So there’s the timeline. Fit the Hyksos into being Joseph and his brothers. Thutmose III and Amenhotep II as the Exodus Pharoahs. The Shasu into being Moses and the Israelites.
Good enough for me. Onward to the giant serpent of fire living underneath Mount Sinai, a goat-faced peacock that speaks of curses.
Three Egyptian Inscriptions About Israel – March 8, 2019
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1. The Soleb Inscription
At the end of the 15th century B.C., the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III built a temple to honor the god Amun-Ra at Soleb in Nubia (modern-day northern Sudan).
Within the temple area are a series of columns on which Amenhotep III listed the territories he claimed to have conquered.
Each territory is listed by a relief of a prisoner with their hands tied behind their backs over an oval “name ring” identifying the land of the particular foe.
The most interesting from a biblical perspective is a column drum that lists enemies from the “the land of the Shasu (nomads) of Yahweh”.
Given the other name rings nearby, the context would place this land in the Canaanite region.
In addition, the prisoner is clearly portrayed as Semitic, rather than African-looking, as other prisoners in the list are portrayed.
Two conclusions are almost universally accepted:
this inscription clearly references Yahweh in Egyptian hieroglyphics (the oldest such reference outside of the Bible),
and that around 1400 B.C. Amenhoteph III knew about the god Yahweh.
Moreover, it would indicate an area in Canaan in the 15th century B.C. inhabited by nomadic or semi-nomadic people who worship the god Yahweh.
This inscription is also evidence that points to an early date for the exodus.
According to a literal reading of 1 Kings 6:1, Solomon began building the temple in the 480th year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, placing the exodus around 1446 B.C.
Moreover, when Moses first went to Pharaoh to deliver God’s message to let His people go, Pharaoh responded by saying,
“Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go?
I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go” (Ex. 5:2).
By around 1400 B.C., when the Israelites would have been nearing the end of the conquest of Canaan, the ruling Egyptian Pharaoh does know about Yahweh.
Egyptologist, Dr. Charles Aling and historian Dr. Clyde Billington summarize:
“If the Pharaoh of the Exodus had never before heard of the God Yahweh, this strongly suggests that the Exodus should be dated no later than ca. 1400 BC because Pharaoh Amenhotep III had clearly heard about Yahweh in ca. 1400 BC.”
2. The Merneptah Stele
In 1208 B.C. Pharaoh Merneptah erected a 10-foot tall victory monument (called a stele) in a temple at Thebes to boast of his claims to victory in both Libya and Canaan.
Of Merneptah’s Canaanite campaign we read:
“Israel is wasted, its seed is not;
And Hurru (Canaan) is become a widow because of Egypt.”
Despite Merneptah’s boast of having destroyed Israel, we know from history that this did not happen.
The Bible makes no mention of this attack.
It seems to have been a relatively small military campaign, taking only three cities and then boasting of Israel being laid waste.
For comparison, when Pharaoh Shishak invaded Israel he recorded the names over 180 cities/places he claims to have conquered.
Even though this seems to have been a small military operation the Merneptah inscription is of huge importance to biblical archaeology.
Most scholars agree that this is the oldest definitive reference to Israel as a nation outside of the Bible, and certainly the clearest Egyptian reference to Israel.
It is also important because it too points towards an early date for the exodus (ca. 1446 B.C.) and not the late date that some scholars hold to (ca. 1270 B.C.).
It is doubtful that there would be enough time from 1270 B.C. to 1208 B.C. to account for the exodus, the 40 years of wandering in the desert, the seven-year conquest of Canaan, the settlement of the tribes in their territories, and the establishment of a national presence in the land, all before Merneptah claims to have conquered them.
Merneptah’s Canaanite campaign instead likely dates to the time of the Judges, when the nation of Israel was already settled in Canaan.
3. The Shishak Inscription
In 925 B.C. Pharaoh Shishak, identified as Shoshenq I, swept through Israel and Judah conquering city after city.
The Bible describes this campaign in 2 Chr. 12:2-4:
“In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, because they had been unfaithful to the LORD, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem with 1,200 chariots and 60,000 horsemen.
And the people were without number who came with him from Egypt—Libyans, Sukkiim, and Ethiopians.
And he took the fortified cities of Judah and came as far as Jerusalem.”
When he returned, he had a relief carved at the temple complex of Amun-Ra at Karnak, listing the 180+ cities he claims to have conquered.
While Jerusalem itself is not named, numerous Israelite and Judahite cities are, including Beth-Shemesh, Gibeon and Megiddo, as well as places called “the fields of Abraham,” and the “highlands of David.”
In fact, the remains of a victory stele set up by Pharaoh Shishak has been discovered at Megiddo.
Top Ten Discoveries Related to Moses and the Exodus – 29 July 2022
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6. Discoveries at Avaris
According to the biblical text, the Israelites settled “in the land of Rameses” (Gn 47:11) sometime in the 19th century BC.
While they were initially free, at some point they became slaves to the native Egyptians and were pressed into building the city of Rameses (Ex 1:11).
When they left Egypt in 1446 BC, some 430 years later, they departed from Rameses (Ex 12:37).23
The use of the word “Rameses” is an update of the biblical text by later editors to replace an archaic place-name with one that was more recognizable, as in Genesis 47:11:
“Then Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded.”
Thanks to five decades of excavations by the Austrian Archaeological Institute of Cairo at Tell el-Dab‘a in the eastern Nile Delta, we now know that this was the site of the city Rameses, which was itself built over a previous city named Avaris.
While the site is most famous as the Hyksos capital,24 it was originally settled in the 19th century (the time of Joseph) by a group of non-Egyptians from Canaan, as evidenced by the Canaanite pottery and weapons they used.25
There is even evidence of a four-roomed house in the village (the same layout as houses typical in Israelite settlements in the later Iron Age), as well as a prominent tomb in which the remains of a statue of a Semitic man with a multicolored robe was found.
The town grew and became more Egyptianized, with a mansion built atop the four-roomed house, which some believe to be the residence of Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph’s sons.26
A palace precinct was later built at Avaris during the Hyksos period, and then expanded during the 18th Dynasty, forming a new royal citadel.27
This later palatial complex dates to the time of Moses and is likely where he spent time when he was raised in Pharaoh’s courts.
Interestingly, the excavators at Tell el-Dab’a noted that the site was suddenly and mysteriously abandoned after the reign of Amenhotep II, suggesting that a plague may have been the reason.28
Bryant Wood summarizes the occupational history of the site:
“The excavations at Tell el-Dab’a have revealed the presence of an ‘Asiatic’ community who first settled as pastoralists, then grew in number as well-to-do entrepreneurs, became subservient to the Egyptians and finally left.
This scenario exactly matches what we read in the Bible.”29
You’ve Heard Israel’s Version of the Exodus. Have You Heard Egypt’s? – April 10, 2022
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Tacitus then proceeded to mention the ensuing desert sojourn in a simplistic manner:
“The people, who had been collected after diligent search, finding themselves left in a desert, sat for the most part in a stupor of grief, till one of the exiles, Moyses by name, warned them not to look for any relief from God or man, forsaken as they were of both, but to trust to themselves, taking for their heaven-sent leader that man who should first help them to be quit of their present misery.
They agreed, and in utter ignorance began to advance [into the wilderness] at random. …
After a continuous journey for six days, on the seventh they possessed themselves of a country, from which they expelled the inhabitants, and in which they founded a city and a temple.”
…
Comparing the two accounts of the Exodus—Manetho’s Egyptian version and the well-known biblical version—makes for an interesting study.
Several storyline variations immediately stand out from Manetho’s account:
The disaster that befell Egypt was unavoidable, the result of offence to the gods by Moses/Osarsiph and his “leper” people, who were themselves responsible for the calamities.
It was these people who treated the Egyptians in a “barbarous” manner, not the other way around.
Instead of the Egyptians’ sacred animals dying in the fifth plague, they were brought into Ethiopia for safekeeping.
Instead of the pharaoh’s son dying in the 10th plague, he was sent to “a friend of his.”
It was for the good of the nation of Egypt that these “polluted” slaves and shepherds left.
Instead of the pharaoh being present and responsible for what befell his country, he was instead in another country entirely, in an unavoidable exile mandated by the gods.
Instead of Israel’s God bringing Israel out of Egypt in spite of the pharaoh, whose army was wiped out in the Red Sea, the pharaoh is portrayed as a conquering hero who reportedly drove Moses’s “lepers” all the way into Canaan, as far as the Syrian border.
And as per Tacitus, it was the slaves who were the race “detested by the gods,” as opposed to the biblical account where Israel is chosen by God.
What do you think of the idea that the Exodus occurred under Amenhotep II?
Douglas Petrovich, _Origins of the Hebrews_ (2021), 314pp., on 166
amazon .com/Origin-Hebrews-Douglas-Petrovich/dp/0999040952/
…the present proposal of an Israelite exodus from Avaris in the spring of 1446 BC, corresponding to Amenhotep II’s Year 7.
[Following his campaign launched ~15 November 1446, which secured an inordinately-large number of captives,] Amenhotep II never again campaigned in Asia during his final 30 years or so on the throne.
_Complete Works of Josephus_ translated by William Whiston, on 787-8, 789 in my 2-column hardcopy
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26. And now I will turn my discourse to one of their principal writers, whom I have a little before made use of as a witness to our antiquity; I mean Manetho.
(22) He promised to interpret the Egyptian history out of their sacred writings…
he mentions Amenophis, a fictitious king’s name, though on that account he durst not set down the number of years of his reign,
which yet he had accurately done as to the other kings he mentions;
he then ascribes certain fabulous stories to this king, as having in a manner forgotten how he had already related that the departure of the shepherds for Jerusalem had been five hundred and eighteen years before; for Tethmosis was king when they went away.
…
When Manetho therefore had acknowledged that our forefathers were gone out of Egypt so many years ago, he introduces his fictitious king Amenophis, and says thus:
“… It was also reported that the priest, who ordained their polity and their laws, was by birth of Heliopolis, and his name Osarsiph, from Osyris, who was the god of Heliopolis; but that when he was gone over to these people, his name was changed, and he was called Moses.”
27. This is what the Egyptians relate about the Jews, with much more, which I omit for the sake of brevity.
But still Manetho goes on, that “after this, Amenophis returned…
In Historical Accuracy, Section B, I go over three accounts of the Exodus. In the conclusion of this section, I write:
The Exodus of the Israelites of Avaris, the expulsion/exodus of the Hyksos, and the Exodus of the Akhet-aten slaves with a priest named Osarsêph, renamed Moses, has been evaluated.
The exodus of the Israelites of Avaris ties Jacob-Israel to an archaeologically evidenced Joseph. It also ties Jacob-Israel to his descendants (Israelites) leaving the Egyptian delta as the Hyksos enter the Egyptian delta, giving the Israelites reason to divert their exodus south into Sinai. This scenario also properly dates before the destruction of Jericho rather than occurring after the destruction of Jericho. However, the Promise Land of Canaan is not free of Egypt’s dominance. Canaan becomes filled with city-states that are vassals to the 18th Dynasty of Egypt.
The expulsion/exodus of the Hyksos provides a larger number of people leaving Egypt in exodus.
The exodus of the Akhet-aten slaves delivers Yuya, a Joseph figure taken in by Egyptian royalty. Unlike the exodus of the Israelites of Avaris and the expulsion/exodus of the Hyksos, the exodus of the Aket-aten slaves explicitly delivers the much-needed theology of monotheism. Moses and Aaron were proponents of monotheism, here Akhen-aten and Osarsêph were proponents of monotheism. Neither in the exodus of the Israelites nor in the expulsion of the Hyksos do we have archaeological evidence of oppressed slaves, but in the exodus of the Akhet-aten slaves, there is skeletal proof of slaves being oppressed as they quickly built Akhet-aten.
Anything on a hypothetical reconstructed explanation regarding why the proper names and adjectives for the Creator in the Torah (5 Books of Moses) are the way they are?
e.g. Example of such.
Elohim (God, Godhead): used only when all manifestations of itself:Elohim exist outside of the heaven and earth before it was finished being created.
YHWH (LORD) : used only when all manifestations of the Elohim (God, Godhead) exist here within the heaven and earth.
Elohim YHWH: (God, Godhead LORD used only when one or more manifestations of the Elohim exist here on heaven and earth.
other nouns or adjectives: used only when the Elohim in any possible number of manifestation exists within the land and people called of Israel.
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