The Exodus: Fact or Fiction?
Evidence of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt
Dated to c. 1219 B.C.E., the Merneptah Stele is the earliest extrabiblical record of a people group called Israel. Set up by Pharaoh Merneptah to commemorate his military victories, the stele proclaims, “Ashkelon is carried off, and Gezer is captured. Yeno’am is made into nonexistence; Israel is wasted, its seed is not.” Ashkelon, Gezer and Yeno’am are followed by an Egyptian hieroglyph that designates a town. Israel is followed by a hieroglyph that means a people. Photo: Maryl Levine.
Is the biblical Exodus fact or fiction?
This is a loaded question. Although biblical scholars and archaeologists argue about various aspects of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, many of them agree that the Exodus occurred in some form or another.
The question “Did the Exodus happen” then becomes “When did the Exodus happen?” This is another heated question. Although there is much debate, most people settle into two camps: They argue for either a 15th-century B.C.E. or 13th-century B.C.E. date for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt.
The article “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History” from the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review1 wrestles with both of these questions—“Did the Exodus happen?” and “When did the Exodus happen?” In the article, evidence is presented that generally supports a 13th-century B.C.E. Exodus during the Ramesside Period, when Egypt’s 19th Dynasty ruled.
The article examines Egyptian texts, artifacts and archaeological sites, which demonstrate that the Bible recounts accurate memories from the 13th century B.C.E. For instance, the names of three places that appear in the biblical account of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt correspond to Egyptian place names from the Ramesside Period (13th–11th centuries B.C.E.). The Bible recounts that, as slaves, the Israelites were forced to build the store-cities of Pithom and Ramses. After the ten plagues, the Israelites left Egypt and famously crossed the Yam Suph (translated Red Sea or Reed Sea), whose waters were miraculously parted for them. The biblical names Pithom, Ramses and Yam Suph (Red Sea or Reed Sea) correspond to the Egyptian place names Pi-Ramesse, Pi-Atum and (Pa-)Tjuf. These three place names appear together in Egyptian texts only from the Ramesside Period. The name Pi-Ramesse went out of use by the beginning of Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period, which began around 1085 B.C.E., and does not reappear until much later.
FREE ebook: Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus.
These specific place names recorded in the biblical text demonstrate that the memory of the biblical authors for these traditions predates Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. This supports a 13th-century Exodus during the Ramesside Period because it is only during the Ramesside Period that the place names Pi-Ramesse, Pi-Atum and (Pa-)Tjuf (Red Sea or Reed Sea) are all in use.
A worker’s house from western Thebes also seems to support a 13th-century Exodus. In the 1930s, archaeologists at the University of Chicago were excavating the mortuary Temple of Aya and Horemheb, the last two pharaohs of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty, in western Thebes. The temple was first built by Aya in the 14th-century B.C.E., but Horemheb usurped and expanded the temple when he became pharaoh. (He ruled from the late 14th century through the early 13th century B.C.E.) Horemheb chiseled out every place where Aya’s name had been and replaced it with his own. Later—during the reign of Ramses IV (12th century B.C.E.)—the Temple of Aya and Horemheb was demolished.
During their excavations, the University of Chicago uncovered a house and part of another house belonging to the workers who were given the task of demolishing the temple. The plan of the complete house is the same as that of the four-room house characteristic of Israelite dwellings during the Iron Age. However, unlike the Israelite models that were usually constructed of stone, the Theban house was made of wattle and daub. It is significant that this house was built in Egypt at the same time that Israelites were constructing four-room houses in Canaan. The similarities between the two have caused some to speculate that the builders of the Theban house were either proto-Israelites or a group closely related to the Israelites.
Is this a proto-Israelite house? This plan shows the 12th-century B.C.E. worker’s house in western Thebes next to the Temple of Aya and Horemheb. The house is undoubtedly a four-room house. In Canaan, the four-room house is considered an ethnic marker for the presence of Israelites during the Iron Age. Is the Biblical Exodus fact or fiction? This favors “fact,” so the question becomes, “When did the Exodus happen?” The presence of such a house in Egypt during the 12th century B.C.E. seems to support an Exodus during the Ramesside Period. Photo: Courtesy of Manfred Bietak.
A third piece of evidence for the Exodus is the Onomasticon Amenope. The Onomasticon Amenope is a list of categorized words from Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. Written in hieratic, the papyrus includes the Semitic place name b-r-k.t, which refers to the Lakes of Pithom. Even in Egyptian sources, the Semitic name for the Lakes of Pithom was used instead of the original Egyptian name. It is likely that a Semitic-speaking population lived in the region long enough that their name eventually supplanted the original.
Watch full-length lectures from the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination conference, which addressed some of the most challenging issues in Exodus scholarship. The international conference was hosted by Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego in San Diego, CA.
Another compelling piece of evidence for the Exodus is found in the biblical text itself. A history of enslavement is likely to be true. The article explains:
The storyline of the Exodus, of a people fleeing from a humiliating slavery, suggests elements that are historically credible. Normally, it is only tales of glory and victory that are preserved in narratives from one generation to the next. A history of being slaves is likely to bear elements of truth.
Exodus: Fact or fiction? This four-room house from Izbet Sartah, Israel, shares many similarities with the 12th-century B.C.E. worker’s house uncovered in western Thebes. Photo: Israel Finkelstein/Tel Aviv University.
So, is the biblical Exodus fact or fiction? Scholars and people of many faiths line up on either side of the equation, and some say both. Archaeological discoveries have verified that parts of the biblical Exodus are historically accurate, but archaeology can’t tell us everything. Although archaeology can illuminate aspects of the past and bring parts of history to life, it has its limits.
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It certainly is exciting when the archaeological record matches with the biblical account—as with the examples described here. However, while this evidence certainly adds weight to the historical accuracy of elements of the biblical account, it can’t be used to “prove” that every detail of the Exodus story in the Bible is true.
To learn more about evidence for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, read the full article “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Subscribers: Read the full article “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History” in the May/June 2016 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 10, 2016.
Notes
1. This BAR article is a free abstract from Manfred Bietak’s article “On the Historicity of the Exodus: What Egyptology Today Can Contribute to Assessing the Biblical Account of the Sojourn in Egypt” in Thomas E. Levy, Thomas Schneider and William H.C. Propp, eds., Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archaeology, Culture and Geoscience (Cham: Springer, 2015). In Bietak’s article, the scholarly debate about the archaeological remains and the onomastic data of Wadi Tumilat is more elaborately treated.
Related reading in Bible History Daily
Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination
All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library
The Exodus and the Crossing of the Red Sea, According to Hans Goedicke
Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.
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The evidence is there for all to see but most miss it. Amenhotep III was the pharaoh who wouldn’t let the Israelites go free. His first born son was Thutmose who died as the first born son during the Exodus or he was Moses and he left rather than died. The Egyptian records don’t indicate what happened to Thutmose he just disappears from the records before Amenhotep died. His second son was Akhenaten who abandoned the Egyptian gods and started his own religion worshiping Aten the sun god. Akhenaten left thebes and built his new capital in the desert. Why did he abandon the old gods? Why did he build a city in the desert? The answer is pretty obvious he abandoned the gods because he saw that the Israelites god was more powerful than Egypt’s gods so he started worshiping a god he could both feel and see (the sun) like the Israelite GOD YHWH.
So you have historical context and support for this? No? Just more fiction? That’s not helpful.
Facts versus fiction? Facts are archeological evidences plus what can be derived off from the interpretation called Bible stories; Bible itslef is not the textbook of a history! What we have known from Rev Israel.Filkenstein the first pure historical names -as confirmed by archeological evidences- appear only from 8th century BC; here,maybe some old historical names of places got into texts created in 6th-1the cent BC. Slavery and liberation from it maybe even not once but a few times is the real history in Ithink in 6or 5th century B.C. An interpretation (of facts) is neither a fact or a fiction ! An experience of liberation is a pure fact or Aristotelian substance. The facts are the positions of stars in the sky seeing by eyes or telescopes; an interpretation of it by Ptolomey or Copernicus is not a fact (physical). On Scientific Semantics of A.Tarski (Warsaw Lwow School of Logic) from 1935 will help in theology also! “Partying of the sea” is a physical or historical fiction for sure but as a narrative tool has a poetic sense; surely, Decmber 8,1991-the date of a formal end of Soviet Union is a historicial fact! The period from August 1980, Gdansk’s Strike to that date – an exodus is an interpretation but very rational and historical or one must believe in a chance
I once researched a paper on the influence of Akhenaton’s monotheism on the Exodus. My premise was that the Egyptian religion prior to that time was inclusive and absorbed gods and myths from surrounding subject people. However, after the suppression of Amarna, when the traditional religion came back, something new had been added: dogma. The Priests of Amun were now super sensitive to other religious beliefs and particularly, monotheism. No one has ever pinpointed when the Hebrews came into Egypt, or who Joseph might have been, but if they were there then and practicing their own religion, they would have experienced prejudice and suppression which could have driven them to leave. I did find evidence of 100,000 people leaving from the Delta region during the Ramesside period. They were not slaves, but were vintners. Part of the evidence was a drastic reduction in wine seals from this period. I have always been fascinated with the influence of religion on human history and this period was obviously pivotal.
There was never a population of 100k in that area at that time, so your theories are entirely debunked.
What would happen if groups of Egyptianized Caananites had a sudden or even catastrophic migration of some kind or another back to an ancestral homeland? We already know factually that significant populations of semites were residing in Egypt at more or less the right time. And the Isrealites couldn’t just reassimilate seamlessly with their old Canannite cousins. They’d been gone a little too long and things were different. They’d changed. The resident Canaanites had changed also. So the returnees decided to assert themselves and eventually they established a foothold on some territory to live in.
It’s easy to forget how simplistic the story can be when you strip it down. And it’s almost eerie how the core of the story parallels or even prefigures other events in history involving similarly displaced, migrating or exiled peoples.
For that reason, I believe the Exodus story is fact just because it all sounds plausible thematically at its core. Of course thinking something sounds plausible is really different than knowing it factually. The story may be perhaps more plausible anthropologically than it might ever be provable archeologically. But maybe someday. I hope so. That would be pretty exciting.
I very much enjoyed the article that is in the current issue of BAR and done by Manfred Bietak, I believe. I have heard (read) some of these arguments before and from similarly qualified individuals of various backgrounds. His arguments are reasonable arguments to the extent that they try to “connect the dots” for an event that would have occurred long ago. I can accept that much of ancient history is discussed on the basis of minimal or occasional documentation, limited concrete evidence, and just the merest of anything. And that is all that can be done. I have heard (but not done the counting myself) that the Bible makes about 2,000 mentions of the Exodus. Thus, it is an event — whether large or small — that made a real mark in national memory and helped to shape their sense of identity and of religion. Thus, this article presents a positive assessment of evidence that does exist. It will be encouraging — and convincing — for some. Others will not find it so convincing. But I think it is clear that something happened and these bits of information point to it .
I just recently saw the Documentary called, “Patterns of Evidence – Exodus” by Tim Mahoney that approaches this subject brilliantly with scientific and archeological evidence to back it up. I would highly recommend this Documentary that sheds light on the biblical and historical account of the Exodus and the timeline that substantiates his findings. This was a 12 year quest and worth a look if you want a visual of what has been written here.
See my blog “The First and Second Exodus from Egypt.”
The Five pastoral Judahite tribes lived at Goshen in Egypt from about 1630 to 1210.BC
From 1290 to 1210 the Judahites were conscripted to work on the canals of Pi-Ramesses (See Bietak canals K1 and K2). The mud from these canals was mixed with hay and made into mud bricks for dwellings at Pi-Ramesses.
I’ah-mose (Moses) the prophet of YHW led the Judahites to Midian in Arabia AFTER the death of Ramesses II in 1213. Exodus 2:23..
This was a LEISURELY JOURNEY with women, children, sheep, goats and cattle. Their tents were loaded onto donkeys.
Moses knew the route well having only recently returned to Goshen from Midian..
There was NO confrontation with Pharaoh ( He was already dead),.There was no death of the first born of Egypt. This refers to the death of the Crown Prince of Egypt. Definitely a late addition to the story. The name Egypt only appears during the 26th Dynasty (6th Century BC).
There was NO pursuit and parting of the Red Sea. This was a borrowing from the Exodus of the Hyksos and Israelites from Avaris pursued by King Ahmose and the problems at the Sea of Reeds about 1540 BC..
The Judahite tribes stayed in Midian Arabia with Moses father in law Jethro for about 15 years. The Judahite tribes did NOT go to Sinai peninsula. The welfare of the livestock of the tribes was paramount. Moses knew every pasture and well in Midian having lived there as a sheep herder for Jethro for over 10 years. There are NO trees or bushes on Mt Sinai. This is again a late addition supported by Helena mother of Constantine over 1500 years after the event.
About 1195 the Judahites moved to Kadesh Barnea where the 600 members of the Judahite tribes split up into 4 groups. The Simeonites to Hormah, the Judahites to Hebron and the Reubenites and Gadites with Moses to the Trans-Jordan.. The Levites were split up between these 4 tribes.
The Judahite tribes were the half-brothers of Joseph who had thrown him down a well after stripping him of his coat of many colors. Joseph as vizier of the Hyksos
had the power to punish the conspirators when they came to Avaris. They were given grazing land at Goshen. There was NO reconciliation EVER. The rest of the Israelites were welcomed into Avaris, Capital of the Hyksos..
After the expulsion of the Hyksos and Israelites from Avaris the Israelites became the Shasu-YHW (wanderers of YHW) in the Trans Jordan for 300 years 1535-1235.
The Israelite tribes were led into Canaan about 1235 by Joshua the Ephraimite, a direct descendant of Joseph.
The total time for Israelites and Judahites in Egypt was 430 years if the 10 years of Joseph in Avaris is added to the total, that is 1640-1210 BC.
The miracles and inflated numbers were to tie the Judahites to the State and to the family God YHW at a time when the very survival of the Judahites was in doubt due to the aggression of the Assyrians, Egyptians and later the Babylonians.
Recently saw the DVD Decoding the Exodus by Simca Jacobovic. His ten year research documents evidence that the Exodus did indeed happen. It is well worth seeing what he presents.
It’s still lies, I’m sorry you couldn’t figure that out, but as you believe nonsense you seem easily lead and not a critical thinker.
@ F — taking the “witness” of the Koran for Biblical narratives is like taking Shrek for Grimm’s tales.
The Koran is not a good witness to Biblical narratives. It’s a second or third hand tale.
How maths (v.simple) will help: from “Adam” to the Restoration of Temple in 164B.C by Maccabi=4000 years/ One Great Year (for Greeks)= all the sum of lives (of “persons”)and periods (also in Egypt, 400years). Check it!