Genesis 12 Footnotes

12:10-15 A tomb painting of Khnumhotep III at Beni Hasan from 870 BC depicts a trading donkey caravan of “Asiatics” visiting Egypt. Their beards, multicolored robes, weapons, and goods would have been typical of visitors from Canaan during the time of the patriarchs. During the first half of the second millennium BC, Egyptian kings had a northern palace in the eastern Delta region near Avaris. Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen points out that “the pharaohs were commonly partial to attractive foreign ladies, as finds and texts for the Middle and New Kingdoms attest.”