Evidence for the Bible - The Israelite Sojourn in Egypt

As I proposed in my article, Evidence for the Bible - The Story of Joseph, following others before me, I believe Joseph would have been promoted to vizier under Amenemhat III in the late Middle Kingdom. In the Bible, once Joseph reveals to his brothers who he is, Pharaoh invites all of Jacob’s family to come and settle in Egypt. We are told that Jacob’s family settles in the land of Goshen where they acquired property and were fruitful and increased greatly in number (Genesis 47:27). So is there any evidence of this settlement? Yes, there are a few things in this time period that should draw our attention as either supportive, or at least consistent with, the biblical account. While there are varying amounts of evidence for the proposed chronology at any given point in history, I believe its primary strength and explanatory power is found in the overall consistency with the biblical record over hundreds of years.

Egypt’s Kingdoms & Dynasties

A good place to begin is with an overview of how scholars discuss ancient Egypt politically and culturally both in general and this time period in particular. Early ancient Egypt is divided into 3 kingdom periods, the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, and each of these are followed by an intermediate period, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Intermediate Periods. During the kingdom periods, the whole country is united under the rule of one pharaoh and it is relatively easy for archeologists and historians to discern what is happening. In the intermediate periods, the country is fractured into regional rule and it’s much more difficult to determine the political situation.

Joseph’s pharaoh, Amenemhat III, was among the last rulers of the 12th Dynasty which marks the end of the Middle Kingdom and the beginning of the Second Intermediate Period. Generally, during the Second Intermediate Period, Upper (Southern) Egypt will be ruled by the native Egyptian 13th, 16th, and 17th Dynasties, while Lower (Northern) Egypt will be ruled by the Hyksos, a series of Asiatic/Semitic foreigners from Canaan that rose to power during the break down of political stability at end of the Middle Kingdom. They are generally represented by the 14th and 15th Dynasties with the 14th being an earlier precursor to the greater Hyksos kingdom in the 15th Dynasty, though the exact relationship between the two dynasties is not certain.

Asiatic/Semitic Settlement in the Nile Delta

Immigration from West Asia increased greatly during the Middle Kingdom, and in the archaeological record at this time there is a particular increase in settlement activity by these people in the eastern Nile delta (Mahoney, 2014). From the material culture they left behind, we can also see that they were reasonably prosperous. To be clear, we can’t be certain that any of these Asiatic settlers are Hebrews, but, as Egyptologist James Hoffmeier points out, archeologically, the Hebrews are unlikely to be distinguishable from other Canaanites at this point in time (Mahoney, 2014). While we cannot be certain that these people include the Israelites, we cannot discount the idea either, and, especially when considered along with the evidence discussed in the article about Joseph, the archeological record is remarkably consistent with the biblical record.

Exodus 1:11 states that the Israelites built for pharaoh the cities of Pithom and Raamses. Archeologist Manfried Bietak identifies the biblical Raamses with the city of Pi-Rammesse, which during the Hyksos period was called Avaris. In a 2015 paper, he points out that a reference to the “Lakes of Pithom” in a papyrus dated to year 5 of Seti II is an Egyptian text that is using a Semitic place name for a location in the delta rather than an Egyptian one, which is rather odd and could be due to the influence of the large numbers of Semitic settlers in the region (Beitak, 2015). He also notes the Semitic place names used could date back to the Canaanite speaking Semitic settlers during the Hyksos period, but since texts containing the place names do not appear until the Rameside period, we cannot be certain (Bietak, 2015). Following Sarah Groll (Groll, 1998), he also with some reservation, considers the name of a lake mentioned in a papyrus related to the one mentioned above to be the Egyptian equivalent of Gesem, which is how the Hebrew Goshen is translated in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament (Bietak, 2015).

While I disagree with many of Bietak’s conclusions as he believes a historical Exodus is likely evidenced in the New Kingdom rather than the earlier Middle Kingdom, I do agree that the connections that he points out between the place names and the biblical text are decent evidence that modern day Wadi Tumilat is the location of the biblical land of Goshen. As for whether the place names date back to the Middle Kingdom or Hyksos period, I believe the name Raamses represents a revision to the original text in a later period as Egypt is referred to as the Land of Raamses in Genesis even in the time of Abraham who certainly lived prior to the Rameside period. A similar case could exist with Pithom, or it could be an original one. We just cannot be certain for now.

Israel’s Slavery & Oppression

Many Egyptologists are convinced that the Hyksos kingdom arose from a group of these Asiatic settlers becoming powerful enough to declare their independence and take over the delta region due to conflict over royal succession and possibly other issues among the native Egyptians in the late 12th and the 13th Dynasties. Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus tied Israel’s sojourn in Egypt to this period in history, identifying the Israelites with the Hyksos (Josephus & Whiston, 2003, pp.942-943). Following him, others have proposed the same. I believe this too could be another clue that we are on the right chronological path, considering Josephus is generally regarded as accurate in his understanding of biblical chronology. However, I think a better interpretation is that the Hyksos rulers of Egypt were the oppressors of the Israelites. I think this is far more consistent with both the historical record and the Bible.

Though the Bible does not say directly that Egypt was conquered by a foreign power during the time between the close of Genesis and the opening of Exodus, I think it gives us clues in the text that are consistent with the idea. The first of these clues is that Exodus tells us there “arose a new Pharaoh that did not know Joseph”. While there may have been many factions among the native Egyptian people during the 13th Dynasty, it’s hard to imagine a native Egyptian pharaoh not knowing him and how his people came to be in the land. The other potential clue is the reason that we are given for the execution of the male Hebrew children. Exodus tells us pharaoh ordered this so that they did not “outnumber the Egyptians”. Because the entire family of Jacob numbered only 72 people when they went into Egypt, it’s really hard to imagine them outnumbering the native Egyptians. However, it’s quite reasonable that they might grow to outnumber a group of foreigners that have seized power.

So why then does the biblical text say it was the Egyptians that oppressed Israel? I think the answer for that can be found in the fact that, though they were foreigners, the Hyksos pharaohs adopted and appropriated the Egyptian culture. They styled themselves as pharaohs, they worshiped Egyptian gods, and followed many other Egyptian practices. When we link biblical chronology to the Egyptian chronology proposed by Rita Gautschy in 2014 as I suggested in last article, Israel’s arrival in Egypt would have taken place in 1820 BC. According to Genesis, the Israelites lived peacefully in Egypt until Joseph’s death 70 years later. Though there is disagreement, the mid 1700s BC is right around the time some Egyptologists believe the 14th dynasty arises in the Nile delta. If the Hyksos dynasties did arise from a segment of the Asiatic population in the delta, it seems very easy to see how the prosperous Israelites would be targeted for a number of reasons including their wealth, population size, and their relatively friendly relationship with the native Egyptians.

Conclusion

While the evidence considered here may be less concrete to some degree than the evidence for the Joseph story discussed in the last article, I think that there are remarkable consistencies between the events in the biblical text and even scholars’ considerably limited understanding of the historical record in this time period. As I stated in the introduction, I believe the strength of this understanding of the chronology is found in the consistent connections across many time periods rather than any single time period, which brings us to the next major event in the biblical timeline, Exodus. Is there any evidence for the powerful deliverance of the Israelites by the hand of God from a rebellious king? That will be the subject of the next article of the series.

References

Bietak, M. (2015). On the Historicity of the Exodus: What Egyptology Today Can Contribute to Assessing the Biblical Account of the Sojourn in Egypt. In: Levy, T., Schneider, T., Propp, W. (eds) Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective. Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04768-3_2

Gautschy, R. (2015). Reassessment of Absolute Chronology of the Egyptian New Kingdom and its ´Brotherly´ Countries. Ägypten Und Levante, 24, 141–158. https://doi.org/10.1553/s141

Josephus, F., & Whiston, W. (2003). Josephus: The Complete Works (Super Value Series) (14018th ed.). Thomas Nelson.

Mahoney, T. (2014). Patterns of Evidence. Thinking Man Films.