It lay apart from the cultivated lands of the Egyptian peasantry, it adjoined the desert which led to Asia, and it was near the Hyksos capital of Zoan.

Meneptah, the son and successor of Ramses II., tells us that from of old it had been given by the Pharaohs to the nomad shepherds of Asia; and after the departure of the Israelitish tribes the same king is informed in a letter from one of his officials that the deserted district had been again handed over to Bedawin from Edom.

This was in the eighth year of the king's reign, three years later than that in which the Exodus must have taken place.
For 400 years the Israelites had been "afflicted" by the Egyptians.

But while the Eighteenth dynasty was in power their lot could not have been hard.

They still remained the free herdsmen of the Pharaoh, feeding their flocks and cattle on the royal demesne.