Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
This Period was caused in part by climate changes that altered the flow of the Nile. As a result of upheaval in the Middle East, foreigners were coming into the Nile Delta. "Once again, the impetus for reunification came from Thebes, where a prince named Kamose gathered forces around 1550 B.C. and attacked the Hyksos in the delta, His brother Ahmose completed the conquest and inaugurated the New Kingdom, which brought Egyptian civilization to its peak." [National Geographic Almanac, p. 54] "Many scholars date the story of the Joseph's Egyptian sojourn to the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1630-1520 B.C.E.) and, specifically, the reign of the 15th dynasty of Hyksos kings in the north." [Isbouts: Biblical World, p. 105] "The book of Exodus says that they had been in Egypt for four hundred years following their initial arrival during the lifetime of Jacob, one of the biblical patriarchs, probably in about the seventeenth century BC. If so, they would have arrived in Egypt during the time of the Hyksos and then remained in Egypt . . . " [1177 BC, Kindle, Location 1835] Many Western Semites settled at the town of Avaris, which became almost entirely Semitic. [Bauer: Ancient World, p. 178-80]