Kiya Blog Tour: Guest Post by Katie Hamstead

As promised, today I am lucky to have Katie Hamstead stop by to talk about the research she did on the origins of Israel for Kiya: Hope of the Pharaoh (available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble). If you'd like to hear more from her, you can follow her on Twitter or check out her blog.

Thank you, Mara for having me on your blog.

The Origins of Israel

Abraham was the first father of the people known as the Israelites. Abraham married Sarah who gave him Isaac in their old age. Isaac then married Rebekah who gave him twins; Esau and Jacob. Jacob then traded for the birthright with Esau, and married Leah, then Rachel, and further down the line Bilhah and Zilpah. These four women gave him twelve sons between them, and Jacob become known as Israel.

These sons are:

From Leah – Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah(Jews), Issachar and Zebulun.

From Bilhah – Dan and Naphtali

From Zilpah – Gad and Asher

And from Rachel – Joseph and Benjamin.

Each of these sons fathered the twelve tribes of Israel, excluding Reuben. Reuben lost his birthright by sleeping with Bilhah. So, Joseph became the birthright because he was Israel’s favorite wife’s firstborn, (We all know the story of Joseph and the techni-colored dream coat! ) and became the father of two tribes; Manasseh and Ephraim, of which Ephraim is the birthright line.

So, now you can understand why it is so significant that Naomi (Kiya) is a direct line of Ephraim in Kiya: Hope of the Pharaoh.

Israel’s time in Egypt isn’t well documented. We see at the end of Genesis Israel dies, but then many generations later, Moses begins Exodus. During this time they grew enormously as a people and somehow went from being favored by the Pharaoh to being slaves.

This is the time in which the Kiya trilogy is set.