Mendeh

This isn't evidence of the ten plague. People died of disease, injuries, etc. a lot back then.

You've done it again. Amenhotep IV, not Thutmose IV, was the pharaoh who introduced monotheism. As nerv111 said, there's good reason to think that the introduction of the Aten was at least partially a political manoeuvre to reduce the authority of the priests of Amen. But actually Aten wasn't immediately declared the only god to be worshipped; it was a gradual transition throughout the reign, becoming more and more extreme as Akhenaten's authority in Akhetaten (Armarna today) began to collapse (he eventually ended up bribing his officials to stay by passing out fabulously expensive collars).

On the building programmes, it's important to note that pretty much ANY PHARAOH YOU CHOOSE will have extensive building programmes. It went with the job description.

I can't stress enough that you need to read a proper book by a proper Egyptologist on the period, or better still, several. There are some tantalising bits of evidence that might have provided the beginnings of an Exodus legend - the city of Avaris, for example, definitely received immigration from around the area of Palestine, and was struck by a serious plague. There were also several periods where foreigners were driven out of Egypt around the time period that you suggest - under Horemhab, for example. It is possible that Hebrew and Asiatic (in Egyptian, 'apiru' and 'aamu') slaves worked down the mines. But none of these equates with Exodus as described in the Bible; rather, it might just provide a glimpse of the sort of events that provided the seeds from which the Exodus legend was to sprout and grow. Buy a proper, scholarly book on the period by someone with proper credentials, and read it. Do a bit of research for yourself.

[ July 12, 2002: Message edited by: Mendeh ]</p>

davidH

doh - yeah I get those names mixed up - keep me right.
But you know that when I made that statement I was actually referring to Amenhotep IV.

No I haven't been getting the information from that site - but it is just another site that has done exactly what I am doing, putting the date of the Exodus into the Egyptian history.

Also you are right that I have been performing research with the Bible in my hand - I compare achaeological evidence with the account of the Bible, and what have I found? - That they support each other, neither contradicts each other. What other way is there of confirming whether a historical book is accurate?


Nerv111, what I have shown so far is that the Biblical story ties in perfectly with Egyptian history.
The Bible says that pharoh's first born was killed in the 10th plague. - We go to Egyptian history, and surprise surprise we find that the firstborn didn't come to the throne.
This on it's own could just have been co-incidence. But look at all the other similarities I wrote about. You can't take one similarity and start saying that the Exodus happened - because it could just have been chance.
But when the whole Egyptian history fits into the Biblical story and there's outside evidence too - it now doesn't seem to just be co-incidence.

You see this is just what I am talking about.
You have taken bits of evidence and said that alone that doesn't prove that the Exodus happened - that is completely true.
But look at all the other evidence that I have shown - could it all just have happened by chance to fall into place?


ok, let me do a sumary:

The Bible clearly gives the date as 1440BC that the Israelites left Egypt.

Tomb murals depict taskmasters over slaves - you are lazy, you are idle (words used in the Bible).

There was evidence of extensive building work around the time of Amenhotep II who was pharoh.

Bible says that in the 10th plague, the first born son of Amenhotep II was killed. Egyptian history shows that the heir didn't come to the throne.

Did Amenhotep drown in the Red Sea? Not sure - but tomb was only half finished, and mummy hastily prepared as though they hadn't expected his death.

The evidence of the Tel Amarna tablets, prove that an Israelite invasion of Palestine had begun. The tablets say invasion started in Seir and Edom - exactly where the Bible says it started.

Pharoh Akhnaton unwillingless to send troops to stop the invasion of Palestine - his own territory. -Did Egypt know that fighting against them was futile because of what had happened to the army they had previously sent?

That's only some of the evidence - are all of these just co-incidental?

The fact is that Egyptian history also shows why the Israelites who were living in Egypt were put to forced labour.

If we go by the dates in the Bible you find that the Israelis lived in egypt over the reign of the Hykos rule (the foreign dominance).
We find from Egyptian history that the time when these foreign rulers were overthrown, corresponds to the time when the slavery of the Israelites began.

Doesn't that make sense? The foreign pharoh is overthrown and the foreigners in the land are put to use as slaves.
If you know nothing about Egyptian history then the Biblical account seems strange - I'll elaborate.

Exodus 1 v 7 - 8

It then goes on to say how he made them slaves..

But the Egyptian history fits in perfectly with this too - the new pharoh having just overthrown the foreign one, would have been exceedingly suspicious of foreigners in his land - especially the large numbers of Israelites, what if they turned against him and put up another foreign ruler....

Exodus 1 v 9-10

He was afraid....not surprisingly.

Now why if the Bible story of the Exodus was not true, would all these things fit in perfectly to Egyptian history?
Was it just a stroke of luck that the writer got archaeological evidence and the Egyptian history right. - Not just so that it corresponded, but that it actually gave reasons why the pharohs did things that they did?

Each bit of evidence on its own can't prove, but all together - it's remarkable.


Anyway, more evidence.


Murshilish wrote in his "Plague Prayers", a prayer to the Hittite storm-god- Murshilish was Hittite king around the time Joshua led the people into the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 28 v 27

The Hittite King had captured soldiers not long after the Exodus had taken place - these soldiers had been infected with a plague, that broke out amoung the Hittite people.
Might these have been the result of the plague God had sent on Egypt?

There is an interesting inscription by Hatshepsut of the 18th dynasty which refers to the restoration of Egypt after the "Hyksos" had been expelled from the delta region:

This tells us that whoever lived in the delta region didn't worship Re the Egyptian sun God.

Genesis 47 v 6
This was pharoh telling Joseph where his family could settle down. Goshen was the delta region.
So this would be the area in which the Israelites grew in numbers - it fits in exactly with the inscription. The Israelites lived in the place Hatshepsut comments on, and they worshipped Jehovah not Re.

Again, another startling similarity.

Exodus 8 v 27
This verse is when Moses is asking the pharoh to let the people of Israel go.
This verse implies that 3 days journey from pharoh's palace, was a place where the Israelites could offer sacrifices.

Is there such a place 3 days journeying away?
This was a place Amenhetep II knew about - it was the temple in Serabit, which Queen Hatshepsut had built.

The temple is located in a beautiful setting northwest of the traditional (but erroneous) site of Mount Sinai. To the north of the temple is a large, pastel-colored plain, and strange black hills to the west and east.

Over the centuries the Egyptians sent numerous expeditions to Serabit; and cartouches ("royal rings" containing the names of kings and queens) from the Old Kingdom onwards can be found. These expeditions reclaimed the highly prized turquoise from fissures in the purplish-gray sandstone, as well as copper from nearby mines. Because the work was very unpleasant, miners from the land of Midian were employed; and slaves from Egypt were brought over under Egyptian guard. The Egyptians acted as guards and overseers; while the Midianites provided the technical know-how.

From the Bible we know that Jehovah was known amoung the Midianites, though it's not known how widely spread the faith was amoung them.

The seat of worship of the miners, was a temple on the top of a rocky plateau, two thousand five hundred feet above sea level, and 3 or 4 days journey [with rest] from the coast. The ruins where found of this temple, and of an intensive settlement, which had once been fortified, perhaps against the intrusion of wild beasts rather than against men [or to keep Israelite slaves in?]. The place is a day's journey from water at the present time....Evidence that at this temple a form of worship was carried on, resembling that of the Israelites, was manifested in a number of ways. This was a great high place. Here were immense heaps of wood ashes, and the fuel must have been carried up to this rocky plateau from places a thousand feet below. And these ashes testified to the burnt offerings, -it was the custom of Abraham's race to sacrifice on the summits of high hills and mountains.

This couldn't have been an Egyptian offering site since the Egyptians didn't sacrifice burnt offerings - the bull was sacred to them, they worshipped them, but the Israelites sacrificed them. Though the temple has been adorned with Egyptian inscriptions and trinkets, these were added by the Egyptian expeditions there - part of the temple may also have been used by Egyptians guarding the miners.

This shows the accuracy of the statement
Exodus 8 v 25 - 26

If they had seen the Israelites sacrificing the animal they worshipped, that would have happened.

Now, this is where something really, really interesting comes up. Here are some verses;

Since the Exodus account says that Moses killed an Egyptian that was maltreating one of his people, we know that Moses indeed cared about the condition of his people.
Moses too had been brought up by his own mother until he was of age to live at the palace - he would have been taught about the Hebrew God.
There is startling evidence that Moses not only knew about Jehovah, but also worshipped him and not the other Egyptian Gods.

An inscription on a tablet at the temple was found and deciphered. This was what it said.

Now read this verse;

But wasn't it Moses that was drawn out of the Nile?

- In the Bibles now you will see the word Moses in place of Manasseh, if you have an NIV version look at the footnote.
It reads
"An ancient Hebrew scribal tradition, some Septuagint manuscripts and Vulgate; Masoretic Text
Manasseh.

Manasseh was Moses' Hebrew name - as the Bible shows. This tablet not only refers to Manasseh being exalted by Hatshepsut, but also to the Queen, having lifted him out of the Nile!

What more proof can you get than that?

Pharoh's daughter had been bathing and had seen the reed basket in the reeds in the Nile, she got the basket and when she opened it there was a baby boy there. - Hid in desperation to avoid him from being killed by the soldiers (I'm sure you all know the story very well).

Is it still co incidence? Did someone who built a temple where Israelite worship took place, thanking Hatshepsut for taking him from the Nile and called Manasseh (Moses) just happen to exist whenever the Bible says the Exodus took place?

It's very interesting.

braces_for_impact

Shheeesh. Looks like I have a lot to learn about egyptian history if I wish to follow this thread. Nevertheless, I recognize circumstantial evidence when I see it. This is starting to remind me of Sitchen or maybe a late night session of Art Bell.

Kosh

Does anyone have an email address for Finkelstein? I think should invite him over for a discussion with David.

Mendeh

Well, you've certainly turned up some interesting stuff, although I need to do some more research myself before I can give you much feedback on them. I'm really sorry I was so blunt earlier: you're obviously serious about this, and you really have turned up some very interesting stuff. I'll try and restrict myself to feedback here rather than my own opinions, but first I feel I ought to give my position on this clearly.

I think it's quite likely that Exodus has some historical basis, and it's entirely possible that it happened during Amenhotep II's reign; what I disagree with here is not the theory in itself; it's the methodology, which seems pretty sloppy in places and generally not very thorough or scholarly; mixing up Akhenaten and Thutmose IV, for example, is not something that someone who knew as much stuff on this subject as they should would do; and this sort of thing casts serious doubt on how biased you are in favour of your claims; it seems to suggest that you're not even attempting to be objective.

The first thing you can do to help your claim is just to give your sources. It's impossible for anyone to check up on the fine detail of some of your points unless we know where your evidence is coming from.

Okay, this is what I'm talking about when I say you need to read some proper books here. Tomb murals often have pictures of workers being chastised, pharaohs smiting their victors in battle, pictures of the deceased in boats on lakes... and they're often not at all a literal account of things that have happened. All Egyptian art is usually deeply symbolic, stuffed full of meanings, and many scenes are actually figurative metaphors rather than anything else. Smiting scenes, for example, are often more palace propaganda than accurate accounts - a way of keeping people in check (look what pharaoh did in this recent war, and what he will do to you if you're bad). In one particular battle with the Hittites, both sides claimed in their write-ups that they had won!
Secondly, tomb wall writings usually adhere to specific FORMULAE, and 'you are idle; you are lazy' sounds pretty formulaic.

This is an example of why you HAVE to give your sources, in order to convincingly claim that your scene is literal or anything to do with the Israelites.
You could also do some work on this source yourself; you might, for example, check whether one of the slaves has the title 'apiru', which is thought by some Egyptologists to = 'Hebrew', or perhaps more generic terms such as 'aamu' or 'setjetyu' (Asicatics). You also ought to give the transliteration of the original hieroglyphs, if you can, so we can check your translation.


Certainly, but so did most other pharaohs. It came with the job description, as I've said. If you're pharaoh, you flout your power as much as possible, and the best way to do that in New-Kingdom Egypt is either to war or to build.

Thutmose was probably not first in line to the throne, and the fact that he had a dead elder brother is interesting, but the available evidence suggests a power struggle after Amenhotep's death due to the messy line of succession Amenhotep left.

Again, some sloppy scholarship; the modern name is Tel-el-Armarna. This is basic stuff, just getting the names right. You need to post the fragment of the Armarna letters that this is from, preferably through a neutral translation rather than your own.


Well, did they? You made the claim - find some evidence to back it up. What we know about Akhenaten contradicts this; it suggests that he let the empire slip away through a mixture of incompetence and lack of interest. Akhenaten showed next to no interest at all in his empire; in fact, he retreated to a city of his own building rather than face Egypt as a whole - all of Egypt's borders and empire went to the dogs during his reign, not just the Syria-Palestine area, with border incursions absolutely everywhere a neighbouring group thought they could get a hold.

Yes, and there were also prisoners-of-war coming in from Palestine around the same time, as well. The fact that people from the area around Palestine had a presence in Egypt is not disputed by any historians, and there is plenty of evidence for it. But this does not an Exodus of Biblical proportions make.

The Hittite Plague -
it's important to remember that plague was a constant problem in the ancient world, but I do take your point. But a plague does not equal ten plagues - is it not more likely on the strength of the evidence you provide here, if we assume that the exodus took place around this period, that there was simply a bad outbreak of plague at around this time, and this eventually was expanded into the full-blown ten plagues of Egypt that we read about in the Bible?

This doesn't necessarily mean what it seems at first glance. First, you need to provide the date of that translation, because a lot of the older translations are quite inaccurate. The translation might well mean that, but it may mean all sorts of other things, like 'in ignorance of Re's wishes'; hieroglyphic inscriptions are quite often highly abbreviated; for example 'ankh, djed, seneb' (life, stability, health) can be rendered using just three hieroglyphs in some cases; in other cases, verbs can be left out if the inscription is formulaic. That's why it's very important to get a good quality, modern translation, as past translations, especially by EAW Budge, for example, are often pretty shoddy.

Your points on a possible relationship between Moses & Hatshepsut certainly do look interesting, but the timescale is completely up the spout. Hatshepsut's reign is 1473-58 BC; Amenhotep II's is 1427-00. Given that you say the exodus has to have happened at the end of Amenhotep's life, by your reckoning, that'd mean that Moses would have already been into his sixties by the time the Exodus actually got under way. This would again suggest that, assuming for the moment that an exodus did happen sometime around Amenhotep II's reign, the Biblical account is quite far removed from the truth; it would make more sense to see the guy who was brought up by Hatshepsut, and was concerned for the 'Asiatics' treatment, as a different person to the guy that ended up leading an escape from Egypt, amd these two got combined into one half-legendary figure by the time Exodus was finally compiled. It must be stressed, though, that this is complete conjecture at present.

In short, speaking as someone who, although I've had a long interest in Egyptian history, is in no way any sort of scholar, I think you've raised some really interesting points, but you badly need to get a much more extensive body of evidence behind them before they'll be very convincing. This whole period is really interesting to me, and the period of Akhenaten's rule and the Armarna letters is something I've done quite a bit of reading on. I'd quite like to find out some more about this myself. I was going to do some reading on the Second Intermediate Period anyway; that's the changeover from Hyksos --&gt; Egyptian rule, so if you feel you want any help on this project, I'd be happy to lend a hand however I can. Give me an email if you want a joel@gnostic12.fsnet.co.uk

In the meantime, can I suggest you get some reference books, which would make your job a whole lot easier? (Ex. 'The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt', edited by Ian Shaw (ISBN 0-19-815034-2).)


Edited to get the bloody UBB code right!

[ July 14, 2002: Message edited by: Mendeh ]</p>

Stephen T-B

Here's an article I wrote for The Yorlkshire Post which addresses the issue raised by this thread:

John McCarthy was held hostage for five years in Beirut, and one of the things which changed his life was reading the Bible, the only book his captors allowed him. "Stephen T-B" reports on the startling journey of discovery it inspired him to make.

IGNORANCE is an excuse for those who cannot distinguish between myths, magic and reality. But as knowledge strips it away, that excuse gets weaker and weaker - and it is about to get weaker still thanks to a television series about the Bible presented by John McCarthy, the Beirut hostage.
The series (nb not yet screened) will bring out for all to see the work of historians and archaeologists which is proving that large chunks of the Old Testament are not a true historical record.
The suspicion that this may indeed be the case has been held for a very long time by a great many people, but until recently it was only a suspicion.
Now it is fact.
The irony is that neither McCarthy nor the series' production company have any interest at all in revealing the Bible to be less reliable than Christian, Jewish and Islamic religious leaders have claimed it to be.
McCarthy had a life-changing spiritual experience during his five-year incarceration, and the production company behind the series is CTVC - the Christian Television Company.
Some people might wonder what they are up to, and the answer lies in the Bible itself.
McCarthy was given a copy by the Muslim militiamen who were holding him captive in a windowless Beirut cell 15 years ago.
Religious men themselves, they assumed their hostages were too, and that they'd like their Book. McCarthy, with his Home Counties, Church of England upbringing, was not thrilled but he read his copy through from start to finish anyway, and then read it again.
Partly he had nothing else to do, but there was also the vague hope that he might find nspiration and solace among its pages.
What he read did not make him religious, but it did make him think. By turns he found the stories comforting and irritating, encouraging and depressing. Here he was, a few miles up the road from where many of the Bible's events had taken place, and what had changed? The conflict in which he had found himself a victim was just the latest chapter, he realised, in a very ancient, on-going story of conflicts and rivalry.
Indeed, if the Biblical record were accurate and Jew and Palestinian were embroiled in a war commissioned by God, what hope was there for reconciliation and long-term peace?
McCarthy's imprisonment was turning a happy-go-lucky Jack the Lad into a grown man with serious concerns. And when at last he was released, the new McCarthy continued to wonder if the Middle East was really locked into some kind of divinely-ordained blood-soaked fate, or was there a greater truth which could set it free?
The thought continued to pester him, and eight years after his release he returned to a part of the world he had thought he would never go back to in order to make a series of 12 programmes for Radio 4 called John McCarthy's Bible Journey.
It was broadcast towards the end of 1999, and in it he explored the extent to which allegories and myths had been rolled up to serve a politically-motivated, nation-preserving purpose.
The series was heard by Alan Ereira, a freelance TV programme maker.
He says: "I had been trying to get a series on archaeology and the Old Testament on to TV for years not the 'We've found Noah's Ark and Sodom and Gomorrah' rubbish, but something that explored the real issues and modern scholarship. By happy coincidence, CTVC eventually sold a closely related idea to ITV and invited me on board. "I'm not a Christian (Jewish, actually). I am an historian working in TV. John's series on Radio 4 was another happy coincidence. I was very impressed with McCarthy, the nicest guy, thoughtful, clever and professional." The result of their collaboration is a six-part series, It Ain't Necessarily So, presented by John McCarthy, directed by Ereira for CTVC and to go out on Sunday evenings in late November on ITV.
A book accompanying the series, with an introduction by McCarthy, has been written by Matthew Sturges, and when McCarthy came to Leeds for a book-signing session at Borders Bookshop, he told me he was surprised to find, when he was in Israel working on the TV series, that most of the Bible's unravelling was being done by Israeli scholars.
One of them, Professor Ze'ev Herzog of the University of Tel Aviv's Institute of Archaeology told him that he had no wish to undermine the Bible's role as underpinning his religion and culture, but he wanted the politicians to realise it provided no basis for their policies and actions.
Herzog's research has led him to the conclusion - widely shared by his colleagues - that there had been no Exodus from Egypt, no invasion by Joshua and that the Israelites had developed slowly and were originally Canaanites.
An article published in October 1999 laying out these findings caused a furore, but Herzog was never personally threatened. Another scholar McCarthy met, however, cannot be named in the book because he has been.
The stories which archaeology now show to be a mix of highly-embroidered folk tales and fables have, as their theme, the idea that Yahweh gave the Children of Israel domination over the land of Canaan as a reward for being alone of all the people at that time to worship him, the one true God. Those same stories, remarks McCarthy, have encouraged modern Israelites to treat the Palestinians as casually as their ancestors are supposed to have treated the Canaanites.
But the word "Israel" is now known to mean "Fighter for El," and El was a Canaanite god. Furthermore, the most common religious objects found in excavations throughout Israel are small female figures, and two stones dating from the eighth century BC have been found with Hebrew inscriptions referring to Yahweh and his consort Asherah.
Many Biblical scholars and archaeologists say evidence points strongly to the probability that the Bible as we know it was put together sometime after the ninth century BC because it is only from then on that events recounted in the Bible begin to be referred to in other, contemporary records. The seventh and eight centuries BC were a period of great upheaval which saw the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BC.
The ruler of the smaller, surviving twin kingdom of Judah was King Hezekiah, and there is evidence that it was he who made Yahweh alone the focus of all worship in his endangered kingdom. In 641BC Josiah came to the throne, and it is surmised that as a means of creating a sense of shared nationhood, he defined the practices of Judaism and edited the collected legends and folk-tales of his people into an original version of the Bible.
McCarthy writes: "Leaving Israel with my understanding of the Bible's historical worth ompletely revised, I felt liberated. The tales of conquest and genocide inspired or ordered by God that had disturbed me when I was a victim of the Middle East conflict, are now just stories - an understandable product of a time when a people had their backs against the wall, when self-preservation demanded a great national statement and historical justification."
McCarthy's spiritual moment happened before his captors gave him a Bible. He was in solitary confinement and what inner resources he had had to sustain him up until then were all used up.
He was being overwhelmed by the hopelessness of his situation and says: "I prayed for help and the next moment I was swept from my despair and depression and felt elated and even an extraordinary sense of euphoria. I felt overwhelmingly confident that it would work out. It was a stunning event."
He has no doubt that it was the result of praying, but doesn't know if the strength came from outside him or from within. Perhaps he had an adrenalin rush - he has read that it can happen - but did he get the rush because he prayed for help?
Speculating on what happened to him and why doesn't really interest him. He just knows it changed him.
As for the Bible, that offered invaluable help with the self-examination and soul-searching which captivity demanded. And it taught him important lessons about the nature of power, human frailty and the value of hope. It taught him the ability to use suffering creatively. It also inspired him to differentiate its spiritual worth from its historical validity, misreadings of which have led to so many woes.

It Ain't Necessarily So is published by Headline at £18.99.

Kosh

Stephen - do you know when this series will be aired? What station?

Thanks.

Mendeh

Okay, having got a bit more of a grip on the history of the second intermediate period, I don't think my last post was quite right, either. I think you've been barking up the wrong tree, as I think you've actually skirted over what would be a far more likely candidate for the basis of the exodus myth, which would have taken place somewhere between 1550 and 1525 BC. It's an exodus out of Egypt of huge proportions that we KNOW occurred, involving 'Asiatics' ('aamu' in Egyptian), some of which would have definitely been immigrants from the Palestinian area.

During the second intermediate period, the power-base was effectively split in two; Egyptian kings ruled an area from Thebes; and the Hyksos raiders ruled an area from the city called Avaris on the Nile Delta. Ahmose, the pharaoh ruling from Thebes, having regained a lot of the power lost when the Hyksos began controlling lower Egypt, mounted a huge assault of Avaris with his army. What exactly happened next is unclear: the Hyksos built a huge defensive wall around the city to keep the Theban army out, but eventually seem to have succombed to Egyptian demands, probably because the Thebans had much better quality armaments: at this period they were using Tin bronze, whilst the soldiers in Avaris seem to have been using only unalloyed copper, the victims of a warrior elite ideology that no longer corresponded to reality.
Manetho's history of Egypt, or at least, a portion of it that Josephus claims to be directly quoting, says that the Theban blockade on the city dragged on and on, until eventually Ahmose was forced to make a treaty with the Hyksos, sparing their lives in return for them leaving Egypt. This is corroborated by the archaeological evidence; there is a clear cultural break between the last Hyksos stratum and the early 15th dynasty in Avaris, which ushered in a whole new style of ceramic-ware, mirrored also in Memphis. After this break, there is no evidence of any continued occupation by people with a mixed Egyptian/middle bronze age culture in Avaris, and in some parts of the city, occupation ceased altogether. You're looking at a massive exodus, started, if you believe Josephus on this matter, because the Theban blockade on the city was unsatisfactory for both sides.
What makes this slightly more interesting is that the cult of Seth had been dominant in the city of Avaris then; the cult that continued and expanded during the New Kingdom, and retained attributes of a Syrian Storm-God.

The sacking of Avaris marked the first step in a series of campaigns needed to secure the unity of Egypt (the exact order is a little dodgy, but this follows Ahmose's account):
Avaris campaign ----&gt;
campaign in southern Palestine, possibly to destroy the remnants of the Hyksos, also possibly to exploit the vacuum left to push into Palestine and even as far as Lebanon - there are references to imported Lebanon cedars, and 'Fenekhu' (=Phoenician) bullocks.
-----&gt; campaign in Nubia--------&gt;
Putting dowm two uprisings in Egypt; one a Nubian incursion from the north into southern Egypt, probably there just to loot and pillage, as it made no attempt to engage the King's army; and the other a serious rebellion by a man called Teti-an, probably who had been serving under the Hyksos - the severity of the rebellion is indicated by the severity with which it was treated; we are informed that "all his troop were WIPED OUT".


However, I also turned up some information that a lot of the stuff Hatshepsut had written was highly propagandised (the conclusion of Bietak, working at Tell-el-Dab'a); ex. She says "I have banished the abomination of the gods (i.e. the Hyksos), and the earth has removed their footprints", when a clear Hyksos legacy remained in Egypt; the chariot, which they had introduced.


Now, it seems to me that this is a far better candidate for a historical basis for the Exodus, pretty much purely on the basis that there's good evidence that it actually happened, and it fits the main events fairly well, unlike the hypothetical escape you've been trying to draw out of the reign of Amenhotep II:

- A large community are forced out of Egypt, containing a large number of immigrants from Palestine.
- The Egyptian force pursues a campaign in Palestine directly after they've pushed the Hyksos out of Egypt (remembered by having the Egyptians pursuing the Israelites while they're fleeing - and if the Palestinian immigrants tried going back home, then the Egyptian army would indeed be following them over the Red Sea)
- The main cult was influenced by a thunder-god cult, and Yahweh's original form was a thundergod.

Now, this is a far cry from the Biblical story, but this is exactly what you'd expect given that it remained an aural tale for centuries, and was only compiled in anything like its final form in the first century BC. But most of all, we know that this particular exodus actually happened; there are historical and archiological records showing that it was a massive, real event, and so far, you have managed to find anything but evidence of the physical exodus itself in Amenhotep II's reign!

Stephen T-B

Kosh - this series was to have been screened on the UK's Channel Four on Sunday evenings, starting last Novermber.
I think the folk in charge lost their nerve but I've put a call through to their press office to find out how things stand.
S.T-B

davidH

I'll make this here a quick reply.
I'm off on my holidays this Saturday and I'll be away for a month... so I won't be able to write until I get back. I'm not sure what to do - can they keep this topic open, or do they lock it and open it when I get back?

Anyway - I've got a favour to ask of you Mendeh (I probably will email you from time to time),
could you post here a timeline of the 18th dynasty pharohs - Hatshepsut to Akhnaton.

Put in when they were born, and when they died - also where their reigns overlapped and all.
Thanks a lot.

I'm interested in what you say about the time being up the spout, thanks.