Moses and Akhenaten (7 page)

The implication of these calculations is that Joseph must have arrived in Egypt as a slave, and been imprisoned, in the very first year of Hyksos rule. Despite the inherent improbability of this having happened, early Egyptologists, working forward from this date, came down firmly in favour of the Exodus under Moses having taken place during the reign of Merenptah, the fourth ruler of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Furthermore, as the Bible indicates that the Pharaoh of the Oppression, during whose reign Moses fled to Sinai, died while Moses was still in exile, it followed that, if Merenptah was the ruling king at the time of the Exodus, his predecessor, Ramses II, must have been king at the time of the Oppression.

These assumptions were shattered in 1896 when the British Egyptologist W. M. Flinders Petrie found a great granite stela in the funerary temple of Merenptah to the west of Thebes. The stela, which had originally belonged to Amenhotep III and bore a text of his, had been later usurped by Merenptah, who recorded on the other side what some scholars believed to be two separate military campaigns – one his victory over Libyan invaders, the other an expedition into Palestine/Syria, matching the biblical account of the pursuit of the Israelites by the Egyptians. The stela, now in the Cairo Museum, has come to be known as the Israel Stela because it includes – in an epilogue to its main story – the first, and only known, mention of Israel in an Egyptian text. As this stela is dated to Year 5 of Merenptah's reign and speaks of Israel as people already resident in Palestine, it upset completely the accepted wisdom of Egyptologists of the time. Not only had the Israelites left Egypt proper by that date, but, after spending a supposed forty years in the wilderness of Sinai, had made their way to Palestine and had been there long enough to develop into a power that posed a threat impelling the ruling Pharaoh to send troops to try to subdue them.

This caused the scholars of the time to adjust their position. Faced with the facts, and lacking any alternative explanation, they decided that at least one of the figures in the biblical account of Exodus, the forty years spent wandering in the wilderness, should not be taken literally. In addition they became ready to disregard the two Pharaohs of the biblical account – one for the Oppression and the other, his successor, for the time of Exodus – and came to the conclusion that Ramses II was the Pharaoh of both events during his long reign of sixty-seven years. This belief has since become widely accepted by the majority of both biblical scholars and Egyptologists, who have come to regard it as unquestionable historical fact. However, the choice of Ramses II as the Pharaoh of the Exodus assumes that the military confrontation between the people of Israel and Egyptian forces in Palestine took place during the first five years of Merenptah, but careful examination of the Israel Stela shows that this cannot have been the case.

In Year 5 of Merenptah's reign, Egypt was invaded by a Libyan leader named Merey, who had gathered to his banner a great army of Libyan tribes as well as five groups of ‘peoples of the sea', who are believed to have come from the Greek islands. They attacked the Western Delta. Memphis, Heliopolis and other Lower Egyptian cities were forced to shut their gates against the invaders, citizens were unable to cultivate their land in safety or move from town to town. On this occasion the invaders were not merely looking for plunder, as had been the case with previous Libyan invasions, for they brought their women, children and cattle with them, clearly intending permanent settlement. On learning of this threat, Merenptah sent an army that met the invaders at a locality in the Western Delta known as ‘The Fields Of Piyer'. After six hours of fierce fighting, Merey fled, leaving his followers to their fate. The number of Libyans killed in the fighting is said to have been 6000 with a further 9000 taken prisoner.

The section of the Israel Stela devoted to these events opens with the date: ‘Year 5, third month of the third season (Spring), day 3'. This is followed by the titulary and epithets of Merenptah and, after giving a general picture of Egypt after the Libyan invasion, the defeat of the enemy is described: ‘Their advanced guard abandoned their rear. Their legs did not stop, except to run. Their archers abandoned their bows. The heart of their runners was weak from travelling. They untied their waterskins … their packs were loosed and cast aside. The wretched enemy prince of Rebu [Libya] was fled in the depth of the night, by himself. No feather was on his head' – a sign of dishonour, as Libyan warriors used to wear a feather in their head-dress – ‘his feet were unshod. The loaves for his provision were seized; he had no water … to keep him alive. The face of his brother was fierce, to slay him; among his commanders one fought his companion. Their tents were burned up, made ashes. All his goods were food for the troops.'
³

Then come some narrative sections, giving an account of the defeat of the Libyans and the saving of Memphis, which are followed by a religious composition in which the gods of Heliopolis praise Merenptah for saving Memphis and Heliopolis. The last section depicts the Egyptians joyful after their victory:

Jubilation has gone forth in the towns of Egypt. They talk about victories… One walks with unhindered stride on the way, for there is no fear at all in the heart of the people. The forts are left to themselves, the wells [lie] open, accessible to the messengers. The battlements of the wall are calm in the sun until their watchers may awake … The cattle of the field are left as free to roam without herdsmen, [even] crossing the flood of the stream. There is no breaking out of a cry in the night: ‘Halt! Behold, a comer comes with the speech of strangers!' but one goes and comes with singing. There is no cry of people as when there is mourning. Towns are settled anew again. He who ploughs his harvest will eat it. Re has turned himself [again] to Egypt. He [the king] was born as the one destined to [be] her protector, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Ba-en-Re, Meriamon; the son of Re: Merenptah Hotep-hir-Maat.

We have further accounts of the campaign against the Libyans in the war inscriptions of the Cairo and Heliopolis Columns, the Karnak War Inscriptions, the Athribis Stela (also called the Kom el Ahmar Stela), texts in which Merenptah has given accounts of the Libyan war in different parts of Egypt, and the Nubian Stelae, found in Nubia at Amada, Toshka, Wadi es Seboua and Amara West. With the exception of the Nubian Stelae, which describe a second war against the Nubians in Year 6 of Merenptah's reign, the only hostilities mentioned are those against the Libyans twelve months earlier.

What distinguishes the Israel Stela is that, unlike other texts, the account of the campaign against the Libyans is followed by a separate concluding section of twelve lines (three on the original stela), naming some foreign locations and peoples:

The princes are prostrate, saying ‘Mercy!' (The word used here is the Canaanite
shalam,
meaning ‘peace').

Not one raises head among the Nine Bows.

Desolation is for Tehenu; Hatti is pacified;

Plundered is the Canaan with every evil;

Carried off is Ashkelon; seized upon is Gezer;

Yanoam is made as that which does not exist;

Israel is laid waste, his seed is not;

Hurru is become a widow for Egypt!

All lands together, they are pacified;

Everyone who was restless, he has been bound by the King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Ba-en-Re Meriamon; the son of Re: Merenptah Hotep-hir-Maat, given life like Re every day.

Various interpretations have been placed upon the Israel Stela. It has been described, because of the poetic nature of its composition, as a hymn of victory. Some scholars have dismissed it as unhistorical and being rather a poetic eulogy of a universally victorious Pharaoh, while others have accepted that it provides a historical account of Merenptah's wars and victories. Although the stela is devoted almost entirely to the war against the invading Libyans, Libya (Tehenu) is also mentioned in the twelve-line epilogue. The other foreign references featured are:

• Hatti, the land of the Hittites in Asia Minor, then extending to include northern Syria;

• Canaan, west and south Palestine, bordering Sinai in the south, the Dead Sea to the east and the Mediterranean to the west;

• Ashkelon, a Canaanite port on the Mediterranean north of Gaza;

• Gezer, a Canaanite city west of Jerusalem:

• Yanoam, an important town of northern Palestine at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee;

• Israel: the sign used here does not indicate a land, but a people; and

• Hurru: although this word is sometimes used to indicate the whole land of Palestine/Syria, it could also mean the land of the biblical Horites, north of Mount Seir at the foot of the Dead Sea.

Merenptah was already an old man of about sixty when he came to the throne. At the time Egypt had enjoyed half a century of peace with Palestine/Syria since Merenptah's father, Ramses II, had concluded a treaty with the Hittites in Year 21 of his reign. No record of any major Egyptian conflict in Asia has been found during the remainder of the reign of Ramses II, and it is hardly to be believed that Merenptah, in the first five years of his reign and at his advanced age, fought these major wars against the Hittites in northern Syria and in Palestine/Syria without leaving any record of it other than the list of names in the epilogue to the Israel Stela.

This does not mean, however, that the epilogue is without historical value. We find no claim on the part of the king that it was
he
who subdued these foreign peoples, no dates or other details of any specific confrontation are to be found, only lasting peace. Yet, as the section implies, this peace had been achieved only through the defeat of Egypt's enemies in Asia. If Merenptah was not the king who confronted and vanquished the Israelites and other peoples in Palestine/Syria, who did? To find the answer we have to go back ninety years before Merenptah's accession to the throne, back to the very beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasty.

4

REBELLION IN SINAI

I
F,
as is generally accepted, the Israelites were still in Egypt at the end of the Eighteenth and beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasties, and if Egyptian troops set out in pursuit of them after the Exodus, as the Old Testament tells us, we should expect to find some evidence of this campaign in Egyptian records.

When Ramses I, founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty, came to the throne towards the end of the fourteenth century
C,
Egyptian influence in Asia had been weakened. The Hittite kingdom of central Asia Minor, which had emerged as a new power under the rule of the energetic King Suppiluliuma, had conquered first the city states of northern Syria, then Mitanni, Egypt's northern ally, thus threatening Egyptian control of central Canaan. Yet, despite this circumstance, the only stela of Ramses I, found at Wadi Haifa in Nubia, makes no mention of any campaign in the north during his short reign. A reference to ‘the captivity of his majesty' is taken to imply a possible military confrontation in Nubia.

Ramses I, already a very old man at the time of his accession, did not survive the end of his second year on the throne and was succeeded by his son, Seti I – and it is here, and in the earlier part of the reign of Seti's son and successor, Ramses II, that we find details of campaigns that match both the Exodus story and the Israel Stela.

At some point in Seti's first regnal year, a messenger arrived with the news: ‘The Shasu enemies are plotting rebellion. Their tribal leaders are gathered in one place, standing on the foothills of Khor (a general term for Palestine and Syria), and they are engaged in turmoil and uproar. Each of them is killing his fellow. They do not consider the laws of the palace.'

There is evidence that this campaign took place immediately after the death of Ramses I, before the process of his mummification, which took seventy days, had been completed and before Seti I had been crowned as the new Pharaoh: ‘The evidence … suggests that Seti had already returned from his first campaign (against the Shasu) when he visited Thebes in his accession year, there to attend to the burial of his predecessor and to initiate the benefactions in the Amun Temple which have been dated to his first regnal year.'
¹
This reinforces the idea that Ramses I could have died while pursuing the Israelites in Sinai. The name ‘Shasu' was used by the Egyptians to designate the bedouin tribes of Sinai, nomadic people who spoke a west-Semitic language, and to differentiate between them and the Palestinians, whom they called ‘Aamu'. (Later on, in the early centuries
AD,
the word ‘Shasu' became the Coptic word
shos,
meaning shepherd.) The full account of this campaign against the Shasu, here identified as a people by the determinative that can indicate either a people or a land, is found in Seti I's war reliefs which occupy the entire exterior of the northern wall of the great Hypostyle Hall in Amun's temple at Karnak (see
Appendix A
(i): The Shasu Wars). The extreme point in the king's first war, shown on the bottom row of the eastern side of the wall and dated to his first year, is the capture of the city of Pe-Kanan (Gaza).