Before they settled in Canaan, the earliest ancestors of the Israelites were nomads, which means that they lived by moving herds of sheep and goats from place to place to find good pastures. For example, the Bible tells us how Abraham moved with Sarah and their family from Ur in Chaldea (at the head of the Persian Gulf) to Canaan in Palestine (Gen 11.26-12.9). Like other nomadic peoples, Abraham and his descendants lived in tents, temporary dwellings that were easy to set up and take down. Abraham's grandson Jacob moved his whole family to Egypt because there was a famine in Canaan where they lived (Gen 46.5-28). His sons and their families remained in Egypt for many years until Moses led them out of Egypt and across the Sinai peninsula. They lived there in tents for forty years as they made their way back to the land of Canaan. Besides the sheep and oxen they took with them, they may have had donkeys and camels to carry them and their belongings (Gen 12.16; 22.3; 24.10; 42.26).