As The Encyclopedia Americana (1956, Vol. 14, p. 595) says: “The only detailed account of them [the Hyksos] in any ancient writer is an unreliable passage of a lost work of Manetho, cited by Josephus in his rejoinder to Apion.” Statements attributed by Josephus to Manetho are the source of the name Hyksos. Interestingly, Josephus, claiming to quote Manetho verbatim, presents Manetho’s account as directly connecting the Hyksos with the Israelites. Josephus, it seems, accepts this connection but argues vehemently against many of the details of the account. He seems to prefer the rendering of Hyksos as “captive shepherds” rather than “king-shepherds.” Manetho, according to Josephus, presents the Hyksos as conquering Egypt without a battle, destroying cities and “the temples of the gods,” and causing slaughter and havoc. They are represented as settling in the Delta region. Finally the Egyptians are said to have risen up, fought a long and terrible war, with 480,000 men, besieged the Hyksos at their chief city, Avaris, and then, strangely, reached an agreement allowing them to leave the country unharmed with their families and possessions, whereupon they went to Judea and built Jerusalem.​—Against Apion, I, 73-105 (14-16); 223-232 (25, 26).

But it is possible that Manetho’s account, actually the foundation of the “Hyksos” idea, simply represents a garbled tradition, one that developed from earlier Egyptian efforts to explain away what took place in their land during the Israelite sojourn in Egypt. The tremendous effect on the country produced by Joseph’s ascension to the position of acting ruler (Ge 41:39-46; 45:26); the profound change his administration brought, resulting in the Egyptians’ sale of their land and even of themselves to Pharaoh (Ge 47:13-20); the 20-percent tax they thereafter paid from their produce (Ge 47:21-26); the 215 years of Israelite residence in Goshen, with their eventually exceeding the native population in number and strength, according to Pharaoh’s statement (Ex 1:7-10, 12, 20); the Ten Plagues and the devastation they wrought not only on the Egyptian economy but even more so on their religious beliefs and the prestige of their priesthood (Ex 10:7; 11:1-3; 12:12, 13); the Exodus of Israel following the death of all Egypt’s firstborn and then the destruction of the cream of Egypt’s military forces at the Red Sea (Ex 12:2-38; 14:1-28)​—all these things certainly would require some attempted explanation by the Egyptian official element.

It should never be forgotten that the recording of history in Egypt, as in many Middle Eastern lands, was inseparably connected with the priesthood, under whose tutelage the scribes were trained. It would be most unusual if some propagandistic explanation were not invented to account for the utter failure of the Egyptian gods to prevent the disaster Jehovah God brought upon Egypt and its people. History, even recent history, records many occasions when such propaganda so grossly perverted the facts that the oppressed were presented as the oppressors, and the innocent victims were presented as the dangerous and cruel aggressors. Manetho’s account (over a thousand years after the Exodus), if preserved with some degree of correctness by Josephus, may possibly represent the distorted traditions handed down by succeeding generations of Egyptians to account for the basic elements of the true account, in the Bible, concerning Israel in Egypt.​—See EXODUS (Authenticity of the Exodus Account).