Abbreviations xv Chronological Charts xix
1 Israel's Early History in Recent Scholarship 3
2 The Origins of Israel: The Current Debate 25
3 Semites in Egypt: The First and Second Intermediate Periods 52
4 Joseph in Egypt 77
5 Israelites in Egypt 107
6 Moses and the Exodus 135
7 The Eastern Frontier Canal: Implications for the Exodus from Egypt 164
8 The Geography and Toponymy of the Exodus 176
9 The Problem of the Re(e)d Sea 199
10 Concluding Remarks 223
Preface
The biblical stories about Israel's origins in Egypt are so well known to people of Europe and the English-speaking world that one hardly has to rehearse the details. Whether people know them from reading the Bible, children's books, or from viewing epic film classics such as Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, the Hebrew heroes Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, Moses, Miriam, and Joshua are celebrated as the founders of the nation of Israel. By and large, historians over the centuries have considered these individuals and the events in which they participated to be historical. The advent of archaeology and the deciphering of cuneiform inscriptions from Mesopotamian and Egyptian hieroglyphics brought the Western world into direct contact with the world of the Bible, making the fathers and mothers of Israel come alive. Sensational discoveries by Flinders Petrie and Edouard Naville in the Delta and Wadi Tumilat at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of twentieth centuries were initially thought to provide firsthand evidence for the presence of the Hebrews in Egypt. Meanwhile, John Garstang's finds at Jericho seemed to support claims that the city was burned and its defense walls flattened, as related in Joshua 6. But subsequent investigations of these sites reversed earlier interpretations, and the evidence that originally appeared to confirm the stories concerning Israel's origin was met instead by embarrassing silence; for some this implied the repudiation of the Hebrew tradition. Since the pioneering days of Petrie, Naville, and Garstang considerably more archaeological data has been uncovered in Egypt, and yet, even as the discipline of archaeology is about to enter a new millennium, direct evidence for the events and figures of Genesis and Exodus remains elusive. Prior to the nineteenth century only a few scholars questioned the historicity of the patriarchal narratives of Genesis and stories of the sojourn-exodus and Joshua's conquest of the land of Canaan. Beginning in middle of the nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, however, many western scholars considered these tales to be sagas, legends, and etiologies, but not historical records. In response to this critical climate, the biblical archaeologist William Foxwell Albright and his followers set a positive tone from the 1940s through early 1970s. Within these circles, the veracity of the biblical stories of Israel's Patriarchs in Genesis to the conquest of the "Promised Land" as described in Joshua and Judges seemed assured. However, a new generation of skeptics, or historical minimalists, have come to the fore over the past twenty years and challenged such a positive assessment. In the first two chapters, I survey these developments and critique the new approaches and conclusions. The position of the minimalist school is that there was no Joseph serving Pharaoh, no Israelite bondage in Egypt, no Moses and the exodus, and certainly no military invasion of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. In place of the biblical accounts of Israel's origin, new, provocative hypotheses have been advanced. While different methodologies have been employed, a new consensus seems to be emerging within a small but influential circle that maintain that Israel was a purely Levantine, indigenous development. So important has been this development that the cover story in the December 18, 1995, issue of Time magazine was entitled, "Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?" The subtitle read "Archaeologists in the Holy Land are shedding new light on what did—and didn't— occur in the greatest story ever told." This subtitle reflects the mood and thinking of some involved in the origins of Israel debate. In this book, I will challenge the premise that the absence of archaeological evidence can prove what did or did not happen in Bible history. The "origins of Israel" debate of the past two decades has, by and large, been an intramural exercise with biblical historians and biblical/Syro-Palestinian archaeologists leading the way; however, little if any, attention has been given to materials from Egypt, except the Merneptah (Israel) stela, that might shed light on Israel's origin. While historians of ancient Israel have not seriously considered Egyptian sources, neither have Egyptologists over the past fifty years shown much interest in the Hebraic connection to the Nile Valley. This is a strange attitude for Egyptologists considering that the Bible has been a partner in historical inquiry from the beginnings of Egyptology. In recent decades, though, Egyptology has developed into a discipline in its own right, independent of Old Testament studies, and consequently there has been little interest in studying the Hebrew Bible and even a reluctance to enter biblical debates. This reticence is evident in an article by Manfred Bietak, the director of the Austrian excavations at Tell el-Dabc a. In response to a paper presented by Donald Redford at a symposium on Egypt and the Bible, Bietak confessed, "Being an Egyptologist I feel somehow embarrassed to comment on problems surrounding the theme of'the Exodus,' "' but he later demurred, "I do not necessarily share Professor Redford's pessimism." Bietak went on to offer helpful insights into the various biblical sources bearing on the geography of the exodus and how the terms should be understood in the second millennium and in the first. Thus Bietak, a brilliant Egyptologist, presents a credible argument for the authenticity of geographical descriptions in Exodus, while remaining dispassionate about the Old Testament material. He seems to have no agenda for or against the historicity of the Hebrew narratives. Thus, when Egyptologists do write about connections between Egypt and the Old Testament, they have generally accepted the Bible's claims. In Nicolas Grimal's A History of Ancient Egypt, the French Egyptologist seems totally unaware of the controversy brewing among biblical scholars and comfortably observes, "It is considered possible that the Jewish Exodus may have taken place during the reign of Ramesses II."2 He finds the lack of surviving evidence for this event "not in itself surprising, given that the Egyptians had no reason to attach any importance to the Hebrews."3 Grimal's approach seems to be fairly representative of most Egyptologists over the past twenty years. While as a rule Egyptologists have not occupied themselves with scholarly integration of Egyptian and Hebrew sources, there have, of course, been a number of outstanding exceptions over the past thirty years. Two of my graduate-school mentors from the University of Toronto, Donald Redford and Ronald Williams, along with Kenneth Kitchen from Liverpool University, are examples of Egyptologists who were also trained in Old Testament studies and other cognate Near Eastern languages. All three have published widely on matters of contact between Israelite and Egyptian history and culture. Over twenty years ago, Williams identified why biblical scholars tend to ignore Egyptian sources when studying the Hebrew Bible:
By the very nature of their training, Old Testament scholars are more likely to have acquired a first-hand knowledge of the Canaamte and cuneiform sources than they are to have mastered the hieroglyphic and hieratic materials of Egypt. For this reason they have had to depend to a greater degree on secondary sources for the latter. It is not surprising, then, that Israel's heritage from Western Asian in such areas as mythology, psalmody, theodicy, proverb collections, legal "codes" and practices, suzerainty treaties and royal annals has been more thoroughly investigated. Yet Egypt's legacy is by no means negligible.4
He, of course, believed that Israel had its birth as a nation in Egypt and, by virtue of being a neighbor in the following centuries, had ongoing contact with it. Hence, Williams maintained that Egyptian influence could be found within the pages of the Old Testament. He concluded his seminal essay by saying, "Due caution must always be observed in assessing the claims of direct influence, but the evidence is overwhelming that Israel drank deeply at the wells of Egypt. In a very real sense the Hebrews were'a people come out of Egypt (Num. xxii 5, 11).'"5 While this book was in the early stage of preparation, the scholarly world lost Professor Williams after a lengthy illness. His sagely approach, command of a wide range of sources and positive contributions to Egyptian-Old Testament studies will be sorely missed, but I hope that something of his legacy will be borne out by this volume.
On the other hand, Redford's important contributions to biblical studies have leaned in the minimalist direction, although he did reject the prevailing status quo in biblical studies regarding the story of Joseph (see chap. 4). In many places in this book, I have disagreed with my esteemed professor with whom I read Late and Old Egyptian texts, and from whom I had the pleasure of learning extensively while working for two seasons on the Akhenaten Temple Project's excavations at East Karnak that he directed. It is most uncomfortable to differ publicly with one's mentor, but I do so with the utmost respect for his brilliance and substantial scholarly contributions. I concur with Ronald Williams that "the evidence is overwhelming" for Egypt's influence on the Hebrews because of their lengthy sojourn in the Nile Valley and subsequent association during the monarchy period in Israel. One of the glaring weaknesses of much of the recent literature that has questioned the historicity of the biblical records is that it has lacked serious investigation of Egyptian historical and archaeological materials. I intend to introduce (or, in some cases, reintroduce) Egyptian material that does shed light on the pertinent questions raised by the historical minimalists. Our differences illustrate how scholars can look at the same body of material and arrive at different interpretations. It goes without saying, as Grimal has reminded us, that there is presently no known direct evidence for Israel's presence in the Nile Delta during the second millennium. This silence has resulted in the historical minimalists, for the most part, ignoring the available indirect evidence. It is my contention, and the purpose of this book, that in the absence of direct archaeological or historical evidence, one can make a case for the plausibility of the biblical reports based on the supporting evidence. The reader will soon realize, as I did early on, that each chapter could have been expanded into a book of its own. Certainly, each of the main subjects warrants such thorough research, but time would not allow it. Because decades of scholarly discussion about the Israelite sojourn in Egypt and the exodus and entry into Canaan are behind us, it is not feasible to introduce every article and book that has dealt with these issues. Even the scholarly contributions of the past fifteen years cannot be covered thoroughly. Consequently, I have had to be selective in the sources treated, but have attempted to consider those studies that have been most influential in the recent debate. Rather than reviewing all the secondary literature on the subject, I will address the bigger picture of the narratives from Genesis 39 through Exodus 15 and to answer the following questions. Is the picture portrayed within these chapters compatible with what we know of Egyptian history? Did the peoples of Canaan go to Egypt for relief during times of drought and famine? Could a Semite like Joseph be elevated to such a position of prominence as reported in Genesis 45? Did the Egyptians press foreigners into hard labor projects as portrayed in Exodus? Could a non-Egyptian like Moses have been raised in the court? Do the plagues of Exodus 7-13 make ecological sense in an Egyptian setting? If so, what social, political, and religious implications are there for Egypt? Finally, do the geographical features and place-names in the Hebrew record accord in any way \vith Egyptian toponymy and geography? In the following chapters, in order to answer these questions, a wide range of Egyptian sources—archaeological, geographical, textual, and pictorial—will be introduced and discussed. Some of the materials \vill not be new, but need to be placed on the table again because they have been ignored or trivialized in the past twenty years. At the same time, I shall provide fresh information from ongoing excavations in the Delta and Sinai, some not yet published in even preliminary form. For this new information, I made two visits to Egypt's Delta and Sinai in the spring of 1994 and 1995 and initiated the Eastern Frontier Canal Research Project during those visits. This work is ongoing, although some preliminary information is reported in chapters 7 and 8. Both trips to Egypt were made possible by funds from Wheaton College. Dr. Ward Kriegbaum, vice president for academic affairs, and Dr. James Stamoolis, graduate dean, made these grants available, and I thank them for their tangible support. A travel grant was also made possible from Wheaton for me to attend the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists at Cambridge University (September 1995), where I presented a preliminary report on my investigations in north Sinai. I am grateful to Professor John Ray of Cambridge, chairman of the organizing committee of the congress, and his committee for naming my paper as the first runner-up to the best interdisciplinary presentation of the congress. Some of the material presented in the paper appears in chapters 7 and 8. There are a host of others whose assistance, encouragement, and support throughout this nearly three-year effort must be acknowledged. Professor Kitchen, to whom this book is gratefully dedicated, helped me greatly by reading each chapter and offering his criticism, encouragement, and vast bibliographic knowledge so generously. Likewise, Professor Alan Millard of Liverpool University also read the entire manuscript. His insights into Old Testament scholarship and Hebrew and Semitic linguistics were most helpful. Dr. Mohamed Abd el-Maksoud of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt and director of all the North Sinai archaeological projects and his associate, Chief Inspector Abdul Rahman el-Ayedi provided the much needed logistical support for my work in Sinai. Dr. Manfred Bietak was kind enough to host me during my visit to Tell el-Dabc a in 1994. Also during my time in the Delta and Sinai in March 1994, Mr. Ted Brock, then director of the Canadian Institute in Egypt, worked very closely with me. While the results of the Shuttle Imaging Radar from the 1994 missions of the space shuttle Endeavour were not available to me, Dr. Jonathan Van Lepp of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was my liaison. I have been assured by the project director, Neil Herman, that a future Imaging Radar mission, perhaps as early as 1998, will complete its mapping of Egypt and Sinai. I am hopeful that the data provided will be of great value for studying the topography of the region, learning more about the Eastern Frontier canal, and will enable us to settle questions about the course of Pelusiac branch of the Nile in Sinai. In connection with this canal (see chap. 7), I am grateful to Drs. Amihai Sneh and Tuvia Weissbrod for hosting me in Jerusalem in June 1993 when I visited the offices of the Geological Survey of Israel. Dr. Weissbrod and I have continued to have many conversations about the canal and the course of the Pelusiac via E-mail. He has been a tremendous resource. A number of colleagues offered insights and criticism with specific chapters or problems with which I was wrestling. These include Dr. K. Lawson Younger (LeTourneau College), Dr. Richard Hess (Roehampton Institute), Dr. Mark Chavalas (University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse), Dr. Gary Rendsburg (Cornell University), Dr. Randal] Younker (Andrews University), Dr. David Lorton (The Johns Hopkins University), Dr. Donald Spanel (Brooklyn Museum), Dr. John Foster (Roosevelt University), and Dr. James Hoch (Akhenaten Temple Project, Toronto). All of my Wheaton Colleagues in the Old Testament and archaeology department (Alfred Hoerth, Hassell Bullock, Herbert Wolf, Andrew Hill, and Richard Schultz) were always ready to entertain and critique my ideas. Professor Hoerth's knowledge of the excavations at Tell el-Retabeh was a boon, thanks to his work there in the late 19705. Richard Schultz particularly helped me with German authors, and Andrew Hill readily shared his time, knowledge, and library with me. Dr. Charles Weber of the history department at Wheaton College introduced me to David Hackett Fischer's book, Historian's Fallacies, which proved to be a wonderful resource. Drs. Jeffrey Greenberg and Steven Moshier of the geology department provided me with equipment for my work on Sinai and have graciously allowed me to use their laboratory to study soil samples from north Sinai. They continue to be key players in the ongoing project. The resident marine biologist, Dr. Nadine Folino, has provided me with information about the shell samples taken from north Sinai (cf. chap. 8). Two graduate assistants who helped me in different ways must be mentioned: Darlene Brooks-Hedstrom (now a doctoral student at Miami University, Ohio) and Nathanael Heller (currently completing his master's degree). A personal friend and engineer who was a part of the work in north Sinai during the 1995 season, Mr. Ronald Bull, directed the mapping and auguring work around the site of Hebua. Much of what was accomplished could not have taken place without him. Because of the travel required in the preparation of this book, my wife, Cathy, and children, Jessica and Benjamin, have been without me for weeks at a time. Their patience, love, and support throughout the past three years were greatly appreciated. It is clear that while many colleagues and friends have contributed in some way to this book, I alone must assume the responsibility for the contents of this work. On the publication side, I must thank Cynthia Read at Oxford University Press for her patience and professionalism at every stage of this project. She has been a delight to work with. Throughout the following pages, the reader will encounter many translations of Egyptian texts and biblical passages. Unless otherwise stated, the Egyptian translations are my own, while the biblical translations are from the Revised Standard Version, unless another translation is specified.
CHAPTER 1. ISRAEL'S EARLY HISTORY IN RECENT SCHOLARSHIP
How are the mighty fallen . . . ?
1 Sam. 1:27a
I. The Demise of Israel's Early History
David lamented the news of the death of King Saul and Prince Jonathan with the famous words, "How are the mighty fallen . . . ?" The same question might be asked of the central figures of Israel's early history—Abraham, Moses, and Joshua—in the scholarly literature of the past two decades. The ipyos -witnessed a number of unrelenting critiques of the comparative method of studying the Hebrew Bible, which sought to show that parallels between the social and legal practices described in the Patriarchal narratives of Genesis are attested to in ancient Near Eastern literature of the mid to early second millennium B.C. Such parallels were adduced as evidence that the biblical events were historical and characters real. Scholars such as John Van Seters and Thomas Thompson argued, however, that many of the so-called parallels were not compelling and could also be documented for the first millennium.1 The result has been an abandonment by many Old Testament scholars of the conclusions of historical maximalists such as William F. Albright, John Bright, and Ephraim A. Speiser.2 Thus the pendulum began to swing towards a more minimalist reading of the Hebrew Bible, especially the material found in Genesis through Joshua concerning the origin of Israel, namely, the Patriarchal, the sojourn-exodus, Sinai, and "conquest" traditions.
For centuries the Israelite exodus from Egypt has been considered to be a historical event central to the formation of ancient Israel as a nation and its faith. The historicity of this event was affirmed by John Bright as recently as 1981 in the third edition of A History of Israel: "There can really be little doubt that ancestors of Israel had been slaves in Egypt and had escaped in some marvelous way. Almost no one today would question it."3 Since that positive assessment was penned, however, the tide has shifted toward historical minimalism and led to the questioning or denial of the historicity of the events of Exodus. In 1986 the late Gosta Ahlstrom's Wlw Were the Israelites? sought to answer the pressing question of Israel's origin without referring to the commonly dismissed Pentateuch and book of Joshua. Ahlstrom's reductionist thesis will be treated in the next chapter. More recently, Robert Coote made the bold assertion: "The writers of ancient Israel knew little or nothing about the origin of Israel, although the Scriptures can provide much information relevant to the investigation of early Israel. The period under discussion, therefore, does not include the period of the patriarchs, exodus, conquest, or judges as devised by the writers of the Scriptures. These periods never existed."4 When Bright's claim is read beside those of more recent biblical historians, like Ahlstrom and Coote, with only a decade separating them, we are forced to ask why the central event in Israel's history has so quickly lost its credibility in the eyes of many leading scholars? No single reason can be offered. In fact, a number of factors have been responsible for this decline and the present crisis.3
1. The collapse of the Albright-Wright synthesis of the "conquest" of Canaan by Joshua and the Israelites.
2. The demise of the Wellhausenian, or traditional-source critical certainties regarding the composition of the Pentateuch and the traditional dating of those sources. New literary and sociological approaches now rival older Continental methods.
3. The redefining of historiography or history writing in the Bible, resulting in the spurning of biblical writings for reconstructing Israel's early history.
4. The emergence of a new skepticism towards the historical reliability of the biblical text, what might be called a "hermeneutic of suspicion."
Let us now briefly sketch how these developments took place and how they set the stage for the present investigation.
The Collapse of the Albright-Wright Synthesis
William F. Albright, followed by his student G. Ernest Wright, significantly shaped and defined biblical archaeology from the 19405 through the igyos.6 The socalled archaeological (thirteenth-century) date for Israel's militaristic entry into Canaan was a direct result of Albright's discoveries at Tell Beit Mirsim (which he thought was biblical Debir) and Wright's work at Beitin, possibly biblical Bethel.7 Writing in the mid-1950s, Wright reflected on his work at the site:
Sometime during the I3th century the city was destroyed by a tremendous conflagration. It was the privilege of the writer to participate in this excavation, and even for a beginner in the field of archaeology there was absolutely no mistaking the evidences of by far the worst destruction which the city experienced in all its history. In some places the debris of fallen walls and charred, ash-filled earth was almost five feet thick. The Canaamte city destroyed was a fine one with excellent houses, paved or plastered floors and drains. Compared with them the poor straggly houses of the next town were poverty itself. The break between the two is so complete that there can be no doubt but that this was the Israelite destruction.8
This type of correlation between the archaeological data and Joshua narratives was the dominant view during the 19605 and 19703, especially in North America, and has more recently been dubbed the "conquest model or theory."9 To be sure, there were those who early on rejected the Albright school's conquest model. In his seminal essay of 1925, "Die Landnahme der Israeliten in Palastina," Albrecht Alt, who carefully utilized Egyptian historical sources, argued for a gradual migration of Israelite tribes into Canaan, rather than a wholesale conquest by a unified Israel under the leadership of Joshua.10 This view was subsequently championed by Martin Noth, who asserted:
It is clear that, to begin with, the occupation of the land by the tribes took place fairly quietly and peacefully on the whole and without seriously disturbing the great mass of the previous inhabitants. We may think of it as having proceeded rather in the way in which even today semi-nomadic breeders of small cattle from the adjoining steppes and deserts pass over into a settled way of life in the cultivated countryside, the only difference being that at that time there was more uninhabited space available than there is today.11
Alt (understandably in 1925) and Noth reached these conclusions based on their reconstructions of the Hexateuch and by largely ignoring or trivializing the archaeologically based approach of the Albright-Wright school. While Noth did not reject the evidence of widespread thirteenth-century destruction of Canaanite cities that Albright attributed to the Israelites, he believed that the archaeological evidence for assigning the destructions to the Israelites was lacking. True, there is nothing about these Late Bronze Age destructions that points toward Israel or any other culprit for that matter.12 I have argued similarly in the case of the widely held view that Egyptian armies at the beginning of eighteenth Dynasty (sixteenth-fifteenth centuries B.C.) were responsible for the rampage that terminated the Middle Bronze Age.13 In both cases, ascribing a destruction level at the sites to a particular perpetrator comes from inferences derived from texts, biblical in the former, and Egyptian in the latter. Noth rejected Albright's thesis on the basis of his conclusion that the text of Joshua was etiological in nature.14 One result of the disintegration of the conquest model is a return to the Alt-Noth hypothesis, and variations of it, as in the •works of Manfred Weippert and Adam Zertal.15 One problem with the "infiltration" or "migrations" model that has not been thoroughly addressed by its advocates is its failure to explain the demise of the Late Bronze Canaanite city-states.16
Another development that grew out of the tension between the German and American positions on the nature of Israel's arrival in Canaan was George Mendenhall's "peasant revolt" theory, presented first in Biblical Archaeologist in 1962(17) and developed more fully in his subsequent monograph.18 Dever recently hailed Mendenhall's contribution as "one of the most original contributions to twentieth-century American biblical scholarship."19 While not eliciting widespread support in the 1960s, this model has gained in popularity more recently among adherents to more sociological approaches, like that of Norman Gottwald,20 who expanded upon Mendenhall's thesis, giving it a Marxist bent. However, Mendenhall has bristled at the way Gottwald has skewed his original thesis, saying,
I was quite aware at the time (1962) that the thesis could be subjected to exploitation by political propagandists interested only in "socio-political processes," and now we have a large work that systematically attempts to force the ancient historical data into the Procrustes' Bed of nineteenth century Marxist sociology. My attempts to warn against such reductionistic interpretations of the history of society radically different from that of the nineteenth century after the industrial revolution, are derided by Gottwald in his magnum opus, The Tribes of Yahweh.21
Nevertheless, Gottwald's work, in turn, has influenced the conclusions of more recent studies such as those by Marvin Chaney and Robert Coote.22 The peasantrevolt model's support has come largely from scholars sympathetic to sociological methods of biblical studies. Anson Rainey, a sharp critic of this approach, demurs in his review of Gottwald's work: "This book could safely and profitably be ignored. Unfortunately, it represents the most recent fad in Old Testament studies. . . . This 'Revolting Peasant Theology' has become popular among students and scholars of Old Testament; it may even be the new panacea of late twentieth century Old Testament Studies."23 Regardless of the present acceptability or the future of the Mendenhall-Gottwald theory, it has posed problems for both earlier American and German models.
Perhaps the most severe blow to the conquest theory has been the archaeological problems posed at Jericho and et-Tell, thought to be Ai. Since these are among the most thoroughly documented and celebrated sites of Israelite victories in Joshua (2, 6-8:29), and since the text is explicit about the cities being burned (Josh. 6:24; 8:28), these sites should both serve as test cases for the conquest model and the historicity of the Joshua narratives.
Liverpool University archaeologist John Garstang excavated Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) from 1930-1936. City IV had undergone a massive destruction and conflagration. Based on the ceramic and scarab evidence, along with the absence of Mycenaean ware, Garstang dated this destruction to ca. 1400 B.C., associating it with the Israelite conquest as described in Joshua 6.24 This discovery and its dating correlated nicely with the now marginalized "early" exodus and conquest dates (ca. 1447 and 1407 respectively) based on the Masoretic Text (MT) of I Kings 6: i.25 The "conquest model" and the book of Joshua basked in the light for less than two decades before the walls came tumbling down. The highly respected archaeologist Dame Kathleen Kenyon, utilizing more exacting methods of excavation and ceramic analysis, reworked the site from 1952 to 1958. Because of her stature and reputation, Kenyon's conclusions were accepted immediately by biblical scholars and archaeologists alike: Garstang's dating of City IV from the Late Bronze Age was in fact the termination of the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1550 B.C.) and the destruction could be tied to Egyptian military activity in connection with the expulsion of Hyksos from Egypt and the beginnings of the Egyptian empire in the Levant.26 Kenyon also discovered that during the Late Bronze period, when the Israelites were thought to have "conquered" Jericho, it was scarcely occupied and the levels were badly eroded.27
Thus, Jericho became a liability to the conquest theory. Recently, however, Bryant G. Wood has reassessed the Jericho material by comparing Garstang's publications, the material in Excavations at Jericho volumes three through five, and unpublished Jericho ceramics.28 He argues for returning to Garstang's original dating and suggests attributing the destruction to the Israelites. Wood's suggestions have not been received warmly by Syro-Palestinian archaeologists.29 However, his arguments for redating the ceramics that Kenyon assigned to the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age must be considered carefully, and the presence of mid-fifteenth through mid-fourteenth-century Egyptian scarabs from the Jericho tombs cannot be ignored. Thus the problem of Jericho has been reopened for discussion and firm conclusions concerning the Israelites must be withheld until the recent publications on Jericho have been studied thoroughly, or there are new excavations.
The second critical site is et-Tell, thought to be biblical Ai by its excavators. Like Jericho, Ai was dug first by Garstang in 1928, then in the 19305 by Judith Marquet-Krause of France, and finally by Joseph Callaway from 1964 to 1976.30 A hiatus from the end of the Early Bronze III (ca. 2400) down to Iron I (ca. 1200 B.C.) posed problems for the 1400 date of Garstang and the mid to late thirteenthcentury date of Albright and Wright. These discoveries caused Albright and Wright to posit a contorted hypothesis, namely, that Beitin (which they had excavated earlier) was really the site destroyed by the Israelites, but the tradition was transferred to the site of et-Tell because of the impressive destruction there.31 Thus, Ai joined Jericho as a major embarrassment for proponents of the conquest model, and consequently Noth's etiological explanation for the Joshua narratives has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity.32 Even the normally conservative Yigael Yadin, who in the main defended the conquest theory, had to acquiesce the point on Ai; "we must interpret the Biblical account as etiological."33
Interestingly, the identification of et-Tell with Ai is based on the geographical description in Joshua 7-8, so, while many biblical scholars are prepared to trust Joshua's information about the location of the site, they reject what it reports to have occurred there. Methodologically, selective use of the biblical materials in this manner should be viewed with suspicion. Ziony Zevit is a good example of a scholar -who is willing to accept the location of Ai at et-Tell based on the information in Joshua but rejects the factuality of the account, even though he admits it is "an untendentious, realistic story that does not tax credulity."34 It should be noted that the equation of et-Tell with Ai of the Joshua narratives has been questioned.35
The Demise of the Wellhausenian, or Traditional-Source- Critical Certainties
With his Die Composition Des Hexateuch (1877),Julius Wellhausen left an enduring mark on critical Old Testament scholarship.36 If ever there was an assured conclusion of biblical scholarship, it was that the Hexateuch was a composite document that could be tied to four primary, separate, datable documents: the Jahwist (J) from the ninth century, the Elohist (E) from the eighth century, the Deuteronomist (D) from the seventh century (the Josianic reforms), and the Priestly sovirce (P) from the fifth century. For nearly a century, Wellhausen's views (with some minor variations), also known as the Documentary Hypothesis, dominated Old Testament Studies, and, except for some "conservative" Jewish and Christian scholars, these conclusions were uncritically embraced by succeeding generations of scholars. With the emergence of Near Eastern and cognate studies, however, which investigate comparable biblical and Near Eastern literature, a number of scholars began to question the prevailing consensus,37 although they have generally been viewed with suspicion by members of the guild. But in recent years a number of serious biblical scholars have begun to distance themselves from the nineteenth-century synthesis. While some are revising the conclusions of the last century, others are rejecting them altogether. For instance, John Van Seters has argued for downdatingj to the sixth century and the elimination of E as an independent source.38 For him, D is the earliest source of true history, dating to the late seventh century.39 The traditional fifth-century dating for the P materials has also been questioned on linguistic grounds. Avi Hurwitz argues for a late pre-exilic date,40 as does Zevit, who suggests a terminus ad quern of 586 for P on socioreligious grounds.41 Building on the works of Hurwitz and Zevit, Gary Rendsburg has also argued for pushing the P materials back to the united monarchy (tenth century).42
Starting in the mid 19805, the period around the centennial of Wellhausen's influential work, a number of studies appeared that dared not only to question Wellhausen's long accepted dates for JEDP but also to challenge his methodology, assumptions, and conclusions. A critical essay by Moshe Weinfeld well illustrated the changing mood.43 Isaac M. Kikawada and Arthur Quinn's book bears the telling subtitle on its cover: "A Provocative Challenge to the Documentary Hypothesis."44 This work compares the structure of early Genesis with that of the Atrahasis myth as the basis for the view that Genesis follows and adapts the structural and thematic features of its Babylonian counterpart. They observe: "The fivepart Atrahasis structure is a crucial inheritance of the Hebrew tradition from the ancient Near Eastern civilizations. In a more general sense we have shown that at least one Hebrew author—and a most important one at that—has assumed on the part of the audience a knowledge of this convention."45 Regarding traditionalsource criticism they conclude: "One thing, if anything, we are certain of: the documentary hypothesis at present is woefully overextended."46
In 1987 R. N. Whybray offered perhaps the most comprehensive critique of the Documentary Hypothesis. He poses many tough questions that undermine the theological and stylistic reasons for identifying a certain pencope with a particular source or date.47 For him the Pentateuch is a collection of fragments assembled into its present form in the post-exilic period by a single author. Whybray's proposal represents a return to the old, long-rejected, fragmentary theory of the late eighteenth-century scholar Geddes. (Vater further developed this hypothesis in his 1805 commentary on the Pentateuch.)48 While Whybray's critique of orthodox source criticism is well reasoned and compelling, his theory concerning the composition of the Pentateuch does not advance Pentateuchal studies but takes it back two centuries.49
As the Documentary Hypothesis has lost some of its luster over the past fifteen years, the tradition-history approach has gained in popularity. Built on the foundation of Hermann Gunkel's form criticism, tradition criticism is interested in investigating the prehistory of the text, both oral and written,50 as advocated in recent years by Rolf Rendtorff.51 Indeed, tradition criticism has had a role in the demise of source criticism's dominance in Old Testament studies, but Whybray questions its validity in Pentateuchal studies.52 While investigating the tradition history of biblical texts has some merit, the degree of subjectivity in this method remains a problem, and, like Wellhausen's source-critical method, certain historical, social, and religious assumptions are made that just cannot be substantiated convincingly.
Although source criticism and tradition criticism remain pillars in Old Testament studies, their monopoly seems to have given way to new literary approaches that have diverted scholars from a microscopic study of the Hebrew Bible to a macro or panoramic view of the text. Building on the findings of an earlier generation of scholars, such as Umberto Cassuto, the "new literary approach" is interested in the broader literary characteristics of a story or passage. The fact that chiasmus operates both on the micro and macro levels has, for instance, resulted in recognizing the literary unity of the flood story. For over a century the flood story, along with the creation narratives, was the locus classicus of the Documentary Hypothesis.53
Robert Alter has perhaps been most influential in defining the new literary readings,54 and a host of biblical scholars now employ this more comprehensive approach.55 Such analyses have enabled the reader to see the tapestry of the text, shedding new light on the rhetorical and thematic dimensions of narratives that have long been overlooked while scholarly investigation of the past century has been preoccupied with identifying the literary threads or strands (i.e., sources), thus missing the design of the fabric. One of the problems raised by Alters preoccupation with the literary dimension of biblical texts is the lack of interest in the historical, social, and legal aspects of the narratives that are the concern of most biblical scholars and historians. For Alter, biblical literature is largely "prose fiction."56 However, using a literary framework that includes such features as doublets need not militate against the historicity of the events. I have argued for this, for example, in the case of celebrated and oft studied patriarchal wife-sister stories in Genesis 12, 20, and 26.57
The use of new literary approaches by biblical scholars has significantly contributed to the decline of the old source-critical consensus. The old historical moorings of the Documentary Hypothesis are in serious trouble, and the result has been a scramble to determine the dates and reliability of the sources or traditions. As Whybray explains, "With regard to written sources, the rejection of the Documentary Hypothesis simply increases the range of possibilities."58 The tendency has been to push these sources even later than Wellhausen ever would have imagined.59 The trend towards late dating (viz. lowering the composition date to the fifth century or later) and abandoning traditional dates for the sources has been resisted by some. The title of E. W. Nicholson's 1991 essay, "The Pentateuch in Recent Research: A Time for Caution" rightly expresses the concern of not a few traditional Old Testament scholars. Also, "new literary approaches" to Old Testament studies have had their detractors.60 Some, like Nicholson and John Emerton,61 continue to follow the Documentary Hypothesis and adhere to nineteenth-century conclusions.62 Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear that "the assured results" of nineteenth-century source criticism no longer have ascendancy in the study of the Hebrew Bible; rather, sociological and literary methods are enjoying widespread use.63
The Redefining of Historiography or History Writing in the Bible
Over the past twenty years a number of scholarly works have appeared on the historiography of the ancient Near East.64 It is no exaggeration to say that "historiography" has been one of the most discussed topics in Near Eastern and Old Testament studies during this period, but it has not yet become as controversial an issue in Egyptology or Assyriology as it has in biblical studies. A number of the recent publications on Near Eastern historiography grew out of a symposium held at the University of Toronto in 1974.65 These include essays by Harry A. HofFner on the Hittites,66 A. Kirk Grayson on Assyria and Babylon,67 John Van Seters on Israel (which laid the foundation for his In Search of History) , 68 and Donald B. Redford on Egypt.69
In response to a more maximalist reading of texts that characterized the 19505 to the mid 1970s,70 the pendulum has definitely swung in the minimalist direction, and skepticism is presently widespread, especially towards the Old Testament. Many historians and biblical scholars now maintain that a text's claims must be corroborated before they can be considered historical. This expectation is the opposite of the Western legal tradition of "innocent until proven guilty."71 In 1976 Maxwell Miller drew the following distinction between the approach of earlier and more recent historians:"i) he generally takes a more critical stance toward his sources. 2) he is inclined to disregard the supernatural or miraculous in his treatment of past events."72 Egyptologist Gun Bjorkman in 1964 put it this way: "It may be said that the burden of proof does not rest on the sceptical scholar but on the scholar who accepts the statements of his source as credible evidence. He has to realise that the narrative cannot be taken at its face value: it does not give the fact itself but only the reproduction of it, or it might even be, more or less, a product of his imagination."73
In fairness to Bjorkman, she was primarily concerned with extracting history from wisdom literature, particularly with the "Wisdom for Merikare," a Middle Egyptian wisdom treatise. However, since she refers to "narrative" it appears that her comments extend beyond instructional literature. Unfortunately, her assertion that the burden of proof does not rest on the critical (minimalist) historian has become the prevailing attitude in biblical scholarship for the past several decades. In shifting the burden of proof to the ancient document and demanding that the maximalist historian "prove" the historicity of a text's claim, the minimalist historian commits a methodological fallacy. Historian David Hackett Fischer labels this practice the "fallacy of presumptive proof," which "consists in advancing a proposition and shifting the burden of proof or disproof to others."74 Additionally, the minimalist approaches an ancient text as "guilty until proven innocent," •whereas the maximalist accepts what appears to be a historical statement unless there is evidence to prove the contrary.
Historical minimalism has dominated the "origins of Israel" debate over the past fifteen years. Nevertheless, the maximalists have not been silent and I will examine their critique of minimalist tendencies. But first, let us examine how historiography has been redefined.
Van Seters, in his influential In Search of History, has done a commendable job of surveying the different cultures of the Near East, including Greece, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt, Syria-Palestine, and Israel. Van Seters's analysis of ancient texts follows Johan Huizinga's definition of history: "History is the intellectual form in which a civilization renders account to itself of its past."75 With this definition as the starting point,Van Seters offers five criteria by which the reader can be certain he is dealing with "history writing":
1) History writing is a specific form of tradition in its own right. Any explanation of the genre as merely the accidental accumulation of traditional material is inadequate.
2) History writing is not primarily the accurate reporting of past events. It also considers the reason for recalling the past and the significance given to past events.
3) History writing examines the causes of present conditions and circumstances. In antiquity these causes are primarily moral—who is responsible for a certain state of affairs? (It goes without saying, of course, that modern scientific theories about causation or laws of evidence cannot be applied to the ancient writer).
4) History writing is national or corporate in character. Therefore, merely reporting the deeds of the king may be only biographical unless these are viewed as part of the national history.
5) History writing is part of the literary tradition and plays a significant role in the corporate tradition of the people.76
It is clear that by these criteria there is little, if any, historiography in the ancient Near East and Egypt. Van Seters maintains that a specific genre of "historiography" is essential (cf. point one). But this raises the obvious question: By what criteria are modern historians able to determine whether a genuine historiographic genre existed in Egypt or Babylon in the second millennium B.C.? Since Van Seters embraces the conclusions of earlier German historians, such as Ernst Troeltsch77 and Hugo Gressmann, who rejected the historical trustworthiness of a text when it reports divine intervention in human affairs (a point already noted in Millers study), there is a built-in bias against ancient writers for whom there was no church-state, religion-history separation or dichotomy between secular and sacred worlds.78
Point four appears to be a no-win situation for the modern historian •who examines the writings of his ancient counterpart. How does one know what motivated the ancient writer to record history? Was it an individual effort or was the writer commissioned? What tools are at our disposal to determine if a given work is "national or corporate in character"? A closer look at Huizinga's essay and how Van Seters has interpreted this fourth point reveals a number of problems. Baruch Halpern, in his review of In Search of History, critiqued Van Seters's use of Huizinga, noting that "strangely,Van Seters does not remark that in appropriating this definition he restricts it to comprehensive histories, excluding what Huizinga explicitly hoped to include, not least Huizinga's own work."79 K. Lawson Younger likewise identified the same problem: "It appears that Van Seters has misunderstood Huizinga's definition and invested it with a meaning quite different from the Dutch historian's."80Younger made the same point in his subsequent monograph on historiography.81 The scholar who takes Van Seters's five points to their logical conclusion and tries to write a history of any ancient, literate culture becomes bogged down in an exercise in futility.
Giovanni Garbini's monograph is one of the most radical works to appear on Hebrew historiography.82 He, like many biblical historians in the 19805, tends to read biblical texts skeptically and dates the books late, concluding:
we may say that the book of Joshua reflects a historical situation markedly later than the exile and an ideology which it is difficult to date before the third century B.C. To rely on it and on the book of Judges as a basis for a unitary framework of Hebrew history prior to the monarchy leads to accepting such a historical absurdity as a fairly large social body completely without a head. . . . The lack of a head, a king, while improbable for social groups in Palestine at the beginning of the Iron Age, is, however, conceivable for a small group with a hierocratic government like that of Jerusalem after the exile—a "Hebrew people" without a "king" in Palestine existed only before the Hasmonaeans.83 [i.e. 165 -37 B.C.]
In other words, the ideology of the books of Joshua and Judges reflects the ideology and Site im Leben of the final centuries of the Intertestamental Period \vhen these works were written. It defies logic to believe that Joshua and Judges originated in the very period when the Qumran scribes were already copying the same documents because they \vere deemed to be canonical. And it must be recalled that the Septuagint was already translated a century before the beginning of the Hasmonaean period. It seems, rather, that Garbini's observations reflect his own ideology, not an accurate portrayal of Hebrew historiographic ideology.
Writing on royal inscriptions from the Near East, Garbmi states, "Everything that we know about the culture of pre-exilic Israel confirms that there were no structural or ideological differences between the Israelites and the neighboring peoples; and all the rulers of these peoples produced inscriptions."84 Consequently, he is perplexed that no royal Israelite inscriptions have survived. However, as Alan Millard points out, "The accidents of survival and discovery are partly responsible for that. Jerusalem has been so long occupied, destroyed and rebuilt that the lack of monuments of her Hebrew kings, early or late, is no surprise."85 Concerning the absence of archival materials for the Davidic-Solomonic period, Millard adds: "Archives from the tenth century B.C. will probably never be unearthed in Palestine because the normal writing material at that time was papyrus, which only lasts when buried in unusually dry places."86 Historians must recognize the limitations of archaeology. It cannot at every point substantiate historical records, be they from the Bible or the archives of the ancient Near East. For Garbini, in order for a king's claim in a text to be considered historically reliable, it must be corroborated by an external source,87 by which he means a text from a neighboring state. For example, Garbini questions the accuracy of the reports in i Kings and 2 Chronicles about the construction of Solomon's temple because the annals of Tyre make no mention of the temple.88 He notes that "the virtually complete silence of epigraphy of Hebrew history seems all the more disconcerting when we compare it with the epigraphic evidence from neighboring peoples: Phoenicians, Aramaeans, Moabites, Philistines and now even Ammonites have left more or less numerous inscriptions, if only just one, but in them we find a record of the name and actions of rulers, of relations with neighboring peoples, of wars and works of peace."89 With the exception of the Phoenicians and Aramaeans, there is a dearth of texts among the neighbors cited. One has to wonder to which Philistine texts Garbini is referring. I am unaware that any have survived, nor is it even known what script the Philistines employed. As for the most celebrated Moabite text, the Mesha Stela, it refers directly to the Israelite kings Omri and Ahab and events described in i and 2 Kings, and, if Andre Lemaire is correct in restoring a line in the stela, the expression "House of David" is attested therein.90
During the summer of 1993, Avraham Biran discovered a fragment of a basalt stela at Tell Dan that mentions the "king of Israel" and the "House of David," thought to be the first ancient, extrabiblical attestation of King David.91 Two more fragments of the stela came to light in the summer of 1994.92 The new pieces contain what appears to be the names (partially preserved) of Jehoram, king of Israel, and Ahaziah, king of Judah, the former of whom fought against Hazael of Damascus and was injured at Ramoth-Gilead (2 Chron. 22:5).93 Hazael, or one of his generals, then, is the likely erector of the stela, commemorating his victory. With the name of the Judaean monarch being probable, bytdwd indeed appears to be an epithet, "House of David."94
Although not an "Israelite" inscription, this Aramaic stela was erected in Israel and describes events that took place in the Northern Kingdom and are reported in the Bible. Despite this important discovery, there are still very few extant documents from Israel's immediate neighbors. When those sources mention Israel, however, they describe events or figures found in the Bible.95
When we move to Mesopotamia, we find Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian texts concurring with the political history preserved in the Old Testament. While there may be differences in perspective and theology between the Assyrian annals and 1-2 Kings, there are no fundamental disagreements. A good example of this concurrence is the events of 701 B.C., where Sennacherib's annals and 2 Kings 18-20 and Isaiah 36-38 can be favorably compared.96 A Renewed Skepticism Toward the Historical Value of the Old Testament
The redefinition of which biblical texts are historiographic, the downdating of the sources, and the final redacting of the Old Testament documents has understandably resulted in a high degree of skepticism regarding Israel's origins in Canaan as well as that segment of their national history that places them in Egypt. Thomas Thompson well illustrates this climate of skepticism when he says, "a valid history of Israel's origins must be written within a historical geography of Palestine, based primarily on Palestinian archaeology and ancient Near Eastern studies . . . Israel's own origin tradition is radically irrelevant to writing such a history."97 It is precisely this type of condescension toward the biblical literature that has given rise to revisionist histories of Israel over the past two decades, chief among them being the denial of the Hebrew presence in Egypt and the subsequent departure for Canaan. By minimizing or dismissing the Bible as a source for Israel's early history, revisionist histories can be written without the constraint of any controls.
The skeptical mood of many in Western scholarship, it appears, reflects the type of questioning that has directed at the media, politicians, and authority in general since the 19605. Iain Provan has recently described this situation in similar terms: "We live in a culture that is slowly but steadfastly losing faith in the technological age and its high priests, as the confidence, even arrogance, of earlier times has given way to the disillusionment and cynicism of the nineties."98 Hence there is a tendency to revise history to reflect the author's concerns and agenda. John Dewey has rightly observed the way in which the modern historian's ideology shapes the reading of earlier sources and writing history: "all history is necessarily written from the standpoint of the present, and is, in an inescapable sense, the history not only of the present but of that which is contemporaneously judged to be important in the present."99 This cogent analysis captures what has been transpiring in the origins of Israel debate. Simply put, the widespread skepticism of the eighties and nineties reflects the ideology of the modern historian.
II. Response to the Current Climate of Skepticism
In response to the rising tide of skepticism among biblical scholars,Yale University Assyriologist and Hebrew Bible specialist William Hallo penned a brilliant essay entitled "The Limits of Skepticism."100 Hallo offers a helpful guide to analyzing an ancient text: "treat the ancient sources critically but without condescension."101 Likewise, Harvard's Jon Levenson has added his voice to the growing number of distinguished scholars who are openly questioning the current skeptical trends in scholarship. Levenson believes the time has come to suspect "the hermeneuts of suspicion."102 Provan's critique of some of the works of key minimalist historians of Israel's origins has also called attention to excessive skepticism.103 In response to the speculation that the biblical writers were writing ideological works and not history, Provan charges that these minimalist scholars too have ideologies and agendas: "The reality is, of course, that the approach to historiography that [Philip] Davies advocates with such passion is no less representative of a confessional stance or ideology, is indeed no more free of unverifiable presuppositions, than those other approaches he so vehemently attacks."104 There has been the tendency for minimalist scholars to think of themselves as strictly objective investigators, the implication being that the historical maximalist is biased, credulous and naive.105 But Provan is right: Everyone has assumptions when approaching a text or archaeological data that influence how one reads a text.106 Anyone who thinks that he or she is totally objective and free from presupposidons commits the Baconian fallacy, the idea that a historian has no prejudices and assumptions.107
Let us return now to Van Seters's use of Huizinga's definition of history. He accepts the Dutch historian's definition that history is the "intellectual form in which a civilization renders account to itself of its past." It seems, however, that the word "intellectual" takes on a decidedly "Western" orientation while ignoring the conventions of the Near Eastern historian, a point also noted by Hallo some years ago.108 It has been customary to celebrate Herodotus as "the father of history," owing to his Greek (Western) philosophic and "scientific" orientation, and because he apparently investigated information and was somewhat critical in his use of sources.109 However, it has been noted that Herodotus could also be quite credulous,110 and some recent commentators on Herodotus have doubted his reliability.111
Van Seters rightly observes that the true historian is "objective"112 [if that is really absolutely possible], but ancient writers never reach this ideal, according to him, until well into the first millennium. Halpern characterizes Van Seters's assessment of the ancient biblical writers by saying he "imagines him (the Deuteronomic historian) a rogue and a fraud, a distributor of taffy."113 On the other hand, historians like Hallo and Kitchen, who might be called maximalists, have greater faith in the ancient writer's integrity. One reason for the disparity between historical maximalists and minimalists is that the former tend to be trained in Near Eastern languages, history, and archaeology with the Hebrew Bible as a cognate discipline, whereas the latter are largely trained in Old Testament studies in the nineteenth-century European mold and treat cognate languages and sources as ancillary rather than central to their discipline.
Another of Huizinga's guiding principles, which serves to balance his definition of history cited above, is "every civilization creates its own form of history."114 Van Seters, it appears, failed to consider this important proviso in Huizinga's essay, -which allows for a variety of ways of writing history, not only one that conforms to certain Western codes or interpretations based on recently developed anthropological or sociological models. Halpern also makes this point when referring to the "variety of biblical historiographic forms and practices."115 Van Seters's definition of history writing is thus overly restrictive and not as broad as that of Huizinga, whose definition he claims to follow.
The tendency to credit the Greeks as the first "true" historians is not the product of nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians. Nineteen hundred years ago, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus protested the same attitude, prevalent in his own day:
My first thought is one of intense astonishment at the current opinion that, in the study of primeval history, the Greeks alone deserve serious attention, that the truth should be sought from them, and that neither we nor any others in the world are to be trusted. In my view the very reverse of this is the case, if, that is to say, we are not to take idle prejudices as our guide, but to extract truth from the facts themselves. For in the Greek world everything will be found to be modern, and dating so to speak, from yesterday or the day before: I refer to the foundation of their cities, the invention of the arts, and the compilation of a code of laws; but the most recent, or nearly the most recent, of all their attainments is care in historical composition. On the contrary, as is admitted even by themselves, the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, and the Phoenicians .. . possess a very ancient and permanent record of the past.116
The ability of the ancient scribes to record history must not be diminished by modern notions of historiography or by the current proclivity to give late dates to the Hebrew narratives based on the groundless assumption that the Israelites \vere unable to write history until the middle third of the first millennium, a position held by Van Seters. On the contrary, Hallo maintains "that history begins where writing begins and I see no reason to exempt Israel from this working hypothesis."117 There is no reason to deny the ability to write and record information prior to the Iron Age, as an ostracon discovered at clzbet Sartah from the twelfthcentury demonstrates.118
In view of Huizinga's position that "every civilization creates its own form of history," the modern historian must exercise caution in employing modern, Western investigative methods on ancient Near Eastern documents. If the historian thinks there is a problem with the text's trustworthiness, the burden of proof lies with the modern investigator, not the ancient writer who cannot explain himself to the modern investigator. Writing on this point nearly thirty years ago, Kitchen stated, "It is normal practice to assume the general reliability of statements in our sources, unless there is good, explicit evidence to the contrary. Unreliability, secondary origins, dishonesty of a writer, or tendentious traits — all these must be clearly proved by adduction of tangible evidence, and not merely inferred to support a theory."119
I will follow this principle and use the "scripture in context," or "contextual approach" of Hallo as the narratives of Israel in Egypt and Exodus are investigated.120 Three decades ago, Roland de Vaux similarly described this methodology regarding the early Hebrew history of Israel:
Israel is one of the peoples of the ancient Near East whose place and role [the historian] puts in general history. He reconstructs its political and economic history, studies its social, political, and religious institutions and its culture, as he does or would do for any other people. The Bible is for him a document of history which he criticizes, and controls, and supplements by the information which he can obtain outside of the Bible. The result is a history of Israel.121
This method of investigating biblical texts, then, insists we examine the linguistic, historical, and social setting of the Hebrew writings in the light of cognate literature of Israel's neighbors.
Unfortunately, over the past decades, comparative work with Old Testament literature has not always been undertaken carefully and critically.Van Seters s and Thompson's works on the Patriarchal narratives successfully exposed some of the shortcomings of the social or legal parallels that Albright, Speiser, and others drew between second-millennium cuneiform sources and Genesis.122 Concerning this aspect of their critique, Kitchen offers praise to these scholars: "Thus, their works do perform the useful function of ruthlessly exposing sloppy argumentation of others, false or inadequate parallels, refuting the wilder excrescences of speculation, and emphasising the need to look at all periods (not only the second millennium) in reviewing possible background to the patriarchal narratives."123 On the other hand, Kitchen chides them for other methodological inconsistencies in their approach: "However, these same advocates themselves then fail to match up to this selfsame standard of reviewing the patriarchal data against all periods. Instead, they neglect the 3rd millennium BC. entirely, along with whole sections of relevant evidence from the early second millennium, and give exaggerated attention to the ist-millennium materials."124 By virtue of using parallels (albeit exclusively late ones) to date biblical texts, Thompson and Van Seters show that they find the comparative method a valid one in biblical research. But what they have done is to swing to the opposite extreme of Albright and Speiser.
The failures of earlier practitioners of the comparative method do not invalidate the approach. "Rather," as Hallo explains, "it invites a reconsideration of the terms of the comparison."125 As a matter of academic integrity, the use of comparative material in the study of parallels must employ sources from all periods, as Kitchen avers, and texts where there is a spatial association with the Hebrew scribes.126 Since the dating of the narratives of the first six books of the Bible remains an open question, one should not exclude Near Eastern documents because they are early or late when trying to determine the setting and origin of the Hebrew narratives.
I concur •with Hallo, Levenson, and Provan that there has been too much condescension and suspicion of biblical documents by historians and biblical scholars during the past couple of decades. In this study, I shall seek to go where the biblical, historical, and archaeological evidence leads rather than being guided by anthropological or sociological models or subjective theories about the dating and origin of the biblical documents. Furthermore, I shall strive to treat both biblical and Near Eastern texts as witnesses to history and avoid the double standard of treating the Bible more critically than cognate literature from Israel's neighbors.
CHAPTER 3: SEMITES IN EGYPT
The First and Second Intermediate Periods A wandering Aramean was my father, he went down into Egypt and sojourned there.
Deut. 26:5
These words make up the opening line of an ancient Israelite creed.1 If Israel had its origins within Canaan as an indigenous people who either evolved from the Habiru or were formerly urban dwellers of the great Middle Bronze cities of the Levant that for several centuries were nomadic before resedentarizing at the beginning of the Iron Age to become "Israel," then this creed and an overwhelming body of biblical evidence is patently wrong. Here is a simple outline of the biblical events from Genesis 37 to Exodus 14: owing to a famine in Palestine, the extended family of Jacob/Israel emigrated to Egypt and settled peacefully there for some time until their fortunes changed. Under a new king or dynasty, they were pressed into hard labor for a period of some decades or longer before being released by a recalcitrant pharaoh with the help of a Hebrew named Moses to return to Canaan from whence they had come. Is such a scenario implausible? Should the overwhelming weight of biblical evidence for this sojourn-exodus tradition be denied in the light of new, revisionist histories of the origins of Israel? I maintain that there is nothing in the main points of this story that defies credulity to justify the recent reductionist tendencies among biblical scholars. While the biblical materials have been spurned because they are believed to be ideologically and theologically shaped and so late in composition as to be useless for historical investigation, the ultimate reasons for the rejection are also ideological and reflect the predisposition to skepticism of the late twentieth century.
For many, the underlying reason for rejecting the history of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt and the exodus tradition is the absence of corroborating historical or archaeological evidence in Egypt. Recently, Niels Peter Lemche has noted that "the silence in the Egyptian sources as to the presence of Israel in the country" is "an obstacle to the notion of Israel's 400 year sojourn."3 Thus, scholars are faced with a dilemma not unlike that encountered in Canaan with the absence of evidence for an invasion by Israel and have arrived at a similar conclusion: the lack of evidence means the events described in Genesis and Exodus are retrojections of a later period and do not reflect historical reality. Indeed, no one has been able to identify any unimpeachable evidence in Egypt, either historical or archaeological, to support the biblical accounts of the sojourn and exodus events. To draw any conclusions from the current state of knowledge (or ignorance), would be to succumb to the fallacy of negative proof.4 The biblical evidence, apart from the Pentateuch, consistently supports the testimony of the book of Exodus, and yet proof from Egypt is lacking. How do we deal with this dilemma? Here I will examine the main points of the story line described in Genesis and Exodus to see if they are plausible within the limits of our present knowledge of ancient Egypt. The book of Genesis contains several reports of the Hebrew patriarchs going to or anticipating a trip to Egypt to avoid drought and famine in Canaan. The first report, ascribed to Abraham, is in Genesis 12:10, which reads, "Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there for the famine was severe in the land." On another occasion, Isaac, son of Abraham, considered going to Egypt because of famine conditions in Canaan: "Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham" (Gen. 26:1).5 Like his father before him, Isaac anticipated going to Egypt, but in a theophany he is told "Do not go down to Egypt" (Gen. 26:2). Finally, Genesis 46:26-29 reports that the family of Israel moved to Egypt in order to escape the grips of a prolonged drought in Canaan (Gen. 41:50-46:7) and were settled in the northeast Delta (Gen. 47:11). The historian naturally will ask if there is evidence for such migrations. Do these references reflect a documented pattern of migration from Canaan to Egypt during times of drought? Does the biblical story fit into any period of Egyptian history when such migrations were taking place? Should there be no evidence for such movements of people from the Levant into the Nile Valley during the second millennium B.C., one might be inclined tod to. question the historical worth of the Genesis narratives. It has been well known for decades, however, that there were Semites in the Delta starting after the collapse of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2190) and reaching a zenith during the Hyksos or Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1700-1550 B.C.) and on into the New Kin. dom (1550-1069 B.C.).
I. Semites in Egypt: Epigraphic Evidence
Throughout the millennia, Egypt's lush Delta was like a magnet to the pastoral nomads of the Sinai and Canaan. "On the borders of the Delta, from time immemorial," writes Jean Bottero, "small groups of these bedawin came to pasture their flocks, tempted by the proximity of better grazing-grounds and possible loot."6 As early as Dynasty i the pharaoh had to defend Egypt's borders and commercial interests in Sinai from troublesome Bedouin. An ivory label of King Den reads, "the first occasion of smiting Easterners."7 From throughout the Old Kingdom reliefs have survived depicting pharaoh smiting Egypt's enemies, and not a few of these have come from the Sinai.8 The biography of Weni, a Sixth Dynasty official, reports on his five raids against "sand-dwellers" (hryw s c ), probably from the Sinai-Negev region, and a sortie against "the Gazelle's Nose,"9 perhaps the Mount Carmel ridge in northern Canaan.10 The evidence furnished by Weni's biography suggests these were preemptive actions against the pastoral-nomadic population east of Egypt. Defensive strategies were also needed to prevent infiltration by these peoples. Evidence for such activities, Hermann Kees observed, is found in the Fifth Dynasty title "Overseer of the barriers, the deserts and the royal fortresses in the Nome of Heliopolis."11 With Memphis no longer the seat of a united Egypt as it had been during the glory days of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2700-2190 B.C.), the First Intermediate Period saw the rise of the power of local governors or nomarchs, resulting in two rival claimants to the kingship during Dynasties 9 and 10 and into 11 (ca. 2160-2050 B.C.), Thebes in the south and Hnes (Herakleopolis) near the base of the Delta.12 Hostilities between the north and the south only exacerbated the problem, with Herakleopolis exercising only minimal control over the Delta, thus allowing for a significant incursion of people from western Asia. William C. Hayes described the Delta of this period as having a "mixed Egyptian and Asiatic population."13 Who were these Asiatics? Where did they come from? And why did they settle in Egypt? Fortunately, answers to these questions are furnished by both epigraphic and anepigraphic sources. Let us consider the written material first.
The Instruction for Merikare
The literature of the First Intermediate Period and the following Middle Kingdom describe a foreign presence in the north. In "Merikare," a Tenth Dynasty Herakleopolitan king provides his son with detailed information about the Delta.14 The speaker, apparently King Khety Nebkaure, in lines 81 to 105 advises his son to take note of his policies toward foreigners in the Delta and follow his lead:15
81. Then I arose as lord of (my) city and was upset because of (the condition of) the Northland (or Delta), from Hii't Snw to Smbjkj,
82. its southern border goes to the 2 Fish Canal.16 I pacified the entirety of the West, even as far as the Delta coast.17
83. They pay revenue from it, it gives mm> wood.18 One sees juniper, they give it to us.
84. The east (Delta) abounds with foreigners, their revenue [conies in] The central Delta19 is turned back, and every one within it. The administrative districts say, 85. "you (the king) are greater then I." See, [the land] which they destroyed has been transformed into nomes. Every great town [/////]. What was ruled by one 86. is now in the charge often men. Official(s) should be appointed who will provide you with revenue lists for taxation.20 Freeman are provided with fields. Like a single gang (they) work for you. 87. Rebellion does not exist there (in the Delta). Because the inundation will not fail for you so that it does not flood, the revenue of the Delta will be under your control. 88. Look, the mooring post is pounded [in the region)21 which I have made in the east, from the border of Hbnw 22 to the Way of Horus23 89. which is settled with citizens, filled with Egyptians, 90. the finest of the entire land, in order to repulse barbarians24 among them. 91. Now speaking about these foreigners, as for the miserable Asiatic, wretched is the place where he is; 92. Lacking in water, hidden because of trees. Many and difficult are the paths therein because of mountains. He has not settled in one place. 93. Food causes his feet to roam about. He fights since the time of Horus. He does not conquer nor is he conquered. 94. He does not declare war, (but) is like a thief darting about in a group. 95. But as I live and will be what I am, these foreigners were indeed a sealed wall, its gates were opened when I besieged it.25 96. I caused the Delta to attack it. I plundered their inhabitants, having captured their cattle. 97. I slaughtered [the people] among them so that the Asiatics abhorred Egypt. So don't be anxious about him, 98. for the Asiatic is a crocodile on his bank. He robs on an isolated road, he does not steal in the vicinity of a populated city. 99. Dig a canal to its [///]26 Flood its half to the Bitter Lakes. Look, it is a navel cord for the foreigners. 100. Its walls are warlike, its army numerous. The farmers in it know how to take up arms, 101. besides the freemen within. The region of ddw swt totals ten thousand citizens who are free and not taxed. 102. Officials have been in it since the time the Capital was established. The borders are established, the garrisons strong. 103. Many northerners flood it near the Delta who pay taxes in barley alongside the freeman. 104. [corrupt line ] Look, it is the door [//// ] the delta, 105. they having made a canal to Herakleopolis.
Ward's thematic arrangement of this section enables us to understand the king's approach to the Delta, especially his dealings with the Asiatic presence: lines 81 -85, "Summary of conditions in the north"; 85-88, "Instructions for reorganizing the Middle (?) Delta"; 88-90, "(the kings) outpost in the Eastern Delta"; 91-98, "Digression: the nature of and (the king's) initial skirmishes with them"; and 99- 105, "Instructions for fortifying the Eastern Delta."27 Throughout this passage and others discussed below, the term "Bowman" (pdtyw, 11. 84, 91, 95) means "foreigner,"28 and is a synonym for C3m(u>) (11. 91, 9 98) here as the parallelism suggests. The term cjm(w) has traditionally been translated "Asiatic" or "Semite,"29 and refers to "speakers of a West Semitic tongue."30 These Asiatics, it appears, were driven to Egypt by their need for food (1.93). Khety does not claim to have expelled the Asiatics from Egypt; rather, he launched an attack on them and captured cattle (11. 96-97). The result of this action against the the Delta aliens seems to have resulted in scattering them, making them less of a threat (11. 97-98). In order to prevent further upheaval in the north and to discourage further infiltration of the Nile valley by peoples from western Asia, the king took further measures. Military defenses were established, garrisons of troops deployed, and Egyptian farmers in the northeast Delta were armed (11. 99- 100). A part of the defensive network described (or envisioned) by Khety was a canal that line 99 appears to describe. Ward renders this as, "Dig a canal until it is unfhindered]. Flood its half as far as Lake Timsah."31 John Wilson understood it similarly; "Dig a dyke . . . flood it as far as the Bitter Lakes."32 R. O. Faulkner's translation of this line is virtually the same: "Dig a moat against [...] and flood the half of it at the Bitter Lakes."33 In a note Faulkner explains the defensive nature of this feature, saying, "it is the key to the frontier against the desert dwellers."34 Kees has also recognized the defensive nature of this feature, translating the critical line as follows: "A wall is set at his side, its (other) side is covered with water up to the Bitter Lakes. Its walls are strong against attack."35 In fact, he also thought that this defense structure was the "Walls of the Ruler" from the tale of Sinuhe (discussed below).36 Other translators, however, have come to different conclusions. Miriam Lichtheim renders this critical line as "Medenyt has been restored to its Nome, Its one side is irrigated as far as Kem-Wer."37 Wolfgang Helck has interpreted this passage similarly,38 as has Joachim Quack in his recent investigation, although he considers Ward's emendation (i.e., dropping the ® determinative) a possibility.39 The reason for the different translations lies in the textual reading preferred by the translator: sd mdnit, or sd tn(y) dnit. The reading mdnit would be Aphroditopolis or Atfih, in the Twenty-second Nome just south of Memphis.40 Of the three manuscript witnesses of "Merikare" in Helck's critical edition, only Papyrus Petersburg has the city determinative written after m dnit, suggesting that the New Kingdom scribe who made this copy thought the city of Atfih was meant. This line, however, is completely lost in Papyrus Moscow, while only sd m is preserved in Papyrus Carlsberg. Consequently, caution must be exercised reading this line, and firm conclusions must be avoided. Ward considers the m following sd to be the particle m(y) that is occasionally written after imperatives.41 Dnit would mean canal, dike, or ditch.42 Since Khety continues by indicating that this structure was meant for defensive purposes (cf. 11. 100-101) and included -walls (inbw), Helck's and Lichtheim's interpretation does not seem to fit the context as well. Also, in support of Ward, the presence of troublesome foreigners or desert dwellers (hjstyw, Pap. Petersburg) or bowman (pdtyw, Pap. Carlsberg)43 at Atfih, south of Memphis, seems unlikely in view of Khety's apparently successful measures taken against them further north in the Delta. It is hard to believe that Khety would have been able to deal with the Asiatics in the Delta up to the eastern frontier and not control them in his own neighborhood. In lines 104-105, dnit occurs again, this time in association with Khety's capital, Hnes (Herakleopolis), and there is no preceding m nor is the city sign used as a determinative. Interestingly, here Lichtheim renders it "dyke," suggesting that it has a metaphorical nuance for "protection."44 We suggest that the idea of a defensive feature near Hnes called a dnit that Lichtheim understood in lines 104-105 is also in view in lines 100- 101 in the Bitter Lakes-Wadi Tumilat area. One might be inclined to favor Ward, Wilson, Faulkner, and Kees's interpretation of this line and locate the activity recommended by Khety in the Bitter Lakes region (km \vf). However, Lichtheim observes that fern wr could also be located in the Fayum, following J.Yoyotte's investigation of the geography of that area.45 It should be noted, however, thatYoyotte's sources for this identification are largely from the Greco-Roman period and may be of little value for identifying placenames of the First Intermediate Period. At this point, one must be careful not to draw firm conclusions about the line sd m dnit because of the lacunae in key points in the various manuscripts. However, the possibility that a canal was excavated in this area as a part of a defensive system cannot be ruled out and in fact seems to be supported by line 100, which states "Its (the dnit)46 walls are warlike, its army numerous." An effective defense network in the area between the Bitter Lakes and the Mediterranean in the eastern Delta Sinai region would be essential to deny further access to people infiltrating from the east. For this reason Ward interpreted lines 99- 101 as follows:
Merikare is to build a canal, presumably from the fortress at Ways-of-Horus southward to Lake Timsah (lines 99ff.). This line of defense, once completed, would be the logical one since it would guard the whole area from the southeastern shore of Lake Manzeleh to Lake Timsah. Its northern terminus would be at the land-route which entered Egypt through Ways-of-Horus and its southern terminus at the entrance to the Wadi Tumilat at Ismailiyah. Precisely this region was the main point of entry for nomads wishing to move out of the desert into the Delta. A fortified canal, half-filled with water, would be an ideal defensive position, easily manned by troops and mobile units of rafts or small boats patrolling the length of the canal.47
Soon after Ward's book was published in 1971, a canal was discovered by members of the Israel Geological Survey in the north Sinai.48 Aerial photographs and examination of this feature on the ground led to the discovery of a seventy-meter-wide waterway that might be the feature Khety had in mind, even if he or Merikare did not begin or complete the project. (For a discussion of archaeological and historical evidence for the canal, see chap. 7) Whatever the Herakleopolitan kings achieved in terms of militarizing the northeast Delta and Sinai, it is clear that their policy was continued by their Twelfth Dynasty successors, as the following sections illustrate. (For archaeological evidence of Herakleopolitan activity in this area, see § II below.)
The Prophecy of Neferti
The "Prophecy of Neferti" most likely originated in the Twelfth Dynasty court of Amenemhet I49 or Senusert I,50 otherwise the propagandistic value attached to the work would have been meaningless.51 Set in the Fourth Dynasty court of Sneferu (1. i), this prophecy anticipates the coming of Ameny (short for Amenemhet), who would bring order out of chaos (1. 58ff.) and reestablish myt, polit cal and cosmic order. Although half a century had passed since Egypt had been reunited under Montuhotep II Nebhepetre, ending Egypt's first dark age and ushering in the Middle Kingdom, conditions of the First Intermediate Period are described.52 Recently, Donald Redford has observed that it "preserves a vivid picture of the state of affairs in Egypt and adjacent parts of Asia during the last decades of the third millennium B.C."53 Before Neferti, a lector priest and "native of On" (Heliopolis), utters his prophecy, we hear his thoughts:54
He (Neferti) was concerned for what would happen in the land. He thinks about the condition of the east. Asiatics (c ynw) travel with their swords,55 terrorizing those who are harvesting, seizing the oxen from the plow. A strange bird56 will reproduce in the marsh of the Delta, having made its nest by the people, the people have caused it (the bird) to approach because of want. All happiness has gone away, the land is cast down in trouble because of those feeders,57 Asiatics (sttyw) who are throughout the land. Enemies have arisen in the east, Asiatics have come down to Egypt. A fortress is deprived of another beside it, the guards do not pay attention to it.58
The scenario in "Neferti" is like that of "Merikare." The eastern Delta has become home to unruly Asiatics who came to Egypt for food and in the process terrorized the Egyptian population. The metaphor, likening the Asiatics to a "strange bird" that reproduces in the Delta and builds its nest, suggests that the foreign population was growing and intended to stay permanently. The closing line translated here suggests that Egypt's defenses along its eastern border were unable to stop the infiltration.59 While it is recognized that "Neferti" has a propagandist bent, the references to the presence of Asiatics are consistent with the picture portrayed in "Merikare."60 Hence, they should be taken as a realistic allusion to conditions in Egypt during the First Intermediate Period and into the Middle Kingdom. According to Neferti's prophecy concerning the messianic Ameny, he is to deal with the problem of the Asiatic infiltration by building up Egypt's border defenses:
One will build the "Walls of the Ruler," life prosperity and health, to prevent Asiatics (c )mw) from going down into Egypt. They beg for water in the customary manner in order to let their flocks drink.61
The "Walls of the Ruler" (inbw hkf) is believed to have been a fortification or network efforts at the end of the Wadi Tumilat. (More will be said about this in the following section.) This section indicates that water for flocks has been and still is the primary reason that Levantine pastoral nomads come into the Nile valley. Drought, it must be recalled, is the reason the biblical Patriarchs gave for coming to Egypt.
Miscellaneous Middle Kingdom References
The Admonitions of Ipuwer continues in the complaint genre like that of "Neferti," bemoaning the conditions in Egypt.62 Although its dating is debated, the work seems to reflect the kind of disruption of political and social life that characterized parts of the First Intermediate Period.63 Ipuwer, while not devoting the same space to the problem of foreigners in the Delta as "Merikare," briefly describes the nature of the problem. Delta residents maintain defensive postures, carrying shields (1,4); the same is said of farmers plowing their fields (2, i). "The nomes are destroyed" complains Ipuwer," Foreign bowmen (pdtyw) have come to Egypt" (3,1). In the lacunae-filled final section of the work, several references are made to "Bowmen" and "Asiatics" (C 3mw). Thus, while this work does not describe the foreign presence in the Delta in great detail, their contribution to the upheaval is unmistakable. With the establishment of the Twelfth Dynasty, significant efforts were made to secure Egypt's borders and guard her frontiers. The well-known fortresses of Nubia were built to defend Egypt's southern flank and to serve as a springboard for economic ventures in that area.64 Many of these forts were investigated during the Nubian campaign in connection -with the Aswan Dam salvage project in the 19605. Given the problems of west Asian migrants entering Egypt from the northeast during the First Intermediate Period, the border between Egypt and Sinai likely became a similar militarized zone. Certainly, that is what the "Instruction for Merikare" anticipates, though, we know very little about this area during the Middle Kingdom. Neferti's reference to the coming Amenemhet I and building the " 'Walls of the Rulers' to prevent Asiatics (c ymw) from going down into Egypt" finds a parallel in the Tale of Sinuhe. Sinuhe fled Egypt upon learning of the assassination of Amenemhet I. He reports:
I reached the "Walls of the Ruler" which were made to repulse the Asiatics (sttyw), to trample the Bedouin (nmiw s f ). It was in fear that I took to crouching in a bush lest the sentry on the wall on duty see (me).6 " 1
The precise location of this feature and its nature remains problematic. Since km wr ("the Great Black") or the Lake Timsah-Bitter Lakes region is mentioned in the following lines, a location on the Egyptian border with Sinai seems assured.66 The fact that both Neferti and Sinuhe mention the "Walls of the Ruler" (inbw /ifej) in connection with keeping Asiatics at bay, and since Neferti associates it with Amenemhet (and in Sinhue it is functioning at that monarch's death), strongly suggests that early in the Twelfth Dynasty, measures were taken to secure Egypt's frontier with western Asia. Some additional textual evidence further supports this suggestion. A stela, found in two parts in 1913 and 1914 in Kerma (Sudan), dating to the 33d regnal year of Amenemhet III (ca. 1810 B.C.), appears to allude to this defense network.67 The stela mentions a shipment of 35,300 bricks north to "Snbt -which is in the Walls-of-Amenemhet, the Justified"—snbt ntt m inbw imn-m-hjt mjc hrw.6t> Hans Goedicke has observed that since the royal name "Amenemhet" has the epithet "mjc hm" appended to it, indicating that this king was dead, it must refer to either Amenemhet I or II.69 He opts for the former, equating "the Walls of Amenemhet" (inbw imn-m-hjt) of the Kerma stela with "the Walls of the Ruler" (inbw hkj) of Sinuhe and Neferti.70 Consequently Amenemhet I is credited with either building or refurbishing the "Walls of the Ruler," a defense network in the Bitter Lakes region running north to the coast.71 Goedicke further suggests that the project alluded to in the stela was to reinforce the area in view of a real threat from Canaan.72 Currently, there is no archaeological evidence for such a fort or network of forts dating to the Twelfth Dynasty in this area. But thanks to a concerted international effort, teams of archaeologists are now surveying and excavating north Sinai. To date, the most significant fort discovered is Tell Hebua (fig. 22), situated northeast of modern El-Qantara. Mohamed Abd el-Maksoud, the discoverer and excavator of this site, has provisionally identified Hebua -with Tjaru, the wellknown frontier town of the New Kingdom.73 Portions of a massive fort with New Kingdom pottery have been uncovered, and an inscription of the Second Intermediate Period king Nehsy has been found, indicating that the this site goes back at least to the seventeenth century B.C.74 As excavations continue, Middle Kingdom levels could come to light.73 Other forts in the area are also being excavated (e.g., Tell Qedua = T 21 and Tell el-Herr), but they have not yet exposed even New Kingdom levels.76 In the coming decade our knowledge of this important area should increase considerably, providing information about the end of the third and early second millenniums in this strategic region. What became of the Semitic people who entered Egypt during the First Intermediate Period? The fate of these peoples during this period is not altogether clear. Certainly there is no evidence of any organized effort to rid Egypt of these people, like that at the end of the Hyksos period. Since many were pastoral nomads, some may have returned to the Levant, though it appears that a significant portion stayed on and assimilated into Egyptian culture. There is ample documentation during the Middle Kingdom of a significant Semitic-speaking population in Egypt. An oft-cited document that provides information on Semites in Egypt during the late Middle Kingdom is Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 (fig. 3).77 This document, probably of Theban origin and dating to the late Twelfth or early Thirteenth Dynasty, contains a ledger with the names of the servants of an Egyptian estate. Over forty are labeled cjm or cjmt (feminine) and bear names of Northwest Semitic type indicating their SyroPalestinian ethnicity.78 Since over forty Semites were attached to this single estate in the Thebaid, the number across Egypt, especially in the Delta, was likely considerable. To account for this presence, Hayes suggests that there was a large number of Syro-Palestinians throughout Egypt in the service of Egyptian nobility.79 In the absence of any historical evidence for major military campaigns into the Levant by the Twelfth Dynasty monarchs, which would account for prisoners of war, Hayes suggests that there was "a brisk trade in Asiatic slaves carried on by the Asiatics themselves, with Egypt" not unlike that reported in Genesis 37:28, 36.80 Since virtually nothing is known of such a slave trade from Egyptian sources, Hayes's explanation alone can hardly account for the significant number of Semites in Egypt during the first half of the second millennium. Recently, a historical inscription of Amenemhet II (1901 - 1866 B.C.) has come to light which reports. on campaigns into the Levant that resulted in the capture of 1,554 prisoners of war.81 This demonstrates that some of the Asiatics in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom were transplanted to Egypt as a result of war. This same text also reports that Asiatic rulers and chieftains from Canaan sent individuals as tribute to the Egyptian court.82 The same text also reinforces what has been known earlier: that Asiatics entered Egypt on commercial ventures.83 There was commercial contact between Egypt and Canaan as far back as the close of the predynastic and Archaic period (Dynasties I and 2).84 During the Old Kingdom (ca. 2700-2190 B.C.) commercial contacts between Egypt and the Levant flourished, with Egyptians desiring timber from Lebanon.85 The famous Beni Hasan scene and accompanying inscriptions report of 37 c )mw coming to Egypt with Abi-Sha has been known for over a century.86 Since Newberry's original publication, it has been commonly thought that these C3tnw were engaged in trade, probably transporting eye paint or kohl (e.g., msdwt) to Egypt, though Goedicke has argued that this group was brought to the area of Beni Hasan to prospect for galena.87 He concludes, "This should be seen as a commercial enterprise for which foreigners were imported to Egypt."88 On the other hand, Detlef Franke has recently argued along more traditional lines that the eye paint is a gift, although he places these Asiatics in Egypt's eastern desert, rather than Sinai or the Levant, because of the presence of galena there.89 Barry Kemp, however, reports that according to Eleventh Dynasty texts galena was extracted in the Sinai.90 Despite differences in the interpretation of this scene, there is agreement that this group of Semites was in Egypt for commercial reasons. While "slave trade," as Hayes described it, might account for the presence of some Semites in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, the evidence now shows that foreigners from western Asia entered Egypt as POWs, as tribute or diplomatic gifts, and as participants in commercial venturers. Furthermore, it is quite logical to believe that a portion of the Semitic peoples in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom and beyond were descendants of immigrants from the First Intermediate Period who had settled in the Delta.91 Other papyri—such as Papyrus London UC XL.i and the Papyri Berol 10002, 10004, 10021, 10034, 10047, 10050, 10055, 10066, loin, 10228, and 10323—point to a significant number of Asiatics (c jm[w]). While these remain largely unpublished, Ulrich Luft has begun a thorough investigation of these sources.92 Some of the professions associated with these Asiatics are singers, dancers, temple workers and doorkeepers, couriers, corvee laborers, and mining-expedition workers.93 While most of them bore Semitic names, others had good Egyptian names like Senusert, but were prefixed by cjm, indicating their foreign origin despite the Egyptian name.94
II. Archaeological Evidence for Semites in Egypt
The literature of the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom place the infiltrating c ymv primarily in the northeast Delta, and the emerging archaeological remains support the written record. After decades of neglect, the Delta is beginning to receive the scientific investigation it deserves. A number of factors have contributed to the neglect, not the least of which is that many sites have been badly denuded by farming activity. The sites of Tell El-Dabc a/Avaris, and Qantir/Pi-Ramesses, for example, today are fields with surrounding villages (figs. 2, 13). Consequently, much has been lost, discouraging early generations of archaeologists from exploring such areas. In addition, since 1948, sites close to and in Sinai have been off-limits for military reasons, and many Delta sites did not have visible architectural remains, as sites in Middle and Upper Egypt did, prompting many Egyptologists to turn to greener pastures. The result of the neglect is that there is a dearth of information about Lower Egyptian cities and villages from the Pharaonic period. This situation is well reflected in Baines and Malek's Atlas of Ancient Egypt (1980), which devotes ninety-five pages to sites from Middle and Upper Egypt, but just ten pages on the Delta. Redford describes further problems for Delta archaeology: "Many Delta sites had been picked over before archaeology became the scientific endeavor it is today, while others have . . . permanently concealed their Middle Kingdom strata below a high water table."95 As further industrialization, urbanization, and changing ecological forces threaten the archaeological record, the past two decades have witnessed a surge in interest and work on these endangered sites. Because of the recent exploration of this important region, information about the Semitic peoples who left their mark on northern Egypt is beginning to emerge from the fog.
Tell el-Dabca
Beginning in 1966, Manfred Bietak of University ofVienna has led the excavations at Tell el-Dabc a, arguably the most important Delta site ever excavated (figs. 2, 13). That it was Avaris, the capital established by the Hyksos rulers of Dynasties 15 through 17 is widely accepted today by Egyptologists.96 The earliest remains uncovered go back to the First Intermediate Period. A Twelfth Dynasty stela mentions a "Temple (or estate) of Khety," which led Bietak in 1979 to surmise that the earliest settlement at Tell el-Dabc a-Khatac na "probably began as an outpost constructed by Herakleopolitan kings of the First Intermediate Period in order to check the Asiatic infiltration of that time."97 A few years later, archaeological evidence for this period came to light. As might be expected of a military outpost, "it was protected by a strong wall" and "the settlement had an orthogonal plan," says Bietak.98 While our knowledge of the earliest history of what later became Avaris is still quite limited, it furnishes us with what is likely the first known settlement built in the northeast Delta in response to the Asiatic threat. Also, it confirms that in the "Instruction for Merikare," Khety is describing a real strategy utilized by the Egyptians to defend against unwanted emigration from the Levant. It appears, however, that this particular site, probably Hwt-rj wjty-hty ("the estate of Rowaty of (King) Khety") was abandoned in the Twelfth Dynasty, while other areas of Tell el Dabc a enjoyed a long period of buildup by immigrants from the Levant.99 A number of inscribed blocks have been uncovered from the early Twelfth Dynasty, bearing the names of Amenemhet I and Senusert I.100 Eric Uphill considers Amenemhet I to have been a key figure in the history of the site because of the strategic location of Avaris and the need to secure his northeastern border, much as he had initiated the building of defensive structures in Nubia.101 Tell el-Dabc a has well-stratified remains from the end of the Twlefth Dynasty (after Amenemhet III), through the Hyksos period (ca. 1648- 1540 B.C.), after which it was thought that Avaris was abandoned before some rebuilding in the Seth temple precinct during the reign of Horemheb (1323-1295 B.C.).102 These levels correspond to the Middle Bronze IIA-C and Late Bronze I periods in Canaan. The domestic and religious architecture, burial traditions, ceramics, and bronzes all show strong connections to the Levant, although there was an increased Egyptianization of the pottery as time went on. Concerning the earliest Asiatic settlement, stratum H and d/2 of the Middle Bronze IIA period, Bietak concludes, "Donkey sacrifices in connection with tombs, and bronzes from the tombs reveal, however, in combination with the house-types that the inhabitants of this settlement were Canaanites, however, highly Egyptianized."103 Up until this point the residents of this site were not the ruling Hyksos -who dominated Lower Egypt during the Second Intermediate period. The arrival of the Hyksos has long been thought to have been a military invasion by a ruthless people. Josephus's citations from Manetho, the third century B.C. Egyptian priest-historian, are largely responsible for this view. Josephus quotes from book two of Manetho's History of Egypt:
Tutimaeus. In his reign, I know not why, a blast of God's displeasure broke upon us. A people of ignoble origin from the east, whose coming was unforeseen, had the audacity to invade the country, which they mastered by mam force without difficulty or even a battle. Having overpowered the chiefs, they then savagely burnt the cities, razed the temples of the gods to the ground, and treated the whole native population with the utmost cruelty, massacring some, and carrying off the wives and children of others into slavery. Finally they made one of their number, named Salitis, king. He resided at Memphis, exacted tribute from Upper and Lower Egypt, and left garrisons in the places most suited for defense.... Having discovered in the Sethroite nome a city very favorably situated on the east of the Bubastis arm of the river, called after some ancient theological tradition Auaris, he rebuilt and strongly fortified it with walls, and established a garrison there numbering two hundred and forty thousand to protect his frontier.104
This statement by Manetho, coupled with the belief that advanced weaponry such as composite bows and horse-drawn chariots were introduced to Egypt by the Hyksos, has contributed to the view of many modern historians that the Hyksos easily conquered Egypt. Consider the following affirmations by scholars from the 1930s through 1960s. In 1939, R. M. Engberg said, "Just as it is plausible to believe that much of the success of the Hyksos was due to their superior weapons and fortifications, so it may be presumed that horses and chariots played a large part in their fortunes."105 John Wilson spoke of "invading hordes" and tied their success to the "speed and striking power of the horse and chariot" that "gave them the most obvious superiority."106 H. E. Winlock and, more recently,YigaelYadin attributed the success of the Hyksos invasion of Egypt to their superior weaponry, especially the chariot.107 Despite the widespread support for a military invasion of Egypt, this view has been challenged in recent years by some scholars, including Torgny Save-Soderberg108 and John Van Seters.109 They believe that the Hyksos Dynasty emerged from the Asiatics who infiltrated Egypt at the end of the Middle Kingdom when political and royal power were waning. The Manethonian tradition was subsequently defended by Helck110 and Redford, first in 1970 and again in I992.111 Interestingly, Redford adopts a maximalist stance with Manetho whereas, as we shall see in the following chapters, he is a historical minimalist with Genesis and Exodus. Regarding the archaeological evidence at Tell el-Dabc a, Redford cogently observes that "what remains to be explained are the major sites such as Tel edDabc a, Tel el-Yehudiyeh and Maskhuta, where an urban but thoroughly Middle Bronze Canaanite population had insinuated itself. And this population surely did not take shape through sporadic infiltration but through the migration en bloc of communities already urban in nature."112
Perhaps these two opposing positions (invasion versus infiltration) on the Hyksos' origin in Egypt are not mutually exclusive. The excavations at Tell el-Dabc a show a pre-Hyksos, Asiatic population of Middle Bronze IIA, Canaanite origin beginning to settle toward the end of the Twelfth Dynasty and into the Thirteenth, around 1800-1700 B.C. (viz. strata G - E/3 and c - b/2).113 Dynasties 1 through 17 are represented by strata E/2 - D/2 and b/i -a/2.114 There appears to have been no major destruction to mark what Bietak called "the second major Canaanite incursion": the arrival of the Hyksos (stratum E/3).115 But that does not mean they were not invaders, since they may not have needed to conquer cities occupied by fellow Semitic-speaking people. Their targets •would have been Memphis (as Manetho states) and other Egyptian cities of the Middle Kingdom. Furthermore, Manetho does not claim that Avaris was founded by the Hyksos king, Salitis; rather, he "rebuilt and strongly fortified it with walls." Thus, I do not believe the Manethonian tradition is invalidated by the absence of a Hyksos-era destruction at Avaris. Instead, Manetho's claim that Salitis rebuilt and fortified Avaris is consistent with the archaeological picture at Tell el-Dabc a. The excavations at Tell el-Dabc a in recent years show that the so-called expulsion of the Hyksos by King Ahmose at the outset of the Eighteenth Dynasty did not result in the obliteration of the city, although tombs were plundered.116 While the site for the most part seems to have been abandoned, the Seth Temple continued to be used through the Eighteenth Dynasty until major renovations were initiated under Horemheb (1323 - 1295 B.C.).117 Since the Seth temple was permitted to function on some basis, it appears there must have been a sufficient number of possibly Asiatic devotees. Apparently, the entire Asiatic population of the Hyksos capital was not eliminated or forced to retreat to Canaan, even though the elite and certainly the military departed. If this scenario was true for Avaris, then other Delta sites where Semitic-speaking aliens resided may not have been entirely depopulated. Only further excavation of the suburban areas of Avaris will settle this issue. (For information about the recently discovered early Eighteenth Dynasy fortification at Tell el-Dabc a, see pages 122-23.)
The Wadi Tumilat
The Wadi Tumilat is a narrow, fertile band that extends east from the Nile Delta and runs to modern Ismailiya on Lake Timsah. It was one of the primary highways in and out of Egypt from earliest antiquity until modern times (fig. 2).118 Because of its proximity to Sinai and the availability of fresh water, it attracted Asiatics from the Negev and Sinai from earliest times. Extensive archaeologicalsurvey work was undertaken by the Wadi Tumilat Project from the late 19705 to the mid-1980s. A part of this project entailed excavations at Tell el-Maskhuta (see next section). A University of Chicago dissertation by Carol Redmount has brought together the data from this comprehensive project.119 Of the seventy-one sites identified, twenty-one yielded Middle Bronze II, Levantine materials that correspond to the Second Intermediate through Hyksos Periods.120 Most sites are regarded as campsites or villages that were seasonally occupied by transhumants, while five of the sites were actually on tells, Maskhuta being the largest.121 Redmount describes the foreign presence in the Wadi as "rural" and notes that the finest burial objects are poor when compared to the tombs of their counterparts at Tell el-Dabc a.122 The comparison of materials from these two areas suggest that during Egypt's Second Intermediate Period, Semitic-speaking peoples at opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum resided in Egypt.
Tell d-Maskhuta
Situated toward the eastern end of the Wadi Tumilat, Tell el-Maskhuta commanded an important position that guarded the entrance to this important route into Egypt from Sinai (fig. 2). Excavations at Maskhuta from the late 19705 and early 19805 uncovered Middle Bronze, Canaanite remains.123 The earliest phase is described as a "marginal settlement" by John S. Holladay, who directed the University of Toronto project; he dates the site to the Middle Bronze IIA period based on the broken cooking pots, apparently from a campsite.124 The second phase witnessed more signs of permanence, such as mud-brick tombs with donkey burials and ceramics suggestive of the late Middle Bronze IIA and into IIB.125 A scarab bearing the name of the Thirteenth Dynasty monarch was discovered. It reads, "Sobekhotep (IV), born of the king's mother Kemi" and was found in one of the tombs of this period, offering a terminus post quern around 1740 or 1730 B.C., according to Holladay.126 Recent chronological studies of the Second Intermediate Period by Kenneth Kitchen, however, have resulted in lowering the dates of Sobekhotep IV down to 1712 to 1705 or even later (1685 to 1678, according to Rolf Krauss).127 The people of this second phase have been labeled "Egyptian based'Asiatics.'"128 Given the later appearance of these transhumant pastoralists from the Levant, they cannot be associated with Asiatics who came to Egypt during the First Intermediate Period. Nevertheless, this evidence illustrates the recurrence of the same type of emigration to Egypt that occurred after the collapse of the Old Kingdom. The Maskhuta material demonstrates that in the waning decades of the Twelfth Dynasty and early into the Thirteenth, Asiatics were once again penetrating Egypt as they had after the collapse of the Old Kingdom.
Tell el-Retabeh
This important site, second only in size to Maskhuta in the Wadi Tumilat (fig. 2), •was excavated in the final years of the last century and early in the twentieth by Edouard Naville and Flinders Petrie.129 In addition to the Ramesside remains, Petrie discovered Middle Kingdom and what he believed to be Old Kingdom materials.130 The presence of Ramesside materials from Retabeh led Petrie to suggest provisionally that it was the site of Ramesses.131 Petrie also uncovered an inscribed weight bearing the name of Nb kjw /Uy.132 Mention of the Tenth Dynasty Herakleopolitan King Khety has led Redford to suggest that "Retabeh in the Wadi Tumilat was apparently fortified in the loth Dynasty."133 This intriguing hypothesis would be further evidence for the policy prescribed in "Merikare" to defend Egypt's frontier against further Asiatic infiltration in the First Intermediate Period. As for Middle Bronze Canaanite remains, the picture is not clear. Nevertheless, Redmount believes that a child burial uncovered by Petrie "looks and sounds suspiciously like an Middle Bronze Age/Second Intermediate Period burial such as those found at Tell el-Maskhuta and Tell el-Dabc a."134 In the mid-1970s smallscale excavations directed by Hans Goedicke were undertaken at Retabeh. While there appears to be evidence of Middle Bronze Age rnaterials.it remains unpublished.135 Thus, it is possible that, like Maskhuta, there is evidence of foreign presence in the Second Intermediate Period, though we shall have to await its publication. The question of Retabeh's association with the "store-cities" of Exodus i: 11 will be taken up in chapter 5 §IV.
Tell el-Yehudiyeh
The Arabic name, "mound of the Jew," tantalizingly suggests a memory of a foreign presence at this unique site located in the thirteenth Lower Egyptian nome of Heliopolis (fig. 2). It was here that the so-called "Tell el-Yehudiyeh" juglets were first found, hence the name. Petrie worked this tell in the early years of this century following upon the earliest probes of Naville and Griffiths in the i88os.136 His excavations led him to think that it was a Hyksos camp, measuring 515 x 490 yards externally and 390 x 390 internally.137 This interpretation, however, was challenged in the 19305 by Hermann Ricke who proposed that this sandy mound was actually a temple foundation.138 The sloped glacis on the outer edge of the tell, a common feature of Middle Bronze II sites from Syria through Canaan,139 led G. R. H. Wright in turn to question Ricke's conclusion, since there is no architectural evidence for a massive temple covering this mound.140 He postulates that the plastered glacis, otherwise unattested in Egypt, •was a technique employed to protect a tell against weathering and erosion. If Wright is correct, then the presence of the glacis at this Delta site further ties it to the Middle Bronze Canaanite culture. About a kilometer east of the tell is the Second Intermediate Period cemetery.141 The mud-brick vaulted tombs, Olga Tufnell has recently observed, are like those found at Tell el-Dabc a.142 The ceramic remains are of Palestinian type and Tufnell suggests a horizon of 1700 to 1600 B.C., based on her reexamination of the contents of these tombs.143 She also thought that the people buried in these tombs were "a poor community of shepherds."144 Clearly, such people would not have been responsible for building up this large site. Tell el-Yehudiyeh should be excavated again, utilizing the more precise archaeological methods of the late twentieth century, but the site is being lost due to farming and building activities in the area. Nevertheless, it is certain that an Asiatic element resided at Tell elYehudiyeh during the Second Intermediate Period, though many questions remain unanswered about the early history of this important site.
Inshas
This site •was excavated in a limited manner in the 19405 and the discoveries were commented upon only in a brief report (fig. 2).145 Remains from the Hyksos Period were found, including vaulted tombs like those discovered at Tell el-Dabc a, Maskhuta, and Tell el-Yehudiyeh.'46
Tell Farasha
Tell Farasha is located midway between Tell Basta to the southwest and Tell elDabc a to the northeast (fig. 2). Although it was excavated in the early 19705, it was not until 1983 that a brief preliminary report appeared.147 Once again, vaulted tombs of the type from Tell el-Dabc a \vere uncovered, complete with Tell elYehudiyeh juglets.148 While full publication is required before firm conclusions are drawn, the preliminary reports show yet another Delta site with Middle Bronze Canaanite remains.
Tell cl-Kebir
Late in 1993, members of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization discovered tombs at this eastern Delta site (fig. 2). The contents -were from the 2nd Intermediate Period and the high quality of the remains has led to the speculation that these were perhaps royal tombs. To date, preliminary publication of this material has not appeared, nor has the historical range for these tombs been announced. But it is safe to say that another delta site has revealed Canaanite materials prior to the New Kingdom.
III. Conclusion
This review of epigraphic and archaeological data clearly demonstrates that Egypt was frequented by the peoples of the Levant, especially as a result of climatic problems that resulted in drought (as "Menkare" reports) from the end of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2190 B.C.) through the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1786- 1550 B.C.). Even during the Empire Period, there are records of hunger and thirst driving people from Canaan and Sinai to Egypt for relief.149 Despite the problem of placing the Genesis Patriarchs in a precise historical context, and even a denial by some scholars that these figures ever existed,150 they seem to fill in a period covering the nineteenth through mid-sixteenth centuries, a range followed by scholars who accept the essential historicity of Genesis.151 This horizon coincides with the period from the end of the Middle Kingdom and into the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1786- 1550 B.C.) when Egypt was for a second time visited by emigrating Semitic-speaking peoples who occupied the eastern Delta. During the century of Hyksos domination of the Delta (ca. 1650-1540 B.C.), Egypt was apparently also accessible to the transhumant population of Canaan and the Sinai. Thus, for a period roughly from 1800 to 1540 B.C., Egypt was an attractive place for the Semitic-speaking people of western Asia to migrate, and during the final century, Lower Egypt was controlled politically by rulers of SyroPalestinian origins in Avaris. This span of time coincides with the traditional "Patriarchal Period" and therefore fits the period and circumstances described in Genesis when Abraham, Isaac (almost), and Jacob -went to Egypt in search of food, water, and green pastures.
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