Walter Kaiser notes that the British Egyptologist Kenneth A. Kitchen has pointed to a number of social comparisons that are quite convincing in verifying the world and circumstances of the ancient patriarch Joseph as they are portrayed in Genesis. For example, Kitchen has detailed the escalating price of slaves from ancient Near Eastern sources to demonstrate that the price paid for Joseph (twenty shekels of silver according to Genesis 37:28) is most properly slotted for the Middle Bronze Age, the traditional age for the Patriarch. During the earlier Akkad Dynasty (2371-2191 B.C.), a slave brought between ten and fifteen shekels of silver, but the price dropped to ten shekels during the Third Dynasty of Ur (2113-2006 B.C.) But in the second millennium, the first part of which was the time of the patriarchs, the price of slaves rose to twenty shekels, as seen in the Hammurabi Code, the Mari Tablets and elsewhere. By the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries, the price had crept up to thirty shekels at Nuzi and Ugarit, a price that matched exactly the identical period of biblical history in the Mosaic Law (Exodus 21:32).
The Egyptological background for the Joseph narrative found in Genesis 37-50 is becoming more fully documented as more discoveries come in. The Hebrew name Joseph seems to be one of the Amorite second millennium perfective names of the i/y class. Joseph was also given an Egyptian name, Zaphenath-Paneah (Genesis 41:45). This Egyptian name is a real Egyptian type that means “(the god) has said: he will live.”
Joseph’s entire life is connected with the significance of dreams. In this regard, the Egyptians seem to have surpassed their neighbors in the presence and interpretation of dreams. Egyptian literature records from the Middle Kingdom (about 2000 B.C.) onward an extraordinary number of dreams. Particularly noteworthy is Joseph‘s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream. The fact that a seven-year drought could occur has been attested at several points in Egypt’s history due to the repeated low height of the Nile flood each year. It must crest at twenty-eight feet above zero datum level each year at Elephantine. However, should it only come up to twenty or twenty-one feet, crops would be off by 20 percent that year. Alternatively, should the water crest at thirty feet, it would sweep away the dikes and canal banks and there would be a loss of life as a result. Not only was precipitation low at the source of the Nile, but this condition appeared to have spread throughout large sections of Canaan and its neighboring lands. [Water C. Kaiser Jr., The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant?, pp. 86-87, 94-96]
2 Nephi 3:7 Joseph truly said: Thus saith the Lord unto me: A choice seer will I raise up out of the fruit of thy loins ([Illustration] Joseph Sees Joseph [Paul Mann, Verse Markers, Book of Mormon, Vol. 1, p. 4]