(NOTE: This is a draft version of Chapter One of The Moses Mystery
and due to the publisher's subsequent copyediting and minor revisions
this text may vary slightly from the published version.)
Chapter 1: The Problem of Israel's Origins
Who were the earliest Israelites? Where did they come from and under
what circumstances did they rise to power in Canaan? These questions,
which bear on the intellectual origins of western civilization,
engage the finest minds in biblical studies, but the answers, like
Tantalus's fruit, remain just out of reach.
The bible tells us that the Hebrew nation originated with Abraham, in
Mesopotamia, Ur of the Chaldees to be specific. From Ur, he and his
family traveled to Haran, and from there to Canaan, where God
promised him that his descendants would rule over the land. This
covenant passed on to his son Isaac, and then to Isaac's son Jacob
(later called Israel.) Jacob had twelve sons, and one of them,
Joseph, became Prime Minister of Egypt. At Joseph's invitation Jacob
and his family, less than seventy males in all, left Canaan and moved
to Egypt. At first, they were warmly received, but as their number
rapidly swelled the good will turned to fear and anger. Israel soon
found itself condemned to forced labor. Eventually, a hero named
Moses arose from the enslaved ranks, and challenged the mighty
Pharaoh to a duel of gods. Egypt's multitude of false idols were no
match for the one true god of Moses, and the Israelite hero
triumphantly led his people out of that country and towards the
promised land of Canaan. Just forty years later, the Israelites
marched into their new homeland and, by force of arms, imposed their
territorial claims on the native population.
Unfortunately, there is not a shred of evidence outside the bible to
corroborate these claims.
What Scholars Believe
Currently, biblical scholars recognize three possible scenarios
explaining Israel's rise to power in Canaan: 1) the
"conquest" theory: that Israel came in from the outside and
conquered the land; 2) the "peaceful settlement" theory: in
which it is argued that Israelites entered gradually, settling in the
sparsely populated areas of the central highlands; and 3) the
"peasant revolt" or "social revolution" theory:
that Canaanites rose up against their overlords.
Despite this wide range of disagreement, there are certain related
matters, consistent with the biblical account, upon which there is
virtual unanimity. The consensus holds that prior to the Hebrew
monarchy, Israel was bound together in a confederation of Semitic
tribes. This political arrangement supposedly evolved over several
centuries from associations of Semite-speaking groups of pastoral
nomads. Scholars also believe that before Israel became a power in
Canaan at least some portion of the Hebrew population (if not all)
journeyed into Egypt and lived there under hostile circumstances.
Additionally, historians accept that the crucial stages occurred in
the twelfth or eleventh century BC, when hundreds of new settlements
were founded in the hill country of central Canaan (although there is
no specific evidence connecting any of these settlements to Israel.)
But certain questions persist.
Where is the Evidence?
How do we know, independent of the bible, that Israel's presence in
Egypt was preceded by an earlier presence in Palestine? Why is there
no archaeological record of Israel or the Hebrew people prior to the
thirteenth century BC? Why is there no extra-biblical evidence
linking any specific Semitic tribes to the Hebrew people? And, why
did the so-called "ten lost tribes" disappear from history
without an archaeological trace of their prior existence?
For Israel's history before the thirteenth century we have only the
biblical account, but that account rests upon a shaky foundation.
Modern scholars now recognize that the early books of the bible
weren't fully edited until after the seventh century BC, and perhaps
centuries later. (There is no extant portion of biblical text dated
earlier than the third century BC.) The final version attempted to
weave a seamless narrative out of a diverse collection of
contradictory historical claims that reflected clashing political
philosophies and opposing religious doctrines. The resulting
compilation indicates numerous compromises with the truth.
Even if we assume that the bible derives from earlier sources yet to
be discovered, it still describes events that occurred more than a
thousand years before its completion. In those ancient times few
peoples had a strong tradition of historical writing and perspective.
Much of what passed for history consisted of myth, legend, and rumor,
elements of which are pervasive throughout the biblical text.
(Herodotus, widely considered the father of historical writing, dates
to the fifth century BC—approximately the same time that the
early books of the bible were edited into their final form—and
draws substantially on myths and rumors for much of what he records.)
Though several nations had written records in the second, third and
fourth millennia from which modern historians can draw conclusions,
there is no evidence that Israel was among them.
Quite simply, where a group of people lived in the sixth century BC,
and what language it spoke, and what it believed about its historical
roots a thousand years earlier, does not, absent independent
corroboration, prove where it lived a thousand years earlier, what
language it originally spoke, and what took place in its formative
years. Certainly, little in the biblical text would be outside the
knowledge of learned Hebrew scribes in the sixth century BC.
Furthermore, the many anachronistic phrases in the early books of the
bible point to a very late editing. This is not to say that in this
later time the Hebrews did not speak a Semitic language or strongly
identify with Semitic culture. We just do not know that this was
always so.
A New Model for Israel's Origins
In this book I offer a radical new solution to the puzzle of Israel's
origins, one that places its earliest roots in fourteenth century
Egypt during the reign of the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten. I call
this the "Atenist" theory, after the unique deity that he
worshipped. It holds that the refugees departing Egypt during what
later became known as the Exodus were native Egyptians, devoted
followers of the pharaoh Akhenaten.
This king's monotheistic religious reforms triggered massive
resentment throughout the country. Less than two decades after
Akhenaten’s death Pharaoh Horemheb launched an aggressive
counter-revolution aimed at suppressing all memory of the hated
predecessor. Akhenaten's loyal followers suffered greatly. They were
removed from office, stripped of honor and property, and in many
instances banished from the country. These persecuted Egyptians
united together, rose in rebellion and formed the House of Israel.
Akhenaten
The pharaoh Akhenaten, ninth king of the Eighteenth Dynasty ruled
Egypt for seventeen years in the middle of the fourteenth century. A
monotheist, militantly devoted to the worship of Re-Herakhty, the
sun-god whom he believed manifest in the form of Aten, the solar
disc, his revolutionary religious doctrine allowed for no
competition. Especially offensive to him was the worship of Amen,
chief deity of Thebes and widely celebrated as the king of the gods.
So strong was his animosity that in an act of theological intolerance
never before experienced in that nation's millennia-long history, he
dispatched agents throughout the land to shut down the god's temples
and excise the offensive name from walls, tombs, statues, and inscriptions.
Another target of the king's wrath was the popular god Osiris, Judge
of the Afterlife. Under Akhenaten, the Osirian funerary practices so
central to the Egyptian way of life were purged of all polytheistic
symbolism. After Year 5 of his reign, the plural form for
"god" no longer appeared in any writing of that time. In
keeping with his proscription against graven images, the scribes
substituted phonetic spelling for those anthropomorphic and
theriomorphic signs used in script.
Akhenaten's monotheism did not take root and Egypt did not remember
him kindly. In fact, they did not remember him at all. Pharaoh
Horemheb systematically destroyed all public evidence of the
heretic's existence. Workers chiseled out Akhenaten’s
identifying hieroglyphs wherever they were found. They demolished his
newly built capital city and quarried the stones for new building
projects in other parts of the country. They even omitted his name
from the king-lists. He had become a nonperson, the nation doing all
it could to forget he ever lived. Today, he is one of the best known
of all pharaohs.
Modern Egyptologists learned of Akhenaten’s existence only in
the late nineteenth century, when teams of archaeologists visited the
ruins of an unidentified city in an area now known as Amarna. These
remains were what were left of the king's demolished capital city. On
some of the walls, portrayed in an artistic style considered an
unusual departure from traditional Egyptian portraiture, they found
the deformed image of an unknown pharaoh and his beautiful queen. The
hieroglyphs indicated that this strange monarch was named Akhenaten,
a pharaoh of whom they had no prior knowledge.
Continued exploration of this city produced a number of informative
discoveries. These included the famous Amarna letters, stone tablets
containing vivid reports of the turbulent state of foreign relations
in the time of both Akhenaten and his father, Amenhotep III. In other
Egyptian cities excavators discovered not only other structures
attributed to this reign but also many of the stones transported from
Akhenaten’s capital city, some with fragments of revealing text.
Before long, a sketchy profile of this monotheistic revolutionary
took shape.
At first, his reputation soared. Historians hailed him as "the
first individual," a religious reformer, a great thinker,
witness to the truth, a magnificent poet, an artistic revolutionary,
even the forerunner to Moses. But, even the most aggressive advocates
of a link between Moses and Akhenaten still adhered to the Semitic
model of Israel's roots.
Sigmund Freud, in Moses and Monotheism, argued that Moses was
an Egyptian noble who followed the Atenist beliefs of the heretic
pharaoh. He even identified Aten with Adonai, a name Hebrews use for
God. On the issue of the Hebrew people, however, he could only
speculate as to how Moses came to be the leader of Semitic tribes. He
suggested that Moses must have served as an Egyptian governor who
became sympathetic to the Hebrew plight.
Thomas Mann, in his novel Joseph the Provider, reflected much
of the speculation in the early years of Akhenaten's discovery. He
made Akhenaten the pharaoh who elevated Joseph to the position of
Prime Minister of Egypt. In all other respects, though, he adopted
the traditional biblical account.
In recent years Akhenaten's luster has worn thin. Today,
Egyptologists dismiss him as a voluptuary, an intellectual
lightweight, an atheist, ultimately a maniac. They sharply reject any
connection between Akhenaten and Moses. Summing up the view of most
Egyptologists, Donald B. Redford, Director of the Akhenaten Temple
Project and one of the chief students of the Amarna Age (as
Akhenaten's reign is known), writes: "A vast gulf is fixed
between the rigid, coercive, rarified monotheism of the pharaoh and
Hebrew henotheism; which in any case we see through the distorted
prism of texts written 700 years after Akhenaten's death" One
historian after another, when reciting the history of Akhenaten's
monotheism, adds similar disclaimers.
This sentiment, so widely endorsed, raises, at least to me, a
question. If the view we have of early Hebrew religion is distorted
through the prism of texts written seven hundred years after the
death of Akhenaten (i.e., the bible, which received its present
written form no earlier than the sixth century BC) how can it easily
be concluded that the original religious views of Moses were any less
a rigid, coercive, rarefied monotheism than that of Akhenaten's?
Horemheb
The pharaoh responsible for waging the campaign against Akhenaten's
memory was Horemheb, who came to the throne about fourteen years
after Akhenaten's death. He demolished Akhenaten’s buildings,
erased the heretic's name from monuments and persecuted the remnant
of Akhenaten's following. Those holding any form of public office or
important position were denounced as corrupt and ineffective. He
removed them from office, punished many of them and, in some cases,
banished them from Egypt. The destruction of Akhenaten's capital city
must have displaced tens of thousands of inhabitants, many of them
priests, soldiers, and members of aristocratic families.
Horemheb had no royal blood. A popular general, he came to the throne
when the royal bloodline ended. He also left no blood heirs. In the
year before he died, he appointed RamessesÊI, another military
figure, as his coregent. Ramesses outlived Horemheb by less than
three years and during his brief reign he appointed his son, Sethos
I, as coregent. Egyptologists mark the death of Horemheb as the
dividing line between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties of Egypt.
Moses
In this book I will argue that Moses was the chief priest of the Aten
cult and that at the time of Akhenaten's death Moses fled from Egypt
to avoid execution. Upon Horemheb's death he returned to Egypt and
attempted a military coup, the purpose of which was to restore the
Aten cult to the throne. His allies included the persecuted remnant
of Akhenaten's following, large numbers of badly treated sick and
diseased Egyptians, assorted opponents of Ramesses I, and an army
belonging to the Canaanite kingdom of Shechem, whose rulers were
openly hostile to Egypt's demands for submission.
Moses' actions brought the nation to the brink of civil war. The
confrontation ended with a negotiated truce that guaranteed the
insurgent army safe passage out of the country. This negotiated truce
and safe passage out of Egypt was the Exodus.
As the centuries passed, like most immigrant groups, the refugees
identified increasingly with the language, culture, and traditions of
their new neighbors. At the same time they lost touch with their own
roots. As the biblical authors wrote repeatedly, Canaanite culture
had a powerful pull on the Israelites and they frequently succumbed
to its enticements. Despite unrelenting apostasy, however, one truth
remained with them. In Egypt they were oppressed and a god like no
other delivered them from bondage.
Corollaries
This new model of Israel's origins has several corollaries. 1)
Israel's appearance in Canaan occurred suddenly in the late
fourteenth-early thirteenth century BC, and not after several
centuries of evolution from tribes of Semite-speaking nomads; 2) the
first Israelites spoke Egyptian and adhered to Egyptian cultural
practices and beliefs; 3) no confederation of Semitic tribes preceded
the Hebrew monarchy; and 4) the "ten lost tribes"
disappeared not because of the Assyrian conquest but because they
never existed.
Dating the Exodus
When did Israel leave Egypt and under what circumstances did it do
so? These are the central questions that we must answer before the
Atenist theory can be validated, but testimony is lacking. Outside
the bible there is no evidence that the Exodus even occurred. It is
only because of the fervency with which ancient Israel proclaimed
such a demeaning origin that historians give any credit at all to the
biblical account.
Within academic circles these questions provoke heated argument.
There is nothing inherently implausible about dating the Exodus to
just after the end of Horemheb's reign. Doing so, though, raises a
host of problems for those who would deny a connection between Moses
and Akhenaten, and most modern scholars do deny such a connection.
Consequently, all popular solutions to the Exodus problem carefully
place a chronological wall between these two innovative thinkers.
The Majority View
The majority view dates the Exodus to the middle of the reign of
Ramesses II, at least seventy to eighty years after Akhenaten's death
and outside the range acceptable for the "Atenist" model.
In support of this position proponents argue that the Exodus must
have occurred close in time to the onset of the previously mentioned
Canaanite settlements in the twelfth and eleventh centuries BC.
In the previous century most scholars believed that the Exodus
occurred sometime during the reign of Merneptah, successor to
Ramesses II, but an archaeological find attributed to that pharaoh's
reign (see below) necessitated that the Exodus precede him. Also in
favor of Ramesses II being the pharaoh of the Exodus is that there
were many years of peace in the latter part of his sixty-seven years
of rule. Such a condition suggested a likely time frame in which to
allow the Hebrews to wander in the wilderness without Egyptian retribution.
Pi-Ramesse
Perhaps the most important piece of evidence cited in favor of
Ramesses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus is the biblical claim that
when the Pharaoh ordered the enslavement of the Hebrew people he set
them to work at the city of "Raamses". Scholars uniformly
accept that the biblical city of "Raamses" corresponds to
the Egyptian city of Pi-Ramesse, the royal residence of Ramesses II.
What makes Pi-Ramesse intriguing is that the city didn't receive that
name until the reign of Ramesses II. Prior to that time it was known
as Avaris, which had been the capital city and stronghold of the
earlier Hyksos kings. Biblical scholars argue that if the Hebrews
worked in the city of "Raamses" and that name first came
into existence during the reign of Ramesses II, then the Exodus must
have come no earlier than the reign of this pharaoh. Additionally,
based on the Merneptah victory stele (see below) scholars recognize
that the Exodus had to occur prior to the reign of Pharaoh Merneptah,
the immediate successor to Ramesses II. Such a sequence of events,
say the scholars, indicates that the Exodus could only have happened
in the reign of Ramesses II.
That argument has a number of flaws. First, according to the bible,
the pharaoh who set the Hebrews to work on "Raamses" could
not have been the pharaoh of the Exodus. His actions occurred before
the birth of Moses. The Exodus occurred in Moses' eightieth year.
Ramesses II only ruled for 67 years. His reign wasn't long enough to
encompass both the birth of Moses and the Exodus.
Second, again according to the bible, while Moses was in exile from
Egypt, the pharaoh on the throne died and a new pharaoh came to
power. This new pharaoh was the pharaoh of the Exodus. So if Ramesses
II had to be on the throne for the work order at "Raamses"
then one of his successors had to be the pharaoh of the Exodus. But,
because of the aforementioned problem with the Merneptah victory
stele an Exodus in the reign of a successor to Ramesses II has been
almost universally rejected.
Third and most important, the bible connects the city of
"Raamses" with Joseph, who placed his father and his
brethren, 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.
Following the logic of the biblical scholars, Joseph would have had
to have lived in the reign of Ramesses II. Since the pharaoh of the
enslavement acted after Joseph died both the pharaoh of the
enslavement and the pharaoh of the Exodus would have to have been
successors to Ramesses II, even more objectionable.
What these conflicts show is that the author of the biblical passages
referring to "Raamses" wrote at a time when the city
of Avaris had become known by the name Pi-Ramesse. This could have
been anytime after the reign of Ramesses II. The events described as
happening there could have occurred before the name change in the
reign of Ramesses II but the author could have substituted the name
he knew at the time for the original name of Avaris. Later, when we
consider Egyptian accounts of the Exodus we will see that the
Egyptian historians placed the people involved in the Exodus in the
city of Avaris rather than Pi-Ramesse.
Other Objections to Ramesses II
Against the idea of placing the Exodus in the reign of Ramesses II,
critics note that Ramesses II was a strong military leader who had a
significant presence in Palestine. (He engaged the powerful Hittites
in a major military battle as far north as Syria.) How could Israel
have successfully resisted such a powerful emperor and there be no
record of the confrontation? Even if the Egyptians had suffered some
sort of military defeat, we know from historical records that the
Egyptians were not averse to lying about what occurred and claiming
victory. "An expulsion of alien forces" is how the
Egyptians might have put it, if the Israelites were a non-Egyptian people.
For the Hebrews to have avoided an Egyptian reprisal so soon after
the Exodus would have required a much weaker Egypt. Such a situation
was evident in the reign of Horemheb, whose final days on the throne
preceded Ramesses II by less than fifteen years. Under his
predecessors, beginning with Akhenaten about a quarter of a century
earlier, Egyptian hegemony in Canaan and Syria had been severely
eroded by the expanding influence of the Hittites and the
rebelliousness of many subject kings. Little is known about
Horemheb's activities in foreign policy, but no evidence indicates
that he significantly reinstated Egyptian authority. Furthermore,
other evidence suggests that he abandoned a series of Palestinian
fortresses, indicating a weak Egyptian presence during his reign.
Interestingly, if the Exodus represented a rebellion by the remnants
of Akhenaten's following, it would explain why there are no public
Egyptian records of the confrontation between the two sides. The
pharaohs meant to wipe out any record of Akhenaten's existence. To
memorialize any such confrontation in public displays, even those
claiming victory over the heretic, would only help perpetuate
memories of the hated king. This does not mean that private reports
or disguised accounts didn't exist, and in later chapters we will
examine evidence of what these other records had to say about this affair.
Minority Views
There are also some strong minority opinions about the date of the
Exodus, all of which place it well before the reign of Akhenaten. One
such theory, partially based on powerful volcanic eruptions in nearby
Crete, dates the Exodus to about 1450. These powerful explosions,
some scholars suggest, caused the parting of the sea and the pillars
of fire and smoke described in the biblical account. Until recently,
most archaeologists thought this eruption took place around 1450, but
new evidence now indicates that they took place about 1645 BC, well
before any acceptable date for the Exodus.
The year 1450 is also troublesome for other reasons. Egypt was then
at the height of its power, its authority extending deep into Syria
and lasting almost another hundred years. It is hard to believe that
a rebel nation could successfully resist Egypt's superior military
resources, or that records of the time, in Egypt and elsewhere, would
omit any mention of such a notable achievement.
Another theory, once widely held but now much less so, holds that the
Exodus corresponded to the expulsion of the Hyksos kings at the start
of the Eighteenth Dynasty, a date in the mid sixteenth century BC.
The Hyksos were Asian chieftains, probably of Semitic background,
who, between the eighteenth and sixteenth centuries, ruled
considerable portions of Egyptian territory. Josephus, the Jewish
historian of the first century AD, was the first to identify the
expulsion of the Hyksos with the Exodus and for much of later history
his argument was influential. The problem with such an early date,
though, is that it creates a post-Exodus period of over three hundred
years in which Israel does not appear in the historical record.
Contradictory Biblical Evidence
Dating the Exodus is problematic because evidence of its occurrence
appears exclusively in the bible, and what little it tells is
contradictory. Exodus 12:40-41, for example, places the Exodus 430
years after the start of Israel's sojourn in Egypt (i.e., from
Jacob's arrival) whereas Genesis 15:13-14 indicates that four hundred
years transpired from the birth of Isaac to the end of the bondage.
Both claims can not be true. Jacob was born in Isaac's sixtieth year.
He didn't arrive in Egypt until his one hundred and thirtieth year.
If the sojourn lasted 430 years, then the Exodus would have to have
occurred 620 years after Isaac's birth. On the other hand, if the
Exodus occurred 400 years after Isaac was born, then the sojourn
could only have been 210 years long. Other biblical passages raise
additional problems.
Even if we favored one biblical claim against another, what
historical event would permit us to anchor that claim to a specific
date? There is the assertion in 1 Kings 6:1 that the Exodus occurred
480 years before Solomon started work on the temple. This is somewhat
corroborated by Judges 11:26, which suggests that Jephthah judged
Israel three hundred years after the Exodus. Since historians date
Solomon's ascension to c.970-950, that claim would yield a potential
Exodus date of 1450-1430.
However, because of the aforementioned problems with such a date,
most scholars maintain that the expression "480 years"
derives from a misunderstanding. According to this view, the biblical
author meant to describe twelve generations of Israelites (since 1
Chronicles 6 shows twelve generations from the Exodus to Solomon) and
assigned forty years to each generation. But, the argument continues,
forty years are too many for a generation. A more realistic
twenty-five years, say proponents of this argument, would make a
better fit, giving a total span of three hundred years. Such a
procedure would date the Exodus to 1270-1250, during the reign of
Ramesses II, right where the majority would like it.
That there is no reference to a generation lasting forty years,
twenty-five years, or any other number of years, does not dissuade
proponents of this surgical reconstruction. Nor can we find any
convincing proof that the biblical author meant "twelve
generations" instead of "480 years." In fact, the
number of years assigned to a generation is wholly arbitrary. In this
case, scholars chose "twenty-five years" because it
conveniently places the Exodus exactly where the majority would have it.
This solution also ignores another problem. There is no extrabiblical
evidence that David, Solomon, or the vast and glorious empire over
which they ruled ever existed. That a Hebrew nation existed cannot be
denied, and most certainly it had a king. The name
"Solomon", however, is simply an adopted title meaning
"peaceable." It could be a title adopted by many Hebrew kings.
If a King Solomon ever had such an extensive kingdom as described in
the bible, it seems to have escaped the notice of both its subjects
and its neighbors—the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Assyrians,
Babylonians, Amorites, Canaanites, Edomites, Moabites. All of these
nations, so far, remain mute on the subject of this Hebrew kingdom.
History contains many rumors about mighty kingdoms that never
existed, but rarely does one never hear of a great kingdom that did
exist. Such an ephemeral kingdom can not serve as an anchor for
biblical dating.
Additionally, the date proposed by scholars for Solomon's reign
conflicts with biblical chronology. As commentators have noted, if
you add up the length of reign for each of Solomon's successors as
king of Judea, the total time from the year he began building the
temple to the destruction of the temple is 430 years. Since
independent sources permit us to date the destruction of the temple
to 587 BC, the biblical account would require that Solomon's initial
building program begin in 1017, about sixty years earlier than
scholars would allow.
In opposition to this earlier date, historians argue that the 430
years from the beginning of the temple to the destruction of the
temple is the same duration as the Hebrew sojourn in Egypt, and that
the numbers have been juggled to create a parallel history in
post-Exodus times. This may be a legitimate attack on the post-Exodus
chronology, but it simply cuts Solomon loose from any chronological
anchor. Since we can't accurately date the start of Solomon's reign,
we can't use that event in order to date the Exodus.
The Earliest Archaeological Evidence for Israel
The Merneptah Stele
Although history does not tell us of the Exodus, it does supply some
help in setting the latest possible date. The earliest nonbiblical
reference to the name Israel appears on an Egyptian stele dating to
the latter half of the thirteenth century BC, about 100-125 years
after Akhenaten's death. It is unique in that Egypt never used the
name again. One has to skip forward almost four hundred years,
completely bypassing the reigns of David and Solomon, before its next
appearance outside the bible.
Commemorating Pharaoh Merneptah's victory over the combined forces of
Libya and the Sea Peoples, the monument preserves an effusive hymn
full of national joy and enemy disgrace. Tucked away near the very
end, is this poem:
The princes are prostrate, saying: "Mercy!"
Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows.
Desolation is for Tehenu; Hatti is pacified;
Plundered is the Canaan with every evil;
Carried off is Ashkelon; seized upon is Gezer;
Yanoam is made as that which does not exist;
Israel is laid waste, his seed is not;
Hurru is become a widow for Egypt!
All lands together, they are pacified;
Everyone who was restless, he has been bound.
The conquests claimed have no connection to the Libyan war. They
depict no historical truth. Their inclusion serves only as a poetic
attempt to portray Merneptah as a grand warrior.
A curious feature of this inscription is that Israel is the only name
with a grammatical determinative signifying people instead of land.
The grammar suggests to almost all biblical scholars that we have
here a picture of ancient Israel in its post-Exodus pre-Conquest stage.
This discovery caused quite a shock to the academic world of 1896,
the year in which the monument was discovered. At that time most
biblical and Egyptological scholars identified Merneptah as the
pharaoh of the Exodus. On this new evidence historians had to date
the event to an earlier time. But when?
If the Exodus happened not much earlier than the start of Ramesses
II, then Moses and Akhenaten would become childhood pals, educated
together and receiving their religious training in the great Egyptian
temple of Annu (the Greek Heliopolis, the biblical On). If scholars
wanted to separate these two revolutionaries, and they did, they had
to date the Exodus either late in the reign of Ramesses II or set it
at least two centuries earlier.
The Merneptah inscription also lends support to my claim that Israel
emerged suddenly in the fourteenth century BC, as opposed to the
current view that Israel evolved over several centuries from nomadic
tribes of Semite-speaking peoples. Prior to this inscription, no
record exists of either Israel or any of the tribes that made up the
Israelite tribal confederation. Where did this Israel come from? What
territory did it occupy? Why doesn't it have any history before this
point? The absence of answers suggests that this Israel was a
newcomer to the political scene?
The inscription does not tell us what language Israel spoke but it
does imply that Israel, despite its lack of identification with a
specific territory, stood as a powerful military force. The text
places it among several major political entities. (Hatti is
the Hittite kingdom, Hurru is the Hurrian kingdom, Ashkelon
and Gezer are two of the most substantial city-states in
Canaan.) The context suggests that it wouldn't have been listed if it
weren't thought to have been worthy of mention as a defeated force.
Its presence as a large powerful force without a territory of its own
suggests that this Israel came from somewhere else.
It should not have arrived there much earlier than the middle of the
reign of Ramesses II. Otherwise it would have likely been identified
with the territory where it was found. This suggests a time frame for
its arrival within forty years of the death of Horemheb. That time
frame would be consistent with both the biblical claim that it was
about forty years after the Exodus that Israel entered Canaan and the
Atenist theory that holds that the Exodus occurred shortly after the
death of Horemheb.
It is also interesting that the very first mention of the name Israel
occurs in Egyptian writing. That name does not appear again in the
historical record for almost four hundred years afterward.
The evidence, then, suggests that at a time consistent with both
biblical chronology and the "Atenist" model, Israel,
previously unknown in the historical record, suddenly appeared in
Canaan or in its neighboring territories with a powerful military
force. What we do not have is evidence that this Israel, at that
time, was a Semite-speaking people or ever inhabited Asia prior to
its departure from Egypt.
Jacob-Her
Concerning this last point, some comments about certain
archaeological finds are in order. As early as the seventeenth
century BC, Semite-speaking tribes and groups moved into the region
of the Nile delta. It is these groups from which the Hyksos
chieftains probably emerged and which formed the base of their
subsequent political power.
Scarabs from this era show many of the chieftains with Semitic names,
two of whom were Jacob-Her and Anat-Her. Linguists do
not know what the her element stands for, but Anat is a
well-known Palestinian goddess. Scholars are quick to see the name Jacob
on the other scarab, speculating about its connection to the biblical
Jacob. That the names are similar is true, but by analogy to the
Anat-her inscription, Jacob could have been the name of a Palestinian
god. At most, it only proves that the name Jacob existed in ancient
times. No evidence connects this Jacob-her in any way to the biblical Jacob.
Habiru
In these early times the archaeological records make frequent
reference to a class of people known as Habiru or 'Apiru, many of
whom were enslaved in Egypt. The term seems to be a classification or
slang expression for mercenaries, servants and outlaws, a term of
derogation often translated as "people of the dust." Many
scholars see in Habiru a source for the name Hebrew and
opinion shifts about on this from time to time. On the basis of
complicated philological issues scholars generally reject the connection.
In any event, the Habiru were not an ethnic group. Studies of Habiru
names show that they contained both Semitic and Indo-European
elements. If Hebrew is derived from Habiru it would most certainly be
a post-Exodus derivation, being used to describe the Israelites at a
time when they were not yet settled in a territory and therefore
exhibiting characteristics associated with the Habiru class. The name
Hebrew, as a term for the Israelites, is not attested to until late
in the first millennium.
The Patriarchal History
If ancient Israel originated in the aftermath of Akhenaten’s
religious revolution, we must also account for the patriarchal
history, the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These stories not
only take place centuries before Akhenaten, they also place the
Hebrew ancestors in Canaan, not Egypt. These accounts present vivid
portraits of colorful characters. They exhibit wide ranges of emotion
and personality, display virtues and flaws, describe many highly
interesting activities and tell of exciting events. They seem to have
few if any counterparts in Canaanite/Mesopotamian mythology.
Where do such fully developed histories come from? Does this vast
amount of narrative detail suggest that the biblical authors drew
upon folk histories of real characters? There is so much personality
in these stories that many scholars find it hard to believe that
these patriarchal families were made up out of whole cloth. One need
not believe all the events occurred to be tempted by such a view.
Nevertheless, the patriarchal history is false. Consider, for
example, this problem. The Book of Genesis ends with the death of
Joseph. The story picks up in the Book of Exodus with the birth of
Moses. This transition period encompasses several generations and,
allegedly, several centuries. In this time Israel grew from a handful
of people to over six hundred thousand males and their families. All
we are told about this transition is that the Pharaoh feared Israel
and reduced them to slavery in order to eliminate any threat.
It is precisely this gap in the history of Israel that is responsible
for all the debates about the date of the Exodus. Why does the bible
have such a detailed history of Israel's ancestors from Creation to
the death of Joseph and such a detailed history of Israel from the
birth of Moses to the end years of biblical history, and have such a
minimalist description of what occurred in the centuries in between?
One feels compelled to ask: in the several hundred years during which
Israel allegedly grew from a small family to a mighty kingdom to an
enslaved nation, did nothing of interest happen? Were there no tales
worth remembering, no accounts of heroism, no stories of inspiration,
no tales of faith challenged and/or lost, no good or bad deeds of note?
Furthermore, at the end of the Patriarchal history, Jacob set the
stage for massive conflict and intrigue in this period of missing
history. He denied the birthright to his three oldest sons, accusing
them of dastardly deeds. He appointed the tribe of Joseph, eleventh
in sequence of birth, as his heir designate, but, to Joseph's dismay,
the inheritance went to his younger son Ephraim rather than his
oldest son Manasseh. And to top it all off, after giving the crown to
Ephraim, Jacob then announced that the scepter shall not depart from
Judah, his fourth oldest son. Who was supposed to rule Israel,
Ephraim or Judah? How did these events affect the children of Israel
and their descendants?
How did the sons and the families handle these decisions? Was there
anger, joy, resistance, rebellion, acceptance? What went on in those
centuries? Why should there a biblical dark ages in the eyes of the
scribal redactors when everything else before and after is so clearly illuminated?
The answer is that what preceded the dark ages never existed. True
biblical history begins with the Exodus and the patriarchal history
is myth, pure and simple. And, in the some of the following chapters
we shall set forth the exact mythological sources from which most of
the patriarchal history derives.
By way of preview, however, let me briefly outline the argument.
Patriarchal history draws upon Egyptian mythology. Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob and their key family members correspond to a family of popular
Egyptian deities associated with the Egyptian god Osiris. Most of the
events depicted in the patriarchal accounts come directly from
Egyptian literary sources and themes, and we will examine the precise
mythological incidents that gave rise to the biblical sources.
If this evidence is as obvious as I suggest, the reader may well be
tempted to ask why biblical scholars and Egyptologists failed to
uncover these connections. There are a number of reasons for such oversights.
When Israel came out of Egypt, its people brought with them the many
stories about Egyptian gods and goddesses, stories that they believed
to be true histories of their country. But, because the Israelites
were militantly monotheistic, with a strong prejudice against the god
Osiris, the deities were transformed into human ancestors. As with
any immigrant group, after centuries of immersion in new cultures and
surroundings, the settlers adopted the traditions and beliefs of
their new neighbors, often integrating their old beliefs with the
newly learned traditions. And as the biblical prophets make clear
over and over, Canaanite culture exerted a mighty force over the Israelites.
The Egyptian deities, already transformed from gods to heroic human
ancestors, came to look less and less like Egyptians and more and
more like Canaanites. Atenist religious views melded with local
traditions. Over the centuries numerous political and religious feuds
developed. Old stories were retold in order to favor one group over
another. Then came conquest and destruction. Most of Israel
disappeared from history after the Assyrian conquests. Those
remaining were captured by Babylon and force fed Babylonian culture
and history. Shortly thereafter, the Hebrews were liberated from
Babylon by the Persians and close cultural contact existed between
these two nations.
In the morass of conflict Israel lost touch with its Egyptian roots.
By the time modern scholars came to review the history, the long
orthodox religious image of Israel as firmly rooted among Semitic
tribes wandering in Canaan and Mesopotamia was fixed in the western
mind. Biblical scholars saw no need to apply to Egypt the scholarly
intensity of research reserved for the Semitic world. Israel was
Canaanite. Biblical history was assumed true, at least in its
outline. That the biblical scribes and redactors could have committed
such a major error in location never entered the biblical mind.
The Twelve Tribes
Closely associated with the problem of the Patriarchal history is
that of the Twelve Tribes. They also originate, biblically, in the
pre-Egyptian period of Genesis, but their story carries forward from
the patriarchal period to the post-Exodus period. However, no
archaeological evidence demonstrates that this tribal coalition ever
existed nor, given the alleged history of Israel in Egypt, should we
have expected there to be.
Israel allegedly came into Egypt with just about seventy males. They
lived, according to the bible, mostly in the small territorial area
of Goshen. They left Egypt with over six hundred thousand males and
their families.
It seems inconceivable that over this time, in a narrow territory,
that such a large number of people could have maintained anything
such as a tribal structure. Certainly by that time, intermarriage
alone, which practice was common in biblical genealogy, would have
obviously wiped out anything resembling clear linear family
divisions. The biblical Israel emerging out of Egypt would have been
divided along class, religious and political lines, not the
artificial tribal structure that implies small isolated family clans.
How does it happen, then, that this fictional tribal history spans
both the mythological and historical portions of Israel's history?
Several factors influenced this development. As the evidence in the
following chapters develops, we will see that the original idea of
twelve tribes, or more specifically, twelve political entities,
originated in Egyptian traditions. After leaving Egypt, other factors
came into play.
At first the Egyptian emigrants dwelled peacefully in southern
Jordan. Then they moved north into central Jordan and west into
central Canaan, settling into what was then unoccupied territories.
While the bible alleges that Israel conquered Canaan at this time
(although elsewhere the bible casts doubt on this proposition), the
territory was already in the throes of a military invasion by
powerful outside forces known as the Sea Peoples. Mostly a coalition
of Greek warriors seeking a new homeland, the invaders established
themselves in several city-states along the Canaanite coast and in
the north Canaan territories. Their aggressiveness led to several
direct confrontations with the Egyptians, fighting with them on
Egyptian territory. (One such engagement is described in the
previously mentioned Merneptah stele.)
The most powerful and famous of these invaders was the Philistines
and they soon threatened all of Canaan, including their former Greek
allies settled into other city-states. In order to halt the
Philistine advance, I propose that the Israelites formed a
confederation with the other Sea Peoples states and local Canaanites
and out of this confederation came a new nation of Israel.
At this time, I will argue, Judah did not yet exist. The Judaeans
only entered the picture at the time of David, a Hebrew mercenary who
worked with and was trained by the Philistine warlords. David used
his newly learned military skills to form an effective military force
and seized control of much of the territory belonging to the
Israelite alliance. David declared himself king and established the
House of Judah. It was in the time of David that many of the stories
pitting Judah against Ephraim and other tribes came into being.
The Canaanite conquest served mostly as a Davidic myth to justify
Judaean control over the alliance. It relied more on tales of the Sea
Peoples invasion than it did on any Israelite actions. These conquest
stories found there way into the biblical corpus, and several verses
indicate that only Judah succeeded in conquering its designated
territories. The other tribes allegedly floundered in their efforts,
indicating that only Judah was justified in serving as head of the federation.
Outline of the Argument to be Presented
It is one thing to point out that there is no evidence corroborating
the biblical account of Israel's early years. It is quite another to
say that because of this lack of corroboration one can simply dismiss
the biblical claims and substitute whatever theory one wants. After
all, absent evidence to the contrary, it is possible that the broad
outlines of the biblical history are correct. To argue that Moses and
Akhenaten were theological comrades-in-arms and that the first
Hebrews were Akhenaten's persecuted followers simply because it is
theoretically possible does not make it so. Such coincidences provide
no solid proof for challenging what almost all biblical scholars
believe to be true. We need hard evidence, irrefutable arguments that
prove the case. I provide that evidence in the following chapters.
Chapter Two examines the famous and puzzling birth-death
chronology in Genesis 5 and 11. These passages, which provide a
continuous chronological link between the births and deaths of
twenty-three generations, beginning with Adam at the dawn of Creation
and ending with the birth of Abraham in the early part of the second
millennium BC, generate much controversy. Scholars casually dismiss
this chronology as worthless but in later chapters we will show that
this chronology provides a highly accurate record of Egyptian
dynastic history.
Chapter Three provides the background material necessary to
understand Egyptian chronology and the problems associated with
establishing an accurate history of Egyptian dynasties and kings.
Chapters Four through Seven cross reference Genesis chronology
with Egyptian dynastic history. The evidence shows that the Genesis
birth/death dates derive from Egyptian king-lists and provide an
exact one-to-one correlation with the starting dates for Egyptian
dynasties and for several important Egyptian kings. The correlations
begin with the foundation of the First Dynasty (c. 3,100 BC) and end
with the start of the Eighteenth Dynasty over fifteen hundred years
later. This chronological record enables us to place the mysterious
events surrounding the Exodus in their proper historical context.
Chapter Eight reviews the various problems associated with
dating the Exodus from biblical data. Then using the evidence of
Genesis-Egyptian date correspondences it places the biblical data
into chronological context and resolves the many contradictions. The
analysis places the Exodus in 1315 BC, during the coregency of
Ramesses I and Sethos I. Such a date means that Moses and Akhenaten
were children together, raised and educated at the same time in the
royal household of King Amenhotep III.
Chapter Nine provides an overview of historical matters
associated with pharaoh Akhenaten, including the nature of his
revolution, the deterioration of Egypt's foreign empire under his
reign, and the counter-revolution undertaken by Horemheb.
Chapter Ten moves from the biblical accounts of the Exodus and
looks at the event through Egyptian eyes, examining ancient Egyptian
texts and the writings of other classical historians. The Egyptian
materials parallel the biblical story in many areas but reverse the
roles of Moses and the pharaoh, making Moses the cruel ruler and
Pharaoh the young child who was hidden away and later returned to
liberate his people. Reducing the parallel themes to their essential
elements we learn how Egyptian mythological and literary motifs
helped shape the biblical story of Moses. Placing the Egyptian and
classical histories alongside the biblical accounts, we learn that
upon Horemheb's death Moses launched a military campaign aimed at
restoring the Atenists to the throne but that he failed in the effort
and led his followers out of Egypt.
Chapters Eleven through Thirteen place the Patriarchal history
in mythological perspective. The evidence shows how the early
Israelites adapted Egyptian myths about the god Osiris and his family
and transformed them into stories about distant human ancestors,
removing them from the magical realm of Egyptian religion and placing
them in the hands of the one and only god of Israel. The chapters
trace most of the major events in the lives of the Hebrew Patriarchs
and set forth many of the Egyptian myths and stories upon which the
biblical accounts were based.
Chapter Fourteen examines the matter of the Twelve Tribes of
Israel. There we find that even the biblical writers were unsure
about how many tribes existed or whether or not they conquered
Canaan. The evidence shows that the Exodus group originally included
only the two Rachel tribes of Joseph and Benjamin and that at a later
time the Rachel group united with remnants of the Greek Sea Peoples
and other non-Hebrew Canaanites to form an alliance against
Philistine encroachment. This new alliance became the House of Israel
but it still did not include the Twelve Tribes. At least three
alleged tribes, including Judah, Manasseh and Gad, and perhaps more
did not yet exist at this time. We also examine some Egyptian stories
that may have been responsible for the idea that Jacob had twelve
sons and that these sons formed a political alliance.
Chapter Fifteen summarizes the evidence presented in the
preceding chapters.
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