Genesis 12:8-10

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

⁸From there he pulled up [his tent pegs] and departed to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.

⁹Abram journeyed on, still going toward the South (the Negeb).

¹⁰Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram ^[a]went down into Egypt to live temporarily, for the famine in the land was oppressive (intense and grievous).

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Footnotes

Genesis 12:10 Some books on archaeology frequently allude to the critical view that strangers could not have come into Egypt in earlier times, quoting Strabo and Diodorus to that effect; but later archaeological discoveries show that people from the region of Palestine and Syria were coming to Egypt in the period of Abraham. This is clearly indicated by a tomb painting at Beni Hassan, dating a little after 2000 b.c. It shows Asiatic Semites who had come to Egypt. Furthermore, the archaeological and historical indications of the coming of the Hyksos into Egypt around 1900 b.c. provided another piece of evidence that strangers could come into that land (J.P. Free, Abraham in Egypt).