Land of Goshen

In the story of Joseph, which comprises the final chapters of Genesis, the patriarch Jacob is facing famine and sends ten of his sons to Egypt to buy grain.

[4] But it is also implied to be somewhat set apart from the rest of Egypt,[5] because Joseph tells his family to present themselves to the pharaoh as keepers of livestock, "in order that you may settle in the land of Goshen, because all shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians.

[11] Donald Redford, while not disputing the location of Goshen, gives a different origin for the name, deriving it from "Gasmu," the rulers of the Bedouin Qedarites who occupied the eastern Delta from the 7th century BCE, but John Van Seters thinks this unlikely.

[14] The scholars Isaac Rabinowitz, Israel Ephʿal, Jan Retsö, and David F. Graf identify the land of Goshen with the parts of the Qedarite kingdom of "Arabia" located to the east of the Nile Delta and around Pithom, and which became known to ancient Egyptians as Gsm (𓎤𓊃𓅓𓏏𓊖)[14] and to Jews as the ʾEreṣ Gōšen (אֶרֶץ גֹּשֶׁן), that is the lit.

[19][18][20][16] The scholars Sarah I. Groll, Manfred Bietak and Mark Janzen reject any connection between the Land of Goshen and the territories of the Qedarite king Gešem, proposing instead that the biblical placename is related to the lake gsm mentioned in Papyrus Anastasi IV.