as a single river, crosses the Equator, and heads
towards Egypt. It is joined by another river coming from the side of Makran [in India and
which also has its source in the Mountain of the Moon]. It is claimed that the Mehrân
[page 345] grows and diminishes like the Nile and that there live crocodiles and fish of
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the same species as those of the Nile. [This river also comes out from under the
Mountains of the Moon4].
Wélîd, it is said, found the castle where were the copper statues erected by the first
Hermes at the time of the first Budashir, son of Kofṭarîm, son of Misraïm, son of Ham,
son of Noah. These statues were eighty-five in number, arranged in such a way as to
receive all the waters which descend from the mountain; systems of conduits fitted with
rounded mouthpieces brought the water into their bodies, then discharged it through their
throats, in a quantity determined and measured by graduated cubits. The water, which
gushed from the mouths of these statues, formed numerous rivers which flowed towards
the two basins, and it then emerged from them, as we have said, to end up uniting all in
the great lake. Hermes arranged this whole system with geometric precision; and he
regulated the quantity of water poured out by each image in such a way that it would
suffice for the prosperity of the country through which it was to flow, and for the needs of
its inhabitants, without ever being excessive. This quantity was measured in that place by
a height of eighteen cubits, of the cubit of thirty-two fingers. When this limit was
reached, all the water that still arrived was discharged to the right of the statues; it entered
pipes which brought it [page 346] to the right of the castle, whence it flowed into marshes
and uninhabited sand plains.
Some scholars have claimed that the four rivers issue from a common origin which is a
dome raised in the land of gold, behind the Dark Sea5. These four rivers are: the Saïhun,
the Jaïhun6, the Nile and the Euphrates. Some have maintained that these four rivers
issue from Paradise, that the dome is of emerald, and that their waters, before crossing the
Dark Sea, have the taste of honey and the perfume of musk. Some travellers have
reached these regions, about whom Ibn Ṣâliḥ, secretary of el-Leït, and others, have
reported traditions. According to these authors, a man of the race of Esaû, son of Isaac
son of Abraham, called Hâïd, saw the dome. The story of his journey is long. ... …
[page 351] ... Let us now return to the story of Wélid. After this king had reached the
Mountains of the Moon, he saw a high peak. which he climbed to see what was behind.
His gaze [page 352] embraced from there the black and fetid Sea of Pitch. He also saw
the Nile seeping there in the form of thin streams. But stinking breaths from the sea
spread around him; several of his companions perished. He himself almost succumbed,
and had to rush back down the mountain. Some people have said that he saw neither
moon nor sun from that point, but a kind of red light, similar to the sun at its setting.
El-Wélid consumed, it is said, twenty years in this journey. His servant ‘Unâ who
governed Egypt, having seen him absent for seven years, became proud and wanted to
make himself king. He claimed that he had never been the servant of Welid, but that he
was his brother, that it was therefore to him that the power should revert at his death.
Then he began to oppress men; he used magic to dominate them; he increased the
4
This sentence comes from ms. B. Ms. A has, instead: “and there comes out of it a river, on the western
bank, coming from the eastern end of the Mountain of the Moon.”
5
This concerns the four rivers of the Bible.
6
Ms. A has Saïhàn, Jaïhàn
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privileges of magicians and tolerated their crimes. The people submitted to him, and
submitted to his authority. ‘Unâ married all the daughters of the princes of Egypt; he took
all the fortunes and killed their owners. However, he honoured the priests and attended to
the care of the temples; his subjects drew back from him, for fear of the magicians with
whom he was surrounded.
One day, this minister saw in a dream Wélid appear to him and say: “Who commanded
you to take the title of king? Do you not know that he who usurps this title is worthy of
death? You have also forcibly married the daughters of princes and confiscated their
fortunes without just cause.” And Wélid gave the order to fill pitch pots with pitch and to
place them on the fire. The pitch began to heat up and ‘Unâ understood that he was going
to be plunged into it. Indeed, when the stuff was boiling, Wélid ordered that he be
stripped [page 353] of his clothes. But at that moment a great bird like an eagle swooped
down on the prisoner, seized him, snatched him out of the hands of the executioners and
carried him through the air to the top of a mountain. Then it seemed to ‘Una that he fell
from the top of the mountain into a valley, where hot and stinking springs gaped wide.
This fall woke him up. He found himself filled with anguish and almost without
feeling. For so long he had become accustomed to ruling like a master that when the
memory of Welid came back to him, he nearly lost his mind. He also knew the worth of
this prince, his strength and his courage. Sometimes he had believed himself certain of
Wélid's death because he had been gone for many years without anyone having heard
from him; sometimes he had feared that he was still alive; but after he had had this vision,
he could no longer doubt his existence, and he only thought of seeking the means of
fleeing Egypt, taking his wealth with him.
He shared his distress with some magicians whom he trusted, and said to them, “I am
afraid of Wélid, and I propose to leave Egypt. What do you think?” They answered, “We
will defend you against him, if you follow our advice.” — “Speak, then,” he replied. “We
shall make you an eagle and you will worship it, for the bird which in your dream
snatched you from your executioners is a spirit which desires us to make its image for you
to worship.” — “I am ready to obey you,” replied ‘Una. “Tell me where to place this
statue and I shall do the rest.” They said, “We shall explain it to you.”
After he had heard the magicians’ advice, he had an eagle made of gold, whose eyes
were jewels [page 354] and whose body was covered with marvellous ornaments. He
built a very beautiful temple, in which he placed this image, and he stretched before it
veils of silk. Then he invited the magicians to conjure it, by incensing and sacrificing,
until it spoke to them. From then on he made this idol his god, and called on all the
people to worship it, and the people consented to it; after some time, the eagle
commanded ‘Unâ to build himself a city to which he would transport himself, and which
would serve him as a defence and a place of refuge against any aggressor.
The rebel then gathered together all the workers of Egypt; he sent his companions to
the western deserts, to seek there a flat land which could only be reached via narrow
defiles and through steep mountains. He recommended that they choose a place that was
close to ponds. At that time, the Fayum was a pond formed by the water of the Nile, and
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it remained in this state until Joseph dried it up. ‘Unâ had insisted that a site near a pond
should be chosen, so that the waters could be brought to the city.
His emissaries therefore travelled through the desert for a month, and they finally
discovered the place he wanted. Then they brought together all that Egypt had of
engineers and surveyors, of workmen capable of splitting rocks, of cutting stones, of
carrying out any part of the work of construction, and they sent all these men to the site of
the new city: a thousand horsemen were placed under their orders, and all the tools they
would need were brought to them. They spent a month transporting the supplies they
were going to need; all these objects were brought on carts; the tracks of the wheels [page
355] are still apparent today in the Western Desert, behind the pyramids, which are the
famous monuments which seekers visit.
… … [page 356] All around the city there extended a fortified wall of sixty cubits and
a half; the top of each gate, opened in this encircling wall, was surmounted by a large
images of an eagle, hollow, in gold and in compound substances, with their wings spread.
……
When this foundation was finished, the rebel brought into the city all the gold, all the
jewels, all [page 357] the riches of Memphis, and all that he had taken from the treasuries
of the kings: statues, secrets of the sciences, powders and herbs, armour, etc. He made the
chiefs of the magicians and priests, the masters of arts and crafts, emigrate to this city.
He made the chief magicians and priests, the masters of arts and crafts, emigrate to this
city. ... ... Every year they amassed in the city enough to live there for ten years: this city
was situated three days’ walk from Memphis. When this city was built, ‘Una’s soul was
at rest and his spirit became tranquil.
One day the rebel received a letter from Welid, who was then in Nubia; this prince
ordered him to send him provisions and cattle. ‘Unâ carried out his orders with the
greatest care; he sent the provisions on ships or on the backs of beasts; but at the same
time he directed his whole family, all the daughters of the princes and nobles of Egypt
whom he had married, to the city which he had built; and when Welid was [page 358]
about to return to Egypt, he himself fled to his city and fortified himself there. One of his
lieutenants was instructed to hold his place and to present himself before the king.
The latter returned to Memphis; the people came to meet him and complained to him
of the tyranny of ‘Unâ. ... ... ... Then Wélid contented himself with ordering him to report
to him; he warned him against the consequences of a revolt, and swore to him that, if he
did not submit, he would cause him to perish in torments as soon as he had him in his
power.
‘Una replied: “The King has no cause to complain of me. I have not attacked his
kingdom, nor have I sought to harm anything of his. On the contrary, I am his servant.
…” At the same time as his reply, [page 359] ‘Unâ sent the sovereign considerable sums
and a quantity of stones. When the king had received his envoys, he calmed down and
thought no more of him.
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El-Welid ruled over Egypt, oppressing its inhabitants, insulting their wives and taking
their property, for the space of one hundred and twenty years. All the people hated him
and cursed him. One day when he went out to hunt, he was thrown by his horse on a hill,
and God delivered the people from him. Er-Rayân, the son of Wélid, condemned his
father’s government and declared himself opposed to it. When his father died, he built
him a tomb near the pyramids. It is also said that this king was buried in one of the
pyramids.
CHAPTER X: THE PHARAOH OF MOSES

ER-RAYÂN
El-Wélid was succeeded by his son er-Rayân. He is the Pharaoh of Joseph. The Copts
call him Nehrâus. He sat on the throne of the empire. He was a prince of a tall stature,
with a handsome face, intelligent, possessing several sciences. His subjects presented
themselves before him to express their [page 360] wishes. He spoke kindly to them,
promised to treat them well, and began by relieving them of taxes for three years. They
blessed him and gave him thanks. He had the treasuries opened, and divided between the
notables and the common people who were present, all that they contained. He then
dismissed them, and they left full of gratitude and affection for him.
Er-Rayân began his reign in a very commendable manner, then he allowed himself to
be dominated by his passions, and he handed over the government to a man of his house
called Ḳiṭfîr7, who is the one whom the historians call el-'Azîz8 [“the Exalted”]. He was
the son of a vizier, very intelligent, master of himself, firm in his views, full of
agreeableness and charm, completely occupied with exercising justice and procuring the
good of the people. He had a silver throne installed in the king’s palace; in the morning
and in the evening he went to the sovereign and made all the officers, viziers and
secretaries pass before him, before entering his house, and when he left it. He continued
to govern for a long time in this way, relieving the king of all trouble, taking charge of all
affairs alone; he visited the provinces; he spread great security everywhere and made
justice reign among the people. Meanwhile, King Nehrâus was immersed in his pleasures
and absorbed in his passions. He did not cast his eyes on any matter, he did not care
about anything, and no one came to speak to him. This state of affairs lasted for many
years. The empire was prosperous and its revenues were increasing. It is said that the
revenue of [page 361] Egypt at that time reached ninety-nine million mitkàl. The
minister distributed it; the share that was due to him for himself, his wives, and his table,
he had carried to his house; that which was intended for the maintenance of the armies,
the priests, the philosophers, the chiefs of the craftsmen, the overseers of the country, the
stewards of the buildings, crops, and plantations, and the masters of the various trades, he
had deposited in detail with each of them, and what remained in excess of these two
shares, he had collected at the treasury of the palace of the king.
7
The name of Ḳiṭfîr is said to be an alteration of that of Potiphar.
8
See the Koran, XII:xxi.
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Nehrâus, however, without taking notice of any of this, without informing himself of
anything, occupied himself with having as many pleasure houses built as there are days in
the year. Every day he changed his residence, and his houses were adorned with carpets
and vases varying from one to another.
When this situation became known to the kings neighbouring Egypt, they
contemplated seizing a country over which reigned such a miserable prince. An
Amalekite named ‘Alkan, son of Sajum, surnamed Abu-Ḳabus9, advanced with the
intention of invading Egypt, up to the vicinity of its border. Al-‘Aziz sent against him an
army commanded by a general called Bernach. This general was beaten and his troops
were put to flight. The Amalekite entered [page 362] Egypt, destroyed many monuments
and works of art, and his desire to take Memphis and its region knew no bounds. The
inhabitants of Memphis, informed of his approach, saw themselves in very great peril,
and they came together to seek help from el-‘Azîz. The latter sent them back to the
king’s palace. They went there, and there began to lament and implore the assistance of
the sovereign. Nehrâus heard them, and asked them what they wanted. They told him
that the Amalekites were invading Egypt, that they had already crossed its borders and
begun to ravage the country, to spoil its harvests, to smash the works of art, to ruin the
monuments. They added that the enemy army was approaching and marching on the
king’s palace.
Hearing this account, the prince trembled. He was ashamed of himself, and awoke
from his numbness. The Copts say that he heard the genies weeping over his father and
that he was moved. He mustered his troops, equipped them, and led them to meet the
enemy. He drove him back to the frontiers of Syria, and killed a great number of men;
then having himself invaded the country of the Amalekites, he plundered the crops, cut
down the trees, burned the houses, and crucified all the enemy soldiers whom he had
taken prisoner. At the place where he stopped, he erected markers on which he wrote: “I
challenge those who would seek to go beyond this place.” It is said that he went as far as
Moṣul, that he imposed a tribute on the people of Syria and that he built near el-’Arish a
very large city to which he transported inhabitants. He garrisoned all these regions with
troops, then he returned to Egypt. Following this expedition, the kings esteemed and
feared him; they bestowed [page 363] him with high praise, sent him presents, and
solicited his friendship.
When he had rested for some time in Egypt, Nehrâus gathered his troops from all the
provinces to attack the kings of the West. He set out at the head of nine hundred
thousand men10. The kings were warned of his approach; some moved out of his way,
others entered into his obedience, others offered him considerable sums and treasures,
imploring peace for their country; and as for those who resisted, he subjugated them and
brought them into bondage. He passed through the land of the Berbers, of which he
9
This name seems to be an alteration, after the Greek, and the reading of ms M seems to be more accurate:
Anafânus.
10
[Mss.] B and M have seven hundred thousand. There is a lacuna in B, which begins at this sentence and
continues to the point where the king is stopped by the wild beasts which devour one another.
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captured the greater part. He sent forward a general called Marîṭos11, and he himself
followed the shores of the sea with a fleet. Some Berber tribes tried to resist him: he
devastated their country. Others begged him for peace and brought him gifts. He passed
from their homeland to Ifriḳïah and the region of Cartagena. The inhabitants asked him
for peace at the cost of sums of money and works of art. He passed on, and he reached
the place where the Green Sea enters the Sea of Rum. He erected a copper idol there.
This is the place where the ancient idols are found. He raised his on a high tower, on
which he inscribed his name, the date of his visit, and the story of his journey. He
imposed tribute on the inhabitants of these places, then, entering the [page 364] continent,
he invaded the country of the Franks and that of the Spaniards. The chief of the latter was
called at that time Luḏrîḳ. He fought him for a few days, and killed many of his
companions. The Spaniards begged for peace at the price of a large tribute in gold which
they promised to pay each year, and on condition that they would never invade, either by
sea or by land, any country dependent on the Egyptian empire, and that they would
instead fight all the enemies of that empire.
Nehrâus left them and, returning eastwards, marched along the shore of the sea in the
country of the Berbers; wherever he passed, the inhabitants came to him, brought him
gifts, made him submission, and enlisted among his troops. He went southwards and
passed through the region of the Kushan, a great nation. These people resisted him and
he killed many of them. He sent one of his lieutenants to a city on the shore of the Dark
Sea. The king of the city and all the inhabitants came to meet this general, to ask him
who he was and what he wanted. The general told them what er-Rayàn was, how all the
kings obeyed him and implored peace from him. They answered him: “As for us, no one
thought of subduing us and we did not think of subduing anyone. No one has attacked us
and we have never attacked anyone.” Then they brought him gifts and jewels and asked
for security for their city. The general received their gifts; [page 365] he wanted to know
if any sailors had ever sailed on that sea. They all answered that it was impossible to sail
there, and they told him that very often clouds rose over it which obscured it for several
days. A little later, the king er-Rayân arrived in person in this place; the inhabitants came
to meet him, bringing him presents and fruits which were mostly wild blackberries, as
well as black stones which became white when thrown into water.
From there the king passed among the negro races and reached the country of the
Demdem, who eat men. They came to meet him naked and armed with iron swords.
Their king was mounted on a huge, horned beast. He was very fat with red eyes and he
fought with great courage. Er-Rayan defeated him and put his people to flight. They hid
in shallows, in covered places, in caves and steep mountains where it was impossible to
pursue them.
After passing through their country, the king came to a people of monkeys who had
very light featherless wings, by means of which they fluttered about; then he embarked on
the Dark Sea, and when he had sailed on it for some time, that sea became dark with
11
According to ms M, this is the general who is put at the head of the fleet; he leaves Rakudah (old
Alexandria), and goes to devastate the islands of the Japhethites.
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clouds. Returning from there towards the right12, he came to the mountain of Botâris, on
the summit of which he saw a statue of red stone which signed with its hand for them to
go back. This statue had written on its [page 366] chest: “Let no one pass behind me.”
The king was now close to the city of copper, but he did not reach it.
From there he passed into the Valley of Darkness, where he heard a great racket but
saw nothing because of the intensity of the darkness. He walked on and came to the
Valley of Sand, at the end of which he saw idols inscribed with the names of the kings
who had come before him. He erected another idol on which he engraved his name.
After he had passed through the Valley of Sand, he entered a desert adjoining the
Black Dark Sea. There he heard screams and roars, and went forth with some of his
bravest companions to seek out the source of these sounds. They saw huge and bizarrely
shaped beasts with ferocious faces, tearing at each other and eating each other. The king
realised that he could go no further.
They continued marching until they reached the land of Saluḳah13, where there was a
serpent of inordinate size and bulk. They saw it lying on the ground and thought it was
dead. But when they approached to examine it, [page 367] they perceived that it was
alive. They fled immediately and guarded themselves against it by magic. The Copts
believe that they charmed this serpent and made it unable to move, so that it remained
motionless and died in the place. It is said to have been a mile long and to swallow
elephants.
The king then arrived at the city of el-Kand, which is the city of the Wise. The
inhabitants fled to a high mountain, to which they had access from within their city, by
ways which neither the king nor his companions could pass. He remained a long time
besieging them, when at last the water ran out, for none was to be found anywhere. The
king’s companions suffered greatly and were near to dying of thirst.
One of the ascetics called Mendus then came to find them. He was one of the most
eminent among these sages; his hair covered his whole body. He said to the king, “O
foolish king, what are you looking for? You already have all kinds of goods and you
have food beyond your needs. Why do you weary yourself and your army? Are you not
satisfied with what you have and do you not trust your Creator who has given you so
much wealth and subjected so many people to you? Nehrâus was astonished at his speech
and begged him to give him some water. The ascetic pointed before him, the king asked
him where their dwellings were, for he had not been able to find in all their city a drop of
water to drink. He replied, “We live in places where no one can enter.” “And what do
you eat?” asked the king. — “Roots of [page 368] plants of which a very small quantity is
sufficient for our subsistence.” — “And what do you drink?” — “We drink water from
ponds which are under the earth and in which gather the waters of rain and snow.” — “So
why did you run away?” — “Out of disgust for your vicinity, out of fear of being defiled
12
“The right” here means “the north”. Ms B has: “returning towards the north”.
13
This name is that of the serpent: “They came to the place of Salufah, which is a great serpent”.
According to Ibn Iyâs 15, the place where this serpent lived is a town.
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through contact with you, out of horror at your approach; otherwise, we have nothing to
fear from you.” — “Where do you take refuge when the sun is too hot?” — “In caves
under this mountain.” — "Do you need any money that I could leave you?” — “Money is
useful only to the proud. We do not use it, and we have enough other goods that we can
do without it. Besides, God has provided us with treasures such that, if you saw them,
you would judge all yours priceless.” — “Then let me see them,” said the king. —
“Follow me,” replied the ascetic.
And he led the king with a company of his companions to a land stretching out at the
foot of a mountain where golden rods grew. Then he showed him a valley whose slopes
were covered with stones of emerald and turquoise. Nehrâus ordered his companions to
choose the most beautiful of these stones, and to bring back as many as they could. They
obeyed and carried these treasures back to Egypt.
The sage saw some men from the king’s army carrying an idol and worshiping it. He
was distressed by this; he asked the king not to remain in this land, and exhorted him to
abandon the service of idols. Nehrâus begged him to show him the way. The sage
consented and bade him farewell.
The Egyptians therefore resumed their march in the direction which had been indicated
to them; in each [page 369] nation they passed through, the king left a monument in
memory of his passing. He came to the land of Nubia; the inhabitants, bringing him
treasures, asked him for peace. Then he came to Dongolah14, where he erected a column
on which he inscribed his name, the details of his itinerary, and all the events of his
journey.
He left there to return to Memphis. All the inhabitants of his kingdom came with el-
‘Azîz to meet him, provided with all kinds of perfumes, odours and incense, accompanied
by players of instruments and wandering entertainers of all kinds. El-‘Azîz had built for
the king a hall of precious white glass with coloured ornaments. He had placed there a
basin of celestial glass, at the bottom of which he had placed fine glass fish. When the
king arrived in Memphis, el-‘Azîz made him descend to this hall. The people devoted
several days to celebrations and rejoicings, to drinking and eating. Nehrâus reviewed his
army: he found that he had lost seventy thousand men; he had left with a million and his
absence had lasted eleven years. When the kings heard what the king of Egypt had done
on this journey, what nations he had conquered, what countries he had conquered, how
many men he had killed or chained, they respected and feared him, because of the
greatness of his courage and the extent of his power.
Nehrâus became proud; in the region of the West he built marble castles which he
flanked with high towers; he came there to stay from time to time. The revenue of Egypt
reached ninety-nine million miṯḳal during his reign. [He wished to raise it [page 370] to
the figure of one hundred million.15] He had everything sought out that might increase
the yield of cultication, improve the roads, restore the bridges, and drain the waters so that
14
[Dongola (Dunqulah), capital of the state of Northern Sudan, on the banks of the Nile.]
15
Ms M.
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they spread advantageously over all the lands. As a result of these works, the revenue of
the country reached the level he had desired, exceeding all previous figures.
The Copts say that in the time of this king, a young man from Syria was brought into
the land of Egypt, of whom his brothers were jealous, and whom they had sold to
merchants who were going to Egypt. The caravans from Syria which came to this
country at that time halted at the same stations as today: it was at one of these stations that
this young man was seized to be sold and was put up for auction. He was Joseph the
righteous; God’s salvation be upon him!
[Pages 370–379 recount a fictionalised version of the story of Joseph and the Descent
into Egypt of Jacob and his offspring. At the end, we learn that “It is said that Nehrâus
believed in Joseph[‘s God], but that he hid his faith, for fear of losing the empire.” The
history continues:]
[page 380] This Pharaoh reigned one hundred and twenty years. It was during his
reign that Joseph dried up the Fayum for the king’s daughter. The inhabitants of Egypt
had begun to slander their sovereign, and they repeated: “The king is old, his intelligence
is declining.” Joseph warned him of these remarks, and Nehrâus said to him: “I do not
care. But see, I have given my daughter a region of such and such a kind, all ponds and
swamps. I would like to divert the water that is lost there and that which is stagnant, to
make that region habitable and fertile. Study this project and see how it can be carried
out. Joseph went to the place and put workmen there, drove out the waters, straightened
their course, built causeways, filled in depressions, and transformed those swamps into a
vast, rich and fertile land, which is called the land of Fayum. He completed this work in a
very short space of time, and the people were in awe of the king’s intelligence and the
wisdom of his minister.
It is said that Nehrâus was the first who made geometric measurements in Egypt16, that
he dug the Menha17 and built the Lahun18; he dispensed water there in determined
quantities. This king, having died, was succeeded by his son Dârimus, whom historians
call Dârim, son of er-Rayân.
DÂRIM
Dârim is the fourth Pharaoh. Having come to power, he behaved in the opposite way
to his father. He kept Joseph as his lieutenant, because his father had made him promise
it by oath. Joseph gave him good advice, which he sometimes followed and sometimes
rejected. Under this king, a silver mine was discovered three miles from the Nile. A
considerable yield was drawn from it. With this metal, Dârim made an idol of silver
under the name of the Moon, and he set it up in the marble castle that his father had built
to the east of the Nile. He set up idols of silver all around it and clothed them in robes of
16
Cf. Murtadi’s Egypt, 215.
17
This is the great canal which goes to Fayum; Y, Matirizi, 201. This branch of the Nile is still called
Joseph’s Canal.
18
The Lahun Causeway, situated in front of Fayum, serves to hold back the waters. Cf. Murtadi’s Egypt,
222.
Page 124 of 136

red silk. He instituted a festival in honour of the main idol, which was celebrated every
month when the moon entered Cancer.
This king travelled to various places of pleasure. Whenever he wanted to cause harm
to his subjects, Joseph resisted him and tried to dissuade him by every means in his
power. But at last Joseph died, aged one hundred and twenty-three. Dârim had his body
buried in the clothes of kings and placed in a marble sarcophagus. This sarcophagus was
buried on the western bank of the Nile; the river fertilised it while the eastern shore
remained sterile; they took him from the west bank and carried him to the east bank,
where they buried him again; it was the western bank that remained barren. It was then
agreed to [page 382] transport the sarcophagus, each year, from one side of the Nile to the
other. Later they thought to furnish the sarcophagus with a strong copper ring, to attach
tightly stretched cords firmly to it, and to lower it to the middle of the Nile, where it was
abandoned; since when the two banks have been fertilized together.
It is said that Dârim took as his vizier, after Joseph, the priest Bilâṭis19. Bilâṭis advised
him on everything Joseph disapproved of. He urged him to harm his subjects, to seize
their property, and his injustices soon exceeded all measure. His tyranny increased to
such an extent that he had all the pleasant women in Memphis delivered to him, and
whenever he heard of a beautiful woman, he sent for her and had her brought to him.
Word of these excesses spread through the kingdom and all men were moved. Bilâṭis
feared a revolt; he tried to persuade the king to change his ways; he went to him and
persuaded him to be kind to his subjects, to apologise to them and to return their wives to
them. The king asked him to gather them together in his presence. He put on his richest
clothes and ordered them to enter; they went forward, not knowing what would happen.
But the king apologised to them and lifted the taxes for three years.
After that, Dârim had a wooden castle built for himself, which he filled with wonders.
He went up there with his wives and friends. Soon he renewed his injustices; he began
again to carry off the women and to take the goods of the people; and he allowed the
nobles and leading Copts to use the Israelites [page 383] as slaves. Then he would go up
to his wooden castle. One night when he was there, as the Nile was already spreading
over the land, as the water filled the space between the hills, and as the moon cast its rays
on the waters, he wanted to go from one bank to the other. Unable to push the wooden
castle fast enough because of its heaviness, he boarded a light ship with three of his
servants and his father’s wife who was a magician. When the boat reached the middle of
the river, there arose a violent wind; the vessel capsized; the king and those
accompanying him were drowned. The next day the court remained perplexed, not
knowing what had happened to the king, when his body was discovered at Sheṭnuf. They
recognized him by his ring and a jewel which he wore round his neck, and they brought
him back to Memphis.
19
For Ibn Iyâs, a certain Milâtis is the fifth Pharaoh,
Page 125 of 136

MA‘ADIUS
The vizier handed over power to Dârim’s son, Ma‘âdius 20, and seated him on the
throne. He was a child. He was proclaimed by the army. Ma‘âdius lifted taxes as his
father had done, and even for a year longer; he promised his subjects to treat them well,
and he made himself obey this; he hastened to give them back their wives. This is the
fifth of the Pharaohs.
During the reign of this king a deluge took place which covered part of the country.
His father’s vizier being dead, Ma‘âdius appointed in his place a priest [page 384] by the
name of Amlâdah. When the king saw how the Israelites behaved, he was displeased by
it, and he fixed them a country in which they would reside alone, without there being
mixed with another population. They settled in a place opposite Memphis, and there they
built themselves a temple for their worship, where they read the pages of Abraham. A
man attached to the king’s household loved an Israelite woman and wanted to marry her,
but the Israelites did not consent to this21. A Canaanite king made himself master of
Syria and forbade the inhabitants to pay tribute to the king of Egypt.
Ma‘âdius devoted himself to the care of the temples and to the worship of the gods.
The people surrounded him with a great veneration. His soul became proud; he
commanded his subjects to call him their Lord. He thought himself too exalted to
concern himself with the affairs of the kingdom, and, gathering the men together, he said
to them, “I have seen fit to hand over the power to my son Aḳsâmis. I shall be behind
him until my person becomes invisible to you, as I promised.” They stood satisfied with
these words and answered, “Let the king decide as he pleases; we are his slaves and those
of whatever master the gods give us.” The king, seeing that the people were submissive
and did not contradict him, set up his son Aḳsâmis in his place.
[page 384]
CHAPTER XI: THE PHARAOH OF MOSES

AḲSAMIS
Aḳsâmis sat on the throne, self-crowned with his father’s tiara. The heads of
government departments stood before him. He filled vacant offices, delimited nomes and
districts, encouraged cultivation, and spread largesse among the people. His authority
was great and his reign happy.
[Aḳsâmis is the king whom historians call Kâshim son of Ma‘dân son of Dârim, and
he is the sixth Pharaoh22]. He founded many cities in the lower region, and he performed
many marvels that it would take too long to enumerate. Bokht-Nassar, when he
conquered Egypt, took a large number of them.
20
[Ms] N gives the same name without vowel points, and adds: “The historians call him Ma‘dân, son of
Dârim, and he is the fifth Pharaoh.”
21
Ms A abbreviates this passage a little. B is more developed, but what it contains more than A is an
interesting fable. We follow ms A.
22
This sentence is lacking in ms A.
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The first seven years of Aḳsâmis’ government were happy and prosperous. Then his
father’s vizier died; and he appointed in his place a man of the royal house called Ṭalmâ
son of [page 386] Ḳumis. This man was brave, versed in magic and divination, a good
scribe, wise, prudent, and knowledgeable in all things. He maintained the prosperity of
the kingdom and the people loved him. He set up many monuments, cultivated
wastelands, and founded cities. Having known from his astrological observations that
there would be a period of drought and misery, he did what King Nehrâus had done, as
we recalled above. He also built temples. It is said that the lighthouse of Alexandria was
built in the time of Aḳsâmis. Under the same reign, the salt sea crossed its limits and
submerged a number of towns, gardens and works of art.
It is reported that Aḳsâmis for some time kept himself hidden from the eyes of men.
Others say that he died and his death was not divulged. His reign lasted thirty-one years,
Up to the moment of his disappearance. Ṭalmâ then administered the empire for eleven
years. But the men, no longer able to be admitted to the king, were moved, and the
rumour spread among them that Ṭalmâ had put him to death by poison. So they said to
the vizier: “It is essential that we see the king.” Then Ṭalmâ let them know that he had
retired from power and that he had put his son Lâṭis in his place. But they did not believe
his word. He had to call in the troops. Their squads came out armed and the people
surrendered.
[page 387]
LÂTIS
Lâṭis seated himself on the throne and donned the tiara. He was brave and very
handsome. He made beautiful promises to men: “If you behave well towards me,” he
said to them, “I will behave well towards you; but if you depart from your duties towards
me, I will depart from you.” He tied the craftsmen to their work; he caused several great
persons to be stripped of their dignities, and he removed Ṭalmâ son of Ḳumis, from
whom he took away the title of vizier. He chose in his place a man named Lâhuḳ, of the
descent of Ṣa Tansian, son of Tedâris, and entrusted his seal to him; this man was a priest.
Ṭalmâ was relegated to Ṣa‘id with the title of governor, and the king sent there with him a
colony of Israelites. He then busied himself in reconstructing monuments, restoring
temples, and building towns; many mines and treasures were exploited in his time.
Lâṭis loved wisdom. But he became proud and unjust. He forbade all those who came
to visit him in his palace, priests or others, to sit there; they were forced to stand until they
left. He sought the evil of his subjects and treated them with increasing harshness; he
seized their goods, and filled his treasuries with them; he coveted their wives and
abducted many of them. The people suffered with sorrow his violence and his outrages.
He enslaved the children of Israel; many priests perished by his orders. The great and all
the people hated him.
[page 388] Ṭalmâ, whom he had relegated to the government of Ṣa‘id, gathered troops
against him, and marched on Memphis with a numerous army. Lâṭis advanced to meet
Page 127 of 136

him. Ṭalmâ waged battle on him, assailed Lâṭis and killed him. He continued his march,
entered Memphis and ransacked the city.
TALMA
Ṭalmâ son of Ḳumis installed himself in the king’s palace and sat on the throne. He
seized everything in the royal treasuries. This is the prince who is, according to the
Copts, the Pharaoh of Moses. The historians name him el-Wélid son of Moṣ‘ab, and they
believe him to be an Amalekite; they say that there were seven Pharaohs. Ṭalmâ,
according to reports, was short, with a long beard, dark blue eyes flecked with red, the left
eye smaller than the other; he had a black spot on his forehead, and it is said that he
limped. Some scholars believe that he was a Copt, and they give as proof of this the
inclination he had for people of that race and the marriages he contracted among them.
When he was seated on the throne, the people were divided in opinion about him. He
began by making largesse; he was kind to those who obeyed him, and he put to death
those who resisted him. His authority grew stronger. He gave all his care to establish
men in their ranks, to fortify monuments, to found cities, to dig ditches. In the vicinity of
el-‘Arish he built a [page 389] fortress, and placed others along the borders of Egypt. He
took for his vizier Hâmân23, who was one of his relatives. He exploited treasures and
spent them on building cities, expanding cultivation, and digging many canals. He is
credited with the construction of the Sardus Canal. Every time he passed through one of
the villages of Jauf, the inhabitants brought him money; in this way he amassed large
sums of money, which he then had returned to those who had given them to him. The
revenue of Egypt in his time reached ninety-seven million [dinars]. He left the people in
charge in possession of their jobs. It is said that he was the first to establish a police
force.
Among the Israelites who had accompanied him was a man called Amrî, who is the
same as Amrân father of Moses. He named him guard of his palace, and charged him
with closing and watching the gates during the night. Ṭalmâ who knew the divinatory art,
had seen that his ruination would come from the act of an Israelite child. He forbade the
Israelites to approach their wives for three years, because he knew that this child was to
be born during that time. But the wife of Amrî or ‘Amrân, having come during the night
to bring to her husband something which she had prepared, he made her pregnant with
Aaron; and in the third year [page 390] he made her pregnant with Moses24. Talmà knew
by his art that the child was conceived. He then ordered that all the newborn males of the
Israelites should be put to death; but he forbade harming ‘Amran because he was of his
house and guard of his palace; it is under these conditions that Moses was born [whom
the Copts call Mush or Mosîs].
[Pages 390–402 provide a fictionalised version of the life of Moses. Many details are
altered from the Biblical account. For instance, it is one of Pharaoh’s wives who draws
23
See the Koran XXVIII:5.
24
The mother of Moses, according to the Arabs, was Najib or Najiah, and most often Yukha‘il; see
Talabi157. — The legend of Moses is amply developed in the Chronicle of Tabari, I, 291 ff.
Page 128 of 136

Moses from the Nile, not his daughter; Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, is “Sho‘aïb”, the
Islamic prophet of the Midianites.
[Most prominently, and true to the title of this “historical” work, the wondrous and
miraculous are greatly heightened. For example, here is el-Miṣri’s account of Moses’
staff turning into a serpent (Exodus 7:8–13), from page 395. The ultimate dependence on
the Biblical account can be seen in the use of “Pharaoh” as a proper name, instead of
Talmâ:]
Moses, invoking the name of God the forgiving and merciful, raised his staff and let go
of it in the air. Jibrîl [Gabriel] took it and bore it away until it disappeared from the eyes
of those present. Then the staff returned in the form of a huge ṯo‘ban serpent which had
two eyes as big as shields and all on fire; fire also came out of its mouth and nostrils; it
was animated by God with an increasing fury; and every drop of its slobber that fell on a
man gave him leprosy. Pharaoh’s daughter was stricken with this leprosy. And the
serpent descended, opening its mouth, and devoured all the phantoms produced by
[Pharaoh’s] magicians; it swallowed two hundred ships that were on the river, laden with
wood and ropes, with all that they contained, and with the sailors that were aboard them.
In the canal which passed through Pharaoh’s house, there were many columns and stones,
gathered there to be used in projected buildings. The serpent swallowed them; it then
advanced towards the palace of Pharaoh to swallow it. Pharaoh was in a dome, raised on
one side of the castle, from which he had had the spectacle of all the previous prodigies.
The serpent put its lower jaw under the castle and raised its upper jaw above the dome; its
mouth exhaled a fire, from which part of the castle was burned. Pharaoh began to cry out
and asked Moses for help. The prophet drove the serpent away from him, and it turned
on the crowd. It reached several people and devoured them; the others fled and fell in a
heap; the serpent was about to swallow them up when Moses seized it; it immediately
became in his hand a staff, as it was before. [Page 396] There was no trace left of the
ships, nor of the timbers and ropes which they contained, nor of the sailors who were
aboard them, nor of the columns and stones, nor of the water which the serpent had drunk
from the canal — so much that it was almost dry.
[Al-Miṣri dealt with the Ten Plagues of Egypt in very brief terms; not even the Tenth
Plague, the deaths of all the firstborn, is explicitly included; perhaps it has morphed into
the paralysis with which Moses strikes the Egyptians to prevent their following the
Israelites on the night of their departure (page 399).]
[page 396] [Pharaoh] contented himself with negotiating with Moses in secret, and
asking him for delays. After each delay expired, Pharaoh having done nothing, the
calamities fell more disastrously on the Egyptians; their dwellings were ruined, their
crops devastated, and prodigies of calamity multiplied in their houses. The people began
to fear and respect Moses, and many secretly believed in him. As soon as anyone
believed, the plagues spared him. … … …
[page 399] … About this time the Israelites were to come together to celebrate a feast.
Moses ordered their wives to exchange their ornaments for those of the Coptic women, to
borrow from them whatever dresses or jewels they could, and to adorn themselves with
Page 129 of 136

them for the day of the feast. They obeyed, then they invited the Coptic women to eat
and drink with them. Moses placed the Israelites a little farther to the east, and he ordered
them to stand ready there. When the crowd had eaten and drunk, Moses struck the Copts
with a numbness that rendered them unable to move. Then he left at the beginning of the
night with all the Israelites. They numbered six hundred and forty and some thousand.
The Israelites drew Joseph’s coffin from the middle of the Nile and took it away with
them. An old Coptic woman, who believed in Moses, had shown them the place. This
woman took part in their exodus. [page 400] The Israelites went to the side of the sea of
el-Ḳolzom so that their traces would not be seen.
At the end of the night, Pharaoh was informed of their departure. He was told how
they had made their women borrow the finery of the Coptic women, and summoned them
to their feast. Pharaoh sat down at once to hold a council; he assembled his men, and as
soon as they had come, he ordered them to prepare to leave in pursuit of the Israelites. He
gave them three days to make their preparations. All those who lived near the palace, and
all those who were far from it, belonging to the king’s troops and squadrons, received
orders to leave and come to him with the greatest haste. On the morning of the fourth
day, these men set out, led by their king, in the footsteps of Benu Israel. There was no
son of a prince, nor any person attached to the service of the great ones or distinguished in
any capacity, who did not enter this army. The number of the soldiers exceeded that of
the soldiers of Moses by six million.
Moses encountered no monument that he did not overturn, and no idol that he did not
make fall on its face. He led his people with prudence, and brought them to the vicinity
of the sea. As soon as he saw the waters, Moses said to his brother [Aaron], “Go forward
to the sea, and call it by the name of Abu ‘al-Abbàs, and command it to smooth its waves
and suspend its motion, until I come with those who follow me.” Aaron went ahead to
carry out this order. Then Moses went forward with all the people, guided [page 401] by
Aaron. When the prophet came to the sea, he struck it with his rod, and the sea split
before his eyes, leaving twelve paths dry. Each tribe took one of these paths, separated
by thin arches of water through which the groups could see each other. All the people
followed these paths. Moses was the last to enter.
Immediately Pharaoh came up behind the Israelites. When he saw them in the sea, he
wanted to abandon their pursuit, for fear of the waves. But Jibrîl appeared on a horse
with white “socks”, and he advanced in the footsteps of the Israelites. Pharaoh’s horse
seeing that of Jibrîl, rushed impetuously after him, without Pharaoh being able to hold
him back, because it was a blood horse and he himself was old. When the king had
entered the road opened by the waters, his whole army followed him to the last man. He
arrived in the middle of the sea just as Moses and his tribes were going out to the other
shore. Then God, through the voice of Jjibrîl, commanded the prophet to close the waters
over Pharaoh and his people; and Moses obeyed.
Page 130 of 136

The king, seeing himself lost, cried out: “I believe in one God who is the God of Benu
Israel. I am one of the Muslims25!” But he did not say this sincerely. Jibril heard him,
and stoning him with a handful of stones, struck him in the face and shut his mouth, lest
the Most High should have mercy on him because of his words. The sea swallowed up
the whole army of the Egyptians, and none of them was saved, and their souls were
thrown into hell. When they were dead, God threw the bodies of many, among them
Pharaoh, on the shore [page 402] of the sea in a high place; these bodies served as
witnesses and an example. This is what God has recounted in the Book revealed by Him
to the Prophet Muhammad.
[Here ends and finishes the book of the histories of time and of what has been
destroyed by revolutions, of the marvels of countries, seas and lands]26; with the help and
by the power of God, to whom be praise and glory for all his gifts, graces and blessings.
 END 
25
We know that the word Muslim, Moslem, means: “one who has given himself”, implying “to God”.
26
This title of ms. A is the same as this ms. bore at the start. B has only: "Here ends the compendium of
marvels and rarities".
Page 131 of 136

Page 132 of 136

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(DKM 2023-02) Velikovsky and The Amalekites

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VELIKOVSKY AND

VELIKOVSKY AND THE AMALEKITES............................................................... 1

Historical argument: lack of Arab history ........................................................................ 42

Part 4: “Malakhei Roim — King Shepherds” .......................................................... 88

DÂRIM ............................................................................................................................. 124

To these, I have added the following:

Finally, as an addendum to Part 3, I have provided a translation of relevant extracts

A review of the Biblical evidence cited by Velikovsky in favour of his

First Encounter: Amalekites in Genesis?

The Battle at Rephidim

country of Ailah [Eilat], towards Madyan [Midian]”. It is impossible to identify clear

Amalek’s Hegemony over the Middle East

to the Egyptians as “Hyksos”, meaning “foreign chieftains”15—won control of most of

Amalek in Joshua and Judges

Amalek in the Book of Judges

“Higher Than Agag”

Numbers 24:20: Amalek, the first of the nations

—a literal translation of which runs:

Summary and Conclusions: Then Came Amalek

None of these considerations completely extinguishes Velikovsky’s contention, that

Velikovsky’s Thesis and Pre-Islamic Arab “History”

“An Old Arabian Tribe”: The origin of Amalek

The names of Shem’s sons correspond to an uninterrupted arc of ancient peoples,

“The Upheaval In Arabia”

Is it not said that, from Al-Hajun to Safa, all is deserted,

Many a woman crying bitterly,

As though a bird fluttered between my ribs:

Part 3: Amalek in Egypt

“The Arabian Traditions about the Amalekite Pharaohs”

Egyptians to take the Israelites as slaves”. But he is never accused of attacking

The Amalekites as slavers

references to Ginzberg’s Legends). The exception is a reference to al-Samhudi’s History

Contrary Arabic traditions concerning Arab pharaohs

dynasty, others correspond to three or four. Particularly striking is the interpretation of

Summary: The Amalekites in Arabia and Egypt

Velikovsky’s misrepresentation of his sources extended also to the Amalekite

Part 4: “Malakhei Roim — King

The Word “Hyksos”

jəšalaḥ-bām ḥarôn ’apô , ‘ebrâ wāza‘am , wəṣārâ , mišlaḥat malə’akê rā‘îm

A Matter of Grammar: Adjectives and Nouns

A Matter of Grammar: Construct State

The equivalent to “genitive case” in Hebrew is known as “construct state”, which is

A Matter of Grammar: Singular and Plural

A Matter of Grammar: Adjectives as Nouns

“Angels of Evil Things”

This construction is exactly the same as Velikovsky’s “unusual Hebrew, … contrary to

Enter the “Angels of Destruction”

TRANSLATED BY DONALD KEITH MILLS

The Sinaitic Inscriptions

not discovered until more than half a century after

Page 100 of 136

Page 101 of 136

By Velikovsky’s interpretation of matters, then, “Amu” was the contemporary Ancient

Page 102 of 136

[The name] Fârân ben ‘Amr becomes noteworthy, inasmuch as it identifies

Page 103 of 136

What the Arabs understand by [‘amaliq] is vague and lacking focus,

Tuch: The Name of an Amalekite Man (Extract)

Page 104 of 136