The Hebrew Exodus from and Jeremiah's Eisodus into Egypt in the Light of Recent Archaeological and Geological Developments 1 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Tyndale Bulletin, 2022
Egyptian texts mention two bodies of water on Egypt's eastern frontier with Sinai, š-ḥr and p3 twfy, the latter of which is mentioned in connection with the Exodus (as ם-סּוף יַ-yam suf), while the former occurs in Jeremiah 2:18. Recent palaeoenvironmental work conducted by the North Sinai Archaeological Project, which was in the field from 1998 to 2008 and directed by the author, has shed new light on these bodies of water and the roles they played in the biblical events involving entering and departing Egypt. The 2019 publication of the geological data now allows one to offer some insights into these ancient lakes. Supplemented by new archaeological discoveries, elements of the routes of both journeys can be elucidated.
Which Way Out of Egypt? Physical Geography Related to the Exodus Itinerary
The Exodus narrative is rich with geographic references that are properly understood in the context of the ancient landscape of the eastern Nile Delta and adjacent Sinai Peninsula. Changes in the physical geography of the region reflect dynamic interactions between the Nile river system, the Mediterranean Sea, and tectonics of the Red Sea rift system. Coordinating field geology, archaeological sites, digital topography, and satellite imagery with Geographic Information Technology resulted in a map depicting the physical geography of the area of interest during the Bronze Age. The map reveals different positions of the Mediterranean coastline with associated lagoons and the existence of Pelusiac Nile distributaries, lakes, and wetlands. The restored geography constrains the path of the ancient "Ways of Horus," the militarized coastal road between Egypt and the land of the Philistines, but also provides a plausible map of the region that is described in the Exodus texts.
Examining Exodus 14 with the geosciences
2015
There are similarities between the physical details described in the Exodus 14 narrative of the parting of the Red Sea, and a wind setdown event in the eastern Nile delta. This publication takes the ocean model results reported by Drews and Han in 2010 and places them in a biblical, archaeological, and historical context. Certain biblical and archaeological research also supports a crossing at the Kedua Gap or possibly at Tell Abu Sefeh. The proposed locations are within 10 km of a place identified as Migdol by several biblical scholars. Four possible crossing sites are evaluated with respect to the biblical text, and what they might imply for the route of a Hebrew exodus from Egypt during the New Kingdom period. The scientific plausibility of the ancient account suggests that Exodus 14 preserves the memory of an actual historical event.
Egyptologists and the Israelite Exodus from Egypt
Early Egyptologists were steeped in interest in biblical history and in particular the Hebrew exodus story. Edouard Naville and W.M.F. Petrie were among the early pioneers. Of interest to early Egyptologists was the geography of the exodus and the route of the Hebrew departure from Egypt. By the mid-twentieth century, Egyptology's love affair with Old Testament matters had soured, but this allowed the discipline to develop as its own science.
In the following it will be shown that in Ramesside times besides descendants of the Canaanites of the Hyksos Period also new groups of Near Easterners arrived in Egypt as prisoners of war or as migrant bedouins. Workmen who had the task to pull down during the 20th Dynasty the temple of Aya and Horemheb in western Thebes seem to have been carriers of the same or similar Iron Age culture as the Proto-Israelites in the southern Levant as they used for their shelters makeshift Four Room-Houses. According to the stratigraphic evidence available the presence of the Iron Age people in western Thebes can be dated to the same time or only slightly later than the settlement of the Proto-Israelites in Canaan. One has to be aware, however, that their ethnogenesis has not yet been finalized at that time. If we may assume a sojourn of early Israelites in Egypt, the most likely period would have been the late Ramesside Period – the 12th century BC. It is also most fascinating to show that Egyptian scribes used Semitic toponyms for places at the eastern border of Egypt, particularly in the Wadi Tumilat. The only sensible explanation is that Semitic speaking people lived there for a time long enough to have with the use of their toponyms an impact on the Egyptian administrative system. Because of geographical and onomastic reasons Wadi Tumilat could serve as a paradigm of the biblical land of Goshen. This article supplies furthermore evidence which makes it very likely that the memory of the town of Raamses/Ramesse in the books Genesis and Exodus has to be tied to the Delta-residence of the Ramessides Pi-Ramesse. At the same time the second biblical store city of Pithom should be identified with the only substantial Ramesside town in the Wadi, Tell el-Retabe, not with Tell el-Maskhuta which according to the archaeological record did not yet exist at that time. Reconstruction of the geography of the eastern Nile Delta in the Ramesside Period shows that at least some ideas of the topographical conditions in the eastern Delta reflected in the books Genesis and Exodus go back to this Period. The quarrying of stone blocks, statues and architectural elements from Pi-Ramesse (Qantir) and their reuse for new big sacred building projects at Tanis and Bubastis in the 21st and 22nd Dynasties brought about the rise of secondary cults of gods “of Ramses” in the 4th century in Bubastis and of the gods “of Ramses of Pi-Ramesse” at Tanis from the 3rd century onwards. Such a development may have fostered ideas among diaspora in exile coming to Egypt that Raamses/Ramesse was situated in Tanis or in the environment of Bubastis. Such considerations may have brought about the theories of the northern and southern Exodus-routes from the time of the 30th Dynasty onwards.
Quaternary Science Reviews, 2013
The SinaieNegev erg occupies an area of 13,000 km 2 in the deserts of Egypt and Israel. Aeolian sand of this erg has been proposed to be derived from the Nile Delta, but empirical data supporting this view are lacking. An alternative source sediment is sand from the large Wadi El Arish drainage system in central and northern Sinai. Mineralogy of the Negev and Sinai dunes shows that they are high in quartz, with much smaller amounts of K-feldspar and plagioclase. Both Nile Delta sands and Sinai wadi sands, upstream of the dunes, also have high amounts of quartz relative to K-feldspar and plagioclase. However, Sinai wadi sands have abundant calcite, whereas Nile Delta sands have little or no calcite. Overall, the mineralogical data suggest that the dunes are derived dominantly from the Nile Delta, with Sinai wadi sands being a minor contributor. Geochemical data that proxy for both the light mineral fraction (SiO 2 /10eAl 2 O 3 þ Na 2 O þ K 2 OeCaO) and heavy mineral fraction (Fe 2 O 3 eMgOeTiO 2 ) also indicate a dominant Nile Delta source for the dunes. Thus, we report here the first empirical evidence that the SinaieNegev dunes are derived dominantly from the Nile Delta. Linkage of the SinaieNegev erg to the Nile Delta as a source is consistent with the distribution of OSL ages of Negev dunes in recent studies. Stratigraphic studies show that during the Last Glacial period, when dune incursions in the SinaieNegev erg began, what is now the Nile Delta area was characterized by a broad, sandy, minimally vegetated plain, with seasonally dry anastomosing channels. Such conditions were ideal for providing a ready source of sand for aeolian transport under what were probably much stronger glacial-age winds. With the post-glacial rise in sea level, the Nile River began to aggrade. Post-glacial sedimentation has been dominated by fine-grained silts and clays. Thus, sea level, along with favorable climatic conditions, emerges as a major influence on the timing of dune activity in the SinaieNegev erg, through its control on the supply of sand from the Nile Delta. The mineralogy of the SinaieNegev dunes is also consistent with a proposed hypothesis that these sediments are an important source of loess in Israel.
Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, MAA International Journal., 2017
In modern literatures, the location of Pi-Hahiroth at which the Pharaoh of Moses sank is unknown; and during the reign of which Pharaohs the Israelites have lived in Egypt is still unconfirmed. Besides, the historic and chronological scenarios suggested by modern scholars regarding this period differ from those mentioned by the Greek and medieval historians. Therefore, the paper shows the location of a mouth of an inland lake, in the western coast of Sinai that ramifies from the Suez Gulf, which according to Al Maqrizi the medieval Egyptian historian, Moses and the Israelites crossed it during the exodus. Regarding the dissimilarity in chronological data from different sources, the paper shows that the Egyptians used diverse time intervals, and four types of years, namely: the Earth's solar year of ~365 days, the pilgrimage year of 6 months, the administrative year of 3 months, and the lunar year of ~30 days. Besides, regarding the dissimilarity in historic scenarios and names of pharaohs, the paper shows how to pronounce their names, similar to that mentioned by Greek and medieval historians, using the proper phonetic values and color-codes of signs, in addition to the rule of pronouncing the core and cover parts of the word in black texts. Finally, the paper shows that the pharaohs of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses are the so-called Amenhotep-III, Seti-I, and Ramesses-V, respectively.
E&G Quaternary Science Journal
No environmental factor has been as critically important for Egypt's ancient society through time as sufficiently high annual flood levels of the Nile River, the country's major source of fresh water. However, interpretation of core analysis shows reduced depositional accumulation rates and altered compositional attributes of the sediment facies deposited seaward of the Nile Delta during a relatively brief period in the late third millennium BCE. These changes record the effects of displaced climatic belts, decreased rainfall, lower Nile flows, and modified oceanographic conditions offshore in the Levantine Basin, primarily from 2300 to 2000 BCE, taking place at the same time as important geological changes identified by study of cores collected in the Nile Delta. It turns out that integrated multidisciplinary Earth science and archaeological approaches at dated sites serve to further determine when and how such significant changing environmental events had negative effects in both offshore and landward areas. This study indicates these major climatically induced effects prevailed concurrently offshore and in Nile Delta sites and at about the time Egypt abandoned the Old Kingdom's former political system and also experienced fragmentation of its centralized state. In response, the country's population would have experienced diminished agricultural production leading to altered societal, political, and economic pressures during the late Old Kingdom to First Intermediate Period at ca. 2200 to 2050 BCE. Kurzfassung: Für die Gesellschaft des Alten Ägypten war im Laufe der Zeit kein anderer Umweltfaktor so entscheidend wie die ausreichend hohen jährlichen Hochwasserstände des Nils, der wichtigsten Süßwasserquelle des Landes. Allerdings deuten Bohrkernanalysen darauf hin, dass während eines relativ kurzen Zeitraums gegen Ende des 3.Jahrtausends v. u. Z. geringere Ablagerungsraten sowie Veränderungen in der Zusammensetzung der Sedimentfazies auftraten, die sich meerwärts des Nildeltas akkumulierten. Diese Veränderungen resultierten aus einer Verschiebung der Klimagürtel, geringeren Niederschlägen und Nilabflüssen sowie veränderten ozeanographischen Bedingungen im Levantinischen Becken um etwa 2300 bis 2000 v. u. Z., einer Zeit weiterer geologischer Veränderungen, deren Effekte sich ebenfalls in den Bohrkernen nachweisen lassen. Wie sich nun zeigt, helfen integrierte multidisziplinäre geowissenschaftliche und archäologische Untersuchungen im Umfeld archäologischer Stätten dabei, näher zu bestimmen, wann und wie sich solche bedeutenden Umweltereignisse negativ auswirkten, sowohl vor der Küste, als auch im Delta selbst.