spin

No-one can say that a pack of Midianite slaves ran away from Egypt, but who cares what one can't say. One doesn't write history on what one can't say. We have traditions tarted up as history and sure as hell if there is some historical kernel to the story the numbers are simply and utterly wrong. If that is the case, then there is no way to say what is and what is not correct in the tradition, if anything is correct. Therefore it is futile trying to do any history with it.

On Ai:
Yeah.

It might be good to know something about Egyptian history. When the Egyptians ousted the Hyksos (the probable source for the exodus tradition), the turned away from using foreign slaves for a long period after the experience of foreign domination. We can rule out the exodus during the Hyksos rule as well as long after their expulsion. This was precisely when Ai was a ruin.

There was a previous siege, when the Hyksos were forced into Canaan.

Sorry, I can't see the point of this.

We are working with facts -- well, at least I am working with facts. We can conclude that the texts are in error over a number of things. The Philistines in the reputed time of Abraham is simply untenable. The Chaldeans at the same time is likewise untenable. Read that to be "impossible".

Egyptians may have had Hebrew slaves, but not during or after the Hyksos perod. They had no foreign slaves and they guarded their borders against foreign infiltration of any sizeable entity. They frequently campaigned in the southern Levant through xenophobia regarding foreign invaders.

The story of the walls of Jericho falling is inherited tradition from the Hyksos.

It was the Egyptians during the Persian period who connected the Hebrews from Canaan with the Hyksos who went to Canaan. The Egyptians reinterpreted the Hyksos to be Hebrews and the Hebrews took it as fact. Read Josephus's Contra Apion for the Egyptian reinterpretations.

I'd say that the exodus tradition is post-exilic, based on Egyptian insults of the Jews living in Egypt which equated the Hebrews with the Hyksos.


spin

Lafcadio

While reading other topics that biblical but also from historical/archaelogical/ethnographical pov, I noticed people are concerned to squeeze every bit of information and provide scenarios and hypotheses instead of denying large bulks of information because of the inaccuracy and mythologization. I wonder why in biblical issues the war is between extreme and no one tries to provide valid scenarios of the historical facts or the source of the stories. Why not use the efforts in actually creating a theory instead of a long chain of denials.

I don't have enough information to completely agree or disagree with this, but I tell what I know about the egyptian rulers right after hyksos were driven off. The number of slaves in the New Kingdom as I can think of rather increased. Ahmoses took slaves as prisoners of war (e.g. Avaris), Tuthmoses III took prisoners and hostages from wars (e.g. Megiddo) and used phoenician coast cities to supply his armies (that's early 15th century). In general many of the kings of that period campaigned often in Asia and had diplomatic relation with many asian princes and kingdoms, therefore I can suspect a significant number of slaves coming to egypt from wars or as gifts.

Just pointing out that though mixed, those stories may rely on facts.

I guess history is one of the sciences with the brittlest grasp on facts, mostly are evidences which only in context prove something, with many times it's not a fact itself

What they called as "chaldeans" or "philistines" could be an earlier population in the same area, probably identifiable as "enemy" or "mesopotamian" or something like that which allowed in time a mythological identification between the two (below you offer yourself an example of such nature )

I know of 18th dynasty egyptian rulers taking slaves. We can talk more how much or little relevance this thing has.

:thumbs: Not that is a "fact", but it's an interesting and believable hypothesis.

spin

The suggestion here is arse(or ass)-up. We start from what we know. Why do the Hebrews know nothing about the very dramatic arrival of the Philistines on the Levantine coast? The easiest explanation for this glaring omission is that the Jews weren't as yet a cultural entity to record such a cataclism in their tradition. The sources of what traditions there are can be totally obscure to historical knowledge. We must always start from what we know, not from what we don't know.

Only in the latter part of the dynasty.

He capture the enemy.

Late in the dynasty.

And how would you be able to discern what if anything didn rely on facts?

There's soft history and hard history: soft history is not so prone to the use of facts. Soft history isn't able to establish much.

What you are saying here is further dehistoricising the texts.

There was a lack of slaves early in the dynasty. It was only after the xenophobic forays into Asia turned into imperial conquest that slaves were brought back. But then, given the Hyksos, the Egyptians weren't going to allow any empowerment of slaves, as we are told about in Exodus.

On the Egyptians in Persian times equating the Hyksos with the Hebrews:
I need to do more work to make it a serious argument, but then I'm too lazy, with other things to do.


spin

Lafcadio

The hebrews picture philistines as cruel, pagan, barbaric warmongers a description which fits fairly enough the egyptian one.
The omission of the event (their actual invasion), on the other hand, might have so many reasons, I can see in my own country's folkloric tradition such omission without being the case of a cultural unity which is easily provable otherwise (for instance my country's folkloric traditions misses the mongol invasion while holds other ancestral stories)

"long after their expulsion" this was your initial formula. I will talk it on examples

http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/ahmose_inscription.htm - it's however a matter of foreign slaves

Now I wonder what do you mean by the initial "long after". Tuthmosis III started his reign about 60 years after the founder of the dynasty. Anyway, if this you regard as a long interval, I'm confident that I may find inscriptions of the kings between showing them having foreign slaves.

Usually science (and history, too) is preocuppied in proving positive claims. In rare exceptions, with a lot of evidence you can show a denial.
Using a similar line of reasoning, I am not interested in things which are not, but in things which are. That's why I'm very open in giving scenarios a chance because only so I can reach to positive claims to try to prove.

I never encountered this taxonomy so far. Let me understand, is Sargon I a matter of soft or hard history? How many historical sources point directly (not inheriting/copying from an existing source) to him, and what actually makes him a fact?

Except historian's works (and that not always) and some records (and that not always, too), no other text is a priori historicized, on contrary they might describe various things, and it's only our interpretation that builds history out of them.
I find very amusing to think of 36th century man reading one of my replies somewhere saying, for instance, about romans occuping Spain. And the amusement will be greater if he'll try to deny something of my existence or knowledge by arguing that Spain and Roman Empire were never contemporary.
But instead of giving such an example, let's go for a real example, when the text is not ment to be a history line and a vicious interpretation would lead to wrong conclusion about the author or the cultural enviroment he lived in.
The author of the poetry from the link above lived in XIXth century, studied in Vienna.
http://www.mihaieminescu.ro/en/liter.../satire3_4.htm
It describes a battle which took place in 1394/5 CE. If you remark it mentions as past the battle from Nicopolis (1396) and the knights of Malta (estabilished only in 1530). It's easier for a literary critique to imagine this as a literary procedure to give the sultan some things to brag about (as ottoman empire was at its start). But I can reach this conclusion only with a lot of informations available. Would anyone recognize a literaturization, a mythologization that happened millenia ago?

I still hold egyptians had foreign slaves earlier in the dynasty (just for the historical accuracy). About their empowerment, I don't know. It makes sense they would be more reserved about it, I don't have any backup information at hand now. The only thing I know is that during the asian campaigns they started to recruit locals for their armies, which shows a sign of trust in foreigners, IMO.
Meanwhile I'm very interested in your Hyksos=Hebrews theory and I look forward for a development of it.

MiddleMan

Can this be expanded upon? Why couldn't the biblical exodus have occurred during (close to the end of) the Hyksos reign? What, historically speaking, would prevent such a scenario?

Benni72

It is worth noting that Israel, Edom, Moab etc. never appear in the extant documents of the XVIII dynasty, not even in the Amarna letters that specifically deal with Palestine (though they do mention a group called habiru). In particular, Israel gets mentioned only under Merneptah.

Anat, I hope you don't mind this link to our discussion about the Nemirovskii theory that dates the Exodus around 1180.

RED DAVE

From MiddleMan:
Now, let's be conservative and say that the cubic area of feces evacuated per person was 3 cubic inches per day.

3 times 365 = 1095 cubic inches of feces per person per year (round down to 1000 cu. in.)

1000 times 3,000,000 = 3,000,000,000 cubic inches of feces in one year.

3,000,000,000 times 38 = 114,000,000,000 cubic inches of feces, total in 38 years.

Now, 1 sq. ft. = 144 sq. in. Make that a layer 1 in. deep and you get 144 cu. in.


114,000,000,000/144 = 791,666,666.7 sq. ft. of feces, 1 inch deep.

1 sq. mile is 27,878,400 sq. ft.

So, if the Exodites (classy new term) used a latrine that covered 1 sq. mile (about 9 sq. ft. per person, 3 ft. x 3 ft., which is generous), they would leave a layer of feces 28.4 inches, or over two feet, deep.

Now, that's a lot of shit!

RED DAVE

Crowley

Just for clarification's sake:

From the Historic/Archeaological perspective when did the Exodus or an Exodus occur (BCE)?

Or did no Exodus of any kind actually occur?

MiddleMan

The exodus did not occur historically/archaeologically.

However, from reading the Bible one can postulate a 1440 BCE date, a 1554 BCE date or a 1220 BCE date. Just depends on how you hold the pages.

WILLOWTREE

Hi Crowley:

Supported by archaeology, in part, the Exodus is a historic fact.

Date of Exodus: 1453 BC.

Persons who deny the event as factual base their views on presuppositions which cannot be overcome because the factuality of the event jeopardizes the validity of secular worldviews.

WT