Tag Archives: Shemot

Did the Jews Build the Pyramids?

The second book of the Torah, Shemot, begins by recounting the Israelite bondage in Egypt, and the Exodus that followed. One often overlooked question is: when did all of this actually happen? The Torah itself never gives any years or specific dates for its events. The accepted Jewish tradition is that the Exodus took place in the Hebrew year 2448, which corresponds to roughly 1312 BCE. What might archaeology and the historical record reveal?

City of Ramses

The Torah tells us that one of the major cities that the Israelites built was Ramses (Exodus 1:11). The historical record shows that this city was, not surprisingly, built by the pharaoh Ramses II (the Great). However, his reign spanned 1279-1213 BCE, too late for the Jewish dating of the Exodus. Perhaps it was Ramses’ grandfather, Ramses I – the founder of Egypt’s famous 19th dynasty – that began building a new capital city to be named after him. Ramses I reigned 1292-1290 BCE; still too late to coincide with Jewish tradition.

The Torah never identifies the names of any pharaohs it mentions. It describes at least three different ones: the pharaoh that dealt with Abraham, and the one that appointed Joseph many decades later, as well as the “new pharaoh” that forgot about Joseph’s contributions (Exodus 1:8). The pharaoh at the time of the Exodus was likely a different pharaoh altogether, too. The description we have of Ramses II actually parallels the Torah’s Exodus pharaoh quite well.

Ramses II was Egypt’s longest-reigning monarch (66 years!) and had over 100 children. He vastly expanded Egypt’s wealth, and stretched its territory and influence as far as the lands of Canaan and Syria. We see that he was a prolific builder, commissioning – among many other projects – a massive temple complex known as the Ramesseum, which still stood over 1000 years later when it marvelled the Greek historian Diodorus. His city of Ramses (or Pi-Ramses) was located in northeastern Egypt, in the land of Goshen, precisely where the Torah says the Israelites dwelled.

The Hyksos

Images of Semites in Egypt, discovered in a Twelvth Dynasty tomb, dated to c. 1900 BCE

The historical record shows that a few centuries before Ramses, a mysterious Semitic tribe migrated to Egypt en masse and ended up taking over the kingdom. They were called heqa khaseshet, “foreign rulers”, which gave rise to the term “Hyksos”. Eventually, the Egyptians fought back and regained control from the foreigners. Most were expelled, many were killed, and it is likely that some were enslaved.

The ancient Jewish historian Josephus wrote that “Hyksos” comes from hekw shasu, “shepherd kings”. Of course, the Torah describes in detail how the Hebrews came down to Egypt and made sure everyone knew they were shepherds, a trade frowned upon in Egypt. Josephus cites historical sources suggesting that 480,000 Hyksos were ultimately expelled, and he concludes that these were the ancient Israelites!

The city of Ramses was discovered 30 kilometres south of Tanis, which is right by Avaris!

It is interesting to point out that the Hyksos’s capital city was also in the northeastern region of Goshen. The city was named Avaris, or Hawara. These sound quite similar to the way the Egyptians refer to the Hebrews in the Torah: ivri.

Historians date the Hyksos period from 1638 to 1530 BCE, totalling just about 110 years. Amazingly, the Zohar (I, 212a-b) states that the Israelites ruled over Egypt for 110 years, then spent the remaining 290 years of their time in Egypt as slaves. This would mean that the Exodus happened 290 years after the end of the Hyksos period. Doing the math, 290 years after 1530 BCE takes us to 1240 BCE – right in the heart of the reign of Ramses II!

Solar Eclipse

‘Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon’ by John Martin

All of the above suggests that the Exodus happened closer to the middle of the 13th century BCE. Recently, Israeli scientists discovered what may have been Joshua’s famous “stopping of the Sun” at the Battle of Gibeon (as described in the Book of Joshua, chapter 10). Interpreting this event as a solar eclipse, scientists at Ben Gurion University used NASA data to find any solar eclipses that may have been seen in the area between 1500 and 1000 BCE. They found exactly one, which took place on October 30, 1207 BCE.

This is incredible because the Battle of Gibeon would have happened roughly 40 years after the Exodus (since the Israelites spent 40 years in the Wilderness before Joshua led them to the Promised Land). If the Exodus took place around 1240 BCE, as we suggested above, then the dating of Joshua’s battle and the solar eclipse is right on target!

Reconciliation

The major issue now is that 1240 BCE seems to contradict the traditional Jewish dating of 1312 BCE. The truth is that Ancient Egyptian chronology is notoriously inaccurate. Scholars admit that discrepancies do exist, and are off by anywhere from 30 to 300 years. The discrepancy in our case is only about 70 years, well within the margins of errors.

Compared to the many foggy lists that scholars use to put together Egyptian chronology, the Torah’s chronology is fairly consistent and straight-forward. The years are added up based on peoples’ lifespans and the ages at which they had children, which are explicitly recorded. Historians might therefore want to take another look at Jewish chronology (as brought down in Seder Olam) if they wish to resolve some of their own conflicts.

And did the Jews build the pyramids? They may have built some pyramids (although by that time, pyramids had gone out of style). However, the famous Great Pyramid of Giza was completed by the middle of the third millennium BCE, long before any Israelites were on the scene.

The above article is adapted from Garments of Light: 70 Illuminating Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion and Holidays. Click here to get the book! 

An Honest Look at the Film ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’

This week we start a new book of the Torah, Shemot, known in English as ‘Exodus’. This volume is primarily concerned with the period of Israelite slavery in Egypt, and the subsequent salvation following the ten plagues and the Splitting of the Sea, climaxing with the revelation at Mt. Sinai, and the start of the transmission of the bulk of the Torah’s laws.

Coincidentally, not long ago was released Ridley Scott’s new film, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and I finally had a chance to see it this week. Though it appeared to show a little bit of promise at the start, the movie soon unravelled into a bizarre re-invention of the Biblical story. Of course, there is nothing wrong with some artistic liberties when adapting an ancient text for a modern film, nor is it too much of a problem to fill in some of the gaps in the Torah’s narrative. However, Exodus: Gods and Kings presented a completely twisted version that did not even slightly stick to the basic story of the Torah. It would take an entire tome to cover all the mistakes in the film, but perhaps we can offer just a few of the most blatant ones.

From the very beginning, we see that Moses seems to be completely unaware that he is not Egyptian. That’s quite odd: Semites and Egyptians had a totally different appearance. Take a look at this depiction of Semitic tribes, as discovered in the 12th dynasty tomb of Egyptian Khnumhotep II, official of the pharaoh Senusret II:

IbschaEgyptSemites

The Semites have a different skin tone, different hair styles, clothes, and so on. The filmmakers clearly knew this, as they show Moses bearded and sporting a nice hairdo, while all the other Egyptian royals are clean-shaven and bald. His eyes look different, and he wears clothes of a completely different style than all the others. How come? Didn’t he ever question why he doesn’t look anything like his “royal brethren”?

More importantly, the Torah clearly says that Moses was initially raised by his true birth mother, Yocheved (Exodus 2:7-9). Only after he was fully weaned did Yocheved present Moses to his new step-mother, the Pharaoh’s daughter (v. 10). It is totally inconceivable that Moses did not know he was a Hebrew! The Torah states that when Moses grew up, he “went out to his brothers and looked at their burdens” (2:11). He knew full-well that he was going out to his people.

At this point, when he saw an Egyptian taskmaster violently beating a Jew, he stepped in to save the victim, killing the Egyptian in the process. In the movie, this heroic act is replaced with an enraged Moses killing an Egyptian guard who was doing nothing terrible at all. The kind, compassionate Moses, described by the Torah as the humblest man that ever lived, is turned into a violent brute who kills indiscriminately. No wonder that Christian Bale, the actor who plays Moses, said of his character that he was “likely schizophrenic and was one of the most barbaric individuals that I ever read about in my life.” Makes sense if all he ever read about Moses was in the script for the film.

If Christian Bale did indeed read about Moses, perhaps he missed the whole part where Moses selflessly led his people for forty years in the wilderness. Where he literally sat from morning to evening to counsel the people and help them (Exodus 18:13). Or when he refused to abandon his people, even when God offered to make an entirely new nation out of Moses (Exodus 32:10). The many occasions where he convinced God to avert His just decrees and forgive the nation for their sins. The time where his sister Miriam transgressed severely against Moses, yet he did not hold even the tiniest of grudges or ill-will, and immediately prayed to God to heal Miriam and have mercy on her (Numbers 12:13). Or the simple fact that Moses led the revolution that brought monotheism (together with a higher sense of morality, starting with a set of Ten Commandments) to over two-thirds of the world’s population.

Worse than its depiction of Moses, though, was the film’s depiction of God: an irrational, pointlessly vengeful, literally childish figure. The film made it seem like the Ten Plagues were nothing more than God’s desire to kill as many people as possible. The reality, of course, was that the Ten Plagues were meant to be a measure-for-measure retribution for what the Egyptians had done; nothing more than cosmic karma. For example, just as the whole story begins with Pharaoh ordering the male-born to be drowned in the Nile, it ends with Pharaoh’s own male soldiers drowning in the Red Sea, measure for measure. Nor was God happy about any of this. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 39b) beautifully says that at the Splitting of the Sea, when the Egyptians drowned, the angels began to sing a joyous song, mimicking the Jews that were singing as well – but God immediately stopped them. He rebuked the angels, saying sadly: “My creations are drowning, and you are singing?”

When one studies the texts and commentaries, it becomes clear that each of the Plagues was specifically tailored towards the sins of the Egyptians, and was designed to bring the rightful justice that was due. Nowhere is this fact even hinted to in the movie. Most telling was after the plague of the firstborn, when Pharaoh confronts Moses demanding an answer as to why they suffered such a tragedy. The latter gives no logical reply, saying only that no Hebrews died. Perhaps the scriptwriter should have had something along the lines of: “Hey Pharaoh, did you forget all the countless babies that you slaughtered? Or the many warnings you were given that this was coming, and to stop your evil ways?” The scene almost makes Pharaoh seem like the victim, and Moses the villain. It appears that the main aim of the movie was to cast Moses (and God) in a bad light. It really seems like the filmmakers went out of their way to do this.

Moses is shown carelessly abandoning his family when he goes back to Egypt to save his people. His wife and son are angry, emotionally-scarred, losing their faith – and Moses does nothing about it. What was the point of making this shift from the Torah’s original version, which clearly states “Moses took his wife and sons, mounted them upon the donkey, and returned to the land of Egypt…” (Exodus 4:20)? He never abandoned his family, but took everyone with him!

It therefore appears quite evident that the purpose of Exodus: Gods and Kings was to turn one of the most beautiful and enduring stories into an ugly, twisted, and corrupt tale. The sheer number of mistakes is both inexcusable and inexplicable. One who wishes to experience a far truer (and more entertaining) version need only to open and read this week’s Torah portion.