Does Archaeology Confirm Joseph’s Time in Egypt?

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The biblical story of Joseph and his brothers may have an historical basis. Is it possible that the cultural memory of the Hyksos, who ruled Egypt during the 17th and 16th centuries B.C.E. but who were later expelled, morphed into the tradition of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus? The history and archaeology of ancient Egypt may provide an answer.

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Footnotes

1. For Canaanites in Middle Kingdom Egypt, see, e.g., the Beni Hasan tomb paintings featured in Michael D. Coogan, “10 Great Finds,” BAR, May/June 1995; see also James K. Hoffmeier, “Out of Egypt: The Archaeological Context of the Exodus,” BAR, January/February 2007.

2. See Manfred Bietak, “Contra Bimson, Bietak Says Late Bronze Age Cannot Begin as Late as 1400 B.C.,” BAR, July/August 1988.

3. Ronald S. Hendel, “Exodus,” Bible Review, August 2002.

4. See, e.g., Hershel Shanks, “Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History,” BAR, May/June 2016; Aharon Kempinski, “Jacob in History,” BAR, January/February 1988; Hershel Shanks, “The Exodus and the Crossing of the Red Sea, According to Hans Goedicke,” BAR, September/October 1981.

Endnotes

1.
Kenneth Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

2.
See Donald Redford, “The Great Going Forth: The Expulsion of West Semitic Speakers from Egypt,” in Thomas Levy, Thomas Schneider, and William Propp, eds., Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective (Heidelberg: Springer, 2015), p. 438; Ronald Hendel, “The Exodus in Biblical Memory,” Journal of Biblical Literature 120.4 (2001), pp. 603–604; Nadav Na’aman, “The Exodus Story: Between Historical Memory and Historiographical Composition,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011), p. 63; see also Baruch Halpern, “The Exodus from Egypt: Myth or Reality,” in Hershel Shanks, ed., The Rise of Ancient Israel (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992), pp. 86–113.

3.
Most scholars agree that at least a portion of the Israelites emerged locally, from Canaanite polities. For a short summary of these arguments, see Eric Cline, From Eden to Exile (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2007), pp. 115–116.