Egyptologists and the Israelite Exodus from Egypt

In the following it will be shown that in Ramesside times besides descendants of the Canaanites of the Hyksos Period also new groups of Near Easterners arrived in Egypt as prisoners of war or as migrant bedouins. Workmen who had the task to pull down during the 20th Dynasty the temple of Aya and Horemheb in western Thebes seem to have been carriers of the same or similar Iron Age culture as the Proto-Israelites in the southern Levant as they used for their shelters makeshift Four Room-Houses. According to the stratigraphic evidence available the presence of the Iron Age people in western Thebes can be dated to the same time or only slightly later than the settlement of the Proto-Israelites in Canaan. One has to be aware, however, that their ethnogenesis has not yet been finalized at that time. If we may assume a sojourn of early Israelites in Egypt, the most likely period would have been the late Ramesside Period – the 12th century BC. It is also most fascinating to show that Egyptian scribes used Semitic toponyms for places at the eastern border of Egypt, particularly in the Wadi Tumilat. The only sensible explanation is that Semitic speaking people lived there for a time long enough to have with the use of their toponyms an impact on the Egyptian administrative system. Because of geographical and onomastic reasons Wadi Tumilat could serve as a paradigm of the biblical land of Goshen. This article supplies furthermore evidence which makes it very likely that the memory of the town of Raamses/Ramesse in the books Genesis and Exodus has to be tied to the Delta-residence of the Ramessides Pi-Ramesse. At the same time the second biblical store city of Pithom should be identified with the only substantial Ramesside town in the Wadi, Tell el-Retabe, not with Tell el-Maskhuta which according to the archaeological record did not yet exist at that time. Reconstruction of the geography of the eastern Nile Delta in the Ramesside Period shows that at least some ideas of the topographical conditions in the eastern Delta reflected in the books Genesis and Exodus go back to this Period. The quarrying of stone blocks, statues and architectural elements from Pi-Ramesse (Qantir) and their reuse for new big sacred building projects at Tanis and Bubastis in the 21st and 22nd Dynasties brought about the rise of secondary cults of gods “of Ramses” in the 4th century in Bubastis and of the gods “of Ramses of Pi-Ramesse” at Tanis from the 3rd century onwards. Such a development may have fostered ideas among diaspora in exile coming to Egypt that Raamses/Ramesse was situated in Tanis or in the environment of Bubastis. Such considerations may have brought about the theories of the northern and southern Exodus-routes from the time of the 30th Dynasty onwards.

2011

for guiding me in my research and painstakingly reviewing my work. I would also like to thank Jennifer Lorge and Eliana De La Rosa for their punctilious reading of my thesis with the utmost attention to detail, correcting grammar, formatting, and providing input on content all while they were busy writing their own theses. Great appreciation also goes out to Dr. James K. Hoffmeier, for taking the time out of his busy schedule to meet with me over brunch to discuss his previous work on the subject and to assist in channeling my methodology. Gratitude is deserved to all the staff and cadre of the Eagle Battalion Army Reserve Officer Training Corps, especially Lieutenant Colonel Mark W. Johnson and Master Sergeant Scott Heise for meticulously working with me to ensure I was able to give professional and effective briefings and presentations, which has come to be useful in so many areas of my life. Most of all, I would like to thank my family, especially my mom, and Major James McKnight, Major Jay Hansen, and Colonel Lance Kittleson for keeping me on track with the remembrance of the true purpose of my studies. Also, I would like to thank my fiancée, Elizabeth Fusilier, for her constant loving prodding to ensure I got this project done in a timely manner.

Hershel Shanks and John Merrill (eds.), Ancient Israel, From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, Revised and Expanded Edition, Washington, D.C. 2021: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2021

This chapter attempts to produce the most likely historic scenario for the famous sojourn and the exodus story. Recent advances in Egyptology, paleogeography and modern biblical exegesis bring about a novel display of the biblical story which excites mankind since several thousand years

New Creation, 2021

An enormous amount of research and the synthesization of historical events and archaeological artifacts has led the author to verify Israelite residence in Egypt from 1876–1446 BC. This research is connected to the unexpected discovery of interconnecting archaeological, epigraphical, and iconographical evidence that attests to the presence of Israelites in Egypt over virtually the entire 430 years. By the sheer volume of verifiable evidence of complementary historical data—when comparing the biblical text and the artifactual and epigraphical record—the author attempts to demonstrate convincingly to objective readers that the biblical story of the Egyptian origins of the Israelite ‘nation’ is reliable as a factual account. Never again will students of the Bible have to listen to uniformed university professors denounce the story of Israelites in Egypt without a ready defense for its validity.

Tyndale Bulletin 72, 2021

Egyptian texts mention two bodies of water on Egypt's eastern frontier with Sinai, š-ḥr and p3 twfy, the latter of which is mentioned in connection with the Exodus (as ‫ם-סּוף‬ ‫יַ‬-yam suf), while the former occurs in Jeremiah 2:18. Recent palaeoenvironmental work conducted by the North Sinai Archaeological Project, which was in the field from 1998 to 2008 and directed by the author, has shed new light on these bodies of water and the roles they played in the biblical events involving entering and departing Egypt. The 2019 publication of the geological data now allows one to offer some insights into these ancient lakes. Supplemented by new archaeological discoveries, elements of the routes of both journeys can be elucidated.

Tyndale Bulletin, 2022

Egyptian texts mention two bodies of water on Egypt's eastern frontier with Sinai, š-ḥr and p3 twfy, the latter of which is mentioned in connection with the Exodus (as ‫ם-סּוף‬ ‫יַ‬-yam suf), while the former occurs in Jeremiah 2:18. Recent palaeoenvironmental work conducted by the North Sinai Archaeological Project, which was in the field from 1998 to 2008 and directed by the author, has shed new light on these bodies of water and the roles they played in the biblical events involving entering and departing Egypt. The 2019 publication of the geological data now allows one to offer some insights into these ancient lakes. Supplemented by new archaeological discoveries, elements of the routes of both journeys can be elucidated.

Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, 2018

Egypt is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible numerous times, but despite multiple studies, the Egyptian background referred to in the Bible remains historically elusive. This is due to the fact that Egyptian details from the biblical source (names, epithets) can often be correlated with more than one period in Egypt's history. These difficulties have prevented the Egyptian aspect from becoming a major factor in biblical studies. To rectify this state, it is here suggested to employ a different methodology: rather than seeking parallels to the Bible's Egyptian details, one should ask how and when these details came to be known in the biblical traditions of Judah and Israel. The article will discuss possible scenarios of transmission as viewed through the archaeological record pertaining to the relations between Egypt and Israel during the Iron Age.

PRC Press, 2010

Archaeologist Joel Klenck describes the Exodus from Egypt is being a source of controversy for millennia as different groups of scholars have debated both the historicity and the date of the event. Due to a lack of Egyptian inscriptions that mention the Exodus, during the 15th Century BC, most scholars have abandoned the Biblical timeline, shifted the event to another period, attempted to radically change Egyptian chronologies, or declared the event a myth or fabrication. This manuscript compares the timelines between the Biblical narrative and conventional Egyptian chronologies and reviews data from archaeological, bio-anthropological, philological, and historical sources in Egypt and Canaan. The analysis suggests that the Exodus occurred as the Biblical narrative suggests, in the 15th Century BC, specifically during the reign of Thutmose II.

The Exodus: An Egyptian Story, 2021

Moses led people out of Egypt against the will of Ramses II (1279-1213 BCE) on the seventh hour of New Year’s Eve at the end of Ramses’s seventh year of ruling and he constituted them in the wilderness as the covenant people Israel of Yahweh. It is an Egyptian story. Why that time? Why that day? Why that year? Why against Ramses II? [“Ramses” is the spelling of his name to be used in this study except when quoting people who used a different spelling.] Why the new religion? Why the wilderness? The answers to these questions are found not in the Hebrew Bible but in Egypt. To understand what Moses did it is necessary to place him in the Egyptian context in which he had been raised and against which he acted. The search for this understanding is the search to understand Egypt. Typically that is not the way the search for the Exodus is conducted. With these brief introductory remarks in mind, let us now turn to the beginning of the first concerted effort in Egyptology beginning in the 1880s to find the Exodus. The specific goals were to find archaeological and textual evidence for it and to locate the route from the unknown location of the capital city of Ramses II, the presumed Pharaoh of the Exodus, to the wilderness. This review entails tracing the development of Egyptology, the formation of the Egypt Exploration Fund, its initial archaeological efforts and how leading Egyptologists have addressed the Exodus in their histories of Egypt. This review will set the stage for how this study will proceed.