Exodus: When Did it Happen? An Essay by G. H. Ritz Exodus ranks as one of the world's best-known episodes in ancient history: the Children of Israel being led out of Egypt from under the harsh rule of Pharoah to the Promised Land. But there are a couple of basic questions that have remained unanswered to the present time: Who was Pharaoh? And when did Exodus actually take place? This article will furnish the answers and, in addition, will identify the Pharaoh of Joseph's time - the one who invited Jacob to bring the tribes of Isreal into Egypt in the first place. The difficulty with placing this event in time springs from the preoccupation among Egyptologists with another event which, while tempting in the ethnic identity involved, is not relevant. This other event is the conquest of Egypt by the Hyksos in the eighteenth century BC. These were Canaanites, called the "sheperd kings", who came down from the Middle East in 1700 - 1690 BC and established a rule of 150 years. The mere fact of the ethnic connection between these kings and the Children of Israel has inspired two estimates for Exodus that are patently false and with which we will deal first. The two dates in question are c.1560 BC and 1260 BC and are derived from the propositions that; either the Israelites entered Egypt in the wake of the Hyksos conquest, or left Egypt when these Canaanites were driven out by Ahmose, the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty. It is a seductive connection between the fortunes of the Hyksos kings and the vagaries of the Children of Israel but there is no real basis for the hypotheses relating these events. The circumstances related to the earlier date (1560 BC) actually suggest that the Children of Israel were already in Egypt at the coming of the Hyksos. They were. Memphis, the leading city of northern Egypt at time, is located just south of the Nile Delta and is near the Land of Goshen, where the Israelites settled. The written record which has come down to us tells of the ease with which the Canaanite invaders conquered Egypt: they took Memphis with little or no resistance. If this is true then it may be safely assumed that there was already a large Semitic population in Egypt, sort of a "fifth column" whose presence, especially in view of the geographic proximity of Memphis to the plain of Ra' Meses, would certainly ease the way for the invaders. Furthermore, if the Israelites were to have moved into Egypt at the time of the Hyksos invasion (circa. 1690 BC) then Exodus would have had to occur in 1260 BC, 430 years later. This would have placed this event well into the reign of Ramese II, "the Great", and this is a wholly untenable position: Ramese II did not lead the hosts of Egypt to destruction at the Red Sea. The argument for the earlier date, 1560 BC, fares no better as the Israelites would have had to enter Egypt in 1990 BC, or 430 years earlier. There are very good historical reasons for dismissing this time for the migration into Egypt, as we will shortly demonstrate. This leaves us with the best estimate: 1460 BC. The date has some basis in fact as the Book of Kings states that the Exodus took place 480 years before the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The date given for the Temple is 980 BC and adding 480 years to that would indeed give 1460 BC. But there is a question here; was the Exodus nine-hundred eighty years before the Temple was begun or completed? If, as we suspect, it was completed in 980 BC but begun some thirty years earlier, then Exodus could have taken place as early as 1490 BC. And there are excellent reasons for believing that it did! The picture of the ancient Egyptians that has come down to us is one of a people preoccupied with death and the afterlife. This is not a true picture. They were a happy, vital, and very productive people with a love of the arts, poetry, and music. Their public buildings and domiciles were, however, constructed of mud brick while their tombs were of stone. The tombs therefore outlasted the brick structures which crumbled to dust and were carried away by the desert winds, thus creating the impression of a moridly solemn people. But death and the afterlife were an important fact of life to these people as evidenced by the elaborate tomb paintings and decorations, and the grave goods they buried with their more prominent deceased. But the love of life, the optimism, of these ancients is reflected in their writings. During good times, periods of prolonged peace and prosperity, the Egyptians left huge volumes of hieroglyphic texts detailing their accomplishments in public works, agriculture, and war. But during harder times, famines, civil unrest, they wrote little or not at all. This is very significant to our discovery, as will soon become apparent. Another component of this account is found in the Bible. The story of Joseph is well-known: that he interpreted Pharaoh's dreams and predicted the seven years of plenty followed by the seven years of famine. Joseph became the most powerful man in Egypt next to the Pharaoh and implimented his plan to store up grain during the full years against the lean years to come with great success. The famine came and the stored food was distributed among the people. But how many are aware of just how this surplus was meted out? In Genesis Chapter 47 we find that Joseph sold the grain to the people for money. Verse 14: "And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the corn which they bought; and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house." When the second year of the famine descended upon the land Joseph next required the people to exchange all their cattle for food, as the money was all gone. These are Verses 15 and 16. The people next sell themselves and their lands in subsequent years for the surplus grain, and in Verse 20 we are told, "Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh: for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaoh's." Except for the land of the priests of Amon. Further, Joseph commands the people in Verse 24: "And it shall come to pass in the increase, that ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field and for your food, and for them of your households, and for food for your little ones." Thus the people of Egypt became Pharaoh's servants and he became Lord over all Egypt. A feudal lord to be sure. Feudalism in Egypt? Read on. Beginning with our surmise that the Exodus occurred in 1490 BC, we now go back 430 years to 1920 BC and the Twelfth Dynasty. This ruling house was founded by Ahmenheme I about 1991 BC. By the time seventy years have passed there have been three more Pharaohs come and gone, two Senwosres and another Ahmenheme, the second. The king of Egypt in the period we identify with the migration of the children of Israel into Egypt, the Pharaoh was Ahmenemhe II (1929 - 1895 BC). This same Ahmenemhe, also called Ahmeny for short, may have rehearsed for his reign as pharaoh by serving as the nomarch (king) if the nome (city- state) of Oryx during the reign of his father Senwosre I. Sir Alan Gardiner, in his monumental book, Egypt of the Pharaohs, tells us that this period in Egyptian history was unique in all the history of this fabled land. It was a feudal state: the Lord of all the land was Pharaoh and his Nomarchs, the kings of the Nomes, were his vassals and a portion of all the goods produced and crops grown in Egypt belonged to Pharaoh. This is a definite link between the Genesis account cited earlier and this period in the history of Egypt, but that's not all. Gardiner also quotes a very intriguing passage from the writings of the same Ahmeny detailing some highlights of his reign over Oryx. In this self-promoting account, Ahmeny asserts that every year he brought his quota to the King's House and was never once delinquent in his accounts. And, he says, he pursued cultivation so assiduously that everyone had enough to eat - even during the famine years! This, we believe, secures one end of the argument: the migration of the Children of Israel into Egypt during Joseph's time. Now, to deal with the other end - the Exodus. The kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty gave the scribes of Egypt much to write about and their artists much to celebrate in painted panels and richly sculpted stellae and temple walls. There was Ahmose, the founder of the line who drove out the Hyksos, the Amenhoteps, the ill- fated montheism of the aesthete Ahkenaten - and Tuthmose I. The first Tuthmose was a powerful military leader who greatly expanded the territory of his realm. After a military campaign in the south where he settled accounts with the Ethiopians, Tuthmose turned to the north and east and conquered all Palestine and Syria up to the shores of the Euphretes River, where he had a stele erected to record the mighty deed. This was about 1520 BC. Tuthmose III, the first's grandson was also a great military leader and he also conquered all Palestine and Syria up to the Euphretes and he, too, had a stone erected to boast of his conquest. This was about 1450 BC, and the accounts of these two conquests are found in the same book, Gardiner's "Egypt of the Pharaohs." This gives rise to an interesting question that Gardiner does not address; neither has any other historian of the period, for that matter. The question: Why did Tuthmose III have to re-conquer the same territory that his grandfather took seventy years before? This brings us to a brief period in this time frame about which very little has been recorded: the sign of an unpleasant time for the people of Egypt. Tuthmose II ascended the pharaonic throne in 1510 BC. From what little information there is about the man we may deduce that he was not very capable and, perhaps, not very highly regarded as well. There are some scant commentaries about a military adventure against the Nubians and another campaign in Palestine, about which it is only reported that some prisoners were taken. Very little else is written about the man and his reign, but the mystery deepens with what we presume to have been the untimely death of Tuthmose II - in 1490 BC. There are no details given. Gardiner refers to a eulogy delivered upon the king's death by the aged Ineni, who had served under four Pharaohs. It is a brief, almost dismissive speech to the effect that the great god flew off to join his ancestors. That's all. And it is immediately following this part of Gardiner's account that he states, in what must be one of the all- time glaring non-sequiturs, that there is no reason to believe that the king did not die a natural death. Interesting. Gardiner also informs us that there are scant records concerning the reign of Tuthmose II, which seems to indicate that these were hard times. Further, we learn that this pharaoh's funeral was a slap-dash affair; he was buried in an undecorated tomb, in a plain sarcophagus that was hardly decorated, and his funerary temple was a joke. A Pharaoh? We have to ask; What could a pharaoh of Egypt have done to warrant such disgrace and dishonor? And for this question there is no answer which comes to mind. Tutenkhamen, a mere boy, whose reign produced nothing noteworthy was accorded full funerary rites, as the discovery of Howard Carter in 1920 revealed to an awe-struck world. In sum, there is nothing a pharaoh of Egypt could possibly have done to be so off-handedly and dsimissively treated at his death. But pharaoh was also god. Applying the question in this context we can imagine pharaoh, the lord god of Egypt, being humiliated by a rival Lord god, a Jehovah. This would have very likely resulted in the obvious desire to set this failed god aside as quickly and quietly as possible - especially if he multiplied his disgrace by leading the hosts of Egypt to their destruction at the Red Sea - in 1490 BC, the year in which Exodus unmistakably occurred.