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EGYPT HAS been called ‘the gift of the Nile’, and it is true that without it Egypt as a fertile, well-populated country would not exist. Through what would otherwise be barren wastes of desert runs the Nile, 6,741 kilometres (4,189 miles) long, the longest river in the world. A short distance north of Cairo, about eighty miles from the Mediterranean coast, the river divides and forms the delta, an area of 14,500 square miles composed of alluvial deposits. Somewhere in this area Moses confronted the Egyptian pharaoh. But, despite the forcefulness of the latter’s exchanges, who he was in the long and well established list of Egypt’s pharaohs has gone unrecorded. The Bible does not choose to name him. Nor does it name the pharaoh before whom Joseph stood some four centuries earlier. Had these two been named in the Word of God we would have received direct enlightenment. Since they are not we are committed by our faith to the Bible’s own chronology.

The date of the Exodus: the Biblical date and the objections

It is quite clear from a careful survey of all the Scriptural evidence, including all the period underlying the Pentateuch, and the history of Israel until the period of Solomon, that the Old Testament places Moses and the Exodus around the middle of the fifteenth century B.C. rather than a full century-and-a-half later in the first half of the thirteenth century, as do most modern scholars. Biblical and extra-Biblical evidence in support of the former period is not easily set aside. An explicit Scriptural statement places the Exodus about 1441 B.C. That statement is in 1 Kings 6:1, from which we learn that Solomon’s temple was founded “in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel”. This fourth year has been variously computed: 958 B.C. (W. F. Albright);(Footnote 1) 967 B.C. (Edwin R. Thiele);(Footnote 2) 962 B.C. (Joachim Begrich).(Footnote 3) By taking the year 961 B.C., which cannot be far wrong, we arrive at 1441 B.C. as the date of the Exodus and 1871 B.C. as the time of the entrance into Egypt, since the sojourn there lasted 430 years (Ex. 12:40,41).

In defence of the 430 years’ sojourn in Egypt and the accuracy of the Masoretic text on Exodus 12:40,41 the following from C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch is particularly pertinent: “The sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt lasted 430 years. This number is not critically doubtful, nor are the 430 years to be reduced to 215 years by an arbitrary interpolation, such as we find in the LXX... this chronological statement, the genuineness of which is placed beyond all doubt by Onkelos, the Syriac, Vulgate and other versions is not only in harmony with the prediction in Genesis 15:13, where the round number 400 is employed in prophetic style, but may be reconciled with the different genealogical lists, if we only bear in mind that the genealogies do not always contain a complete enumeration of all the separate links, but very frequently intermediate links of very little historical importance are omitted, as we have already seen in the genealogy of Moses and Aaron, Exodus 6 vv. 18-20”.(Footnote 4) A further piece of evidence is from James R. Battenfield:

“Other passages bear on this problem. One of these is Galatians 3 v. 17, a verse which I seek to harmonise with Exodus 12 v. 40. The 430 years of Galatians 3 v. 17 stretch from the ratification of the covenant to Jacob (Genesis 45 w. 1-4) just before he entered Egypt until the Exodus of 1445 B.C. The 430 years I take most literally”.(Footnote 5)

Scholars such as W. F. Albright—who argues for a date a century-and-a-half later for the Exodus (1290 B.C.)(Footnote 6)—and Η. Η. Rowley— who places it nearly two centuries later (1250 B.C.)(Footnote 7)—are compelled to reject 1 Kings 6:1 as late and considerably unreliable despite the fact that the chronological note it contains bears evidence of authenticity and obviously fits into the whole scheme underlying the Pentateuch and the books of Joshua and Judges. Those who thus, by a century-and-a-half or two centuries, shorten the period of Joshua and the Judges, which the Biblical figures place about 1400-1500 B.C., virtually rule out the possibility of fitting Biblical chronology into the frame of contemporary history. In fact this ‘late date theory’ makes complete nonsense of the chronology of the book of Judges. Consequently its adherents are forced to reject or dramatically alter all the numerous chronological notes contained in the book of Judges and to telescope the period at least in so far as the Bible’s chronological framework is concerned.

The date of the Exodus critical to a proper appreciation of Bible chronology

The correct date of the Exodus is critical to a study and proper appreciation of Biblical chronology within the framework of contemporary history. Although up to the present no direct archaeological evidence has been found of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt, nevertheless in the light of considerable indirect testimony it is practically impossible with any show of reason to deny either the historicity of Moses or the fact of the Exodus. More than fifty years ago J. W. Jack remarked: “It is far from likely that any nation would have placed in the forefront of its records an experience of hardships and slavery in a foreign country unless this had been a real and vital part of its national life”.(Footnote 8) And as Israeli scholars are wont to comment wisely: “If Moses didn’t exist, then he must have had a brother of the same name”. The question before us then is not, Did it happen? but, When did it happen? The date of the Exodus is, however, a peculiarly elusive problem which has occasioned endless controversy. Besides the extreme views of those who consider the Exodus story a garbled form of the Egyptian saga of the expulsion of the Hyksos, or of those who place it very late, in the reign of Merneptah or even somewhat later, only two principle views exist.

The first places the event around 1445 B.C. in the reign of Amenhotep II of the eighteenth dynasty; the second about 1290 B.C. in the reign of Ramesses II in the nineteenth dynasty.

Contemporary Egyptian history favours Biblical chronology

The date arrived at from 1 Kings 6:1 falls very probably in the opening years of the reign of Amenhotep II (1450-1425 B.C.)(Footnote 9) who was son of the famous conqueror and empire-builder Thutmosis III (1482-1450 B.C.). No other known pharaoh besides Thutmosis III fills all the specifications for being the pharaoh of the oppression. He alone besides Ramesses II was on the throne long enough (fifty-four years including the twenty-one of his stepmother Hatshepsut’s regency) to have been reigning at the time of Moses’s flight from Egypt and to die not long before Moses’ call at the Burning Bush (Ex. 3:3). In character Thutmosis III was ambitious, launching no less than seventeen military campaigns in nineteen years, and engaging in numerous building projects, for which he used a large slave-labour task force.

Life-size head in schist of a king who has been identified as Thutmosis III, although the identity is uncertain. British Museum.

His son Amenhotep II, who was a consummate charioteer and bowman, and who doubtless hoped to equal his father’s military prowess, appears to have suffered some serious reverse in his military resources, for he was unable to carry out any invasions or extensive military operations after his fifth year (c. 1445 B.C.) until the modest campaign of his ninth year (according to the Memphis Stela(Footnote 10)). The relative feebleness of his war effort, by comparison with that of his father, would well accord with a catastrophic loss of the flower of his chariotry in the waters of the Red (Reed) Sea during their vain pursuit of the fleeing Israelites.

In the contemporary records of Amenhotep II no references occur to such national disasters as the ten plagues or the loss of the Egyptian army in the Red (Reed) Sea, much less to the escape of the Hebrews. But this is to be expected.

The Egyptians were the last people to record their misfortunes. Nor is there any sign upon the mummy of the pharaoh, discovered in 1898 in the Valley of the Kings, to show that he had drowned in the sea. The Bible does not state that he was, or that he personally accompanied his horses, his chariots and his horsemen into “the midst of the sea” (Ex. 14:23).

If Amenhotep II was the reigning pharaoh of the Exodus then his eldest son was slain in the tenth plague which “smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon . . . “ (Ex. 12:29). It is plain from the monuments that Thutmosis IV (c. 1425-1412 B.C.), who excavated the sphinx, was not the eldest son of Amenhotep II. Confirmation of this comes to us in the form of the so-called “Dream Inscription” or “Dream Stela” of Thutmosis IV, recorded on an immense slab of red granite near to the sphinx at Gizeh. While it has been demonstrated quite convincingly that the inscription comes from a later period,(Footnote 11) there can be little doubt that it represents faithfully the substance and much of the actual wording of an authentic inscription set up by Thutmosis himself in the fifteenth century B.C.

Shabti figure of Amenhotep II. The Shabti figure was to act as the deceased’s deputy for the tasks he was called on to perform in the underworld. British Museum.

Apparently the older stela had been seriously damaged and was copied as well as its condition would allow in a later century, when once again the sand was removed from the sphinx at Gizeh.

In this text the god Har-em-akht (Horns in the horizon), in whose honour the sphinx was thought to have been built, appeared to the young Thutmosis in a dream while he was a mere prince in his father’s household. The god promised him the throne of Egypt upon one condition: that he will remove the sand from the sphinx.(Footnote 12) It is quite obvious that if Thutmosis IV had been the eldest son of his father Amenhotep II there would have been no purpose in a divine promise that he should some day become king. He would naturally have succeeded to the throne if he had survived his father since the law of primogeniture was in force in Egypt at this time. It is a necessary inference, therefore, that the oldest son of Amenhotep must have later predeceased his father, thus leaving the succession to his younger brother. This well accords with the record of Exodus 12:29 that the eldest son of Pharaoh died at the time of the tenth plague.

Even more conclusive is the situation in Goshen during the reign of Thutmosis III as compared to that which existed under Ramesses II. In the time of Ramesses some of his main building activity was in the area known as Wadi Tumelat, or Goshen, and this meant that the Egyptians must have been living around this region and in the midst of it as well.

But the details of the plagues of flies, of hail and of darkness (Ex. 8:22; 9:25,26; 10:22,23) make it clear enough that Goshen was at the time of the Exodus inhabited exclusively by the Israelites, and plagues which befell the rest of Egypt made no appearance at all in Goshen. So far as we can tell from the archaeological evidence presently at hand, there were no Egyptians living there in the reign of Thutmosis III or Amenhotep II.

A further confirmation of the ‘early date’ of the Exodus (c. 1445 B.C.) and the invasion of the land of Canaan is found in the statement of Jephthah recorded in Judges 11:26, where he reminds the Ammonite invaders that the Israelites had been too long in possession of the land of Gilead for the Ammonites to challenge their legal right to hold it: “While Israel dwelt in Heshbon and its villages, in Aroer and its villages ... three hundred years, why did you not recover them within that time?” (RAV). Since Jephthah’s period was admittedly earlier than the time of King Saul, whose reign began around 1050 B.C., this certainly pushes the Israelite conquest back to about 1400 B.C.

Still further confirmation is found in the Apostle Paul’s comment in Acts 13:19,20 which, according to the earliest and best reading (as preserved in the Eberhard Nestlé Text),(Footnote 13) states: “And when He (God) had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, He gave them their land as an inheritance, for about four hundred and fifty years. And after that [that is, after the division of the land] He gave them judges until Samuel the prophet” (RSV). In other words, the interval includes the Exodus itself, the conquest under Joshua and the career of Samuel down to the date of David’s capture of Jerusalem (c. 995 B.C.).

Compare with this Deuteronomy 12:10,11, which states that the choice of a holy city will be revealed after “He giveth you rest from all your enemies”, including apparently the Jebusites in Jerusalem. This means that the 450 years of Acts 13 includes the period from 1445 to 995 B.C. It goes without saying that a materially later date for the Exodus would be utterly irreconcilable with Acts 13:19.

The late date for the Exodus refuted

Notwithstanding this consistent testimony of Scripture to the 1445 B.C. date (or an approximation thereof), the preponderance of scholarly opinion today is in favour of a considerably later date, the most favoured one at present being 1290 B.C., or about ten years after Ramesses II began his reign.

Many arguments are advanced in support of the 1290 B.C. date(Footnote 14) and the rejection of the Biblical record as unreliable. Since there is not space to deal with them all, two are selected, these bearing on places described in the book of Exodus. They are:

1. the mention of the city of Raamses in Exodus 1:11;

2. the archaeological evidence from the city of Jericho.

The store cities of Pithom and Raamses

According to Exodus 1:11 the Israelites had taskmasters set over them who made them work with rigour, and this is how Pharaoh’s store cities Pithom and Raamses were built.

Raamses: in the annals of Egyptian archaeology the name resounds like a thunderclap, instantly evoking the well-known Ramesses II.  Unquestionably he was a builder on a huge scale, inevitably using slave labour. With a great flair for publicity, it was he who built the famous rock-cut statues at Abu Simbel. It was his one-thousand-ton, sixty-feet-high statue in the Ramesseum at Luxor, now ignominiously toppled by an earthquake, that inspired Shelley’s famous poem Ozymandias.(Footnote 15)

Scholarly opinion over the years has pointed to Ramesses as the pharaoh of the oppression and Merneptah as the pharaoh of the Exodus. However, of all pharaonic candidates for involvement in the Exodus story, Merneptah is among the most unlikely. In 1895 the great Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie discovered a stele or tablet from Merneptah’s reign with a particularly pertinent inscription which contained the words:

“Israel is laid waste, his seed is not; Palestine is become a widow for Egypt”.

The real interest of the stele is this reference to Israel, the first in all history. It makes clear the fact that Israel was already settled in the land.

Figure of Ramesses II. British Museum.

Since Merneptah reigned for only ten years, even if the Exodus had occurred in his first year, there would not have been time for anything even remotely resembling the purported forty years of Israelite wandering in the wilderness. The Merneptah Stele provides, then, what historians call a terminus ante quem, an end point requiring that, whatever the date of the Exodus, it must have been before Merneptah. We are therefore thrown back to Ramesses II and his store cities, Raamses and Pithom. What outside the Bible do we know about these ancient places?

It has long been known that Ramesses II’s Pi-Ramesses (or Per-Re’emasese—the house of Ramesses) would have been in the Nile delta, but, since the soil of the area is alluvium, excavation was unpleasant and scientifically difficult. However, in 1929 Strasbourg University Egyptologist Pierre Montet began the first of more than twenty years of excavations at a vast coastal site known to the Greeks as Tanis. He found it to be an enormous jumble of monuments, the vast majority being incised with the all too familiar cartouch of Ramesses II. With the exception of Thebes down in the south there was nowhere in Egypt with as many Ramesses II monuments as Tanis.

Equally significant was that there was nothing there from the eighteenth dynasty, the one immediately preceding the time of Ramesses II and his father Seti I. The deduction from this was that Tanis, alias Pi-Ramesses, was an original creation of Ramesses II, thus matching perfectly the Exodus 1:11 information that Ramesses was a city the Biblical Israelites had to build for the pharaoh.

When Montet published his arguments, not only did scholar after scholar begin to accept them, they interpreted them as proof positive that Ramesses II, and certainly no earlier monarch, must have been the pharaoh of the Exodus. As pointed out by the American Biblical scholar G. Ernest Wright: “We now know that if there is any historical value at all to the store-city tradition in Exodus ... then Israelites must have been in Egypt at least during the early part of the reign of Ramesses II”.(Footnote 16) Another scholar, the British Egyptologist K. A. Kitchen, laying stress on how Tanis was an original Ramesses II creation, remarked: “ . . . so that the Exodus can hardly be dated to the preceding eighteenth dynasty as was once thought by some scholars”.(Footnote 17) Thus was Ramesses II identified as the most likely pharaoh of the Exodus.

It is now known with great certainty that Tanis was neither Biblical nor the Egyptian Pi-Ramesses, nor was Ramesses II responsible for building anything at that particular location. More recent careful study of the site’s stratification has revealed not only nothing of the eighteenth dynasty but also nothing of Ramesses’s own nineteenth either; nothing, in fact, until the twenty-first dynasty, some two centuries after his time. The explanation for the prevalence of so many Ramesses II building blocks and so much of his statuary is that, in the twenty-first dynasty, roughly contemporary with Israel’s kings Saul and David, these were transported from the real Pi-Ramesses some miles to the south of Tanis. As evidence of this operation and the crudity with which it was carried out, several of the monuments have missing bases. One pharaonic statue which lost its toes during the removals had these replaced with toes of lime-coated mud.(Footnote 18) The reason for the removals appears to have been a silting up of the original Pi-Ramesses so that, by the twenty-first dynasty, it could no longer function as an Egyptian capital.

If the problems over the Pi-Ramesses site have caused confusion, a little more light has been shed on the quest for the city Exodus calls Pithom. A consensus of Egyptologists has equated it with a delta city of the Egyptians called Per-atum. A text from the reign of Merneptah provides a rare mention of Peratum. It takes the form of a report from a frontier official:

“Another communication to my [lord], to [wit: we] have finished letting the Shoshu tribes of Edom pass the fortress [of] Merneptah . . . which is [in] Tjeku, to the pools of Per-atum of Merneptah . . . to keep them alive and to keep their cattle alive”.(Footnote 19)

This demonstrates clearly that the Per-atum/ Pithom region of the eastern delta was regarded as valuable pasturage for nomadic groups and their flocks. The Shoshu, like the Habiru, are frequently mentioned as pastoral nomads. This particular incident reported in the ancient text reminds us how Jacob and his family went down into Egypt: “So they took their livestock and their goods, which they had acquired in the land of Canaan, and went to Egypt, Jacob and all his descendants with him” (Gen. 46:6, RAV).

So where was the real Pi-Ramesses? Where was Per-atum/Pithom? The first question finds an answer in the researches of an Austrian archaeology team under the direction of Egyptologist Dr Manfred Bietak.(Footnote 20) Excavations began in 1966 and were still continuing in 1985 in the Tell el-Dab’a/Qantir area some fifteen miles south of Tanis and four miles north of the village of Faqus. Here Dr Bietak and his team found the site of a carefully laid out city of some importance during Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, a century prior to the takeover by the Hyksos and some five hundred years before Ramesses II.

Site of Avaris/Pi-Ramesses

Map of the Nile Delta showing the true site of the Biblical city of Raamses.

There can be no reasonable doubt from the pre-Ramessid remains found in the environs of Tell el-Dab’a and those of Seti I (father of Ramesses) and Ramesses II from around Qantir that this area was one and the same as the ancient Egyptian city of Pi-Ramesses and the Biblical Raamses. It was from here that the original plethora of Ramessid monuments must have been moved to Tanis in the twenty-first dynasty—a move which has created the confusion of identity that has hitherto prevailed among the archaeologists and Biblical scholars.

What is also obvious from Dr Bietak’s discoveries is that, not only was this site the true Biblical Raamses, it quite evidently had a history much earlier than the time of Ramesses II, and was in fact none other than the Hyksos capital Avaris, referred to in Manetho’s History.(Footnote 21)  Dr Bietak’s findings of a temple of Seth correspond perfectly to a major temple of Seth, the prime god of the Hyksos, known from the Egyptian Papyrus Sallier I(Footnote 22) to have been at Avaris.

The archaeological evidence from the city of Jericho: when did the walls fall down?

Going now to the second of the two arguments advanced in support of the 1290 B.C. date for the Exodus, “When did the walls fall down?”, it is evident again that there has been a confusion among archaeologists and Biblical scholars. The confusion has not been over the place but over the time:

“The story of the Israelite conquest of Jericho (Joshua 2-6) is one of the best known and best loved in the entire Bible. The vivid description of faith and victory has been a source of inspiration for countless generations of Bible readers. But did it really happen as the Bible describes it?

“The site has been excavated several times in this century. Based on the conclusion of the most recent excavator, British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, most historians and Bible scholars would answer with a resounding ‘Νο, certainly not! There was no city there at the time Joshua supposedly conquered it’.

“Some 30 years after her excavation ... the detailed evidence has now become available in the final report. So it is time for a new look”.(Footnote 23)

In the 1930s the British archaeologist John Garstang excavated a residential area just west of the perennial spring that supplied the city’s water and which now fills a modern reservoir. Signs of a fiery destruction and his dating of the remains led John Garstang to conclude that the Israelites had indeed put the city to the torch about 1400 B.C., in harmony with the Biblical narrative. However, Kathleen Kenyon, John Garstang’s successor, excavated another area at Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) and dated the city’s destruction to about 1550 B.C., 150 years earlier than Garstang’s date. This destruction she concluded was far too early to ascribe to the Israelites. By the time the Israelites appeared on the scene, she argued, there was no walled city at Jericho.

There is no space in this brief paper to examine in detail these opposing arguments. However, Bryant G. Wood, while applauding Dame Kathleen Kenyon’s careful and painstaking fieldwork, states: “Her thoroughgoing excavation methods and detailed reporting of her findings . . . did not carry over into her analytical work”.(Footnote 24) He comes down strongly in favour of John Garstang’s original date for the destruction of Jericho (about 1400 B.C.), and further states that the correlation between the archaeological evidence and the Bible narrative is substantial:

(a) the city was strongly fortified (Josh. 2:5,7,15; 6:5,20);

(b) the attack occurred just after harvest time in the spring (Josh. 2:6; 3:15; 5:10);

(c) the inhabitants had no opportunity to flee with their foodstuffs (Josh. 6:1);

(d) the siege was short (Josh. 6:15);

(e) the walls were levelled (Josh. 6:20);

(f) the city was not plundered (Josh. 6:17,18);

(g) the city was burned (Josh. 6:24).

Currently these views are held by only a minority of scholars. Most still reject a fifteenth century date for the Exodus. However, as new data emerge and old are re-evaluated they will undoubtedly lead to reappraisal of current theories. For us the emergence of new data at the Biblical Raamses and at Jericho is a heartening confirmation of our faith in the Word of God.

Joseph in Egypt

In the British Museum there are three portrait sculptures of the Egyptian Pharaoh Senwosret(Footnote 25) (Seostris III, c. 1878-1841 B.C.). Particularly noticeable are his big ears and hard, careworn face, a realism in portraiture that is rare in pharaonic art.

Statue of Seostris III (Senwosret).

British Museum.

Commenting on this T. G. H. James, Keeper, Department of Egyptian Antiquities, British Museum, writes: “Not until the Middle Kingdom with the statues of Seostris III was there a suggestion in the lines of the features and in the heavy frowning expression of the human qualities of the king”.(Footnote 26) However, historian Ian Wilson(Footnote 27) sees the expression of the king in a different light. He poses the question: “Could the worried countenance reflect the bad dreams and fluctuations between plenty and famine recorded in the Joseph story?”. He refers to the work of Dr John Bimson of Bristol’s Trinity Theological College, who proposes that Senwosret III was the pharaoh under whom Joseph became prime minister and whom Jacob stood before.(Footnote 28)

Famine was a scourge in ancient days, as sadly it still is in some parts of our world today. In rainless Egypt the available cultivated area was determined by the height to which the River Nile rose in its annual inundation. The flood waters not only watered the fields, they also brought with them a deposit of rich alluvium which renewed the fertility of the land with almost unfailing regularity. This black deposit provided a contrast between the inhabited land of Egypt and the uninhabited tawny-coloured desert which was so striking that it caused the ancient Egyptians to name their land Kemet, ‘The Black’. The desert lands were known as Deshret, ‘The Red’. No one in Egypt knew that success or failure depended on the intensity of monsoon rains far to the south in tropical Africa, but what they did know was that there was a direct relationship between the height of the floodwater, as marked on special Nilometers at different points along the Nile, and the vigour or otherwise of the subsequent season’s crop. If the high-water level at Aswan was six feet below normal this could mean three-quarters of Egypt’s potentially arable land going unwatered, resulting in famine unless grain stocks had been kept from previous years.

Since, particularly during the Old and New Kingdoms, it was the person of the god-pharaoh who was believed to be responsible for national fertility and good order, the pharaoh’s dreams of plenty and famine as interpreted by Joseph have great credibility.

But why should Senwosret III be named as the pharaoh in whose reign the Bible events occurred? Climatology specialist Dr Barbara Bell states that Nilometers have provided evidence to indicate that his reign may have suffered particularly badly from fluctuations in the Nile high-water levels: “ . . . The recent discovery at the Dal Cataract of an inscription commemorating a water level on 24 January 1869 B.C., year 10 of Senwosret III, close to the modern high-water level, make it reasonable to think that the Nile may have been more erratic in the reign of this king than under his predecessors”.(Footnote 29)

Furthermore, only in the reign of Senwosret III can be fitted the situation in which Joseph, having been appointed prime minister (or vizier), with full charge of all the grain of the years of plenty, bought up all the land for the pharaoh: “Then Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for every man of the Egyptians sold his field, because the famine was severe upon them. So the land became Pharaoh’s” (Gen. 47:20, RAV). Before the time of Senwosret III power in provincial Egypt had been in the hands of the great nobles, very much equivalent to the feudal barons of medieval England. But in Senwosret’s reign all this changed. Egyptologist W. C. Hayes, in his contribution to the Cambridge Ancient History, states: “No more is heard of the ‘great chiefs’ of the nomes and their local courts. Instead, the provinces of Lower Egypt, Middle Egypt and Upper Egypt were administered from the residence city by three departments of central government”.(Footnote 30) This raises the interesting question, Could Joseph have been the administrator or vizier for Lower Egypt, based perhaps at Pi-Ramesses where Dr Bietak’s very latest discoveries have revealed a palace from around Senwosret’s time?  While there is no direct extra-Biblical evidence to suggest Senwosret III had a vizier called Joseph, sufficiently little is known of the vizierate(Footnote 31) in Senwosret’s time for this to have been perfectly possible.

Furthermore, the evidence from Dr Bietak’s archaeological discoveries at Tell el-Dab’a is that Senwosret’s twelfth dynasty in the Middle Kingdom was the very time when we find Asiatic and Egyptian living side by side in apparent harmony. There were some prohibitions, however, imposed on foreigners, which show up in the Genesis narrative and are relevant to the dating of Joseph’s premiership in Egypt.

Not the Hyksos

What is certain is that Joseph stood before a pharaoh who was a native prince of Egypt. The narrative of Genesis demands this. A tradition at least as old as the time of Josephus (c. A.D. 90) states that a Hyksos dynasty was ruling Egypt at the time Joseph rose to power as prime minister in Pharaoh’s court. The Hyksos (a corruption of the Egyptian hekau haswet, or ‘rulers of foreign lands’) were a somewhat heterogeneous horde of Asiatic invaders, largely of Semitic background, who gradually infiltrated northern Egypt at first and then took over the supreme power with an irresistible progress which carried them into southern Egypt. Capturing Memphis, they made it their capital (along with Avaris(Footnote 32) in the delta) and established the fifteenth and sixteenth dynasties. They probably began filtering into Egypt about 1900 B.C., gained control by 1730 B.C. and held power for some one hundred and fifty years.(Footnote 33)

According to the Biblical chronology, using the 1445 B.C. date for the Exodus and adding a 430-year sojourn in Egypt, the probable date of Jacob’s migration into Egypt during Joseph’s premiership was about 1870 B.C. This was anywhere from 94 to 140 years before the rise of the Hyksos and puts Joseph back in the period of the twelfth dynasty. Obviously these factors exclude the possibility that Josephus’s tradition was reliable.

It is true that a bond of sympathy might have existed between the Hyksos and the Hebrews because of their Asiatic origins. Nevertheless there are clear indications in the text of Genesis and also in Exodus 1 that the pharaoh who welcomed Joseph was a native Egyptian and not a Semitic foreigner. In the first place, the reigning Egyptian dynasty, although willing to welcome strangers within its boundaries, shows a racial bias against them. When Joseph received his brothers in his banquet room he was compelled to seat them by themselves rather than as guests at his own table: “the Egyptians could not eat food with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination to the Egyptians” (Gen. 43:32, RAV). This could never have been said of the Hyksos rulers, for the base of their power was Syria and Palestine, from which they had migrated, and in which they retained power during their period of ascendancy in Egypt. Their attitude towards other Semitic immigrants and visitors to Egypt could only have been cordial rather than characterised by the racial prejudice suggested in this verse.

In the second place it is quite obvious that the sentiment of the Egyptian government in Joseph’s time was strongly averse to shepherds: “for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians” (Gen. 46:34). While this has been verified from Egyptian monuments (which frequently depict cattle but never sheep on their bas-reliefs) it could scarcely be true of the Hyksos, who were known to the later Egyptians as ‘shepherd kings’. Hence it was a native dynasty that was on the throne. It was therefore necessary for the sons of Jacob to stress their possession of cattle and omit mention of their herds of sheep if they were to make a favourable impression before Pharaoh (Gen. 46:31-34).

Exodus 1

Thirdly, the first chapter of Exodus presents an array of data almost irreconcilable with the usual supposition that the new king who knew not Joseph was an Egyptian of the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty. At the very commencement of the eighteenth dynasty the Pharaoh Ahmose drove out the Hyksos population except that which was put to the sword, pursuing them even to their southern fortress of Sharuhen. If, then, the Israelites were friends and allies of the Hyksos, as it is usually assumed, it is hard to see why they were not expelled with them. On what basis did the nationalistic Egyptians under the Pharaoh Ahmose make a distinction between the Hyksos and the Hebrews? It seems more obvious that the Israelites were antagonistic to the Hyksos and favourable in their attitude towards the Egyptians during the long period of Hyksos domination.

Fourthly, the statement of the pharaoh reported in Exodus 1:8-10 is quite pointless in the mouth of a native Egyptian. It would have been an exaggeration to assert that the Israelites were more numerous than the native Egyptians.

On the other hand it was quite possible that they were more numerous than the Hyksos themselves. As for the king’s apprehension that they might join up with enemies of the government in time of war, it is difficult to see what non-Egyptians they might have leagued with, surrounded as they were in the isolated pocket of Goshen. But if the speaker in this case was a Hyksos there would be some point to an apprehension that they might make common cause with the Egyptians, who after all had been cordial to them for Joseph’s sake.

The probability is that the “new king ... which knew not Joseph” (Ex. 1:8) was of the Hyksos dynasty, and it was he who put the Israelites to work as slaves at his building projects. It would then appear that there was a policy of enslavement and oppression a few decades after the expulsion of the Hyksos by the successor of Ahmose, arising understandably out of a mistrust of all foreigners, by the native Egyptians, following their experience of Hyksos domination. Possibly this later phase is introduced at Exodus 1:15, as well as the command to the midwives to practise infanticide.

Fifthly (and this is an interesting comment on the customs of the Egyptians and the Hyksos) : “So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt” (Gen. 50:26). It is unlikely that early Jewish chroniclers would have related the story of their revered ancestor Joseph being buried according to Egyptian tradition unless that was what occurred. It is also unlikely that Joseph would have received Egyptian-style burial had he lived in the Hyksos period.

Sixthly—and here the evidence proceeds full circle—there is the evidence of the city of Raamses in Exodus 1:11. As the narrative is related in the Hebrew text the forced labour at Raamses commenced before the birth of Moses, which is not mentioned until the next chapter. But if the Exodus took place around 1290 B.C., as most modern scholars suppose, and if Moses was eighty at that time, he was thus born about 1370 B.C., or a good sixty years before a nineteenth-dynasty Ramesses ever sat on the throne of Egypt. Therefore it could not have been at a city named after Ramesses II that the Israelites worked. The only possibility left, accepting the accuracy of the Biblical record, is that it was the Hyksos who compelled the Israelites to work at the places named in the Scripture as Pithom and Raamses, the latter being the city Dr Manfred Bietak has identified as in the Tell el-Dab’a/Qantir area, and not at Tanis where hitherto it was deemed to be by most scholars. As to the name Raamses (or Ramesses) itself, Genesis 47:11 speaks of “the land of Rameses” as the general area of Goshen where Joseph settled his relatives. This would indicate that the name was current long before the time of Moses. In confirmation of this, both W. F. Albright and John Rea state that the names of Ramesses and his father Seti can be traced back to Hyksos times.(Footnote 34)

Conclusion

No book or article on the entry into Egypt of the children of Israel, their growth as a nation, their sojourn and enslavement, and their Exodus from that land under their national leader Moses, can be described as truly definitive, but in recent years there have been some remarkable new findings and new theories expounded which confirm the accuracy and veracity of Biblical records of these events. So far these new findings and theories have been scattered in different scholarly publications, often in language nearly incomprehensible to the average layman, and generally most difficult for the layman to obtain. Yet collectively they are of such interest in overturning many previous assumptions about the sojourn in Egypt, as well as allegations of inaccuracies in the Bible accounts and chronology, that it is only right that an attempt be made to bring at least a few of them together for the benefit of brethren and sisters, and as a starting point for any further study they themselves may wish to pursue—God willing. This has been the aim of this article.

FOOTNOTES

1. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (Dec. 1945), p. 17.

2. The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, pp. 254f., 1951 edition. This fact is not included in the 1983 edition.

3. As quoted by Merrill F. Unger, Archaeology and the Old Testament (1956), p. 141.

4. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, The Pentateuch, as quoted by James R. Battenfield in “A Consideration of the Identity of the Pharaoh of Genesis 47”, from The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 15/2 (1972), p. 78.

5. Ibid., pp. 78-9.

6. From the Stone Age to Christianity (1940), pp. 194f.

7. A Companion to the Bible (1963), p. 574.

8. The Date of the Exodus in the Light of External Evidence, p. 10.

9. As a number of differing systems of Egyptian chronology are in existence—for example those of George Steindorf and Keith C. Seale, When Egypt Ruled the East (1942), p. 274, and John Baines and Jeromin Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt (1980)—the dates used are approximate.

10. Amenhotep II describes his conquests on stelae found at Memphis and Karnak. See Ancient Near East Texts J. B. Pritchard (editor), pp. 245-7. At best the evidence from the various inscriptions is of an ambiguous character.

11. A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, Gleason L. Archer Jr. (1955), p. 235.

12. A translation of this inscription is given in Ancient Near East Texts, op. cit., p. 449.

13. The Nestlé Greek New Testament is one of the most reliable available today. This widely used edition was prepared by Eberhard Nestlé in 1898. It was his intention to offer the results of the scientific investigations of the nineteenth century. The text is based on a comparison of the texts edited by Tischendorf (1869-72), Westcott and Hort (1881) and Bernhard Weiss (1894-1900). Where two of these editions agreed this reading was printed by Nestlé.

14. In Light from the Ancient Past, pp. 106-8, J. Finegan lists five.

15. Ozymandias is the Greek form of Ramesses.

16. G. E. Wright, Biblical Archaeology, p. 60.

17. K. A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament, p. 59.

18. The toes of the thirty-feet-high statue of Ramesses II were found at Tell Abu el-Shafei, just north of Qantir.

19. Merneptah Text from Papyrus Anastasi VI (British Museum Antiquity 10245). Translation as quoted in Ancient Near East Texts, op. cit., p. 259.

20. A short, easily readable account of Dr Bietak’s excavations can be found in chapter 3 of Ian Wilson’s book, The Exodus Enigma. Dr Bietak’s works that I have been able to track down so far are: “Avaris and Piramesse; Archaeological Exploration in the Eastern Nile Delta”, Mortimer Wheeler Archaeological Lecture 1979 {Proceedings of the British Academy 65, 1979, pp.225-90); “Problems of Middle Bronze Age Chronology; New Evidence from Egypt” {American Journal of Archaeology 88,1984, pp. 471-85). These works are in Newcastle-upon-Tyne University Library, for which I have a ‘consultation only’ ticket. No doubt they are in other university libraries, or may be obtainable from local libraries via the inter-library loan service.

21. Manetho was an Egyptian priest who lived in the third century B.C. On the basis of various available sources he compiled a history of Egypt in which he listed pharaohs by dynasties, at first thirty, subsequently thirty-one—a classification that has proved so convenient that it has been retained to the present. Unfortunately comparatively little has survived from his work, and even those portions of king lists and other citations which are extant have obviously suffered in process of transmission.

22. Papyrus Sallier I, British Museum 10185.

23. Opening quotation from “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence”, by Bryant G. Wood, published in Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1990, pp. 45-59.

24. Ibid., p. 57, to which the interested reader is referred for further study. The inter-library loan service will supply a copy if asked.

25. British Museum Antiquities 684-686.

26. T. G. H. James, An Introduction to Ancient Egypt, p. 196.

27. The Exodus Enigma (1985), p. 65.

28. Dr John Bimson, “A Chronology for the Middle Kingdom and Israel’s Bondage”, in S.I.S. Review (journal of the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies), Vol. III (1979), pp. 64-9. However, in a personal letter Dr Bimson describes this as a rather idiosyncratic essay based on a chronology he no longer stands by, and refers us to J. R. Battenfield, “A Consideration of the Identity of the Pharaoh of Genesis 47”, in The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 15/2, 1972, pp. 77-85.

29. Dr Barbara Bell, Climate and History of Egypt, p. 258.

30. Nome: an administrative division of Egypt. Lower Egypt was divided into twenty and Upper Egypt into twenty-two. Also from Vercoutter, Egypt in the Middle Kingdom: “One of the first official acts of Khakaure- Senwosret III was to abolish the very office of the nomarch. We do not know his reasons. Had the princes tried to revolt on his accession? or was it simply that the new king’s authoritarian character could no longer support the independence of his nobles? Our sources tell us nothing. We only know that from about 1860 B.C., toward the middle of the reign, the texts speak no more of nomarchs” (pp. 373-4).

31. For what is known see W. K. Simpson, “Sobkemhet, a Vizier of Seostris III”, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 43 (1957), pp. 26-9.

32. Dr Bietak found remains of temples of worship and mortuary temples belonging to them at Tell el Dab’a, one of which was one hundred feet long and sixty feet wide.

33. Merrill Unger, op. cit., p. 84, intimates their period as 1776-1570 B.C.

34. Gleason L. Archer Jr., op. cit., pp. 224-5.

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