Dead Men Tell Tales

by Harry Rimmer

It is a fascinating experience for the student of archeology to wend his way through the mass of evidence derived from these generations and now in the possession of the great museums of our earth. A pilgrimage begun in the British Museum, at London, continuing through the Egyptian Museum at Cairo, passing by way of Sakkara to culminate at Karnak, will enable the fascinated student to read this entire book of Genesis from the sources of antiquity. Thus in the very beginning of the convergence of the two streams, Revelation and History, we see that dead men indeed tell tales; and their stories vindicate the record of the Word of God!

Much of this evidence is, in the very nature of the case, inductive, and is valuable largely because of the light it sheds on dark places in the text of the Scripture. The customs of the people of antiquity were in many ways so different from those of our day, we have lost the comprehension of their conduct that is dependent upon mutual experience. There are thus certain obscurities in the pages of the Bible that have baffled modern man for a long time, but which are now clearly understood in the light of fresh understanding of the beliefs and practices of the times that are dealt with in the Scriptures. This is by no means the least of the benefits of archeological investigation.

One such field will be found in the record of the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, and the manner in which God shook the power of the conquering pharaoh and devastated Egypt for the relief of the oppressed. The entire record has been repudiated point by point by the various critics and the varying schools of criticism, until their limited opinions leave no grounds for belief in the very fact of the event itself. These objections, when analyzed carefully, are all predicated upon the personal ignorance of the individual critic concerning some phase of the proceedings that climaxed with the departure of Israel from servitude.

One of the commonest objections to the credibility of the Old Testament history was the oft-repeated assertion that though the children of Israel were in bondage for a long period in Egypt and left that land in the most dramatic exodus antiquity had known, there is no record from Egyptian sources of the people or history of Israel. Such is not now the case, but had it been so this would not necessarily have diminished the value of the historical statements to be found in the record of the book of Exodus.

Very few of the races of antiquity recorded in detail their defeats! Certainly no nation that prided itself upon its greatness and power ever suffered a more complete overthrow than did Egypt in the redemption of Israel. It is only natural to presume that they would make very little reference to the crushing blow that they suffered at that time. There is even today a strong tendency on the part of the Egyptians to hush up all evidence of this event as far as it is possible to do so. In the great Egyptian Museum at Cairo, for instance, we find a record of one of these texts that does refer to the Israelites.

Exhibit 599 in this aforesaid Museum is a large stele in dark gray granite, which is beautifully engraved on both sides. On one side there is an extensive inscription in which Amenophis the Third gives a categorical list of his gifts and offerings for the temple of Amon. The other side of the stele has been appropriated by Amenpthah. He gives a highly dramatic account of his battles and victories over the Libyans, and then alludes to the assault of Ascalon, of Gezer, and of Yanoem in Palestine. In the course of this later record, the inscription reads, “Israel is crushed. It has no more seed.”

In the Egyptian Museum this exhibit is accompanied by the following ingenious statement: “This is the sole mention of the Israelites in the Egyptian texts known up to the present day.”

This is not exactly the truth. The Egyptian Museum itself at Cairo has a number of the tablets containing the correspondence between the Egyptian court and the kings and governors who were vassals to Egypt in Palestine and Syria. These communications make urgent demands upon the crown of Egypt for military help against the invasion of an armed horde who are called in the text, Hebiru. The word “Hebiru” is commonly identified with the modern term Hebrew.

Again, the late Director General of the Department of Antiquity of Egypt and the great founder of the Cairo Museum, Maspero, has left us an interesting note of this monument of Menepthah. Maspero points to the fact that in comparison to Egypt, Chaldea and Assyria, Israel was a very insignificant race. If this was true when the nation was ruled by her greatest and most glorious dynasty, that of David and Solomon, it would be more so when the nation consisted of a slave company lodged in a corner of the delta.

The later ravages undergone by the temples of Egypt, when they suffered incalculable harm through the vandalism of the darker ages, makes it indeed extraordinary that any record of those earlier times has remained.