Hypothetica 4

¹6. 1. Their original ancestor belonged to the Chaldeans, but this people who had emigrated from Syria to Egypt in past time removed from Egypt partly because of the vast size of the population for which the land was insufficient. Also it was due to the high spirit of enterprise in which they had been bred and to the revelations of God made by dreams and visions bidding them go forth, and what influenced them as much as anything was that they had providentially been seized by a yearning for their ancient fatherland. It was from there that this ancestor of theirs had passed over into Egypt either because God had so decreed or through some prevision of his own. There he had prospered to an unequalled degree so that from his time to the present day their nation has existed and survives and is so exceedingly populous.