The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos

by A. H. Sayce

Ramses iii. died after a reign of more than thirty-two years, and the military renown of Egypt expired with him. His exact date is still a matter of doubt, but his accession must have fallen about b.c. 1200. The date is important, not only because it closes the history of Egypt as a conquering power, but also as it marks a great era of migration among the northern populations of the Mediterranean, as well as the permanent settlement of the Philistines in Palestine. It was, moreover, the period to which the Israelitish invasion of Canaan must belong.

When Ramses iii. overran the southern portion of Palestine, and built the temple of the Theban god at the spot now known as Khurbet Kan'an, not far from Hebron, the Israelites could not as yet have entered the Promised Land. There is no reference to the Egyptians in the Pentateuch, and there is no reference to the Israelites in the hieroglyphic texts of Medînet Habu. Hebron, Migdal, Karmel [pg 090] of Judah, Ir-Shemesh and Hadashah, all alike fell into the hands of the Egyptian invaders, but neither in the Egyptian nor in the Hebrew records is there any allusion to a struggle between Egypt and Israel. When Joshua entered Canaan all these cities belonged to the Canaanites, and when Ramses iii. attacked them this was also the case. The Palestinian campaign of Ramses must have prepared the way for the Israelitish conquest; it could not have followed after it.

Moreover, “the five lords of the Philistines” seem to have already been settled in the extreme south when the Israelitish invasion took place (Josh. xiii. 3). Yet it also seems clear from the Egyptian monuments that the settlement was not fully completed until after the Asiatic campaigns of the Pharaoh had occurred. The Philistines indeed formed part of the great invading host which poured through Syria and assailed Egypt in the early part of his reign, but Gaza was one of his conquests, and its possession enabled him to march into Canaan. Before Gaza could become a Philistine city it was needful that its Egyptian garrison should be withdrawn. Professor Prášek believes that the Philistine occupation of southern Canaan took place in the year b.c. 1209, since the Roman historian Justin tells us that in this year a king of Ashkelon stormed the city of [pg 091] Sidon, and that the Sidonians fled to a neighbouring part of the coast, and there founded Tyre. However this may be, the Philistine settlement in Canaan must be ascribed to the age of Ramses iii., and it was already with the Philistines that the Israelites came into conflict under almost the earliest of their judges.

But the date of the Israelitish conquest of Canaan is closely bound up with that of the Exodus out of Egypt. It is true that when we are told of the forty years' wandering in the desert, the word “forty” is used, as it is elsewhere in the Old Testament, as well as upon the Moabite Stone, to denote an indeterminate period of time. It was a period during which the greater part of the generation that had left Egypt had time to die. Joshua and Caleb indeed remained, and Othniel, the brother of Caleb, lived to deliver Israel from the king of Aram-Naharaim, and to be the first of the judges. But otherwise it was a new generation which was led to conquest by Joshua.

If Ramses ii. was the Pharaoh of the Oppression, the Pharaoh of the Exodus must have been one of his immediate successors. Egyptologists have hesitated between Meneptah, Seti ii., and Si-Ptah. There is much to be said in favour of each. None of them reigned long, and after the death of Meneptah the [pg 092] sceptre fell into feeble hands, and the Egyptian monarchy went rapidly to decay.

Native tradition, as reported by the historian Manetho, made Meneptah the Pharaoh under whom the children of Israel escaped from their house of bondage. Amenôphis or Meneptah, it was said, desired to see the gods. He was accordingly instructed by the seer Amenôphis, the son of Pa-apis, to clear the land of the leprous and impure. This he did, and 80,000 persons were collected from all parts of Egypt, and were then separated from the other inhabitants of the country and compelled to work in the quarries of Tûra, on the eastern side of the Nile. Among them there happened to be some priests, one of whom was Osarsiph, a priest of On, and the sacrilegious act of laying hands on them was destined to be avenged by the gods. The seer prophesied that the impure lepers would find allies, and with their help would govern Egypt for thirteen years, when a saviour should arise in the person of Amenôphis himself. Not daring to tell the king of this prediction, he put it in writing and then took away his own life. After a time the workers in the quarries were removed to Avaris, the deserted fortress of the Hyksos, on the Asiatic frontier of the Egyptian kingdom. Here they rose in rebellion under Osarsiph, who organised them into a [pg 093] community, and gave them new laws, forbidding them to revere the sacred animals, and ordering them to rebuild the walls of Avaris. He also sent to the descendants of the Hyksos at Jerusalem, begging for their assistance. A force of 200,000 men was accordingly despatched to Avaris, and the invasion of Egypt decided on. Amenôphis retired into Ethiopia without striking a blow, carrying with him his son Sethos, who was also called Ramesses after his grandfather, as well as the sacred bull Apis, and other holy animals. The images of the gods were concealed, lest they should be profaned by the invaders. Amenôphis remained in Ethiopia for thirteen years, while Osarsiph, who had taken the name of Moses, together with his allies from Jerusalem, committed innumerable atrocities. At last, however, Amenôphis and his son Sethos returned, each at the head of an army; the enemy were defeated and overthrown, and finally pursued to the borders of Syria.

The tradition is a curious mixture of fact and legend. Osarsiph is but an Egyptianised form of Joseph, the first syllable of which has been explained as representing the god of Israel (as in Ps. lxxxi. 5), and has accordingly been identified with Osar or Osiris. The ancient Egyptian habit of regarding the foreigner as impure has been interpreted to mean that the followers of Osarsiph were lepers. The [pg 094] Exodus of the Israelites has been confounded with the invasion of the northern barbarians in the reign of Meneptah, as well as with the troublous period that saw the fall of the nineteenth dynasty when the throne of Egypt was seized by the Syrian Arisu. And, lastly, the hated Hyksos have been introduced into the story; their fortress Avaris is made the rallying-place of the revolted lepers, and it is through the help they send from Jerusalem that the rule of Osarsiph or Moses is established in the valley of the Nile.

An interesting commentary on the legend has been furnished by a papyrus lately acquired by M. Golénischeff, and dating from the age of Thothmes iii. On the last page is a sort of Messianic prophecy, the hero of which has the name of Ameni, a shortened form of Amenôphis. “A king,” it says, “will come from the south, Ameni the truth-declaring by name. He will be the son of a woman of Nubia, and will be born in.... He will assume the crown of Upper Egypt, and will lift up the red crown of Lower Egypt. He will unite the double crown.... The people of the age of the son of man (sic) will rejoice and establish his name for all eternity. They will be far from evil, and the wicked will humble their mouths for fear of him. The Asiatics (Âmu) will fall before his blows, and the Libyans before his flame. The wicked will wait on his judgments, the rebels on his [pg 095] power. The royal serpent on his brow will pacify the revolted. A wall shall be built, even that of the prince, so that the Asiatics may no more enter into Egypt.” In this Ameni we should probably see the Amenôphis of the Manethonian story.

Against the identification of Meneptah with the Pharaoh of the Exodus it has, however, been urged that he seems on the whole to have been a successful prince. His kingdom passed safely through the shock of the Libyan and northern invasions, and notices which have survived to us show that, at all events in the earlier part of his reign, Gaza and the neighbouring towns still acknowledged his authority. At Zaru, on the Asiatic frontier of Egypt, a young scribe, Pa-ebpasa by name, was stationed, whose duty it was to keep a record of all those who entered or left the country by “the way of the Philistines.” Some of his notes, made in the third year of Meneptah, are entered on the back of his school copybook, which is now in the British Museum. One of them tells us that on the fifteenth of Pakhons Baal— ... the son of Zippor of Gaza, passed through with a letter to Baal-marom(?)-gau, the prince of Tyre; another that Thoth, the son of Zakarumu, and the policeman Duthau, the son of Shem-baal, as well as Sutekh-mes, the son of Epher-dagal, had come from Gaza with a message to the king.

A curious despatch, dated in Meneptah's eighth year, goes to show that at that time the kinsfolk of the Israelites still had liberty to pass from the desert into the land of Goshen and there find pasturage for their flocks. One of his officials informs him that certain Shasu or Bedouin from Edom had been allowed to pass the Khetam or fortress of Meneptah Hotep-hima in the district of Succoth, and make their way to the lakes of the city of Pithom, in the district of Succoth, “in order to feed themselves and their herds on the possessions of Pharaoh, who is there a beneficent sun for all peoples.” The document may be interpreted in two ways. It may be taken as a proof that the Israelites had not yet fled from Egypt, and that there was consequently as yet no restraint placed by the Egyptians upon the entrance of the Asiatic nomads into their country, or it may be regarded as implying that the land of Goshen was already deserted, so that there was abundance of room for both shepherds and flocks. On behalf of this view a passage may be quoted from the great inscription of Meneptah at Karnak, in which we read that “the country around Pa-Bailos (the modern Belbeis) was not cultivated, but left as pasture for cattle because of the strangers. It was abandoned since the time of the ancestors.” More probably, however, this means that the land in [pg 097] question was not inhabited by Egyptian fellahin, but given over to the Hebrew shepherds and the “mixed multitude” of their Bedouin kinsmen.