The Oxford History of the Biblical World

by Coogan, Michael D.

  The numbers given for the participants in the Exodus events are impressive, and improbable. Exodus 12.37–38 states: “The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children. A mixed crowd also went up with them, and livestock in great number”; the report of the census in Numbers 1.46 reiterates this figure. By the time one adds women and children—and anyone else subsumed under the rubric of “mixed crowd”—it is a mass of people, at least 2.5 million, that is moving out of Egypt. Such a number, particularly when combined with “livestock in great number,” would have constituted a logistical nightmare and is impossible; if all 2.5 million people marched ten abreast, the resulting line of more than 150 miles would need eight or nine days to march past any single fixed point. Taken at face value, such a host could not have crossed any ordinary stretch of water by any ordinary road or path in one night; nor could these numbers, or anything remotely approaching them, have been sustained in the inhospitable Sinai desert. Modern census figures suggest a current total of approximately forty thousand bedouin for the entire Sinai Peninsula; in the late nineteenth century CE the figure was under five thousand. The entire population of Egypt in the mid-thirteenth century BCE has been estimated at 2.8 million.

  One hint of a more feasible figure for participants in the flight from Egypt is the reference in Exodus 1.15 to two Hebrew midwives; unusually, the midwives are even named. Together, the two met the needs of the entire Hebrew community sojourning in Egypt: in this case certainly not the hundreds of thousands or even thousands of women implied in a census of over half a million men. Perhaps, then, the two mid-wives reflect a superseded and now lost tradition of a much smaller group dwelling within and presumably departing from Egypt.

  Biblical dates and numbers are thus indifferent to concerns of strict historical accuracy. As with other details, the biblical reckonings are subservient to theological images and themes. The improbabilities of the data can be rationalized in different ways: but once rationalized, they lose their claim to ancient authority, historical or otherwise.

  The Bible and Primary Historical Sources

  The biblical account makes an exceptionally poor primary historical source for the Exodus events. Possible historical data are mostly inconsistent, ambiguous, or vague. No Egyptian pharaoh associated with the Exodus events is named. When the king of Arad fights the Israelites in Numbers 21.1, he is merely called “the Canaanite, the king of Arad.” In those few places where the Exodus narrative is meticulous about detail, the particulars are either unhelpful—such as the stages in the trek out of Egypt, or the names of the three Transjordanian rulers (King Sihon of the Amorites in Num. 21.21; King Og of Bashan in Num. 21.33; Balak, son of Zippor, king of Moab, in Num. 22.4) who are completely unknown outside the Bible—or inappropriate. In the latter case, biblical precision generally stems from concerns other than historical: standardized generation formulas grounded in symbolic numbers are applied backward to calculate the year of the Exodus; or historically impossible numbers are given for participants in the departure from Egypt to stress the event’s significance.

  The surviving biblical account of the Exodus has thus been shaped by later creative hands responding to overarching theological agendas and differing historical and cultural circumstances. Many of the preserved details are anachronistic, reflecting conditions during the first millennium BCE when the narrative was written down and repeatedly revised. As a consequence the final Exodus account should not be accepted at face value, nor can it function as an independent historical variable against which other sources of historical information are judged. Rather, it is a dependent variable whose historical value is judged by and against other, more reliable sources of historical information.

  Over the past two centuries, scholars have learned an enormous amount about the ancient world. Vast quantities of raw data, both textual and archaeological, have been collected and processed; innumerable synthetic works have been produced; and anthologies of primary and secondary sources have proliferated. Granted, our knowledge is not perfect; a number of variously sized holes in our understanding remain to be filled, and individual historical sources can be problematic. Collectively, however, the weight of accumulated historical knowledge is both impressive and indisputable—and almost without exception decisive for larger issues of historical understanding.

  Synchronisms among the ancient Mediterranean, Egyptian, and Near Eastern cultures have been worked out slowly and carefully by scholars in a variety of related fields. There is some quibbling in the decorative details of this structure, particularly for more poorly known eras, but the framework as a whole is solid. Absolute dates are disputed within a limited chronological range, but this does not mean that separate parts of the whole can be treated individually without regard to the broader implications for the entire structure. All parts are interrelated, and shifting one or more segments of the framework requires a concomitant movement of all other associated elements. Any substantive modification must be warranted on cogent historical grounds. The biblical narrative in particular, with its inherent inconsistencies, contradictions, and clearly problematic historical base, is not an appropriate venue for arbitrarily challenging fastidiously constructed and well-established chronologies and cross-cultural synchronisms.

  Any search for a historical core to the Exodus saga must thus work within the network of established and interdependent chronologies for Egypt and the ancient Near East. The first step is to seek mention of Exodus events in nonbiblical ancient sources. Unfortunately, there are none: no texts from Egypt or anywhere else in the ancient Near East provide such an independent witness. Years of the most intensive scrutiny have failed to produce a single unequivocal, or even generally accepted, nonbiblical historical reference to any event or person involved in the Exodus saga. The first reasonably secure date in all of biblical history is Solomon’s death around 928 BCE; and with one exception, no extrabiblical reference to Israel or Israelites by name occurs in historical sources earlier than the ninth century.

  The exception occurs on the “Merneptah Stela,” also known as the “Israel Stela.” This black granite stela, over 3 meters (10 feet) high, was found in the ruins of Merneptah’s funerary temple in western Thebes. A fragmentary copy also turned up at Karnak, the powerful state temple of the New Kingdom pharaohs (Dynasties 18–20; ca. 1550–1069 BCE) located in eastern Thebes. The stela tells us that it was carved in the fifth year of Merneptah (whose name is also rendered Merenptah), a pharaoh of Dynasty 19 who ruled approximately 1213–1203. The long text of the stela primarily glorifies Merneptah’s military victory over Libyans and their Sea People allies, but its last two lines refer to a prior military campaign into Canaan, in which Merneptah says that he defeated, among others, Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoam, and Israel. The hieroglyphs employed for Ashkelon, Gezer, and Yanoam include the determinative sign regularly used to refer to city-states: a throw stick plus three mountains designating a foreign country. The hieroglyphs with which Israel was written include instead the determinative sign usually reserved for foreign peoples: a throw stick plus a man and a woman over the three vertical plural lines. This sign is typically used by the Egyptians to signify nomadic groups or peoples without a fixed city-state home, thus implying a seminomadic or rural status for “Israel” at that time.

  Recently some scholars have suggested that reliefs in the Karnak temple once attributed to Rameses II were carved during Merneptah’s reign and provide a parallel account to the Canaanite campaign referred to on the Israel Stela, specifically illustrating the battles in which Ashkelon, Gezer, Yanoam, and Israel were defeated. If so, these reliefs would be the first known depictions of Israelites. Only Ashkelon, however, is named specifically; the identification of Gezer, Yanoam, and Israel must be inferred. This interpretation, as well as the dating of the reliefs, remains controversial. Ironically, the encounter with Egypt immortalized in the Merneptah Stela, the only indisputable extrabiblical mention of Israel prior to the ni
nth century BCE, is not recorded in the Bible, at least not in recognizable form.

  Earlier in this century, a great deal of excitement arose with the discovery in Egypt of the Amarna tablets. These texts, dating to the fourteenth century BCE, mention a troublesome group of people found in ancient Syria-Palestine called the ‘Apiru/‘Abiru, or Hapiru/Habiru. Scholars eagerly equated these Apiru with biblical ’ibrî, or “Hebrew,” and at first thought they had found confirming, independent evidence of the invading Hebrews under Joshua. As more texts were uncovered throughout the Near East, however, it became clear that these Apiru were found throughout most of the Fertile Crescent (that well-watered arc of urban civilizations extending from the Tigris-Euphrates river basins over to the Mediterranean littoral and down through the Nile Valley) during the second millennium. They had no common ethnic or national affiliations; they spoke no common language; and they normally led a marginal and sometimes lawless existence on the fringes of settled society. The Apiru constituted, in effect, a loosely defined, inferior social class composed of shifting and shifty population elements without secure ties to settled communities. Apiru are frequently encountered in texts as outlaws, mercenaries, and slaves. Scholarly opinion remains divided as to whether there is an etymological relationship between Apiru and ’ibrî, though many scholars think that the Apiru were a component of proto-Israel.

  Historical Analogues to the Exodus Events

  Given the lack of extrabiblical witness to any part of the Exodus account, a second step toward placing the Exodus events in history has been to seek general historical parallels to the biblical data. Such analogues are most commonly invoked in three discrete categories reflecting the major components of the biblical narrative: “descent into Egypt,” “sojourn in Egypt,” and “Exodus from Egypt.”

  Virtually any movement into Egypt by Asiatics prior to the time of Merneptah can be considered a potential parallel for the biblical descent into Egypt by Joseph and Jacob and his entourage. Contacts between Egypt and Canaan can be charted at least intermittently throughout the late fourth and third millennia BCE and fairly regularly during the first half of the second millennium. These contacts become continuous during the second half of the second millennium, when Egypt ruled an empire that included most of ancient Syria-Palestine.

  A variety of sources—tomb and temple paintings and reliefs, inscriptions, and papyri—indicate that during the second millennium BCE, large numbers of Asiatics found their way into Egypt. Many came as slaves: spoils of conquest from Egypt’s numerous sorties into Syria-Palestine; tribute imposed on the vanquished by a victorious Egyptian state; or victims of the ancient slave trade. Demand for slaves in Egypt was considerable, from individual Egyptians as well as palace and temple estates. Slave ownership was not confined to the wealthiest elite; we know of one Syrian girl who was peddled door-to-door by a private trader in a village in western Thebes.

  Trade was another reason for Asiatics to enter Egypt. A nineteenth-century BCE (Dynasty 12) tomb painting at Beni Hasan in Middle Egypt depicts an Asiatic donkey caravan. New Kingdom Theban tombs portray Syrian merchants. Major ports maintained foreign quarters that housed traders and trade missions. It is also suggested that the expression “to speak Syrian” became synonymous with “to bargain” in late New Kingdom times.

  We know from later biblical sources that Egypt provided refuge for those fleeing political strife or persecution in ancient Syria-Palestine. In 1 Kings 11.16–18, Hadad and a small group of Edomites evaded David and Joab by escaping to Egypt, where the pharaoh gave them asylum. Similarly, in 1 Kings 11.40, Jeroboam fled to Egypt after his abortive revolt against Solomon and wisely remained there until Solomon’s death. In 2 Kings 25.26, a remnant of those left behind after Nebuchadrezzar’s capture and sack of Jerusalem fled to Egypt. Finally, in Matthew 2.13–15, an angel told Joseph to descend into Egypt with Jesus and Mary in order to avoid Herod’s deadly search for the infant Jesus; there they remained until Herod’s death.

  Egypt also seems to have served as a haven for the less fortunate, particularly during times of famine or other hardship. Certainly the fertile, well-watered delta would have been an attractive destination, permanent or temporary, for a variety of groups from Syria-Palestine. There was probably a more or less constant flow of Asiatic and bedouin elements through Egypt’s permeable northeastern border, as people sought pasturage, sanctuary, or a better life in Egypt’s wealthier and more sophisticated civilization. At times of strong central government and strict border control this infiltration was probably a trickle; when the government was weak, foreign movement into the delta might become a flood. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of hard data for reconstructing delta history in detail, particularly for periods prior to the first millennium BCE.

  Physical proximity to Asia made the delta, especially the northeastern delta, the main overland entry into Egypt for Asiatics. Goshen, the territory of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt according to the Bible, is traditionally located in precisely this area. The delta was also home to the two major routes connecting Egypt and Syria-Palestine: the principal northern artery—the Ways of Horus and the Way of the Sea—along the Mediterranean coast; and the peripheral southern route through the Wadi Tumilat to the middle of the Sinai Peninsula.

  Occasional written sources also provide glimpses into delta affairs. The “Instructions for Merikare,” a literary work dating to the First Intermediate Period (ca. 2160–1963 BCE), speaks briefly and generally of Asiatic infiltration into the eastern delta. A late Dynasty 19 (ca. 1295–1186 BCE) papyrus contains a short scribal report concerning a group of Shasu bedouin whom the Egyptian government allowed to pass the Fortress of Merneptah-Content-with-Truth, located in Tjeku (probably the Wadi Tumilat). These Shasu wanted to water their flocks at the pools of Per Atum of Merneptah-Content-with-Truth in Tjeku. The Shasu, a seminomadic group known only from New Kingdom Egyptian documents and reliefs, apparently occupied southern Palestine east of the Jordan River and frequented much if not all of Canaan. Egyptian texts refer to a “land of the Shasu,” and reliefs depict the Shasu in a distinctive garb clearly differentiated from that worn by Canaanites. Like the Apiru, the Shasu are often invoked in discussions of Israelite origins, and a number of scholars think that elements of the Shasu were among the proto-Israelites who formed the core of the settlers of the hill country of Canaan during the late thirteenth and early twelfth centuries.

  Historical sources identify only one group of Asiatics that migrated into and occupied the delta: the Hyksos. The Hyksos were a succession of foreign kings, based in the eastern delta, which comprised Egypt’s Dynasty 15 (ca. 1648–1540 BCE) during the confused Second Intermediate Period. They were booted out of the country at the beginning of the New Kingdom by a line of native Egyptian rulers from Thebes. The Canaanite origin of the Hyksos has been established by archaeological connections.

  Potential counterparts thus exist for a “descent into Egypt” like that recorded in the Bible. Such an event in principle would be far from unique. These analogues, however, are only possibilities, and cannot be construed as hard evidence for a particular movement of Israelites into Egypt under specific circumstances. At most, they tell us that a movement by Israelites into Egypt sometime during the second millennium BCE was neither impossible nor unlikely, and would have been compatible with the tenor of the times.

  Similar parallels exist for an Israelite “sojourn in Egypt.” Diverse second-millennium BCE Egyptian records attest to Asiatics, particularly individual Asiatics, living in Egypt and functioning in a wide variety of capacities ranging from the most menial of slaves to the highest of officials. From the Middle Kingdom (Dynasty 12) comes a papyrus mentioning an “officer in charge of the Asiatics.” Foreigners, whether captives or mercenaries, were common in the Egyptian military from Old Kingdom times on. The New Kingdom army, larger, more permanent, and more professional than any before, utilized correspondingly larger numbers of mercenaries. A Dynasty 13 papyrus lists, individually, seventy-ni
ne slaves belonging to a private household in Upper Egypt; of these, forty-eight had foreign names, mostly Semitic. Middle Kingdom stelas in general often mention Semitic domestic slaves who apparently functioned as trusted family retainers. Indeed, so many household slaves in Egypt were of Asiatic origin that the generic word for “Asiatic,” ’amw, became synonymous in some contexts with “slave.”

  Information about Asiatics becomes particularly copious and varied during the New Kingdom, reflecting both a larger number of preserved texts and depictions and increased contact resulting from Egypt’s conquest of southern Syria-Palestine. Children or other close relatives of local potentates in areas conquered by Egypt were commonly sent to Egypt as hostages to guarantee the good behavior of the conquered potentates. While in Egypt, these hostages were well treated and carefully acculturated into Egyptian thought modes and lifestyles. Children were raised with the children of the Egyptian elite; males often served in the Egyptian army. This policy was a shrewd component of Egypt’s colonial regime, forging a powerful bond between Egypt and hostage, and enhancing vassal loyalty if and when the hostages returned home to positions of power. Hostages who did not return home often rose to positions of importance within Egypt.

  At or near the bottom of the Egyptian social ladder were the many slaves tied to state and temple endowments. They were forced to toil on agricultural, industrial, and construction projects, engaging in such tasks as weaving, cultivation, wine making, quarrying, and public works. Thutmose III (Dynasty 18, ca. 1479–1425) put Syrian captives to work as “clothmakers” for the state temple of Amun at Karnak; the same king also gave 150 Asiatic weavers to one of his favored officials. Generally more fortunate were domestic slaves, particularly in the royal household, where they might become trusted servants. Some Canaanite slaves held the royal sunshades; other Asiatics served among the king’s personal entourage, rising even to the high position of chamberlain.