The Historicity of the Exodus

Parshat Bo

This week will focus on the historicity of the Biblical Exodus.  There is no doubt that the Exodus is one of the most inspiring stories in all of history.  The idea of a redemption of a distressed people in a foreign land who rise up and defeat their masters has inspired any group under similar situations, whether it be African slaves in America, or, as we'll see, the Jews themselves a millennium later when they were in exile in Babylon.  However, trying to pin the story of the Exodus to any specific time period is futile.  In order to demonstrate this, we're going to spend a lot of time, probably way too much time in fact, going through the history of Egypt and Palestine over roughly a millennium and a half.

The way I'll structure the post is to describe a particular period in time, and then afterwards discuss the various aspects of the Biblical story of the Exodus that seem to fit into this time period.  I'll consider the Exodus in this case, as one chunk of text that begins with Joseph's descent into Egypt and ends with the confrontation at Yam Suf (Reed Sea).

Before we start, I must impress upon you that the material is far vaster than can be covered in a single blog post.  Every paragraph below probably has at least one book discussing the topics contained therein.  It is an impossible task to cover every possible angle.  Nevertheless, I will attempt to be as thorough as I can.  Also, as a completely unrelated side note, Parshat Bo, was my bar-mitzvah parsha.

The Century of Hyksos Rule

The very first event [1] that seems to be related to the Exodus, and perhaps, the primal seed of the whole story, is the rule of the Hyksos kings.  We've already seen the Hyksos in a previous week, but I'll recap the basics of the historical period.  The Hyksos were a Semitic people who invaded Egypt, and ruled from about 1650 to 1550 BCE.  The Hyksos capital was at the city of Avaris, in the Easternmost branch of the Nile river.  In 1550 they were expelled by the Pharaoh Ahmose who claims to have chased them all the way into Canaan, where they settled.  Knowledge of the Hyksos is known from some inscriptions of that period. Also, excavations of Avaris, modern day, Tel-el-Daba, indicate Semitic elements in the Middle Bronze Age, as well as a destruction layer after which the Semitic elements vanish.

The Hyksos invasion and expulsion is the only historical event in which a large number of Semitic people exited Egypt and settled in Canaan, and for that reason alone it is very tempting to relate it to the Exodus story of the Bible.  However, there are even more reasons to draw connections.  The Jewish people in the Exodus are said to have settled in the land of Goshen, which is traditionally in the Eastern Nile region, the same area that the Hyksos ruled from.  The Hyksos invasion came from the Middle East, and the Joseph accuses his brothers of being spies from the east planning a conquest.  Also, astonishingly, the name of one of the Hyksos kings is Yakob'Har, which is essentially the same as the Biblical patriarch, Yaakov (Jacob).

However, the actual Hyksos event also differs significantly from the Exodus, to the extent that in many ways they are opposite stories.  The Hyksos are invaders; the Jewish people settle in peace with Pharaoh's blessing.  The Hyksos rule over Egypt, perhaps even cruelly.  In the Exodus story, the Jews are oppressed by the Egyptians.  The Hyksos are expelled by the military might of the Egyptians.  In the Exodus story, the Egyptian army is destroyed completely at Yam Suf.  The Hyksos raided Egyptian valuables and brought them to their capital at Avaris.  In the Exodus, the Egyptians voluntarily give their gold and silver to the Jews.  If the Exodus is a description of the Hyksos event, then it must be interpreted as a later account with a pro-Hyksos spin, meant to counter the Egyptian stories about the cruel Hyksos rule.

The New Kingdom - 18th and 19th Dynasties

The first two dynasties of the new kingdom, extend from the end of the Hyksos rule at about 1550 BCE to the beginning of the 12th century BCE.  These two dynasties represent the high point of Egyptian strength and might.  It contains the reigns of the most well known Pharaohs, Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Ramses II, and even the Pharaoh known only from his well hidden tomb, Tutenkhamen.  After the expulsion of the Hyksos, the Egyptians took control over the entire Levant region, including the land contained in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.  The land was populated by small vassal states.  The other great power at this time was the Hittites.  Egypt and the Hittites often vied for control, but at other times had an uneasy peace.  The Hittite sphere of influence went south from modern day Turkey and into modern day Syria.  The area between the Egyptian control and the Hittite control, in Southern Syria and away from the coast were a bit of a no-man's-land.

Towards the end of the 18th Dynasty, we have the so called Amarna period, called for the location of the capital in modern day Amarna.  Excavations at Amarna have yielded a rich supply of correspondences between the Egyptian Pharaohs, and the vassals in the Levant [2].  Often these requests are for military aid from Egypt, or other boilerplate statements to accompany tribute [3].

The first Pharaoh with the name Ramses, or Ramesses, is in the 19th dynasty, and ruled for only 2 years.  Ramses II, had a much longer reign from roughly 1290 BCE to 1220 BCE.  The city of Pi-Ramses, located near the old Hyksos capital of Avaris, is mentioned in the Torah as one of the two store cities built by the Israelites (Exod. 1:11).  Pi-Ramses, was not a store city, but rather it was the royal capital of the empire [4].

Another amazing artifact from the 19th dynasty is a stele erected by the Pharaoh Merneptah, who ruled at the tail end of the 13th century BCE.  This stele describes an armed march through the Levant, and among the nations, it describes a people known as Israel, who the Pharaoh claims to have utterly destroyed.  This is the earliest extra-biblical mention of Israelites.  The exact location of the people is not known, but the hieroglyphics are clearly referring to an ethnic group, not a land or kingdom [5].

There's one other interesting aspect of this period that bears directly on the Exodus narrative.  Throughout the Amarna letters, and in other Egyptian documents, there are tons of references to people referred to as Apiru.  These Apiru are everywhere, in Egypt, in Canaan, and in Syria.  They are mentioned by the Egyptians, the Hittites, and the Babylonians.  They aren't referred to as a distinct ethnic group, rather, they appear to be something of an underclass, robbers, brigands, and people living on the outskirts of society [6].  Because of the similarity of sound, a hypothesis that Apiru is the source for the Biblical word Ivri needs to be considered.  It can't be a direct translation, the use of Apiru is clearly not an ethnic group.  However, it is certainly conceivable, that a proto-Israelite group, negatively referred to by outsiders as just another Apiru band, could have taken the pejorative term and owned it.  Sort of like how other negative terms, like Eskimo or Yankee, have been adapted by the people they were meant to once insult.  Ivri is not a common word in the Torah, there are only 34 mentions.  However, relevant to this topic, a full 20 of them appear in the Exodus narrative [7].

How does this period relate to the Exodus?  If you calculated naively using the biblical narrative, using 1 Kings 6:1 which states that Shlomo's (Solomon's) temple was built 480 years after the Exodus, you get a date of roughly 1450 BCE for the time of the Exodus. This would place it shortly after the reign of Hatshepsut, and during the reign of Thutmose III.  However, this is problematic for many reasons.  As noted above, the Torah mentions the city of Pi-Ramses which was not built until the 13th century BCE.  Furthermore, the corpus of the Amarna letters makes no mention of an Israelite group at all in the region.  Finally, the storyline of the Jews escaping Egypt and then moving to Canaan cannot be realized in this era because Canaan was entirely under the control of Egypt.  Other biblical nations mentioned in this time period don't exist yet.  This includes the Philistines, which are instrumental in discussing the next era.

The Sea People and the Bronze Age Collapse

Starting possibly as early as 1300 BCE, new settlements start appearing in the Levant, first in the north, and a hundred years later in the south.  They are attested in accounts both by the Egyptians and the Hittites.  At first they were mere annoyances, but soon that was all to change.  In the eighth year of Ramses III, corresponding roughly to 1180 BCE Egyptian records report a massive invasion of these new people.  Colloquially, they are termed as the "Sea Peoples" as an origin from the Aegean seems most probable based on the new pottery and city designs recovered from archaeology [8].

The conquest of the Sea Peoples was stunning.  The Hittite empire, previously embroiled with the Assyrians were crushed.  The Sea Peoples burnt the Hittite capital of Hattusa to the ground.  The ancient city of Ugarit suffered the same fate.  The latest archaeological remains from that city are clay tablets talking of the invasion.  Tarsus and cities on Cyprus were also destroyed.  Egypt was able to repel the invasion, but they lost all their ancient holdings in Canaan.  Cities in Canaan such as Ashdod and Ashkelon [9] see destruction layers followed by new settlements around this time.  However, the most important point for this topic is that the Egyptian records of Ramses III mention one nation among the Sea Peoples that is important to us.  They mention Paleset, in Hebrew Paleshet, and in English, the Philistines.

The resulting aftermath of the invasion created something akin to a Dark Age in Canaan.  Without a strong Egyptian presence, there were no more correspondences between Canaanite vassals and their Egyptian ruler.  In the biblical timeline this would fall into the period of the Judges, and the type of loose confederacy of pastoral nations seems historically appropriate for this time period.  But what about the Exodus, could it have occurred in this time period?

Exodus 13:17 describes the Israelites as not wanting to go the short route through the land of the Philistines.  The implication is that at the time of the Exodus, the Philistines were there.  Unless the Philistines are an anachronism here too, as they are in the patriarchal narratives, the Exodus must have occurred after this time.  Furthermore, the weakened Egypt, and the Dark Age situation with the lack of written evidence, leaves room for unrecorded events.  However, the time line is too tight for a strict historical reconstruction.  The Mernepteh stele has the Israelites already in the land prior to the Philistines settlement.  Also, in contrast to the Philistine cities which display marked destruction layers, cities supposedly involved in the conquest, like Jericho and Ai, show no destruction layers in the late Bronze.  The conquest is not the Exodus per se, but it is part of the biblical historical account.  Also problematic is that other nations peripheral to the Exodus don't show up until later.  These include the kingdoms of Edom, Moab, and Ammon, all of which seem to have arisen as kingdoms squarely in the first millennium BCE and as ethnic groups late in the second millennium BCE [10].

The time period is probably the best candidate for a limited exodus (little e) in which some number of people, possibly enslaved Semites, left Egypt and traveled to Canaan. However, it's important to note that we have no positive evidence of this.  There are no markers for sudden migration or settlement patterns in the archaeology of the time period.  Instead, we just have a vacuum in which the possibility for events that have escaped written accounts is higher.

In the Shadow of Mesopotamia

During the reign of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, they were often threatened between the two great powers.  Egypt in the south, which gradually regained its influence after the Bronze Age Collapse, and the Neo-Assyrian empire, and later, the Babylonian empire, in the east.  These powers sometimes waxed and waned, and with it their extent of control over the Israelites.  Certainly at times, Israel probably felt like an oppressed people, and a story about the divine deliverance would be resonant with them.

The story of the early kingdoms of Israel and Judah are not well known except from the biblical story.  The northern kingdom of Israel peaked around the time of the Omride dynasty, started by Omri and then his son Ahab.  During this period they led a coalition that was able to repel the Assyrian army.  The northern kingdom would not last forever though.  In roughly 720 BCE, the Assyrian empire destroyed the Israelite capital at Samaria and exiled the nobles of the nation.  From there, the Assyrian army went south, they destroyed the Judean city of Lachish and captured most of the land of the kingdom and gave it to their Philistine vassals on the coast.  They sieged Jerusalem, but were not able to conquer it, returning with a hefty tribute.  The Assyrian empire collapsed shortly after, and the brief respite allowed the kingdom of Judah some autonomy.  However, it wasn't much longer until the Babylonian empire arose following it.  The Babylonians captured the kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE, destroying the Temple in Jerusalem, and again exiling the nobles.  Some of the descendents of these nobles would return to Jerusalem later after the Babylonian empire was conquered itself.  But for another period, the Jews, or at least some significant number of them, were subjects in a foreign land [11].

It turns out that there are some aspects of the Exodus story that fit more into a Mesopotamian background rather than an Egyptian one.  For example, in the Exodus story, the Hebrew slaves are forced to make bricks.  If they were in Egypt, you might expect references to stone quarries.  Similarly, the idea of store cities fit better in Mesopotamia than they do in Egypt [12].  The Egyptian army in the Exodus story uses three-horse chariots, something that is known in Assyria, but not in Egypt.  The big Egyptian military unit, the Egyptian archers, are entirely missing from the Exodus account.

Some other facets of the story do seem Egyptian, but fit in this late time period rather than one in the 2nd millennium BCE.  When we look at the geographical names in the Exodus, places like Migdol and Pi-Hahiroth seem to fit more in the time period of the Judean kingdom rather than an earlier time.  As Redford writes:

Whoever supplied the geographical information that now adorns the story had no information earlier than the Saite period (~685 BCE) [13]. 

Also, not related directly to the Exodus, but to the previous story, it is possible to guess when the Joseph story was written based on the Egyptian names present.  Just like English names, Egyptian names became more and less popular in different eras.  The Joseph story includes the names Asnat, Potiphar, and Zaphnat-Paneach.  Again quoting Redford.

Saphnath pane'ah is unanimously agreed to be the transliteration of an Egyptian name-type that means "God N speaks (or spoke) and he lives."  The type begins in the 21st dynasty [1069-945 BCE], becomes very popular in the ninth through seventh centuries BC, and thereafter peters out [14].

Redford lists numerous other facets of the Joseph story that fit in the first millennium, like the celebration of the king's birthday, the 20 percent tax on the population [15], and representing years by cows [16].

Egyptian Influences in Post-Exilic Times

Much later in our chronology, roughly in the 3rd century BCE, the Egyptian Priest Manetho recorded several stories relating to the Hyksos expulsion.  These stories were lost in later years, but preserved through the account of Josephus.  One of these, relating to the Hyksos as Shepherd Kings was discussed previously.  However, there is another story which discusses the expulsion of polluted leprous individuals.  This story also has parallels to the biblical account.  Moshe was given a divine sign where his hand becomes leprous.  Miriam contracted leprosy.  And biblical laws deal with leprosy at length [17].

Both the discussion of shepherd kings and the divine signs of leprosy seem more like a reaction against Egyptian anti-Semitic propaganda, rather than the opposite.  However, it seems unlikely to me to attribute modifications to Exodus story post-Manetho.  Rather, some of the sources that Manetho used to formulate his histories were possibly also known to the authors of the Exodus, and they manufactured pieces of the story to counter the Egyptian propaganda.

So... What is the Exodus Story Actually Referring To

As we've seen above, there are lots of possibilities.  The Exodus story could be relating to the historical expulsion of the Hyksos who then settled in Israel, but detailed from the Hyksos side and not the biased Egyptian side.  It could be discussing the escape of a small group of slaves, possibly Levites, sometime around the Bronze Age Collapse.  It could include some Philistine accounts of battles with Egypt that took place on the sea or on the coast, in which the proto-Israelites participated.  It could be referring not to an actual Exodus, but a freedom from the rule of Egypt, when Canaan fell out of Egyptian influence during the bronze age collapse.  It could be a story of hope used to console exiled Jews living in Babylonia. 

In my opinion, there's a good chance it is all of these things.  The Exodus isn't one story recounting an individual event.  It's a general story of redemption and freedom from oppression that gradually gathered additional information from each era.  That's why when we look back at it today, we see such a hodgepodge of different time periods.  What is clear is that the literal event discussed in the Torah today is fictional.  The Exodus (big E) never happened.  However, that doesn't mean that there wasn't an exodus (little e) or multiple exoduses that helped seed the story in future years.

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1. There are the occasional attempt by people to relate the Exodus plague events to the eruption of Thera sometime in the 17th and 16th centuries. But in my opinion the connections are exceedingly weak. ^

2. You can read some of the Amarna letters here.^

3. For more, see Redford, "Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times" Princeton Univ. Press, 1992, p. 192-213^

4. The other city Pithom, possibly Per-Atum,but possibly not, could have been a store city, but is less well known^

5. Kugel, "How to Read the Bible," Free Press, 2006 p. 381^

6. Kugel p. 207^

7. Kugel p. 207^

8. Redford pp. 241-256^

9. Finkelstein and Silberman, "The Bible Unearthed" Simon and Schuster, 2001 p. 340^

10. Finkelstein, p. 116.^

11. For more, see Finkelstein, ch 15-16]^

12. Redford, p. 416]^

13. Redford, p. 409. This is disputed by others, for example, Hoffmeier^

14. Redford, p. 424.^

15. This is recorded in Papyrus Rylands.^

16. Redford, p. 426.^

17. See Gmirkin, "Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and the Exodus" for more.^