The Impact of a Weakened Egypt on the Exodus: Exploring Historical and Biblical Perspectives

The story of the Exodus has been both a point of interest and contention within Biblical scholarship for quite some time. Two main views about the Exodus have arisen: the Exodus was a real, historical event and the Exodus is simply myth. Unfortunately, very many modern biblical scholars do not believe that the Exodus was a historical event (Wood 2008: 97), instead placing the narrative into the classification of an origin myth for the people later known as the Israelites (Dever 2006: 235). 

Although this view is held by many a scholar, there are also very many who believe the Exodus to be a truly historical event. Among those biblical scholars who believe in the historicity of the Exodus, two main camps have been set: those who believe that the Exodus occurred under Pharaoh Ramesses in the Late Bronze II or even Iron I periods, citing the use of the name Ramesses in the Biblical text as evidence for the date, and those who hold to a Late Bronze I date, citing biblical chronology as a source for the timing. 

Dating of the Exodus

Scholars within this debate range between four positions. Those who believe that the Exodus occurred in the Late Bronze II/Iron I periods include both Ramesses II (1279-1213 B.C.) or Ramesses III (1184-1153 B.C.), utilizing the name Ramesses as evidence for these dates; two other proposals are also given, one dating to the end of the Middle Bronze Age dating to the 1550 B.C. but revised to 1470 B.C. and the traditional date of 1446 B.C. in Late Bronze IB (Walton 2002: 259). 

Late Bronze II/Iron I

A rather minor view of the Exodus purported by Manfred Bietak places the event at ca. 1150 B.C., noting excavation results from sites such as Lachish, Heshbon, and Gibeon (Walton 2002: 260), sites that show evidence of attack during the period that may have occurred at the hands of Joshua. For example, since Lachish shows evidence of Egyptian domination dating to Ramesses IV whose reign ended around 1154 B.C., it is argued that the Conquest under Joshua could not have occurred until after that period of Egyptian domination (Bietak and Rendsburg 2021: 43).

Perhaps the best known dates for the Exodus come from Hollywood fame, noted in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film titled The Ten Commandments, staring both Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. In the film, Moses stands before Ramesses II as the Pharaoh of the Exodus, a concept that dates back to William F. Albright (Rea 1960: 58), often called the Dean of Biblical Archaeology, and continues through rather important conservative scholars such as James Hoffmeier (2012). Evidences for the date include archaeological corroboration such as Egyptian records mentioning brick-making shortfalls dating to 1275 B.C. under Ramesses II (Hoffmeier 2012: 8) and the lack of any reference to the Israelites in Egyptian records before the Merenptah stela (Wood 2007: 254). The latter evidence is also used by those who deny the existence of the Exodus altogether (Hoffmeier 2012: 2), and while this view is still widely held, many who previously held the view have now moved to dismissing the Exodus as myth (Walton 2002: 260).

Middle Bronze/Late Bronze I

Two other views, placing the historical Exodus in Late Bronze I, are also maintained. The view that the Exodus occurred at the end of the Middle Bronze Age has been promoted by John Bimson (1981). This view notes the lack of fortified cities in the Late Bronze Southern Levant, a believed contradiction to the Biblical text that describes walled cities to be attacked by Joshua.

The final view is the traditional view of dating the Exodus to 1446 B.C. based on the internal Biblical chronology established in 1 Kings 6 which promotes the event as occurring four hundred eighty years before the dedication of the temple, which is known externally as dating to 966 B.C.; this is further supported by Judges 11:26 where Jephthah notes that the Exodus occurred three hundred years prior (Wood 2005: 488). Although detractors suggest a lack of archaeological evidences supporting the traditional date, Bryant Woods and others have advocated support for the date from both the Southern Levant and from Egypt, including the destructions of Jericho, Ai, and Hazor, where Middle Bronze defenses had been reused in the Late Bronze Age, and from the Nile Delta, where an 18th Dynasty palace is found in the region of Pi-Ramesse dating to the traditional date of Moses and where a mid-nineteenth century Asiatic settlement is found, dating to the traditional time of Jacob (Wood 2005: 488). 

View Understood in This Study

Although each of the above mentioned theories have their strengths and weaknesses, for some the weaknesses are simply too strong to ignore. The date of ca. 1150 B.C. is problematic since the Merneptah Stela dates to ca. 1220 B.C. (Aharoni 1982: 174), a stela inscribed under the orders of Pharaoh Merneptah mentioning a people group in the Southern Levant called Israel. 

Of note, the view that the Exodus occurred ca. 1267 B.C., while relying upon the Biblical usage of the name Ramesses and some archaeological evidences from the Southern Levant, appears to dismiss the internal Biblical chronology (cf. Wood 2005: 488) and attempts to squeeze the oppression and population growth of the Israelites into a three-year period (Wood 2007: 251).

As with the other views, Biblical historicity of the Middle Bronze view is assumed, but the Biblical chronology is again ignored. This is slightly corrected when Bimson revised his chronology, extending the Middle Bronze Age up to 1430 B.C. and the Exodus to 1470 B.C. (Bimson 1981: 94), but the extending of the Middle Bronze Age necessarily contracts the Late Bronze Age and therefore does not accommodate all of the archaeological data from LB I (cf. Walton 2002: 260).

Thus, the traditional view of the Exodus date, i.e., 1446 B.C., is still the strongest date both Biblically and archaeologically. This is supported, though debated, by evidences at Jericho and in the Nile Delta (see above).

Egyptian History/Culture

Placing the Exodus at the traditional date of 1446 B.C., much of Egyptian history falls into step with the Biblical text, extending from Joseph in the Middle Kingdom to the Exodus in the New Kingdom. Understanding the historical background of the Biblical text helps to better understand that Biblical text. 

Middle Kingdom

During the Middle Kingdom, the site of Rowaty in the Nile delta, whose name translates as “the door of the two roads” (Bietak 1996: 19), appears to have acted just as such, existing as an estate that stood between Egypt and the Levant (Hoffmeier 1999: 63). The complete name of the settlement is translated as “the (royal) settlement (of) Amenemhat (I), justified, of Rowaty” (Bietak 1996: 19), a planned settlement with royal favor.

During the Middle Kingdom, this royal settlement seems to have been the home to a High Asiatic functionary in the service of the king of Egypt (Bietak 1996: 19). Living quarters outside of the royal estate consisted of sand-brick huts that may had been in the beginning stages of rural development (Bietak 1979: 237), and the estate itself appears to have followed the four-room house plan native to the Southern Levant; additionally, a tomb for an Asiatic dignitary has been discovered (Wood 2008: 100).

Plan and reconstruction of Palace G

Second Intermediate Period

By the Second Intermediate Period, the site of Rowaty became known as Avaris. From this site that continued to grow in the declining Thirteenth Dynasty, Asiatics gained power and ruled over much of Lower Egypt as the Fourteenth Dynasty (Bietak and Rendsburg 2021: 55), in  the early years ruling primarily over fellow Levantines in the region, including those living in settlements granted by the late Twelfth Dynasty kings (Bietak 2005: 57). 

By ca. 1640 B.C., another Asiatic group was able to gain control of Avaris, initiating the Fifteenth, or Hyksos, Dynasty, controlling Lower Egypt and even, for some time, Upper Egypt (Bietak and Rendsburg 2021: 55). These Asiatic rulers ruling from the harbor town of Avaris were well connected to outside entities such as those at Cyprus, Palestine, and even Crete (Bard 2005: 58), and under the Hyksos, Avaris was developed into a historically large and important site (Petrovich 2013: 11-12).

Building projects at Avaris include temples to the storm god and his consort (Bietak and Rendsburg 2021: 55-56), but also palaces, both types of which contain similar architecture to buildings in northern Syria and Mesopotamia (Bietak and Rendsburg 2021: 58). Of note, Palaces F and G were built parallel to each other, separated by a massive lake (Petrovich 2013: 12), Palace G likely being the residence of the Hyksos Pharaoh (Wood 2008: 29). 

New Kingdom

The Middle Kingdom site of Rowaty, known later as Avaris (Bietak 2009: 15) became known as Perunefer in the early New Kingdom, only later to be rebuilt as Rameses (Wood 2008: 28). Of note, the large basin south of the Hyksos Palace F appears to have remained active in the New Kingdom as evidenced from a New Kingdom fortification wall running parallel to the straight edge of the rectangular lake (Bietak 2009: 16). 

Interestingly, Amenhotep II appears to be the Pharaoh mainly associated with Perunefer (Rea 1960: 65), and he even fostered several Canaanite cults, including both Ba’al and Astarte (Bietak 2009: 16). Unfortunately, Egyptian texts fail to mention Perunefer after the reign of Amenhotep II until the later Amarna Age (Petrovich 2013: 17), likely signaling an abandonment of the site.

In Relation to the Exodus

Much of the information given above directly correlates to the Biblical text. This is particularly so when the date of 1446 B.C. is understood to be the date of the Exodus. As such, the Middle Kingdom conforms to the time of Joseph, the Second Intermediate Period correlates with the initial enslavement of the Israelites, and the New Kingdom corresponds to the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt.

Middle Kingdom

As noted previously (Ch. 27, this work), the Middle Kingdom of Egypt marks the initial period whereby a slave could rise to ranks of power (Morris 2006: 70-71), and this sometimes included outsiders such as Asiatics (Kitchen 2007: 71). The existence of such an Asiatic functionary is seen at the royal settlement of Rowaty (Bietak 1996: 19) where the tomb of that Asiatic has been discovered (Wood 2008: 100). Although the tomb had been robbed out long ago, including the rather atypical removal of the body (Wood 1997: 58), the remains of a 2 m tall statue of a seated Asiatic was found purposefully smashed (Schiestl 2007: 135) in a robber’s pit dug into the tomb (Rohl 1995: 363). 

The correlation to the Biblical text comes in the fact that the Biblical Joseph was said to have risen to the rank of Vizier (Gen. 41:41), ruler of all of Egypt. Although Asiatics are known to have come to positions of power, there was also a fear of outsiders at the time (Arnold 1991: 19), even to the point of building a fortress to repel any large scale movements of Asiatics to Egypt (Bard 2015: 188). Genesis 42:9 mirrors this distrust when an Egyptianized Joseph replies to his brothers that they are spies coming to search for Egyptian weaknesses. Of course, in the end, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, and the Pharaoh settles them in Rameses (Gen. 47:11), then known as Rowaty. The Asiatic functionary found in Tomb 1 at Rowaty may very well be the Biblical Joseph, whose body and grave goods were taken much later in history, as noted in Exodus 13:19-22. Other correlations can be seen in Chapter 27 of this work. 

Second Intermediate Period

With the destabilization of the Thirteenth Dynasty, as Asiatic groups grew in the Delta and Egyptian Pharaohs retreated southward, there came a ruler “who knew not Joseph,” as noted in Exodus 1:8. Although uncertain, this may be the beginning of Egyptian dominance over the Israelites, particularly as the Fourteenth Dynasty ruled over Asiatic groups in the Delta, including those living in settlements granted by previous kings (Bietak 2005: 57). If not the Fourteenth Dynasty then certainly it was the the Fifteenth, or Hyksos, Dynasty who enslaved them. 

The site of Rowaty, most likely the residence of Joseph and the surrounding huts of his brothers, would be changed under the Fifteenth Dynasty into the site of Avaris, including the building of Canaanite temples and palaces. In later years, the site would come to be known as Rameses, as noted in Exodus 1:11 where the Israelites were enslaved and forced to build the store cities of Pithom (unknown) and Rameses (Avaris). Although the Hyksos were eventually expelled from Egypt (Mieroop 2011: 182) and followed into the Southern Levant (Bard 2015: 227), the Israelite slaves apparently remained under the overlordship of the native Egyptian Pharaohs who continued the mistreatment.

New Kingdom

It was under the New Kingdom Pharaohs that Moses comes into the story. Of interest, Palaces F and G, originally constructed under the Hyksos, continued in use during the New Kingdom (Wood 2008: 28), and the location and description of Palace F appears to match the description of pharaoh’s daughter going down to the Nile River to bathe in Exodus 2:5 and of Pharaoh himself going out to the river in the morning in Exodus 7:15 (Wood 2004: 48).

Notably, the Amenhotep II, who is described as “he who dwells in Perunefer” (Rea 1960: 65) and who fostered Canaanite cults at the site, including both Ba‘al and Astarte (Bietak 2009: 16), may be the Pharaoh of the Exodus, though this is highly debated. As noted above, after the reign of Amenhotep II, the site of Perunefer is not mentioned again until the Amarna Age (Petrovich 2013: 17), possibly signifying the end of royal usage, a concept that fits the Biblical narrative as, according to the Biblical text, large amounts of slave labor connected to the site were no longer available. 

Direct evidence of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt continues to elude archaeologists, but large numbers of slaves in Egypt during the New Kingdom are known (Loprieno 2012: 12). That said, after such a loss of slaves as described in the Exodus narrative, the campaigns of Amenhotep II after the date of the Exodus appear to have been an attempt to resupply the slave labor, including the capturing of more than 100,000 people and over 1,000 chariots (Petrovich 2006: 102-03). In the end, one can not be dogmatic about who the Pharaoh of the Exodus was, but the evidence appears to fit the Biblical narrative supporting the existence of an Exodus.

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[This is a lecture written for the course 'HIST 262: History of the Ancient Near East,' taught Fall 2023 at God's Bible School and College, a regionally accredited College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Bibliographical material will be posted under Research on this site.]