Who was the Pharaoh of the Exodus?

Sankhkare Thutmose Egypt

The story of Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt has been told many times in prose, poetry, plays, television, movies, and even cartoons. Almost without exception, the writers of these stories choose to depict Ramses II as the unnamed pharaoh of the Exodus, but how much truth is there in that assumption? According to "Pharaoh's Daughter and Her Hebrew Adopted 'Son'" by Omar Zuhdi in this month's issue of KMT magazine, new analysis of old material is casting doubt on the accuracy of this long held tradition.

Obviously, any study of Moses must begin with the Bible. Yet, Zuhdi suggests, the first question has to be one of interpretation. How historically accurate is the biblical story of Moses? Is it meant to be literal history or allegory? It seems that most Biblical scholars agree with David Little Cooper:

"When the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context ... indicate otherwise."

Unfortunately, the Bible does not provide us with concrete dates for the events of Moses's life. However, at least one later book of the Old Testament offers a hint:

"And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign ... that he began to build the house of the Lord." (1 Kings 6:1)

Based on currently held views, the fourth year of Solomon's reign would fall in the year 966 BCE. Accepting that the authors of the Bible meant literal solar years, we can subtract 480 years from 966 BCE, thereby placing the Exodus in 1446 BCE during the reign of Amenhotep II or possibly at the end of Thutmose III's reign. But does the biblical narrative fit with the historical record of that time? Let's continue to compare the two and see.

Kings I has provided us with our first definite date in Moses's life. To arrive at the year of his birth, we must consider another passage: Exodus 7:7, which tells us, ... Moses was fourscore years old, and Aaron was fourscore and three years old, when they spake unto Pharaoh." Therefore, simple subtraction gives us 1526 BCE as the year Moses was born. So where does this place him "in the grand sweep of Egyptian history"?

As you may already know, pinpointing dates in pharaonic history is a difficult task. The Egyptians did not use one fixed point for dating their long history. In addition, there are gaps and conflicting information in some areas. However, using sources such as the kings lists of Karnak, Abydos, and Sakkara we can devise a chronology of the Egyptian pharaohs, including lengths of reigns. In addition, since the Egyptians used the first sighting of the star Spdt (Sothis) — Sirius to modern astronomers — as the key point for beginning their year and because this gave them a 365 day year, we can begin to correlate ancient Egyptian dates with our own modern history through astronomical observation. In addition, scholars use Egyptian interaction with contemporary civilizations to help suggest chronologies, although even at that specific dates may vary by as much as decades from one historian to another.

Using Chronicle of the Pharaohs by Peter Clayton (an accepted chronology meant for consumption by the general public) as our benchmark reference, Moses would have been born during the last years of Amenhotep I (1551-1524). However, given the astronomical ambiguities involved in pharaonic dating, to place any date so precisely in the reign of a given pharaoh must be viewed with a bit of flexibility. Therefore, we would be wise to consider that the Hebrew patriarch may have been born several years earlier or later — possibly even during the reign of Amenhotep's successor, Thutmose I (1524-1518).

Unlike most Egyptian kings, Amenhotep I faced the end of his reign without "an heir of his body", as the saying goes. So sometime before he died, he chose as his successor Thutmose, the Great Commander of the Army. To strengthen his claim and to insure a smooth transition, the newly designated heir married Pharaoh's sister Ahmes. It is interesting to note that Thutmose was married to Pharaoh's sister, not his daughter. Might this indicate that Amenhotep I had no daughters? A fact that may become important to our study later.

Eventually Thutmose I became the father of three sons and two daughters, one of which was the very well-known Hatshepsut. After a short but successful reign, he died leaving the Horus throne to Thutmose II, who was his son by a minor queen not by the Great Royal Wife Ahmes. Again to secure Pharaoh's claim, the second Thutmose was married to his half-sister Hatshepsut, who may have been older than her husband and who had been born to Queen Ahmes. This meant that the Great Royal Wife was actually more royal than her husband. Had she been male, there is no doubt that Hatshepsut and not Thutmose II would have inherited the Double Crown.

Thutmose II reigned for approximately fifteen years and died when his heir, again by a secondary wife, was still a child of six. At this point Hatshepsut publicly took the reins of state (there is some indication she may have been the power behind the throne already), initially as regent for her nephew/step-son, but eventually declaring herself Pharaoh. While it is not possible to pinpoint when she assumed the kingship, two things seem clear: (1) she did not replace Thutmose III as the sovereign, but joined him as co-regent; and (2) she only assumed her royal titles after several years, since dated inscriptions referencing her do not appear until Year 7 of Thutmose's reign. The prevailing view accepts that she did not begin dating her reign from her own accession, but from the death of her husband and her assumption of the regency.

The two ruled jointly — Hatshepsut in the south supported by the priesthood and confining her interests for the most part to domestic issues; Thutmose in the north supported by the military and concerning himself with military issues (as a simplified summary of their joint reign) — for 22 years, at which point Hatshepsut disappears from the records. The cause of this disappearance is uncertain, because (for unknown reasons) some 17 years later Thutmose had the inscriptions on her monuments and virtually all mention of her kingship destroyed. However, there is no reason to believe it was due to anything other than natural death. Whatever the circumstances, Hatshepsut left the historical stage as her grandfather had done, without producing a son. This fact undoubtedly made it easier for Thutmose III to assume sole kingship and saved the country from further division, perhaps even civil war.

This, then, is the time frame in which the Bible appears to have placed Moses's early years — from some time just prior to or at the beginning of Thutmose I's reign to the end of Hatshepsut's co-regency with Thutmose III.

The Bible makes it clear that Moses was born during a time of strife for his people. Famine was ravaging their homeland when the Israelites took refuge in Egypt. Originally they enjoyed a privileged status due to the esteem with which the pharaoh of the day viewed their kinsman Joseph. One benefit of Joseph's high position was that they were granted the right to settle in the Delta in an area known as both Goshen and Ramesses. However, Exodus says, "Now there rose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph." (Ex 1:8). No mention of this pharaoh's name has been found in either biblical or Egyptian sources. However, the Bible again gives us two pieces of information by which we might identify him.

"And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pi-thom and Ra-amses." (Ex. 1:9-11)

Bearing in mind Mr. Cooper's admonition to seek the plain sense of scripture, what we have here is an Egyptian pharaoh who saw what he perceived as a potential threat and who took what he deemed were appropriate steps to contain it. The threat? A large foreign population growing in the northeastern Delta, which being of Semitic origin might side with enemies (also of Semitic origin) from areas of Asia in that same direction. The countermeasure? To set this population to work building 'treasure cities' for Egypt, using the time-honored institution of corvée (defined as 'unpaid labor [as toward constructing roads] due from a feudal vassal to his lord').

We don't know how long this corvée labor — which the Israelites viewed as slavery — lasted in Egypt. However, it is evident from scripture that it had gone on for some time before the Exodus. Without hints to calculate a time period, a guess must be ventured. So, when during this particular time period was Egypt threatened by enemies from the northeast just beyond the Delta? No inscriptions indicate any threat during Amenhotep I's reign. Thutmose I marched troops across the Euphrates, which he certainly would not (or could not) have done had he been concerned about attacks on his northeastern border.

Ahmose I, however, faced a situation that fits very closely with what is described in the Bible. A hundred years earlier Egypt had been invaded and partially conquered by a Semitic people mainly from Canaan or Syria. The contemporary term for them was Aamu. History calls them the Hyksos, and they established the Fifteenth Dynasty in northern Egypt, which ruled collaterally with the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Dynasties. Some time during his 22 year reign, Ahmose I, whose father and brother before him had died battling the Hyksos, managed to eject the invaders from Egypt's borders and restore native pharaonic rule to the Two Lands.

Furthermore, Ahmose and the subsequent kings of Egypt dedicated themselves to seeing to it that a repetition of the Hyksos conquest could never happen again. He and his immediate followers became warrior kings, who built fortifications along Egypt's northeastern border and actively seized territory outside that border to create buffer states between Egypt and the 'barbarians' of the Middle East — people of Semitic origins that the Egyptian Pharaohs would never again fully trust. It's even possible that the pharaoh who so favored Joseph was himself a Fifteenth Dynasty Hyksos ruler and not the Egyptian king ruling from Thebes.

After their defeat at the hands of Ahmose, the Hyksos undoubtedly melted back into the Canaanite and Syrian populations. At any rate, they disappear from history as a political force. However, the population from which they came continued to loom large and menacing just to the northeast. And among those apirw ('foreigners') were the Hebrews who continued to migrate and settle in Egypt's Delta, coming from the very areas that so concerned Pharaoh. Isn't it reasonable to believe that Ahmose might have fortified his border 'by pressing into service the local residents — Asiatics like the Hyksos which he did not eject from Egypt and yet, nevertheless, would most probably have mistrusted?

As closely as the documented history in Egypt seems to correspond with the Exodus story, one major objection to placing the Hebrew 'enslavement' at this time has been raised: that of Pharaoh's treasure cities. The objection being that Pithom and Ramesses are well documented at the beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasty and yet do not appear to have been in existence at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty. However, can we really be certain of this? To truly begin to answer this question, we first need to identify the sites in question.

Unfortunately, scholars have put forth at least three different locations as possible candidates for Pithom (Per-Atum) and so emphasis has fallen on the city of Ramesses. The difficulty here is not the site, but the name. It is known that Ramses II expanded and engulfed the former Hyksos capital Avaris to build his capital Per-Ramses (Pi-Ramesses). Let's assume that the Israelites were set to work rebuilding Avaris — not unreasonable given that a number of battles must have taken place here during Ahmose's expulsion of the invaders. Why, those advocates of Ramses II as the Exodus Pharaoh ask, does the Bible refer to the city by a name it would not acquire for another 250 years?

A simple explanation — and one suggested by those who would chose an earlier date for Moses — is that a later day copyist simply updated the name given in the Pentateuch to a more widely accepted term, in the same way people today will refer to Waset by the Greek name Thebes or (more often still) by the modern name Luxor. Such modernizing of place names is found elsewhere in the Bible, why not here as well?

"And there went a man of the house of Levi and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son, and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months." (Ex. 2:1-2)

According to scripture, Moses's mother Jochebed attempted to hide him in defiance of an edict declaring that all Hebrew children under the age of two be killed. This presumably is why Aaron, three years Moses's senior, was spared. When Jochebed could no longer hide her son, she made the ark of bulrushes and "laid it in the flags by the river bank." Now, Moses's sister Miriam comes into the story. She is sent to follow the boat to be sure it is found and by whom.

"And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself in the river, and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it." (Ex. 2:5)

The princess recognizes that the child is of the Hebrews, and yet she determines to adopt him as her own — also in defiance of Pharaoh's edict, it seems. It has been suggested that Moses's arrival at this particular place on the river at this particular time may not have been coincidence, but planned by Jochebed based on prior observation of the princess's habits. It is certain that she would have known his best chance of survival would be under the protection of someone powerfully placed at Court. So who was this benefactress?

If it can be accepted that Moses's birth occurred sometime toward the end of Amenhotep I's reign or during that of Thutmose I — and bearing in mind that only princesses and not queens may be considered — there appear to be only two candidates living at the time. Both of these were daughters of Thutmose I: Hatshepsut and Nefrubity. Inscriptions at Deir el Bahari seem to indicate that Nefrubity didn't survive very long after childhood. However, this is not true of her older sister, Hatshepsut. History was later to prove her a very capable young woman and one unlikely to quail at defying Pharaoh's orders. She seems well worthy of being considered a candidate for the daughter of Pharaoh.

At this point, Miriam approaches Pharaoh's daughter and offers to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the child. The royal princess agrees, even offering wages, and thus Jochebed was given back and even paid to nurture her own son.

"And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses. And she said, 'Because I drew him out of the water'." (Ex. 2:10).

The name Moses is often said to be a shortened name of a theophoric or god-bearing name, like Ramses or Thutmose, the later part mses (meaning born of) being so close to the biblical name. However, it is much more likely that it stems from the Egyptian mw (water) and s (son): "Son of the Water". The Bible says of Moses's upbringing only, And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds" (Acts 7:22).

This description agrees with what is known of the training of Egyptian princes, who were schooled in academics such as reading and writing, hieroglyphs and hieratic, foreign languages, and military studies. That Moses, a Hebrew, would have been allowed such training is not in question. The Egyptians were know to have raised and trained many foreign princes alongside their Egyptian counterparts. That he would have been accepted as the princess's son also agrees with what is known of the Egyptian customs of adoption. In fact, by all accounts, by his late teens Moses would have been well prepared to enter government service, either as an administrator or as a military officer. We don't know what he chose to do with his life, however, since the Exodus narrative moves immediately from Moses receiving his name to his reason for fleeing Egypt as an adult.

"And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burden: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. And when he went out the second day, behold two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?" (Ex. 2:11-14).

Now the questions most pertinent to our study are why did Moses wait forty years before venturing out among "his brethren"? Why did an Egyptian prince (even an adopted one) fear retaliation for killing a commoner? And, indeed, how is it a foreign "slave" would dare to back talk a Prince of the Two Lands? Perhaps, the answers also provide clues to our mystery. We know that after forty years of privilege, Moses left the Egyptian court and returned to his people. Not only returned to them, but "...refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God...." (Heb. 11:24-25). But why? Surely there was some precipitating factor that caused this change of heart. A loss of standing at court, perhaps, or a disinheritance?

So let's examine what we know of Egyptian history to see if that and the biblical narrative might be compatible. At some point in Egyptian history, Hebrews from Canaan and Syria began to move into the Delta, drawn there by a privileged status accorded them by the pharaoh of that region of Egypt. After an unknown length of time, Upper and Lower Egypt went to war from which the Pharaoh of Upper Egypt emerged victorious and reunited the Two Lands. This Pharaoh implemented a drastically different policy toward the Hebrews living in the Delta. Harsh measures were enacted, and the Hebrews, now mistrusted by the regime in power, were set to work building defenses along the northeastern border.

Then, in approximately 1526 BCE, the Princess Hatshepsut (probably only a teenager herself) came upon an abandoned Hebrew baby near the Nile and adopted him as her own son. At some point just before or after her father's death, she married Thutmose II to strengthen her half brother's claim to the throne. After a short reign he, too, died leaving his six-year-old son by a minor wife as his heir with the Great Royal Wife Hatshepsut acting as regent. For forty years history unfolded and then around 1483 BCE, Hatshepsut's co-regency with Thutmose III ended. This date coincides closely with Moses's fortieth year, at which time he not only returned to his people, but refused to be considered an Egyptian.

Is it possible that Hatshepsut's death left Moses, after enjoying the life of an Egyptian prince for forty years, without the royal protection he had known all his life? And is it possible that due to a falling out with Thutmose III — the details of which we may never know — all mention of his existence (as was attempted with that of his adopted mother) was expunged from the Egyptian records? At this point, of course, he returned to his Hebrew brethren where, after killing an Egyptian citizen (and bereft of the powerful protection he had once enjoyed), he was forced to flee the country.

Eventually, of course, he returned. In 1446 BCE by our calculations, at which time, if we have the chronology correct, Amenhotep II may have been wearing the double crown. And, as Mr. Zuhdi puts it, "the rest, as they say, is history."