Archaeologists Discover Remains of Egyptian Army From the Biblical Exodus in Red

[Anchorman]

You seem to imply, Spud, that, given the two references to Yw/Yahweh, that the Exodus had already happened when those inscriptions were created. Does that mean that you feel that Canaan had already been conquered by 1370 BC? Because that doesn't work. Here are my reasons for this: 1. 'Ramses'/Piramesee, mentioned in Scripture, was not built before 1250 BC - two centuries after these inscriptions were made. Since the city was purportedly built by Hebrew slaves (if Exodus is correct, which I doubt), there would have to have been a pre-existing population elsewhere worshipping YHWH. 2. The 'Amarna letters', part of a diplomatic correspondance to Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, Neferneferuaten and the young Tutankhaten/amun, cuneform tablets recovered from Akhetaten (Tell el Amarna) mention several kings of the Canaanite region, including a king (probably little more than a tribal chief) of Jerusalem - a Canaanite town which offered tribute to the Egyptian king. This suggests a peaceful trade link between the area which had long been part of the Thutmosid empire, and would remain so for several centuries.

[Spud]

Thanks for your ideas Anchorman. Going back to your original post to me:

Spud: If Leviticus - or any of the Pentateuch as we now have it - was composed at the time of the Exodus, I assume you have a whole raft of unequivocal archaeological evidence for a slave population and high ranking adopted Hebrew courtiers in Egypt at a specific time frame to back your assertion up?

Firstly, it was not an assertion, but a conclusion based on observation. Secondly, if we are going to demand evidence for everything in the Bible, what about the resurrection? We only have what the Bible tells us - just as in the account of the Exodus.

[Gordon]

... if we are going to demand evidence for everything in the Bible, what about the resurrection? We only have what the Bible tells us - just as in the account of the Exodus.

Bit of a problem that, Spud (I'd say much more than a bit!).

[Anchorman]

Thanks for your ideas Anchorman. Going back to your original post to me:

Firstly, it was not an assertion, but a conclusion based on observation. Secondly, if we are going to demand evidence for everything in the Bible, what about the resurrection? We only have what the Bible tells us - just as in the account of the Exodus.

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The thread was started by Sass to examine a spurious claim of remains of the Egyptian army, Spud - not the Resurrection.
Now, I'm the first to admit that the Egyptians would never write about a defeat. About the best they'd manage was boasting about a draw - as in the Battle of Kadesh.
However, even though the preservation in the Delta is poor (I know this from personal experience in the field), the fact that no mass graves or cemeteries have been found anywhere near Tell Qantir - the ancient site of 'Rameses'; shows that no mass burials or even burials over an extended period of time took place there.
If a slave population existed in the area for any length of time, where are the bodies?
Where are the remains of pottery? hearths? We have found none which matches any Semitic style pottery.
Any remains we have were buried in typical Egyptian style, with a few 'Bes' amulets and Osiris knots as protection and guarantee for 'Amduat' - the next world.
Nothing Semitic, or any evidence of slavery.
Indeed slavery as the Greeks and Romans practiced it was unknown in Egypt.
Slaves were usually the property of the state - and invariably captured prisoners from either Syrio-Palestinian or Sudan military expeditions.
At the time 'Ramses'/Piramesse was constructed, Egypt was somewhat jittery, fearing invasion from both Lybians, who had begun to settle in the Delta (and would go on to rule Egypt for centuries),and a coalition of seafarers  known as the 'Sea Peoples' (who would later form the Philistines, among other tribes). That's why Ramesses II built 'Ramses' in the first place - as a military capital frontier city to watch the surrounding lands.
I ask again; do you have any evidence for a slave workforce population in the Nile Delta. please?

[Anchorman]

........and, as if by magic; The very latest - and fascinating - discoveries at Tel Qantir - Piramesse AKA 'Ramses'. http://luxortimesmagazine.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/german-archaeologists-discover-ancient.html?m=1#!/2017/02/german-archaeologists-discover-ancient.html

[Spud]

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The thread was started by Sass to examine a spurious claim of remains of the Egyptian army, Spud - not the Resurrection.
Now, I'm the first to admit that the Egyptians would never write about a defeat. About the best they'd manage was boasting about a draw - as in the Battle of Kadesh.
However, even though the preservation in the Delta is poor (I know this from personal experience in the field), the fact that no mass graves or cemeteries have been found anywhere near Tell Qantir - the ancient site of 'Rameses'; shows that no mass burials or even burials over an extended period of time took place there.
If a slave population existed in the area for any length of time, where are the bodies?
Where are the remains of pottery? hearths? We have found none which matches any Semitic style pottery.
Any remains we have were buried in typical Egyptian style, with a few 'Bes' amulets and Osiris knots as protection and guarantee for 'Amduat' - the next world.
Nothing Semitic, or any evidence of slavery.
Indeed slavery as the Greeks and Romans practiced it was unknown in Egypt.
Slaves were usually the property of the state - and invariably captured prisoners from either Syrio-Palestinian or Sudan military expeditions.
At the time 'Ramses'/Piramesse was constructed, Egypt was somewhat jittery, fearing invasion from both Lybians, who had begun to settle in the Delta (and would go on to rule Egypt for centuries),and a coalition of seafarers  known as the 'Sea Peoples' (who would later form the Philistines, among other tribes). That's why Ramesses II built 'Ramses' in the first place - as a military capital frontier city to watch the surrounding lands.
I ask again; do you have any evidence for a slave workforce population in the Nile Delta. please?

Hi AM,
I've spent a bit of time reading up on the historicity of the Exodus, and would like to mention a few things:

1. In Exodus 12 it says,
37Now the sons of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, aside from children. 38A mixed multitude also went up with them, along with flocks and herds, a very large number of livestock.
(a) This Rameses seems to have existed in the time of Joseph (Genesis 47:11)
(b) From Exodus 18 we learn that the figure of 600,000 seems genuine, as it says that Moses chose men and made them leaders of thousands (and hundreds, fifties and tens). 12:38 reads as though the mixed multitude are in addition to the 600,000 Israelite men; I wonder if they were included in that number though?

2. I can't give you archaeological evidence for a large slave population. Bear in mind though that they were only slaves for 100 years at most, and it was over 3000 years ago. Here are a few interesting finds:

(a)

A papyrus dating from the end of the Old Kingdom was found in the early 19th century in Egypt [6]. It seems to be an eyewitness account of the events preceding the dissolution of the Old Kingdom. Its author, an Egyptian named Ipuwer, writes:

Plague is throughout the land. Blood is everywhere.
The river is blood.
That is our water! That is our happiness! What shall we do in respect thereof? All is ruin!
Trees are destroyed.
No fruit or herbs are found...
Forsooth, gates, columns and walls are consumed by fire.
Forsooth, grain has perished on every side.
The land is not light [dark].

http://www.starways.net/lisa/essays/exodus.html

(b) I found some of the "9 Reasons to Believe That the Biblical Exodus Actually Happened" in the link below to be quite convincing. For example:

3. In the exodus account, pharaohs are simply called “Pharaoh,” whereas in later biblical passages, Egyptian monarchs are referred to by their proper name, as in “Pharaoh Necho” (2 Kings 23:29). This, too, echoes usage in Egypt itself, where, from the middle of the second millennium until the tenth century BCE, the title “Pharaoh” was used alone.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-adam-jacobs/9-reasons-to-believe-that_b_7968204.html

3. There seems to be a theory that the generally accepted chronology of Egyptian history needs to be revised, to account for overlapping of various dynasties.

Again, it isn't what you were hoping for, but not having any previous experience in Archaeology I'm just going on stuff available online.

[Spud]

1. There is rich evidence that West-Semitic populations lived in the eastern Nile delta—what the Bible calls Goshen—for most of the second millennium. Some were slaves, some were raised in Pharaoh’s court, and some, like Moses, bore Egyptian names.

2. We know today that the great pharaoh Ramesses II, who reigned from 1279 to 1213 BCE, built a huge administrative center out of mudbrick in an area where large Semitic populations had lived for centuries. It was called Pi-Ramesses. Exodus (1:11) specifies that the Hebrew slaves built the cities of Pithom and Ramesses, a possible reference to Pi-Ramesses. The site was abandoned by the pharaohs two centuries later.

3. In the exodus account, pharaohs are simply called “Pharaoh,” whereas in later biblical passages, Egyptian monarchs are referred to by their proper name, as in “Pharaoh Necho” (2 Kings 23:29). This, too, echoes usage in Egypt itself, where, from the middle of the second millennium until the tenth century BCE, the title “Pharaoh” was used alone.

4. The names of various national entities mentioned in the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15:1-18)—Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, et al.—are all found in Egyptian sources shortly before 1200 BCE; about this, the book of Exodus is again correct for the period.

5. The stories of the exodus and the Israelites’ subsequent wanderings in the wilderness reflect sound acquaintance with the geography and natural conditions of the eastern Nile delta, the Sinai peninsula, the Negev, and Transjordan.

6. The book of Exodus (13:17) notes that the Israelites chose not to traverse the Sinai peninsula along the northern, coastal route toward modern-day Gaza because that would have entailed military engagement. The discovery of extensive Egyptian fortifications all along that route from the period in question confirms the accuracy of this observation.

7. Archaeologists have documented hundreds of new settlements in the land of Israel from the late-13th and 12th centuries BCE, congruent with the biblically attested arrival there of the liberated slaves; strikingly, these settlements feature an absence of the pig bones normally found in such places. Major destruction is found at Bethel, Yokne’am, and Hatzor—cities taken by Israel according to the book of Joshua. At Hatzor, archaeologists found mutilated cultic statues, suggesting that they were repugnant to the invaders.

8. The earliest written mention of an entity called “Israel” is found in the victory inscription of the pharaoh Merneptah from 1206 BCE. In it the pharaoh lists the nations defeated by him in the course of a campaign to the southern Levant; among them, “Israel is laid waste and his seed is no more.” “Israel” is written in such a way as to connote a group of people, not an established city or region, the implication being that it was not yet a fully settled entity with contiguous control over an entire region. This jibes with the Bible’s description in Joshua and Judges of a gradual conquest of the land.

9. Professor Berman gives a good deal of background for the remainder of his piece on the similarities between the structures of the Tabernacle and the battle compound of Ramesses II as well as the Book of Exodus’s “Song of the Sea” and an Egyptian battle hymn known as the “Kadesh Poem.” He explains that Maimonides held that the Torah makes liberal use of the material of other nations as a kind of “cultural appropriation.” But in this case, how could the Torah’s author have known about the details of these highly specific Egyptian references had they not been privy to them - as part of that culture? As Rabbi Berman explains:

The evidence suggests that the Exodus text preserves the memory of a moment when the earliest Israelites reached for language with which to extol the mighty virtues of God, and found the raw material in the terms and tropes of an Egyptian text well-known to them. In appropriating and “transvaluing” that material, they put forward the claim that the God of Israel had far outdone the greatest achievement of the greatest earthly potentate.

Like many events that occurred in the past and are explored through sciences such as forensics, evolutionary biology and archaeology, researchers are working with only limited and fragmentary information as R Berman says, “Proofs exist in geometry, and sometimes in law, but rarely within the fields of biblical studies and archaeology. As is so often the case, the record at our disposal is highly incomplete, and speculation about cultural transmission must remain contingent.” Ultimately, the “mesorah” - the Judaic chain of transmission from one generation to the next - speaks to me more than whatever biblical scholarship and archaeology “dig up,” but for those who need an official scientific stamp of approval before taking something seriously, this is real grist for the mill.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-adam-jacobs/9-reasons-to-believe-that_b_7968204.html

[Anchorman]

Hi AM,
I've spent a bit of time reading up on the historicity of the Exodus, and would like to mention a few things:

1. In Exodus 12 it says,
37Now the sons of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, aside from children. 38A mixed multitude also went up with them, along with flocks and herds, a very large number of livestock.
(a) This Rameses seems to have existed in the time of Joseph (Genesis 47:11)
(b) From Exodus 18 we learn that the figure of 600,000 seems genuine, as it says that Moses chose men and made them leaders of thousands (and hundreds, fifties and tens). 12:38 reads as though the mixed multitude are in addition to the 600,000 Israelite men; I wonder if they were included in that number though?

2. I can't give you archaeological evidence for a large slave population. Bear in mind though that they were only slaves for 100 years at most, and it was over 3000 years ago. Here are a few interesting finds:

(a)
http://www.starways.net/lisa/essays/exodus.html

(b) I found some of the "9 Reasons to Believe That the Biblical Exodus Actually Happened" in the link below to be quite convincing. For example:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-adam-jacobs/9-reasons-to-believe-that_b_7968204.html

3. There seems to be a theory that the generally accepted chronology of Egyptian history needs to be revised, to account for overlapping of various dynasties.

Again, it isn't what you were hoping for, but not having any previous experience in Archaeology I'm just going on stuff available online.





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Your references are pretty commonplace, Spud - and refer to events in what we call the 'First Intermediate Period' - a period when low Nile floods precipitated a collapse in central authority ruling from Memphis, and several ruling families ruling a divided Egypt. My own preference is from the tomb of Ankhtifi, when the owner even hints at cannibalism and that he was the only one who 'rescued the land'.
The fact is that you need to take tomb biographies very carefully, and in context. Their purpose wasn't really to tell the truth, but exaggerate the status of the tomb owner - especially when Egypt was divided. We see very similar inscriptions a few centuries later, in the Scond Intermediate Period - and in my own area, the Third - from 1000-525 BC. In fact, I can point to a papyrus  belonging to a certain Nakhtnebef, who claims
"I fed the land when the Nile ran with blood; I kept the land when the locusts brougght famine and the king could not be found".
Pretty close to the Exodus, Eh?
Problem is that it dates to around 580 BC!

[Anchorman]

Are you asserting that Exodus Happened in the ninth century BC, Spud? Because the Pentateuch keeps calling the Egyptian king 'Pharaoh' - transliterated from the Egyptian 'per-aa 'Great house' a word first applied to the court in the time of the female king Hatshepsut. The word was never used as a royal title or substitute for king before the time of king NetjerKheperre Setepenre Siamun (r 978-959) So either the Exodus happened AFTER that time, or the title, which had become common by the Saite period (when Nekhau was king) was known when the Pentateuch was re-written and edited into the form we know today.

[jeremyp]

(b) From Exodus 18 we learn that the figure of 600,000 seems genuine, as it says that Moses chose men and made them leaders of thousands (and hundreds, fifties and tens).

That's just not a credible figure. 600,000 men means at least an equivalent number of women and children and all the livestock (where did slaves get livestock?) Let's call it a round million people. That is a fair sized city. Now imagine they camp for a day in the desert.

How many animals do you have to slaughter to feed everybody? If it is one cow per hundred people - an underestimate I am sure - that's a pile of 10,000 cow skeletons to dispose of. Where are they? Why haven't archaeologists found them?

Also, a million people: assume they all live to be 50, that means every year, 2% of the population must die - 20,000 people or about 54 a day. Why do we not see a trail of Hebrew graveyards throughout the Sinai?

Also, imagine what a million people would look like tramping through the desert. When Germany invaded Belgium at the beginning of WW1 they had a force of 750,000 men. Eye witnesses reported it took the columns days to march past them because of their length and this was a disciplined well organised force marching to a tight time table.

The numbers are simply not credible.

[Anchorman]

Here's a site comparing Egyptian demography. http://www.aldokkan.com/society/demography.htm - I'd suggest that Breasted has a tendancy to exaggerate, and that, in New Kingdom Egypt, with a stable economy and a series of high Nile inundations in the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties till around 1200 BC, the population of the entire country could not have been more than four million. Around a million of those would have lived in Lower Egypt - the Delta . Had half a million people suddenly upped sticks and gone, not only would there be evidence of anbandoned settlements, but the economy would have collapsed, precipitating internal strife and collapse of central authority (as happened at times of low Nile inundation, famine, invasion, etc) This simply did not happen.

[Spud]

Are you asserting that Exodus Happened in the ninth century BC, Spud? Because the Pentateuch keeps calling the Egyptian king 'Pharaoh' - transliterated from the Egyptian 'per-aa 'Great house' a word first applied to the court in the time of the female king Hatshepsut. The word was never used as a royal title or substitute for king before the time of king NetjerKheperre Setepenre Siamun (r 978-959) So either the Exodus happened AFTER that time, or the title, which had become common by the Saite period (when Nekhau was king) was known when the Pentateuch was re-written and edited into the form we know today.

Wikipedia seems to disagree with you that the word was never used as a royal title or substitute for king before 978-959:

During the reign of Thutmose III (circa 1479–1425 BC) in the New Kingdom, after the foreign rule of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period, pharaoh became the form of address for a person who was king.[5]

The earliest instance where pr-aa is used specifically to address the ruler is in a letter to Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), who reigned circa 1353–1336 BC, which is addressed to 'Pharaoh, all life, prosperity, and health!.[6] During the eighteenth dynasty (16th to 14th centuries BC) the title pharaoh was employed as a reverential designation of the ruler. About the late twenty-first dynasty (10th century BC), however, instead of being used alone as before, it began to be added to the other titles before the ruler's name, and from the twenty-fifth dynasty (eighth to seventh centuries BC) it was, at least in ordinary usage, the only epithet prefixed to the royal appellative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaoh

[Owlswing]

Wikipedia seems to disagree with you that the word was never used as a royal title or substitute for king before 978-959:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaoh

Probably a Wiki entry written by Spud himself!

[Anchorman]

Wikipedia seems to disagree with you that the word was never used as a royal title or substitute for king before 978-959:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaoh

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Er.........
You DO know that the rule of Hatshepsut occured entirely within the tenure of Thutmose III, don't you, Spud?
So the term 'pr-aa' was apropriate for the use of the court of the joint kings - The Egyptians themselves had trouble with grammer, trying to deal with the concept of a female king.
As for the Amarna letters? The text can be read  as follows;
"To the great house OF Naphuria....."
'Naphuria' being an attempt to render into cuneiform the prenomen - the official name - of Akhenaten, 'Neferkheperure Waenre'.
Spot on with the dyn 21 reference - Siamun was a rather obscure Tanite dyn XXI ruler.

[Spud]

The word was never used as a royal title or substitute for king before the time of king NetjerKheperre Setepenre Siamun (r 978-959)

That is the first ruler to whose name the title Pharaoh was attached. An induction of an individual to the Amun priesthood is dated specifically to the reign of Pharaoh Siamun on a fragment from the Karnak Priestly Annals. Thus, point 3 in post #81 is correct when it says that post-Pentateuch references to Pharaoh use the proper name in addition to the title Pharaoh.

-
Er.........
You DO know that the rule of Hatshepsut occured entirely within the tenure of Thutmose III, don't you, Spud?
So the term 'pr-aa' was apropriate for the use of the court of the joint kings - The Egyptians themselves had trouble with grammer, trying to deal with the concept of a female king.

Yes I am aware of that. As far as I am aware there is no record of kings or queens from that era being addressed as Pharaoh.

As for the Amarna letters? The text can be read  as follows;
"To the great house OF Naphuria....."
'Naphuria' being an attempt to render into cuneiform the prenomen - the official name - of Akhenaten, 'Neferkheperure Waenre'.

I had a look through the Amarna letters here: http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/amarnaletters.html

There are no instances of the king being called Pharaoh in the correspondence with Amenhotep III. But I found four instances, which I have put in bold, in a letter from a Canaanite ruler called Ribb-Addi who later wrote similar letters to Akhenaten (son of Amenhotep III):

Still the king, my lord, says: "For what reason art thou sending him to me?" Behold me; there is no governor in my service from the city of Zemar, and still the face of every one (is) towards me and the two men of Egypt whom I send to Pharaoh. There is no going forth, there is no sending to the king; there is no man who will carry my letter to Pharaoh. Now these two men will carry a letter to the king, but I myself go not forth. Always am I afraid and turn my face towards [the king] my lord. I send [ ] thy lord, since he will go up (?) [ ] I will send (?) on the days [ ] and I send to Pharaoh, and he will send and will cause soldiers to come [ ] ......

A man of Yari[muta]. At the gate I (stand). A [ ] I send [to] Pharaoh for the protection of the men of the country of Milu[kha]; but thou dost not hear; yet why is the king constantly sending men of the guard [from] the country of Milukha to its defence? They have not [surrendered] the city to the Beduin.

http://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/EAribbaddi.html

[Anchorman]

You will note that the terms 'per-aa' and 'king' are used in the same letter, Spud? Doesn't that suggest that the former - per-aa - was intended to mean the court of the king, and the latter the kingg? This would be more probable, since we know that most of the diplomatic correspondance was handled through the Great Royal Wife Tiye, rather than the king himself.

[Spud]

Not necessarily, Jim. This phrase indicates that 'Pharaoh' refers to the king himself: "and I send to Pharaoh, and he will send and will cause soldiers to come"

[Spud]

It's worth noting, though, that the king of Egypt is called 'Pharaoh' as early as Genesis 12:15 in the story of Abraham

[Anchorman]

It's worth noting, though, that the king of Egypt is called 'Pharaoh' as early as Genesis 12:15 in the story of Abraham
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Thanks for making my point, Spud.
That means that either the entire corpus of Egyptian pharonic titulary uis wrong,
or Abraham was in Egypt during or after the time of Siamun.

Of course, it could also be proof positive of a rewriting of the Pentateuch well after the term was part of Pharonic titulary.

[Anchorman]

 A gentle reminder, Spud. Given that there is simply no evidence for a massive slave population in the Delta; Given that slavery in Egypt was a concept different from that in Greece, Rome or Persia; Can you pin down when you think the events in the later part of Genesis and the early part of Exodus took place, please - and why? If there is simply no evidence in archaeology for these events taking place as described in the Pentateuch, doesn't that suggest that the books of Moses were rewritten at a later date? Thanks.

[Spud]

It's worth noting, though, that the king of Egypt is called 'Pharaoh' as early as Genesis 12:15 in the story of Abraham
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Thanks for making my point, Spud.
That means that either the entire corpus of Egyptian pharonic titulary uis wrong,
or Abraham was in Egypt during or after the time of Siamun.

Of course, it could also be proof positive of a rewriting of the Pentateuch well after the term was part of Pharonic titulary.

The quote in message 89 proves that the title, "Pharaoh" could have been in use from the time of Akhenaten. Of course the story would have been written up long after the events took place, hence the title being used for the king of Egypt at the time of Abram, in the book of Genesis.

Even if the story was rewritten around 600 BC or whenever, the details it contains strongly suggest that the original sources were eyewitnesses. For example, mud bricks made with straw, and other details described here:

http://bibleistrue.com/qna/pqna69.htm
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48967121.html

The first link points out that most buildings made from mud bricks would not have survived for long (ie centuries).

[Anchorman]

Are you suggesting that Akhenaten was either king of Egypt or had any connections with those who worshipped YHWH? Because if you are, you are entering the trap of wishful thinking and romantic history. Despite what you've read, Akhenaten didn't destroy any religious foundations in the Delta; the temples at Heliopolis, Memphis, Bubastis, Sais and Avaris remained functional, if reduced in status. Indeed, Akhenaten was responsible for the second Apis Bull burial at Sakkara, and dedication stelae to Ptah of Memphis. That means that the Delta continued to function as it had before he came to the throne, and remained so through the turbulance of his successor(s). There is no evidence of any deposits which suggest Semitic or Asiatic settlement in the Delta at this time. None.

[Spud]

No, just saying that the title, "Pharaoh" could have been in use from the time of Akhenaten, bearing in mind the letter from Ribb-Addi.

[Anchorman]

No, just saying that the title, "Pharaoh" could have been in use from the time of Akhenaten, bearing in mind the letter from Ribb-Addi.

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Given the somewhat unique situation of Egypt during his complex rule, I'd suggest that it's unsafe to make that assumption.

[Spud]

Fair enough, but one can't help thinking that you actually don't want there to be any archaeological evidence for the Exodus. I've given you two links, which give convincing evidence that the story originated from eyewitness accounts. But you seem to ignore anything that might actually prove the Bible to be accurate. Why?