by Ahmed Osman
In the spring of the following year Ramses II returned to Syria, this time to conquer Kadesh. After fierce fighting, in which the king himself played a courageous role, he succeeded in defeating the Hittites and capturing the city. His third Asiatic campaign took place in Year 8 of his reign. On this occasion he had first to crush unrest in Galilee before embarking on other campaigns – recovery of the area of Damascus, strengthening his hold upon the Phoenician coast lands and attacking the Amurrite city of Dapur to the north of Kadesh. Two years later, in Year 10, the king engaged in a second attack upon Dapur, which had rebelled: ‘Sometime in regnal Year 10, or shortly afterwards, Ramses II appears to have left Egypt; perhaps at this time he conducted the campaigns into Transjordan that are represented at the walls of Luxor since they do not fit into the accounts of his earlier campaigns.’2
Ramses II returned to Beth-Shan in Year 18, after which negotiations began between himself and Hattusili III, the new King of the Hittites, that resulted ultimately in a treaty of peace and alliance between them in Year 21. This treaty was later consolidated by a marriage between Ramses II and a Hittite princess in his Year 34 and a second princess a decade later. Details of the treaty, known from both Egyptian and Hittite sources, can be found in Appendix A(ii): The Hattusili Treaty, but the subsequent situation that obtained between the two countries is summed up by Schmidt, an American Egyptologist, in the following terms in his book Ramses II: ‘With Year 30 and the first Jubilee, a time of peace and tranquility seems to have descended upon Egypt; from that year onward, there is no reference to warfare or strife. Building activity seems to have become Ramses’s primary public concern, and, as far as one can tell, the economy of the land prospered.’
Some of the wars conducted by Ramses II were a continuation of the campaigns against the Shasu that had been initiated by his father, Seti I. There are several references to them, although no specific dates are to be found, at Tanis, one of the Ramesside cities in the north-east of the Delta, south of Lake Menzalah:
Obelisk V, W. Face:‘… who made a great slaughter in the land of the Shasu’; Obelisk IX, W. Face: ‘… who plunders the Shasu-land’; Stela II: ‘… he has destroyed the inheritance of the Shasu-land and made them [the chiefs] bring their tribute to Egypt for ever and ever’; Stela V: ‘… who made great slaughter in the land of the Shasu’; Stella [VIII], frag. 3:’… the Shasu, taken off as c[aptives…]’; Stela IX, Face B, 3: ‘… who plundered the Shasu-land’.
We also find at Karnak, south of the Hittite treaty and Ascalon-scene, over a file of prisoners: ‘… the Shasu whom His Majesty plundered’.3
Where did these battles against the Shasu take place? Professor Kenneth A. Kitchen of Liverpool University, citing various Egyptian sources, has concluded that Mount Seir formed part of the Shasu-land and is to be equated with Edom of Genesis (36: 8–9). (See also Appendix A (iii): A Dissenting Voice.) Of a number of other names mentioned he says that Bernard Grdseloff, the Polish Egyptologist, has ‘aptly compared Rbn with the Laban of Deuteronomy, 1:1 (and Libnah of Numbers, 33:20–21) and Sm’t with the Shimea thites of I Chronicles, 2:55, all in the area of Seir/Edom, the Negeb, or the Araba rift valley between them’, and concludes that the evidence ‘clearly suggests that Ramses or troops of his raided the Negeb, the uplands of Seir or Edom, and perhaps part of the intervening Araba rift valley … Thus we have evidence for the activity of Ramses II (or at least of his forces) in both Edom and Moab (to the south and south-east of the Dead Sea).’4
Dr Kitchen next proceeds to try to provide possible dates for the military confrontations between Ramses II and the Shasu: ‘It is difficult to place these Transjordanian activities within the general pattern of Ramses II’s Asiatic wars as at present known, and a summary must suffice. The first campaign would be that of Year 4: the “middle” stele at Nahr el-Kelb, north of Beirut, gives this date clearly. The second campaign – explicitly so-called – is that of Year 5 in Syria that ended in the notorious battle of Kadesh. Then a campaign in Year 8 in Palestine, Syria and Phoenicia is commemorated on the rear face of the pylon of the Ramasseum. Then comes the south stele of Ramses II at Nahr el-Kelb, perhaps dated Year 10, indicating further activity in Phoenicia. At some time in this general period belong the Syrian wars commemorated by the Karnak series of reliefs and related scenes at Luxor, besides other traces. However, the Egyptians had also to deal with matters nearer home, in Palestine. An undated scene at Karnak showing the submission of Ascalon is usually ascribed to Ramses II. And in his Year 18 is dated a stele from Beth-Shan that records virtually no concrete facts, but in itself may indicate activity in that region. This brings us to Year 21 and the Hittite Treaty, after which dated records of warfare cease.
‘The foregoing picture may suggest that for his first ten years Ramses’s Asiatic activities were concentrated on Syria and the Hittite problem. Perhaps this gave way to a stalemate ending in the treaty of Year 21. In the meantime, in the Years 11–20, unrest had developed in Palestine (Ascalon relief; Beth Shan stele, Job Stone)’ – inscribed stones of Ramses found in Syria/Palestine – ‘Perhaps one may also place the Edomite and Moabite undertakings within this period.’5
It would seem that all military confrontations in Asia came to an end for the Egyptians by Year 21 of Ramses II when the peace treaty was concluded with the Hittites. The wars with the Shasu must, consequently, all have taken place before this date.
We therefore have the situation that, in the first year of Seti I, the Shasu were emerging from Sinai and posing a threat to Canaan, Edom and Moab. Then, at the time of Ramses II, about two decades later, they have left Sinai and are to be found in Edom and Moab. If we compare the sudden appearance of the Shasu bedouin and their movements with the Israelite Exodus from Sinai we find that they followed the very same route. Dr Kitchen, too, was struck by this fact: ‘For Old Testament studies, the new information has some bearing on the date of the Hebrew conquest of central Transjordan and their entry into W. Palestine, not to mention the date of the Exodus.’6
And so to return to the epilogue of the Israel Stela …
The evidence available makes it clear that Merenptah had only peace in Asia during his reign. There is no reference whatever to his having conducted any war in Palestine/Syria. It therefore seems clear that the epilogue to the Israel Stela refers not to his own campaigns, but to the status quo he inherited, the situation created by his grandfather, Seti I, and his father, Ramses II:
• Tehenu (Libya): Here Seti I’s wars are meant, as Merenptah’s own war with the invading Libyans had been described in the Israel Stela and elsewhere.
• Hatti: The land of the Hittites. We saw how both Seti I and Ramses II fought the Hittites in northern Syria until a peace treaty was ultimately agreed. There is no account of any war after that date.
• Canaan: The land of western Palestine, which also includes the cities of Ascalon and Gezer. It was Seti I who regained this section in the Nineteenth Dynasty and Ramses II consolidated his victory.
• Yanoam: To the south of the Sea of Galilee in north Palestine. It was captured by Seti I in his Year 1.
• Hurru: Whether it referred to Palestine/ Syria in general or the Horite land to the south of the Dead Sea, both Seti I and Ramses II fought in these areas.
There is one other name in the epilogue – Israel. Yet there is no mention at all of the Shasu, bedouin of Semitic origin, nomads with no fixed city or country, striking north from Sinai and threatening Canaan, Edom and Moab. On the evidence the inescapable conclusions are that Merenptah never fought Israel, but his father and grandfather did, and the terms Israelites and the Shasu are, in this particular case, one and the same people. As Moses and the tribe of Israel united in Sinai with some local Midianite elements, they were first identified as Shasu by Egyptian scribes. Later, when the Israelite identity became clear – and now that they were no longer in Sinai, but had settled in Palestine – the scribe of the Merenptah Stela was able to recognize them as such.
It is t
he preconceptions of the majority of scholars, Dr Kitchen among them, that have been the basic barrier to acceptance of this historical truth. They have failed to take into consideration the point made by Jean Yoyotte, one of the leading French Egyptologists of our time, that the ‘biblical account of the Exodus, which was written much later by Hebrew scribes, contains literary embellishments about miraculous events of the flight’.7 Thus they have sought evidence of great catastrophes that befell Egypt and expected to find the names of Moses and Joshua in Egyptian texts. More misleading, through misinterpretation of the Israel Stela and their belief that the Sojourn lasted 430 years, they have sought evidence of the Exodus into Sinai in the wrong eras, the reign of Ramses II or of Merenptah.
As long ago as the early 1960s, however, Yoyotte, who had done a great deal of work in the Delta and among the Ramesside remains, became one of the few to see through the ‘embellishments’ of the biblical account and identify the historical core of the story – that the Shasu wars are the only possible equivalent of the biblical story of the Exodus:
‘The persecution of the Jews was undoubtedly part of the Ramesside campaign against the Shasu (bedouin) … The exact date of the Exodus is disputed. According to the Bible, the Jews toiled in a town called Ramses, and a stele of the time of Merenptah, a son of Ramses II, speaks of the “annihilation” of Israel. From this evidence it has been deduced that their persecutors were Ramses II and Merenptah and that the Exodus took place under the latter in about 1200 C. But the “Israel Stele”, in fact, gives the impression that the Jews had already returned to Palestine by this time. Considering biblical chronology and the results of excavations at Jericho, it.seems probable that their sufferings took place at the time of Seti I …
‘The “Israel Stele” is a misleading name for a document consisting of twenty-eight lines, twenty-five of which describe the triumph of the king over Libya. Mention is made of Palestine only in a three-line epilogue in which the famous name Israel appears among others. As far as the Ramesside government was concerned, the Exodus was merely a migration of bedouin labour, the Shasu among others.’8
As we said before, there are strong indications that the Exodus did not take place before the Ramesside period of the Nineteenth Dynasty. However, as Seti I campaigned against Israel in north Sinai and south Palestine immediately on succeeding to the throne, the Israelites must have left Egypt proper during the short reign of his father, Ramses I.
This chronology would make sense in more ways than one in the light of the Book of Exodus. As we shall see, before coming to the throne, Pa-Ramses (later Ramses I) had been appointed by Horemheb as his vizier, Commander of the Troops, Overseer of Foreign Countries, Overseer of the Fortress of Zarw, Master of the Horse. Ramses, himself said to have come from the Eastern Delta, was therefore at that time the most powerful man in Egypt after Horemheb. If the Bible, which never gives the name of the ruling Pharaoh, names the Eastern Delta city built by the harsh labour of the Israelites as Ramses, the name must derive not from Pharaoh but from vizier Ramses, who personally forced them to work. Then, while Moses was still hiding in Sinai, the Lord informed him that the King of Egypt (Horemheb) had died. In this case, the king whom Moses met after his return must have been a new king (Ramses I). Yet this new king could not have ruled for a long time as, after the different punishments inflicted upon him for not allowing the Israelites to depart, that by their nature take one full year as they are seasonal and follow the inundation of the Nile, they leave, he follows them and dies.
The Bible does not state directly that the pursuing Pharaoh died in the waters although this is implied:
And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them. (Exodus, 14:28)
The Koran, however, makes it clear that the pursuing Pharaoh, too, was drowned:
We took the Children
Of Israel across the sea:
Pharaoh and his hosts followed them
In insolence and spite.
At length, when overwhelmed
With the flood, he said:
‘I believe that there is no god
Except Him Whom the Children
Of Israel believe in: …’
(It was said to him) …
‘This day shall We save thee9
In thy body, that thou
Mayest be a Sign to those
Who come after thee!
But verily, many among mankind
Are heedless of Our Signs!’(Sura X:90–92)10
Ramses I is known to have ruled for less than two years. The biblical account of this part of the Exodus story cannot therefore agree more precisely than it does with what we know of the history of Ancient Egypt at this time. If Ramses I was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Horemheb was the Pharaoh of the Oppression. But how long had the Israelites been in Egypt when these events took place?
5
SOJOURN – AND THE MOTHER OF MOSES
CONTRADICTORY accounts in the Old Testament make it difficult to arrive at the precise date when the Patriarch Joseph and the Israelites arrived in Egypt. As we saw earlier, we are offered a choice of three periods for the Sojourn – 430 years, 400 years and four generations. In Stranger in the Valley of the Kings I argued that the figure of 430 years was wrongly arrived at by the biblical editor in the following way: firstly, he added up the four generations named in the Old Testament account of the Descent into Egypt as if each new generation were born on the very day that his father died, having lived for more than a century:
Then he deducted the years (fifty-seven) that Levi lived before the Descent – according to the Talmud he lived eighty years after the Descent and died at the age of 137 – plus the forty years Moses is said to have lived after the Exodus. This left him with his total of 430 years. This method of computation is obviously unsound, and I have since been pleased to find that many biblical scholars agree with my view that the figure of 430 years for the Sojourn is not to be taken literally – a variety of explanations are put forward – while it is, surprisingly, the majority of Egyptologists who appear to look upon it as a sacred figure not to be challenged.
One eminent biblical scholar who has commented on the length of the sojourn is the late Umberto Cassuto, formerly Professor of Biblical Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who wrote: ‘… the numbers given in the Torah are mostly round or symbolic figures, and their purpose is to teach us something by their harmonious character … these numbers are based on the sexagesimal system, which occupied in the ancient East a place similar to that of the decimal system in our days.
‘The chronological unit in this system was a period of sixty years, which the Babylonians called a šūš. One šūš consisted of sixty years and two šūš of a hundred and twenty years – a phrase that is used by Jews to this day. In order to convey that a given thing continued for a very long time, or comprised a large number of units, a round figure signifying a big amount according to the sexagesimal system was employed, for example, 600, 6000, 600,000 or 300, 3000 or 300,000 or 120, 360, 1200, 3600 and so forth. I further demonstrated there that, if it was desired to indicate a still larger amount, these figures were supplemented by seven or a multiple of seven. The number 127, for instance (Genesis, 23:1), was based on this system.’1 Elsewhere Professor Cassuto makes the point that the figure forty, found frequently in the Bible, is similarly used as a kind of shorthand for a period of time and is not to be taken literally.
He then goes on to try to harmonize the two Israelite traditions – that the Sojourn lasted 430 years (six times sixty, plus seventy) and four generations. He cites as his four generations Levi, Kohath, Amram and Aaron, who is said to have been the brother of Moses, and adds together the years they are given in the Old Testament. This approach is permissible, he argues, because
a) Each generation endured the burden of exile throughout the times of its exile, and its distress was not diminished by t
he fact that it was shared by another generation during a certain portion of that period; hence in computing the total length of exile suffered, one is justified to some extent in reckoning the ordeal of each generation in its entirety,
b) A similar and parallel system was used in the chronological calculations of the Mesopotamians. In the Sumerian King List, dynasties that were partly coeval, one reigning in one city and the other elsewhere, are recorded consecutively, and are reckoned as if they ruled successively. Consequently, if we add up the years that these dynasties reigned, we shall arrive at a total that is actually the sum of the periods of their kingship, although it will exceed the time that elapsed from the commencement of the first dynasty to the end of the last.
Professor Cassuto then proceeds to make the following calculation:
Here he points out that ‘upon deducting from [this total] (in order to allow for the time that Levi and Kohath dwelt in the land of Canaan before they emigrated to Egypt) one unit of time, to wit, sixty years, we obtain exactly a period of 430 years, which is the number recorded in Exodus, 12:40.’ The 430 years are thus the total years of the four generations and are not to be taken as representing the period of time that elapsed between the Israelites’ arrival in Egypt and their departure.
Only two Hebrew generations, Amram and Moses, were actually born in Egypt – Kohath arrived with his father, Levi (Genesis, 46:11) – and, in working backwards from the reign of Ramses I, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, to try to establish the time of the Descent, calculation depends upon the age young Hebrew boys married at the time and had their first child. It seems reasonable to suggest that the period in which the Descent took place should be sought within the range of some fifty to eighty years earlier than the Exodus.
