Egyptologists and the Israelite Exodus

from Egypt 15
James K. Hoffmeier

Abstract
Early Egyptologists were steeped in interest in biblical history and in
particular the Hebrew exodus story. Edouard Naville and W.M.F. Petrie
were among the early pioneers. Of interest to early Egyptologists was the
geography of the exodus and the route of the Hebrew departure from
Egypt. By the mid-twentieth century, Egyptologys love affair with Old
Testament matters had soured, but this allowed the discipline to develop
as its own science.
Over the past decades, Biblical scholars have largely been swept into
the current of historical minimalism, leaving Israels origin story on the
dust heap of history. This development serves as a pressing call for
Egyptologists to return to the debate to bring data from Egypt to bear on
historical and geographical matters. Indeed some have responded in
constructive ways.
This chapter examines interaction between Egyptology and the exodus
narratives and then reviews some of the newer archaeological, toponymical,
and geological data from Northeastern frontier of Egypt that shed new light
on the biblical narratives.

The Egyptian Origins of Israel: Recent
Developments in Historiography
The Bibles portrayal of the children of Israel
entering Egypt during a time of famine in
Canaan, followed by a period of enslavement,
and then a glorious exodus from Egypt under
J.K. Hoffmeier (*)
Divinity School, Trinity International University,
Deerfield, IL, USA
e-mail: jhoffmei@tiu.edu
the leadership of Moses was largely viewed as
reflecting historical reality in the field of biblical
scholarship through much of the twentieth
century. While biblical scholars debated the
particular written sources behind the tradition
and their reliability, the general picture was
accepted as accurate.
In North America, the influence of W.F.
Albright and his students, especially G. Ernest
Wright and John Bright, contributed to this
consensus. Not only did these scholars affirm
the historicity of the sojournexodus tradition,
but they also were convinced that the footsteps

T.E. Levy et al. (eds.), Israels Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective, 197

Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-04768-3_15,
# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
198
of Joshua and the conquering Israelites could be
traced through numerous archaeological sites in
Israel. From the 1930s to 1970s AlbrightWright
synthesis dominated the English-speaking
academy. This solid superstructure began to
experience fissures when Thomas Thompson
(1974) and John Van Seters (1975) authored
influential studies that weakened the scholarly
foundations for historicity of the Genesis
Patriarchal narratives established by the Albright
school. Thompson and Van Seters were
dismissive of the parallels drawn between Near
Eastern social and legal texts and the Genesis
narratives. And so began the slide down the
slippery slope towards historical minimalism
with the redefining of historiography that
continued in the following decades until it
reached the court of David and Solomon.1 The
1980s saw the rise of skepticism towards the
Israelite conquest of Canaan and a dismissive
rejection of the Torahs stance that the Hebrews
came from Egypt. In place of the traditional
view, new models began to appear that explained
Israels origins as an indigenous development in
the land. Some of the chief proponents of these
views are Niels Peter Lemche (1985), Gosta
Ahlstrom (1986), Giovanni Garbini (1988:
127132), Israel Finkelstein (1988, 2006:
4165), and William Dever (2003: 174).2 If
there is no evidence of a new people who
conquered the land coming from outside of
Canaan, they reasoned, then it seems unlikely
that Israel originated in Egypt as the Pentateuch
would have us believe. Consequently, Robert
Coote (1990: 3) declared concerning the exodus
and conquest, these periods never existed. For
Lemche, the lack of evidence of the Israelites in
Egypt was enough reason for him to jettison the
biblical tradition. He has opined that the silence
in the Egyptian sources as to the presence of
Israel in the country is an obstacle to the notion
of Israels 400 year sojourn (Lemche 1988: 31).
1
Regarding the skepticism of the historicity of the biblical
accounts of David and Solomon, see Miller (1987, 1991:
2831) and Garbini (1988: 2132).
2
For a critique of these various positions see Hoffmeier
(1997: chapters 1 and 2).
J.K. Hoffmeier
It is fair to say that these statements of biblical
scholars reflect a general skepticism of the last
25 years towards the Israelite origins as a people
in Egypt.
The purpose of this chapter is not to further
review the recent scholarly trends in the field of
Old Testament studies, but rather to examine
how Egyptologists have regarded the sojourn
and exodus tradition. From the outset allow me
to observe that I have not found the same level of
skepticism among present-day Egyptologists
towards the Egyptian origin traditions of the
Bible as there is among Old Testament scholars
and Syro-Palestinian/biblical archaeologists.
Before examining the current situation, let us
review the history of Egyptology and its
relationship to Old Testament studies,
particularly, the question of the historicity of
the Israelite sojournexodus narratives.
Early Egyptology and the Hebrew
Sojourn/Exodus Tradition
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Egyptology was considered by many to be the
handmaiden of biblical studies, especially as it
related to the stories in the Pentateuch.
Abrahams encounter with a pharaoh in Genesis
12, Josephs service in the court of pharaoh, and
the narratives about Moses and the exodus were
subjects of scholarly interest. It was certainly the
hope of many that excavations in Egypt might
provide direct or background information on the
times, locations, events, and historical figures
involved in the biblical narratives.
The Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society),
that publishes the Journal of Egyptian Archaeol-
ogy, was founded in 1882. In the Memorandum of
Association, the EEF actually stated that one of its
purposes was to make surveys, explorations . . .
for the purpose of elucidating or illustrating the Old
Testament narrative, or any part thereof, insofar as
the same is in any way connected with Egypt.3
3
I am grateful to the secretary of the EES, Dr. Patricia
Spencer, for providing me a copy of the original founding
charter.
15 Egyptologists and the Israelite Exodus from Egypt
Because of the prominence of the Delta in the
Pentateuchal stories, it was the focus of some of
the early surveys and excavations. Two of the early
Egyptologists to excavate under the auspices of the
EEF were Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie and
Edouard Naville. The lesser known Naville was
Swiss and a professor at the University of Geneva
(Lesko 1997: 113). The interest of these scholars in
the biblical history is well reflected in the titles of
some of their early excavation report. Two of
Navilles earliest ones were The Store-City of
Pithom and the Route of the Exodus (1885)
which dealt with his excavations at Tell el-
Maskhuta and The Shrine of Saft El Henneh and
the Land of Goshen (1887). The latter excavations
were undertaken in 1885 at several sites: Saft el-
Henneh, Khataanah-Kantir, and Tell el-Retabeh,
all located in the eastern Delta and the Wadi
Tumilat (Naville 1887). Meanwhile, Petries early
work took him to San el-Hagar (biblical Tanis),
Tell el-Yehudiah, and Tell el-Retabeh (20 years
after Naville) (Petrie 1888). His interests in biblical
history are also seen in the title of one of his
publications, Hyksos and Israelite Cities (Petrie
1906a). The same year Petrie published a major
monograph on his explorations in Sinai called
Researches in Sinai and devoted chapter XIV to
Conditions of the Exodus (Petrie 1906b). In the
same volume, two chapters (XVI and XVII) were
written by C.T. Currelly of the Royal Ontario
Museum in which some possible locations for Mt.
Sinai are examined. Five years later Petrie (1911)
published his Egypt and Israel, which devoted two
chapters to the sojourn and exodus.
Also during the first two decades of the
twentieth century, the French Egyptologist Jean
Cledat conducted surveys and some excavations
in North Sinai and along the Isthmus of Suez
during the second decade of the twentieth
century (Cledat 1919: 210228; Cledat 1920: Thus Gardiner was not claiming that the entire
203215). While his surveys and excavations
were primarily Egyptological in nature, his
publications reflected his interest in the exodus
story. A section of one article is called on le
passage de la mer rouge where he attempted to
identify the toponyms of Exodus 14:2 (Cledat
1919: 201228). Clearly many of the early
Egyptologists were interested in the problem of
199
the Israelite sojourn and exodus as reflected in
the title of an article published in the Irish
Church Quarterly in 1908 by L.E. Steele, viz.,
The Exodus and the Egyptologist.
In 1922, Sir Alan Gardiner, the renowned
Oxford Egyptologist, wrote a very sharply
worded critique of Naville and others that he
thought were navely using the Bible to find the
Delta sites associated with the exodus story
(Gardiner 1922: 203215), followed by another
in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology (Gardiner
1924: 8796) that was a response to an article
by Naville in the same volume of JEA (Naville
1924: 1839). T.E. Peet, who was Brunner
Professor of Egyptology at University of
Liverpool, likewise rebuked Egyptologists
whom he accused of being unduly influenced
by the Bible in their Egyptological research or
who were overly zealous to prove the historicity
of the Old Testament narratives based upon
questionable evidence (Peet 1922: 57). Naville
took umbrage at Peets charge that his suggestion
that Tell el-Maskhuta was Pithom was the result
of guesses of early explorers, bent on finding
biblical sites at any cost (Naville 1924: 18).
Additionally Naville demurred with Gardiners
classification of the Exodus narratives being no
less mythical than the details of creation recorded
in Genesis. At all events our first task must be to
attempt to interpret those details on the supposi-
tion that they are a legend (Gardiner 1922: 205).
The comparison of Genesis 13 with the Exodus
narratives, Naville thought, was an invalid one
and that they were not of the same literary type.
In his rejoinder to Naville, Gardiner pointed out
that he was misquoted, noting that he never used
the phrase all the story of the Exodus (Gardiner
1924: 87). As it turns out this phrase had been
accidentally or intentionally added by Naville.
Exodus narratives should be written off as
legendary, although some elements in them
appeared fanciful to him. Naville further took
exception to Gardiner claiming that religious
conservatism was compromising scholarly
research (Gardiner 1922: 203204). Naville
charged that it was Gardiner who introduces
the religious element, which should be entirely
200
left aside. He is strongly biased, not by religious
conservatism, but by the opposite tendency and
its conclusions (Naville 1924: 18).
With the work of these pioneer Egyptologists,
the search was on for the Biblical cities
associated with the exodus. Unfortunately,
Gardiners strong condemnation of those whom
we might call Biblical Egyptologists, I believe,
cast a pall for decades over serious investigation
of biblical history by Egyptologists. Since the
1930s there have been only a few Egyptologists
in Great Britain who actually integrated their
work with biblical studies in general and in
particular with the exodus tradition. One notable
exception to this trend was a small book written
by Alfred Lucas in 1938 called The Route of the
Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Best known
for his classic book, Ancient Egyptian Materials
and Industries (1926), Lucass book is still
available in print in the fourth edition, revised
by J.R. Harris (1962/1989). Although Lucas
spent most of his career analyzing artifacts and
materials from which they were made, he
believed that his 40 years in Egypt gave him a
basis to offer some insights into the biblical
exodus story. Quite aware of the harsh tone of
the debate about the location of the cities of the
Exodus, Lucas pledged to follow the dictum of
the chemist Robert Boyle who said: a man may
be a champion for truth without being an
enemy of civility: and may confute an
opinion without railing at them that hold it
(Lucas 1938: 8).
It seems that the heated debate of the 1920s
has been ignited once again in the past few
decades as more recent archaeological
discoveries are being scrutinized along with
even greater skepticism towards the Bible. The
sage advice followed by Lucas is certainly
appropriate today in the polarizing debate
between historical minimalists and maximalists
over the origins of Israel. In this dispute,
Egyptologists, whom one would expect to have
something to say on the subject, for the most part
have been strangely silent. In fact, it was the
intent of the Egyptology and Ancient Israel
section of Society of Biblical Literature, which
I established in the early 1990s, to provide a
J.K. Hoffmeier
forum where Egyptologists and biblical scholars
could meet to discuss matters of mutual interest.
One important question that emerges from
this discussion is why have Egyptologists had
so little to say on the subject of Israels origin
as presented in the Bible? In a sense, the rather
harsh debate of Gardiner and Peet with Naville,
I believe, had a chilling effect on scholarly
integration of Egyptology and biblical studies
for several generations of Egyptologists.
Gardiner cast a giant shadow over the field
of Egyptology for more than five decades.
Who then would dare enter the arena of
Hebrew-Egyptological investigation for fear of
being criticized by him or to be accused of
having a religious agenda by other scholars.
There is, of course, a positive side to
this debate from the 1920s and that is that
Egyptology was able to emerge as a discipline
of its own, independent of the limited interests of
the biblical historian. A perusal of major
Egyptological journals shows that articles are
scarcely found that deal with the Bible in general
or the sojournexodus in particular.
In a sense, Gardiner and Peet did for
Egyptology what William Dever did for Syro-
Palestinian archaeology in the 1970s and 1980s
by establishing it as a discipline in its own right
apart from the interests and limitations of biblical
archaeology (Dever 1992: 354367). Devers
more recent proposal that there be a dialogue
between Syro-Palestinian Archaeology and
biblical studies to produce a new biblical
archaeology is a model that would work well,
I believe, for the disciplines of Egyptology and
biblical studies.4 As such, Old Testament
scholarship could utilize Egyptian material
where appropriate without hijacking the
discipline. Unfortunately, there has been too
little dialogue between the two disciplines for
reasons that will be explored below. If those
who are trained in the various specializations of
Egyptology are not a part of the conversation,
4
He speaks of a dialogue between Bible and archaeo-
logical data (Dever 1992: 358359) and elaborates it in
more detail recently (Dever 2001: chapter 3).
15 Egyptologists and the Israelite Exodus from Egypt
then, regrettably, biblical scholars who are not
qualified to use Egyptian data will do so (as
sometimes happens) in a way that will not do
justice to Egyptian sources, resulting in poor
integration with the Bible.
In Germany the kind of acrimony witnessed
in Briton among Egyptology and biblical studies
in the early twentieth century did not occur.
There were some Old Testament scholars who
worked Egyptological materials. Albrecht Alt
(18831956) is a leading example. His doctoral
dissertation from 1909 bore the title Israel und
A gypten (Fritz 1997: 79). Although he is
generally recognized as a Hebrew Bible scholar,
his work on historical geography demanded that
he work with Egyptian toponym lists and other
Egyptian sources. In his article on the Die
Deltaresidenz der Ramessiden (Alt 1954:
113) he was one of the first continental scholars
to recognize Qantir as the location of ancient
Pi-Ramesses (see Chap. 8). He wrote a mono-
graph on the Hyksos Die Herkunft in neuer Sicht
in 1954.
Egyptologists and the Exodus: 1930s
to the Present
To be sure, there were Egyptologists who
occasionally wrote on the problem of the Israelite
sojourn and exodus from the 1930s to the end of
the twentieth century. Alfred Lucas has already
been mentioned.
In Germany Wolfgang Helck produced a
major work on the interconnections between
Egypt and the Near East in the third and second
millennium (Helck 1971), but this does not deal
directly with the exodus. He did write an
important article that argued that Hebrew writing
Rameses corresponds to the Egyptian (Pi-)
Ramesses (Helck 1965: 3548) in response to
the linguistic problems raised by Donald Redford
on the correlation (Redford 1963: 408418).
Siegfried Herrmann who authored Israel in
Egypt (1973), a small monograph dealing with
the sojourn and exodus, is another German
scholar of our times who has used Egyptian
sources to explicate the narratives in Exodus.
201
These European scholars, however, were
primarily Hebrew Bible scholars who had some
training in Egyptology and used the materials in
a responsible way, but they would not identify
themselves as Egyptologists.
The late Manfred Gorg (d. 9/2012) who was
trained in Hebrew exegesis and Egyptology was
the most prolific German scholar of our time to
deal with Egyptian sources and the Old
Testament. He has penned scores of articles
dealing with Hebrew words that might be of
Egyptian etymology and connecting Egyptian
toponyms to biblical place names. Many of
these articles are published in Biblische Notizen
and in the monograph series, Agypten und Altes
Testament, both of which Gorg edited. This
series has been one venue where biblical issues
and Egyptology have been discussed. In
neighboring Switzerland, Othmar Keel has
successfully employed Egyptian (along with
other Near Eastern) iconography in his studies
of Hebrew symbolism, but his studies tend to
avoid historical questions (Keel 1978; Keel and
Uelinger 1998).
Pierre Montet, the French excavator of San el-
Hagar from 1928 to 1956, believed that he had
discovered both Zoan/Tanis and Rameses of
Exodus 1:11 and the Ramesside capital, Pi-
Ramesses. He authored a book entitled, Egypt
and the Bible, in which he presented his
understanding of Egyptian data bearing on the
Hebrew Scriptures and devotes a chapter to
Moses and the exodus (Montet 1968: 1634).
Bernard Couroyer and Henri Cazelles were
also French biblical scholars who were well
versed in Egyptology. They wrote on the exodus
traditions as well as some other topics where
Egyptian sources were brought to bear on the
Bible. In addition to teaching Hebrew and Old
Testament, Couroyer taught Coptic and Egyptian
for more than 30 years (Puech 1997: 10),5 and he
wrote a number of articles dealing with the book
of Exodus including La residence ramesside du
Delta et la Ramse`s biblique (Couroyer 1946:
5
For a complete bibliography of Couroyer, see Marcel
Sigrist (1997: 2028).
202
7598), Quelques egyptianismes dan lExode
(Couroyer 1956: 209219), and Un
egyptianisme biblique: Depuis la fondation de
lEgypt (Exode, IX, 18) (Couroyer 1960: 4248).
An acknowledgement of his contributions in
Egyptian-Hebrew studies, a memorial volume
in his honor, was published under the title Etudes
Egyptologiques et Bibliques (Sigrist 1997).
Cazelles worked competently with Egyptian
materials. His most important contribution to the
exodus tradition is his article Les Localizations
De Lexode et La Critique Litteraire (Cazelles
1955: 346358). It offers an excellent analysis of
the toponym cluster in Exodus 14:2 and the
Egyptian geographical names found in Pap.
Anatasi III that describes the marshy areas on
the eastern frontier.
Also in recent decades, my own mentors from
the University of Toronto, the late Ronald
Williams and Donald Redford, have included in
their publication dossiers a number of important
articles, dictionary entries, and books on Egypt
and the Bible, some of which deal with the
Exodus. One of Williams seminal studies is
A People Come Out of Egypt: An Egyptolo-
gist Looks at the Old Testament (Williams
1975: 231252). Williams wrote a number of
articles in the Hastings Dictionary of the Bible
including entries touching subjects in Genesis
and Exodus, i.e., Asenath, Nile, On,
Pharaoh, Plagues of Egypt, and Raamses,
Rameses (for his complete bibliography, see
V. Williams 1983: 127).
Redford has been even more prolific over the
past 50 years on integrating Egyptian data with
matters related to Israels origins. His mono-
graph on the Joseph story remains a standard
work on Genesis 3950 after 40 years (Redford
1970), and Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient
Times (1992) includes a major treatment of
Israels origins. His essays related to the Israelite
sojourn and exodus have been very influential
(Redford 1963, 1987, 1997, 2009), especially
among minimalist leaning biblical scholars as
he has argued that the geographical terms in the
Exodus narratives point to the Saite Period
(seventh century) and that the exodus story may
be an adaptation of the Hyksos expulsion story
J.K. Hoffmeier
that was applied to the Israelites. The linguistic,
textual, and archaeological questions he has
raised have not been ignored by Egyptologists,
but have been thoughtfully answered (Helck
1965: 3548; Kitchen 1998: 65131; Hoffmeier
1997, 2005). The works of Williams and Redford
have left their impact on the field of Hebrew
Bible and Israelite history, and their careful and
critical use of Egyptian materials has influenced
me greatly.
Another distinguished Egyptologist who has
written on matters related to the Israelite sojourn
and exodus over the past 50 years is Kenneth
Kitchen, a lonely voice among British
Egyptologists. He is known in Egyptological
circles as the leading Ramesside Period expert
due to his seven-volume compilation of
Ramesside Inscriptions (Blackwell), along with
the Ramesside Inscriptions Translated and
Annotated: Notes and Comments (Blackwell)
that is still in progress. Drawing decades of
work with Ramesside Period materials, Kitchen
has written extensively on the Hebrew sojourn
and exodus in his books (Kitchen 1966: 5772,
1977: 7591, 2003: 241312) and countless
articles dealing with questions related to
background, chronology, and authenticity. He
sees the setting of the exodus narratives as
being the Ramesside Era. Although too many to
cite, several of his articles stand out and are
worthy of mention, such as the Exodus in
the Anchor Bible Dictionary 2 (1992), The
Tabernaclea Bronze Age Artifact (Kitchen
1993: 119129), and Ancient Near Eastern
Studies: Egypt, in The Oxford Handbook of
Biblical Studies (2006). In collaboration with
Paul Lawrence, Kitchen has recently produced a
magisterial three-volume magnum opus, Treaty,
Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East
(Kitchen and Lawrence 2012). Exceeding 1,000
pages in length, Volume 1 offers transcriptions
and translations of every known law code and
treaty text from the third through the first
millenniums B.C., be they Sumerian, Eblaite,
Akkadian, Hittite, Egyptian, Hebrew, or
Aramean. The texts serve as the database for
comparative study of biblical law and treaty
texts (Volumes 2 and 3). Setting aside theories
15 Egyptologists and the Israelite Exodus from Egypt
about the biblical text such as sources and their
dating, Kitchen rather compares the ANE data
directly to the biblical forms and concludes that
the thirteenth century form of treaty texts best
compares with the legal materials of Exodus and
Deuteronomy.
My study, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for
the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996),
was written from an Egyptological perspective
to address the origins of Israel debate of the
1980s and 1990s since the historical minimalists
who were setting the agenda were biblical
scholars, biblical historians, and Syro-Palestinian
archaeologists. Egyptologists, for the most part,
have not been heard from in the 1980s and 1990s.
There are a few exceptions. Unfortunately, by
avoiding this interdisciplinary discussion,
Egyptologists have allowed biblical scholars
who are not trained to work with Egyptian texts
to do so, often resulting in unwarranted
conclusions. For example, Gosta Ahlstrom
(1986: 40),6 the biblical scholar, proposed that
the hieroglyphic writing of Israel in the
Merneptah Steladespite the use of the people
determinativeshould refer to a geographical
entity, not an ethnic group. Subsequently,
Lemche (1998: 37) has expressed that it is
remarkable that other scholars have not taken
up Ahltroms interpretation. There is good rea-
son why this interpretation was not embraced by
scholars familiar with Egyptian orthography. No
Egyptologists would ever read the signs of a
foreign ethnic entity ( ) as indicating a foreign
land, but a people group. Ahlstrom is forced to
propose an error in the text and then emend it to
fit his theory!
One critic of Ahltroms theory, the late Anson
Rainey (1991: 93), pointed out that this simply
demonstrated that Biblical scholars untrained in
Egyptian epigraphy should not make amateurish
6
This suggestion was first proposed by Ahlstrom a year
earlier in an article which was coauthored by another
Hebrew Bible scholar, Diana Edleman (Ahlstrom and
Edelman 1985: 5961).
203
attempts at interpretation. Rainey, though
primarily known as a Semitist, an expert in the
Amarna Letters, and a specialist in historical
geography was trained in Egyptology by
H. J. Polotsky. Rainey periodically entered the
debate about the origins of early Israel, which
included his analysis of the Merneptah reliefs at
Karnak that presents a pictorial counterpart to
military campaigns recorded on the Israel
Stela (Rainey 2001: 5775). Raineys recent
Bible atlas, already a classic, contains excellent
treatment of the New Kingdom, in particular
the Amarna Age and Ramesside Periods, as
background to the origins of Israel, and his
transcriptions, transliterations, and translations
of Egyptian execration texts and toponymic lists
are foundational to the understanding of the
geopolitics of the Late Bronze and Iron Age
when the Israelites first appear in Canaan
(Rainey and Notley 2006: 58121). He also
investigates the toponyms of Egypt and Sinai
from the Bible, which he maintained were
based on collective memories and legendary
elaborations . . . but that such a powerful folk
memory with so many ramifications can hardly
be a strictly pure invention (Rainey and Notley
2006: 118). He concluded by remarking that
the geographical data in the exodus and wilder-
ness traditions does embody considerable
geographic information (Rainey and Notley
2006: 118).
While it is my contention in this chapter that
Egyptologists have been for the most part silent
during the debate of the 1980s and 1990s, some
have engaged in the discussion in several multi-
authored books which have included some
Egyptological perspective on the exodus (some
discussed already above). A seminar was held at
Brown University in 1992, and its proceedings
were published as Exodus: The Egyptian
Evidence in 1997. This 112-page book contained
the papers of the six participants, only three of
whom were Egyptologists: Frank Yurco, James
Weinstein, and Donald Redford. Yurco was the
only one to present a positive case for using
Egyptian evidence in understanding the origins
of Israel, even proposing that Amun-her-khepsh-
ef, the eldest son of Ramesses II and Queen
204
Nefertari, might have been the crown prince who
died in connection with tenth plague (Yurco
1997: 5775). He believes that this princes
death can be fixed to the period between 1259
and 1249 B.C., a date for the exodus within the
thirteenth century B.C. as proposed by Kitchen.
In the new Oxford History of the Biblical
World (1998), Carol Redmount, an Egyptologist
from University of California at Berkeley, wrote
the chapter on the sojourn and exodus.
Unfortunately, she uncritically accepts the
views of historical minimalists about the nature
and dating of the biblical materials to the late
monarchy or exilic and postexilic periods
(Redmount 1998: 79121). Contrary to the
views of many scholars who have examined the
Egyptian backgrounds of the Exodus 114,
Redmount claims What is immediately striking
about the earlier portions of the Exodus saga is
the lack of distinctively Egyptian content and
flavor, despite the Egyptian (Redmount 1998:
87). Had Redmount consulted the works of
Williams, Kitchen, and Hermann cited here, not
to mention my Israel in Egypt, she would have
been introduced to a wealth of Egyptian
background data.7
1998 also saw the appearance of a volume
from the Irene Levi-Sala Annual Research
Seminar held the preceding year. It was called
The Origin of Early IsraelCurrent Debate and
was organized by Eliezer Oren who also
edited the volume. The ten participants
included eight biblical scholars and Syro-
Palestinian Archaeologists, a classicist, and a
lone Egyptologists, Kenneth Kitchen. It is
curious that this seminar, usually held at Ben
7
(Hoffmeier 1997: 138140). Interestingly, my book is
listed in a Select Bibliography at the end of the chapter,
and it offers the following annotation: A detailed exami-
nation of the biblical account of the Exodus incorporating
recent textual, historical, and archaeological scholarship,
which concludes that the main points of the narratives are
plausible (120). It is not clear whether this is the conclu-
sion of the author or the editor. Regardless, nowhere in
Redmounts chapter is there evidence that Israel in Egypt
was considered in drawing her minimalist conclusions.
J.K. Hoffmeier
Gurion University (Beer Sheva), did not attract
any of the fine Israeli Egyptologists.8
Finally, a collection of essays called Ancient
Israel was published in 1998 by Biblical Archae-
ology Society and edited by Hershel Shanks.
This book was revised and updated by different
authors in 1999. It has a chapter on the sojourn
and exodus that was originally written by Nahum
Sarna, an excellent commentator on the book of
Exodus (but not an Egyptologist), and was
updated by Shanks.9 These recent studies illus-
trate how Egyptologists, in my judgment, have
not been sufficiently engaged in the origins of
Israel debate even though Egypt does play a
crucial role according to the biblical tradition.
What Do Egyptologists Really Think
About the Exodus?
Despite these studies, the reality is that
Egyptologists seem to show little interest in
integrating their materials with biblical studies
in general or with the exodus narratives in
particular. In response to a rather negative
seminar paper of Redfords in 1986, Manfred
Bietak, the Austrian excavator of Tell el-Daba
(Egypt), made a remarkable and telling rejoinder.
He said, Being an Egyptologist I feel somehow
embarrassed to comment on problems
surrounding the theme of the Exodus and
then he proceeded to say, I do not necessarily
share Professor Redfords pessimism (Bietak
1987: 163). So, what is behind this
embarrassment?10
8
Surprisingly, Israeli Egyptologists have had little to say
about the sojournexodus traditions. In a search of the
Egyptological Bibliography (18221997), I found only a
few articles by Israeli Egyptologists that dealt with the
sojournexodus narratives. One important contribution is
by Sarah Israelit-Groll, The Historical Background to the
Exodus: Papyrus Anastasi VIII (Groll 1997: 109115).
9
For some reason, all the other chapters in this book are
updated by leading scholars in their respective fields,
while the Exodus chapter is revised by the editor!
10
I point the readers to Bietaks paper in this volume. It is
evident from his presentation at this conference on May
31, 2013, that his work in the NE Delta and particularly at
15 Egyptologists and the Israelite Exodus from Egypt
No doubt the fact that the Hebrew Bible
remains the Scriptures of Jews and Christians
alike automatically casts a pall of suspicion
over it as a source for historical research. My
own curiosity about this matter motivated me to
investigate this question. In order to get some
fresh data, I conducted a small, unscientific
survey among members of the International
Association of Egyptologists. Working from the
IAE directory, I randomly selected 125 scholars
from which to conduct a survey to gauge current
attitudes among Egyptologists. I received 25
responses, a 20 % return. The only criteria I
used in the selection process were not to include
scholars whose views I already knew through
personal communication or from their writings,
and secondly, I attempted to cast my net wide so
as to include scholars from a wide range of
countries. Although I intentionally did not send
the survey to Egyptian Egyptologists as the lines
too often blur between academic study of ancient
Israel and modern politics, making Egyptians
reluctant to discuss the Bible,11 I received
responses from Egyptologists in the following
countries: the United States (12), Great Britain
(4), Germany (2), Belgium (2), and one each
from Australia, France, Canada, Holland, Russia,
Latvia, and Uruguay.
Four questions were posed:
1. Have you published any studies that deal with
the Israelite/biblical sojourn and exodus
story? Followed by if not why not? Five
indicated that they had addressed the question
in some manner, either in an article, section of
a book, or book review, though none had
engaged in a major project. Twenty answered
Tell el-Daba have provided extremely valuable informa-
tion about the Semitic-speaking population (including the
Hyksos) living in the Delta, which could well have
included the Hebrews among them.
11
The late Habachi Labib (2001: 119127) wrote at some
length on the sojournexodus in his publication of
materials from his excavations in Qantir (Pi-Ramesses)
in the 1950s, but his work only appeared in 2001, over
15 years after his death in 1984. Clearly in this chapter he
demonstrates a rare interest among Egyptian
Egyptologists in biblical history and the sojournexodus
tradition, but that may be due to the fact that he was a
Coptic Christian.
205
NO, and I was able to place their reasons in
four different categories:
(a) No expertise in biblical studies or
Hebrew: 8 1/2
(b) No interest in the subject 4 1/2
(c) Specialization in Egyptology too narrow
to venture into another field: 6
(d) To avoid the intensity of the debate about
the Bible: 1
2. Do you think the early Israelites lived in Egypt
and that there was some sort of exodus?
Nineteen answered YES. None said NO, but
four indicated that it possibly happened or that
they were unsure. Only one who described
himself as unsure had some 30 years before
written positively about the exodus, but had
grown skeptical in the intervening years. The
strongest negative statement was that it was
unlikely. Interestingly, that opinion came
from Oxford, Gardiners old stomping grounds.
And one chose not to answer the question.
Some who affirmed the historicity of an
exodus from Egypt added interesting comments
like I dont think there is any doubt about it. Or
I see no reason why the Israelite sojourn in
Egypt should have been fabricated. By the same
token, I see no fundamental reason why an
eventual exodus of the Israelites people could
not have occurred.
I must admit to being surprised by the largely
positive response to the question of the historicity
of the sojournexodus story, but most gave no
evidence of any knowledge of the debates of the
past 30 years among Old Testament scholars and
biblical archaeologists on the origins of Israel.
The two final questions allowed opportunities for
the respondents to give their reasons for their
positions and to share any ideas or theories they
had. These answers were not possible to quantify,
and many left these questions blank. Those who
offered additional thoughts indicated that given
the regularity of Asiatics, to use the Egyptian
term, entering Egypt during the days of famine
or draught in the Levant it was likely that the
biblical Hebrews were one such group. Several
sought to associate the expulsion of the Hyksos
with the Israelite exodus.
206
Another theme that came up with some
frequency was the recognition that Egypt may
never be able to produce positive archaeological
evidence for the Hebrews in Egypt because
there were large numbers of Semites in Egypt at
various times during the second millennium B.C.
and it would be impossible to distinguish one
group from another.
I have already acknowledged that this was not
a scientific survey; however, I think that it does
offer some interesting insights which are offered
here.
1. 80 % were either not interested in matters of
biblical history or felt that they lacked the
expertise to offer anything concrete to the
origins of Israel debate. Those who had
written on the subject have produced very
little.
2. There was an important undercurrent I picked
up from some of the respondents. Despite the
fact that most felt that the exodus was a
historical event, there was a feeling that this
debate has such heavy religious implications
that, as one Egyptologist admitted, I have
found it difficult to have unbiased
discussions, and then he/she said, I believe
religion to be a private matter. Another
scholar said, Like most Egyptologists I sus-
pect, I dont regard the whole Exodus thing as
really relevant to us in a historical sense;
I think it says more about the beliefs of those
who are interested in it today than in ancient
times. My survey, however, suggests
otherwise. In fact there seems to be the
attitude that the exodus is a religious matter,
not one for real Egyptologists to investigate.
This disposition came through very clearly in
a statement by another scholar who protested:
The absence of Egyptologists from the
exodus debate is indeed a conundrum. I am
detecting almost an aversion in some circles
to even discussing the exodus as a serious
historical event, as if to discuss it seriously
somehow leads people to question your
J.K. Hoffmeier
credibility as a scholar. These two quotes
perhaps offer the best testimony of what
might be behind Bietaks reference to it
being an embarrassment for an Egyptologist
to discuss the exodus.
Thus I see a kind of disconnect. Egyptologists,
on the one hand, seem to accept the historicity of
the biblical sojourn and exodus narratives, but on
the other hand either have no interest in
investigating it using their discipline, or feel
that it is a subject to be investigated by people
with a religious agenda. This sounds like we
remain stuck in the quagmire of the debates of
the 1920s of Gardiner and Peet against Naville.
But contrary to Gardiner (1922, 1924), who did
write on the sojournexodus traditions, and Peet
who authored Egypt and the Old Testament
(1922), more recent Egyptologists have avoided
the topic altogether.
Gardiner and Peet, it seems to me, were
concerned with a critical approach to the use of
Egyptology in studying the Bible rather than a
simplistic and literalistic hermeneutic. It may
well be that due to acrimonious feuds of the
1920s and the antireligious bias that pervades
the western academy, and a long a history of
anti-Semitism in the Middle East, for the present
and the near future only a few Egyptologists will
intentionally design research and excavation
projects in an effort to answer questions of
biblical history. This is regrettable since Egyp-
tology is a cognate field to Hebrew studies and
has much to contribute, offering both
background and contextual data, and it can
serve an important check and balance
against the excesses of biblical scholarship that
uncritically uses Egyptian sources.
It is my hope that Egyptologists will take a
greater interest in bringing their expertise to the
dialogue with Old Testament studies and that
Hebrew Bible scholars will engage in a careful
study of Egyptian history and archaeology before
articulating rash conclusions about biblical
history.
15 Egyptologists and the Israelite Exodus from Egypt
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Thomas E. Levy Thomas Schneider
William H.C. Propp
Editors

Israels Exodus in
Transdisciplinary
Perspective
Text, Archaeology, Culture, and
Geoscience

Managing Editor: Brad C. Sparks