And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair.
Was come into Eyypt It appears from the monuments of that country that at the time of Abram's visit a Was come into Eyypt. It appears from the monuments of that country that at the time of Abram's visit a monarchy had existed for several centuries. The seat of government was in the Delta, the most northern part of the country, the very quarter in which Abram must have arrived. They were a race of shepherd kings, in close alliance with the people of Canaan. The monarch was distinguished by the name of Pharaoh, which, like Ptolemy in later times, Caesar in ancient Rome, and Czar in Modern Russia, continued to be the titular name of the Egyptian kings down to the conquest of the country by Alexander the Great. It has been thought to be compounded of the masculine article ph, the, and ouro, king. But both Wilkinson and Hincks are of opinion that it is derived from Ph-rah, the sun-the names of the earlier kings of Egypt consisting always of the name of the sun, with generally the addition of some qualifying epithet.
Osburn ('Mon. Hist. of Eg.') thinks that the reigning sovereign during Abram's visit was Pharaoh Achthoes; because, according to Josephus ('Antiq.,' 8: 1, 2), the Egyptians, when Abram arrived, were divided into factions by religious differences, which he, by his wisdom and piety, helped to compose; and Osburn says 'that this must have been in the reign of Pharaoh Achthoes, since there is a strong coincidence between the state of things in Egypt, described in that passage of Josephus, and what we find to have actually prevailed at the epoch of Abram, when the nation was torn into opposite and contending parties by a religious war, principally on the eastern frontier of the Delta, where the cities of the first settlers stood, and which Abram must have crossed to enter Egypt from Canaan.'
Since much uncertainty still attaches to the subject of Egyptian chronology, Poole and others, without venturing to fix the precise date, content themselves with saying that Abram went into Egypt in the reign of one of the Huksoos, or shepherd-kings, who had a close connection with Canaan. It may be added that the fact, implied in the sacred narrative, of there being a settled and organized community then in Egypt under monarchical government, is illustrated by the statement of Josephus, that Menes, the proto-sovereign who founded Memphis, lived many years before Abram. It is probable that those cyclopean structures, the earliest pyramids, were already towering above Memphis; and we need not wonder that Lower Egypt was inhabited by a civilized population when the first colonizers of the country must have brought with them a knowledge of the arts and sciences preserved by the early post-diluvian patriarchs.