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The Volcano Explains Everything—Or Does It?

Does this crater from an ancient volcanic eruption hold the answer to the mysteries of the Exodus?

By Manfred Bietak

Canadian documentarian Simcha Jacobovici, in cooperation with James Cameron, director of Titanic, has master-minded a two-hour TV special dealing with the oft-treated—and oft-mistreated—Exodus narrative. The Biblical account provides the principal pillar of the script. Every sentence of the Biblical text is taken literally in quite a fundamentalist fashion. Until now, Biblical scholars have not found specific archaeological evidence for the Exodus. This perspective—the archaeological evidence—is purportedly now supplied by Jacobovici and backed up, we are led to believe, with opinions of scholars working in the field. Technically the film is brilliantly produced—flashy and full of unusual special effects. The […]

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Footnotes

1.

Hershel Shanks, “The Exodus and the Crossing of the Red Sea, According to Hans Goedicke,” BAR 07:05.

2.

Manfred Bietak, “Israelites Found in Egypt,” BAR 29:05.

Endnotes

1.

This was proposed by Robert Ritner (University of Chicago), Karen Foster (Yale University) and Ellen Davis (Queens College).

2.

By James Allen (now of Brown) and Malcolm Wiener (INSTAP).

3.

Tell el-Dab’a, Tell Hebwa and Tell el-Ajjul.

4.

Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities, and the special research program SCIEM2000 (The Synchronisation of Civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Second Millennium B.C.) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.

5.

J.C. Darnell, “Die fruhalphabetischen Inschriften im Wadi el-Hol,” in Der Turmbau zu Babel, Ursprung und Vielfalt von Sprache und Schrift, vol. 3A (Die Schrift: Vienna and Milano, 2003), pp. 165–171. See also the newest study by O. Goldwasser, “For a Late 12th Dynasty Date of the Proto-Sinaitic Script,” Egypt and the Levant 17 (forthcoming).

6.

See Thomas Schneider, “Mythos und Zeitgeschichte in der 30. Dynastie,” in A. Brodbeck, ed., Ein ägyptisches Glasperlenspiel (Berlin 1998: pp. 207–242). I am grateful to Erich Winter, University Trier, Germany, for consultation.

7.

Lyvia Morgan (at present visiting professor at Harvard University and Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo) and Nannó Marinatos, professor of classics, University of Illinois, Chicago.