The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos

by A. H. Sayce

A more serious objection to making Meneptah the Pharaoh of the Exodus is the fact that his son Seti ii. was already acknowledged as heir to the throne during his father's lifetime. The “tale of the two brothers,” to which we have already had to refer, was dedicated to him while he was still crown-prince. Indeed, it would even appear that he was associated with his father on the throne, since the cartouches of Meneptah and Seti ii. are found side by side in the rock-temple of Surarîyeh. It would seem, therefore, that the first-born of the Pharaoh, who was destroyed on the night of the Passover, could not have been a son of Meneptah—at all events, if his heir and future successor were his first-born son. That Meneptah should have been buried in one of the royal tombs of Bibân el-Molûk at Thebes, and received divine honours after his death, is of less consequence. As has often been remarked, no mention is made in the narrative of the Exodus that the Pharaoh himself was drowned, and though Meneptah's tomb (No. 8) is unfinished, the cult that was paid to his memory indicates that his mummy was deposited in it. It was plundered centuries ago, and the numerous Greek inscriptions on its [pg 098] walls make it clear that it was open to visitors in the Roman age.

Professor Maspero has suggested that the Pharaoh of the Bible was Seti ii. We know that Seti must have been a weak prince, and that his rule was disputed. A usurper, Amon-messu by name, seized the crown either during his lifetime or at his death, and governed at Thebes, while the authority of the lawful line of princes was still acknowledged in the north. We also know that he must have died suddenly, for his tomb at Thebes (No. 15), though begun magnificently, was never finished. Its galleries and halls were hewn out of the rock, but never adorned with sculptures and paintings, and, except at the entrance, we have merely outline sketches, which were never filled in. His cartouches, however, are found in another tomb, not far off (No. 13), and after his death worship was paid to him and his wife.

A despatch, written during his reign, relates to the escape of two fugitives who had travelled along the very road which the Israelites attempted to take. The scribe tells us that he set out in pursuit of them from the royal city of Ramses on the evening of the 9th of Epiphi, and had arrived at the Khetam or fortress of Succoth the following day. Two days later he reached another Khetam, and there learned that the slaves were already safe in the desert, having passed [pg 099] the lines of fortification to the north of the Migdol of King Seti. The account is an interesting illustration of the flight, on a far larger scale, that must have taken place about the same time. The geography of the despatch is in close harmony with that of the Book of Exodus, and bears witness to the contemporaneousness of the latter with the events it professes to record. It is a geography which ceased to be exact after the age of the nineteenth dynasty.

It is thus possible that Seti ii., instead of Meneptah, is the Pharaoh whose host perished in the waves of the Red Sea. But there is yet another claimant in Si-Ptah, with whom the nineteenth dynasty came to an end. Dr. Kellogg has argued ably on behalf of him, and it is possible that the views of this scholar are correct. Si-Ptah's right to the throne was derived from his wife, Ta-user, and he reigned at least six years. That he followed Seti ii. has long been admitted, on the authority of Manetho, though doubts have been cast on it in consequence of a statement of Champollion that he found the name of Seti written over that of Si-Ptah in the tomb of the latter at Bibân el-Molûk (No. 14). All doubts, however, are now set at rest by an inscription I copied at Wadi Halfa two years ago, in which the writer, Hora, the son of Kam, declares that he had formerly belonged to the palace of Seti ii., and had engraved [pg 100] the inscription in the third year of Si-Ptah. In another inscription in the same place, dated also in Si-Ptah's reign, the author states that he had been an ambassador to the land of Khal or Syria. Intercourse with Asia was therefore still maintained.

Si-Ptah's tomb at Thebes was usurped by Setnekht, the founder of the twentieth dynasty. It is even doubtful whether the king for whom it was made was ever buried in it. In the second sepulchral hall the lid of his sarcophagus was discovered, but of the sarcophagus itself there was no trace. Perhaps it had been appropriated by Set-nekht. At any rate, those who believe that the Pharaoh of the Exodus perished in the Red Sea will find in Si-Ptah a better representative of him than in Meneptah or Seti. And the period of anarchy which followed upon his death may be regarded as the natural sequel of the disasters that befel Egypt before the children of Israel were permitted to go.

However this may be, the question of the date of the Exodus is reduced to narrow limits. The three successors of Ramses ii. reigned altogether but a short time. Manetho gives seven years only to Si-Ptah, five years to Amon-messu, and we know from the monuments that Meneptah and Seti ii. can have reigned but a very few years. Thirty or forty years at most will have covered the period that elapsed [pg 101] between the death of the great Ramses and the downfall of his dynasty. Then came a few years of confusion and anarchy, followed by the reign of Setnekht. If we place the accession of Ramses iii. in b.c. 1230, we cannot be far wrong.

When that happened, the Israelites were hidden out of the sight of the great nations of the world among the solitudes of the desert. They were pitching their tents on the frontiers of Mount Seir, in the near neighbourhood of their kinsmen in Edom and Midian. There, at Sinai and Kadesh-barnea, they were receiving a code of laws, and being fitted to become a nation and the conquerors of Canaan. Were they included among the Shasu of Mount Seir whose overthrow is commemorated by Ramses iii.?

For an answer we must turn to the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Numbers. There we read how it is said in the book of the wars of the Lord: “Waheb in Suphah and the brooks of Arnon, and the stream of the brook that goeth down to the dwelling of Ar, and lieth upon the border of Moab.” Of the war against the Amorites on the banks of the Arnon we know something, but the Old Testament has preserved no record of the other war, which had its scene in Suphah. Where Suphah was we know from the opening of the Book of Deuteronomy, which tells us that the words of Moses were addressed to the people [pg 102] “in the plain over against Suph.” Suph, in fact, was the district which gave its name to the yâm Sûph or “Sea of Suph,” the Red Sea of the authorised version, the modern Gulf of Akabah. Here were the Edomite ports of Eloth and Ezion-geber, where Solomon built his fleet of merchantmen (1 Kings ix. 26), and here too was the region which faced “the plain” on the southern side of Moab.

The barren ranges of Mount Seir run down southward to Ezion-geber and Eloth, at the head of the Gulf of Akabah. And it was just in the ranges of Mount Seir that Ramses iii. tells us he smote the Shasu and plundered their tents. When he made this expedition, the Israelites were probably still encamped on the borders of Edom. They had not as yet entered Canaan when he marched through the later Judæa, and crossed the Jordan into Moab, and his campaign against the Shasu of the desert did not take place many years later. At Medînet Habu, the “chief of the Shasu” figures among his prisoners by the side of the kings of the Hittites and the Amorites.

Was “the war of the Lord” in Suphah waged against the Pharaoh of Egypt? Chronology is in favour of it, and if the enemies of the Israelites were not the Egyptian army, it is hard to say who else they could have been. We know from the [pg 103] Pentateuch that they were not the people of Edom; “meddle not with them,” the Israelites were enjoined; the children of Esau were their “brethren,” and God had “given Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession.”