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Home > Magazines > BAR > January/February 1998

Let My People Go and Go and Go and Go

Egyptian records support a centuries-long exodus

By Abraham Malamat

Nothing in the archaeological record of Egypt directly substantiates the Biblical story of the Exodus. Yet a considerable body of Egyptian material provides such close analogies to the Biblical account that it may, in part, serve as indirect proof for the Israelite episode.

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Endnotes

1.

If the Apiru are, as I suggest, connected with the Hebrews, this would rule out the suggested connection with the Shasu, another group sometimes alleged to be connected with the emerging Hebrews/Israelites.

2.

Although every Israelite is a Hebrew and likely an Apiru, not every Hebrew or Apiru is necessarily an Israelite.

3.

Alan H. Gardiner, “The Ancient Military Road Between Egypt and Palestine,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 6 (1920), pp. 99–116; Eliezer D. Oren, “‘Ways of Horus’ in North Sinai,” in Egypt, Israel, Sinai, ed. Anson F. Rainey (Tel Aviv: Dayan Institute, Tel Aviv Univ., 1987), pp. 69–119.

4.

John A. Wilson in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 258.

5.

Wilson, Texts, p. 259.

6.

Wilson, Texts, p. 259.

7.

See R. Drenkhahn, Die Elephantine Stele des Sethnakht (Wiesbaden, 1980).

8.

Hinted at by M. Görg, Kairos 20 (1978), p. 279f. and n. 28.

9.

For an even later dating in the 12th century B.C., see M.B. Rowton, “The Problem of the Exodus,”Palestine Exploration Quarterly 85 (1953), pp. 46–60; and Gary A. Rendsberg, “The Date of the Exodus,” Vetus Testamentum 42 (1992), pp. 510–527.