We find it in contracts drawn up in Babylonia in the time of Abraham; we also find it as the name of an Egyptian king in the period when Egypt was ruled by Asiatic conquerors.

The latter fact is curious, taken in connection with the further fact, that the son of the Biblical Jacob--the progenitor of the Israelites--was the viceroy of an Egyptian Pharaoh, and that his father died in the Egyptian land of Goshen.

Goshen was the district which extends from Tel el-Maskhuta or Pithom near Ismailiya to Belbeis and Zagazig, and includes the modern Wadi Tumilat; the traveller on the railway passes through it on his way from Ismailiya to Cairo.

It lay outside the Delta proper, and, as the Egyptian inscriptions tell us, had from early times been handed over to the nomad Bedawin and their flocks.
Here they lived, separate from the native agriculturists, herding their flocks and cattle, and in touch with their kinsmen of the desert.

Here, too, the children of Israel were established, and here they multiplied and became a people.
The growth of a family into a tribe or people is in accordance with Arab rule.