Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings

by Phillips, Graham

  If these Apiru are the Hebrews, which they certainly seem to be, then their presence in Egypt at this time does not necessarily imply that the Exodus had not yet occurred. They may have been recaptured during Ramesses' fierce campaigning in the early part of his reign. In his fifth regnal year, around 1287 BC, Ramesses assembled one of the greatest war machines the country had ever seen – around 20,000 soldiers – for an all-out offensive against the hated Hittites. Following in the footsteps of Tuthmosis III, some 200 years earlier, Ramesses moved north through Canaan and up the Gaza Strip, so as to attack the Hittites in their Syrian strongholds. However, he had not banked on the Hittites' similar resolve to crush the Egyptians: they had assembled an even bigger army, a staggering 40,000 strong. Remarkably, Ramesses managed to survive the conflict with his army intact, neither side gaining the advantage. For the next fifteen years there were repeated battles between the Hittites and the Egyptians with no one getting the upper hand. Eventually, both sides agreed on a ceasefire. The consequence of all this fighting was that Ramesses was continually' storming through Canaan, often returning with Hyksos captives to be used to support the war effort. A number of Israelites could easily have been among them.

  There are, in fact, Apiru captives in Egypt a century later, working for the twentieth-dynasty pharaoh Ramesses III, both as attendants at the Atum temple at Heliopolis and elsewhere as quarry workers (see Chapter Eight). This is around 1180 BC, well after the Exodus must have occurred. We know from the Israel Stela that the Israelites had established some kind of kingdom in Canaan by the reign of Merenptah, some thirty years earlier. If these Apiru had been recaptured, then so equally could those referred to in the reign of Ramesses II. In fact, one the Apiru references actually shows that they were already in Canaan a few years before Ramesses' time. In the reign of Seti I, around 1300 BC, they are recorded as having been involved in a revolt at Beisham in Palestine (see Chapter Eight). Seti I had initiated the conflict with the Hittites which, although not on the scale as his son's campaigns, did necessitate repeated excursions along the Canaan coast. During such forays, he may well have become embroiled in skirmishes with the Israelites.

  The Exodus narrative can be somewhat misleading from an historical perspective, as it gives the impression that the Israelites experienced no immediate trouble from the Egyptians after they had settled in Canaan. Historically, although their main foes would have been the native Canaanites and the marauding Philistines, as the Bible relates, they would also have been stuck in the middle of an ongoing war between the two biggest empires of the day – Egypt and the Hittites. Although usually out of harm's way in their hilltop fortifications, they would have been no match for either side should they decide it was to their advantage to occupy their encampments.

  The references to the Apiru in Egypt during the reign of Ramesses II, therefore, cannot be taken as evidence that the Exodus had not yet occurred. On the contrary, the Seti reference appears to show that it had already taken place some years before Ramesses II's reign.

  We move, therefore, to the principle arguments for placing the Exodus in the early nineteenth dynasty. Firstly, that Ramesses II was the chief architect of the city that the Hebrews were forced to build. Secondly, that Eastern Delta was named the Land of Ramesses at this time, and Exodus 12:37 refers to it by this name as the starting point of the Exodus: 'And the children of Israel journeyed from Ramesses to Succoth . . .'

  It would therefore seem fairly straightforward that the Exodus occurred during the reign of Ramesses II. However, we must remember how the Pentateuch often use later names for locations, and not always those contemporary with the events being described. In this particular instance, there can be no doubt whatsoever that the Bible is using a later name for the area. The Old Testament actually refers to the area around Avaris as Ramesses when it speaks of a period hundreds of years before Ramesses II was born. In Genesis 47:11, Ramesses is the name given for the land where the Israelites are allowed to settle on their arrival in Egypt. 'And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Ramesses . . .'

  As we have seen, this is hundreds of years before the time of Ramesses II, during the Hyksos era (see Chapter Eight) – even the Bible tells us that this was over four centuries before the Exodus (Exodus 12:40). As Genesis calls the Eastern Delta the land of Ramesses when referring to a time well before it was actually called by that name, the same could equally be true of the Ramesses references in connection with Goshen and the city of Avaris in the Exodus account.

  Independent reigns of the 18th- and early 19th-dynastypharaohs

  Neither the references to the Apiru in Egypt nor the biblical allusions to Ramesses can therefore be taken as a case for placing the Exodus in the reign of Ramesses II, or during the reigns of his immediate nineteenth-dynasty predecessors. So is there any historical evidence to tell us when the Exodus took place?

  Dr Manfred Bietak's excavations of ancient Avaris (see Chapter Eight) revealed four distinct levels of occupation: a Middle Kingdom layer; a Hyksos layer, dating from around 1650–1550 BC; a period of abandonment and relative inactivity; and a level of extensive rebuilding from around 1300 BC – the period of Ramesses I, Seti I and Ramesses II. It has been suggested that between the expulsion of the Hyksos and the rebuilding by these first nineteenth-dynasty kings, the city was completely abandoned. However, although it may not have been a major centre, this clearly was not the case. The reason why these kings – principally Ramesses II – decided to build their new city at Avaris, rather than anywhere else, is that it seems to have been their family home. Horemheb's regime had succeeded in dislodging the old ruling elite, and replaced them with army officers. For three decades, the country had been run by something approaching a military junta. Like most of Horemheb's senior officials, Ramesses I had been a professional soldier. Ramesses I's tomb was found by Belzoni in the Valley of the Kings in 1817, and hieroglyphic inscriptions from its modest decorations reveal that the pharaoh had been the son of a troop commander, Seti, who had been stationed at Avaris. Accordingly, Avaris must have been occupied to some extent.

  It would seem as though Ramesses I was somehow related to his successor, Seti I, as his father bears the same name. Besides which, the military elite were trying to establish a new dynasty, and for Seti to have been accepted as pharaoh, he must have had some family connection to his predecessor. Accordingly, all three pharaohs probably had family links with Avaris. The most likely conclusion is that Avaris had been a garrison town. As it was the nearest large settlement to the major trade route – or potential invasion route – into Egypt at the time (the Ballah–Timsah crossing), it would make sense for it to have housed a military barracks. In any age, whenever you have a important military base, a town grows up around it. Exactly such a thing happened in Roman times, with many of Europe's largest cities having begun life as a fort of the Roman army. It is, at present, impossible to tell from the excavations at Avaris when such an occupation may have begun, as so little of the site remains. However, one particular Egyptian reference to the town does survive which suggests that it was reoccupied during the time of Amonhotep III.

  The account appears in Manetho's Aegyptiaca, in the third century BC, which was reproduced in the work of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus around AD 70. According to Manetho, a king named Amonhotep was advised by one of his officials, a man also called Amonhotep, to purge the country of 'undesirables' and set them to work in the stone quarries. After many miserable years in bondage, the king grew sorry for the wretched slaves and allowed them to live in their 'ancestral home' at Avaris. However, although they lived in better conditions, they still remained as slaves. In Avaris, the slaves were joined by a priest from Heliopolis, who had himself abandoned the Egyptian ways, and preached to them not worship the gods of Egypt. Ultimately, the priest decided to free them from captivity by training them to fight the Egyptians. He sent an emissary to the 'shepherds w
ho had been expelled by Tuthmosis' asking for their help. 200,000 men apparently responded, and eventually they all manage to leave Egypt.

  This was obviously a legendary account that the Grecian Manetho had heard from some native Egyptians. However, it seems to contain certain elements of truth. The only king called Amonhotep who also had a chief minister of the same name is Amonhotep III. In Amonhotep III's reign, a certain Amonhotep, son of Hapu, was the master of works .responsible for the country's labour force. He oversaw the conscription of site workers and the allocation of foreign captives for quarrying, transportation and building. He also filled the post of 'Scribe of the Elite Troops', making him responsible for army recruitment. In short, Amonhotep, son of Hapu, was responsible for the country's entire work force. Such a man would be responsible for conscripting quarry workers, just as the story relates.

  In essence, therefore, there is no reason to doubt the account. If it is true, then it not only demonstrates that Avaris was occupied during the reign of Amonhotep III, but it shows that slaves were employed there. Might they have been the Israelites?

  The 'shepherds who had been expelled by Tuthmosis' are quite clearly the Hyksos, as elsewhere in his works Manetho describes them as the 'Shepherd Princes'. The 'undesirables' must have been related to them in some way: not only do the Hyksos come to their aid, but Avaris – once the Hyksos capital – is said to be their 'ancestral home'. As the Israelites do appear to have been an important Hyksos faction (see Chapter Eight), Manetho's account is the nearest thing we have to an historical report of the Hebrew bondage in Egypt outside the Bible. Moreover, as the 'undesirables' rebel and ultimately leave the country, it may also be an allusion to the Exodus itself. It is possible that the story arose to cover the humiliating truth. The Israelites had escaped in large numbers, and later made it an issue of propaganda: the Egyptians countered by claiming that 200,000 Hyksos had actually helped them. This is blatantly an unrealistic figure, as the greatest army that Egypt ever assembled numbered only 20,000 men.

  We turn finally to the archaeological evidence. Can this tell us when the Exodus occurred? The first archaeological signs of an identifiable Israelite presence in Palestine appear around the early-to-mid thirteenth century BC, and from the distinctive style of Mycenaean pottery found on the site, we know that Hazor had fallen to the Israelites around 1250 BC, give or take thirty years (see Chapter Eight). According to the Bible, the Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years before they arrived in Canaan, which, if based on any historical truth, would place the Exodus somewhere between 1340 and 1290 BC. However, the latest radiocarbon tests to date the fall of Jericho may provide a somewhat earlier date.

  In 1952, when Kathleen Kenyon excavated the site of ancient Jericho, she concluded that the city was destroyed by fire around 1500 BC – much too early to have been the work of the Israelites. However, the recent radiocarbon tests, at the Centre for Isotope Research at Groningen University in Holland, have determined a much later date for the destruction. In July 1996, Hendrik J Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht published their findings in the journal Nature (see Chapter Nine), after they had dated ancient cereal grains found in the burned layer of the citadel excavation. (The samples had actually been excavated by Kathleen Kenyon herself in the 1950s.) Caution is called for with regards radiocarbon dating, due to the margins of error involved (see Chapter Nine). In this case, however, six separate sets of samples were tested, providing dates spanning a period of 150 years. The dates arrived at were: 1316, 1292, 1335, 1316, 1244 and 1397, giving a central date of 1315 BC. This would actually fit with the Biblical account.

  According to the Bible, the Israelite conquest of Canaan began with the fall of Jericho and was followed by a lengthy campaign, as a number of city states were taken in succession, culminating in the fall of Hazor. In the fifteenth century BC, Tuthmosis III also conquered Canaan, and we can use his campaign as a comparison to arrive at a plausible chronology. We know from inscriptions on the Seventh Pylon at Karnak, that in the Year 42 of his reign Tuthmosis completed the conquest by capturing Kadesh. He did not come to the throne in his own right until his mother, Hatshepsut, died in his ninth regnal year, and the campaign did not start until this time. His conquest of Canaan therefore took around thirty-three years. Taking into account that the city states were far less formidable by the period Joshua was campaigning, with a lesser, but growing army of Hyksos recruits, it may have been possible for him to have completed the conquest in about the same time. Consequently, if the Israelite campaign started with the fall of Jericho around 1315 BC, the conquest may have been completed around 1280 BC, a date which falls within the parameters of the dating of Hazor's fall.

  As the biblical account of the conquest of Canaan fits so well into the archaeological chronology, then perhaps the forty years in the wilderness also reflects an historical framework. Based on these findings, forty years earlier than Jericho's fall places the Exodus around 1355 BC. When we allow for a certain margin of error, this makes an Exodus in the 1360s BC, in the reign of Amonhotep III, a very real possibility.

  Let us, therefore, summarize the historical and archaeological evidence available. Give or take ten or twenty years, these are the historical events as best we know them:

  Circa 1315 BC: The burning of Jericho.

  Circa 1300–1250 BC: Earliest archaeological evidence for Israelites in Palestine.

  Circa 1300 BC: Apiru involved in a revolt in Palestine.

  Circa 1250 BC: The burning of Hazor.

  Circa 1220 BC: Israel Stela reveals that the Israelites had established some kind of state in Canaan.

  This completely tallies with the biblical account: the Israelite conquest of Canaan, starting with Jericho, which was razed to the ground, and finishing, after a lengthy campaign, with the burning of Hazar. The Bible also tells us that the Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness before they took Jericho. Because of the remarkable accuracy so far, we might assume that the Bible is also right on this point. If so, then the Exodus would have taken place around 1355 BC, give or take ten or twenty years either way.

  Let us now look at what the historical and archaeological evidence tells us concerning events in the 1360s BC – a time which, based on the above chronology, falls well within the margin of error for the date of the Exodus:

  Circa 1360 BC: Egypt is at the height of her power. The pharaoh Amonhotep III is firmly entrenched as absolute ruler. The God Amun-Re is unquestioned as supreme deity.

  Amonhotep suddenly behaves strangely, makes Sekhmet – the goddess of devastation – chief goddess and erects more statues to her than any other god in Egypt's history. Soon after, he hands over complete authority to his son Akhenaten.

  Akhenaten abandons two thousand years of tradition, denies the existence of all the old gods, and establishes the previously obscure Aten – which is not actually a god at all – as a universal and omnipresent deity. There is no evidence of dissention.

  Akhenaten's new religion is almost identical to the Hebrew religion.

  According to the Bible, the Exodus occurred after God had afflicted Egypt with a series of dreadful plagues. The terrifying events left the country devastated and demonstrated to the Egyptians the power of their God. From what we see above, it is quite clear that around 1365 BC something frightening and devastating had challenged the nation's beliefs. Moreover, it seems to have had something to do with the Hebrews. Remarkably, even without the inclusion of the Thera eruption, everything fits with the Exodus having happened at this time.

  The latest scientific evidence, from both the ice core samples and the independent radiocarbon tests, does show that Thera erupted in the early fourteenth century BC. Not everyone, however, would agree with this date. Even at the present time of writing, scientists are disagreeing by hundreds of years: some placing the eruption as early as the seventeenth century BC, others as late as the twelfth century BC (see Chapter Nine). It is the same with archaeologists: some, having found traces of pumice in Egypti
an ruins dating from the period of Tuthmosis III, have suggested that Thera erupted in the fifteenth century BC; while others, having found similar pumice in the Avaris region dating from the Hyksos period, have suggested that the eruption occurred in the eighteenth century BC.

  The confusion may well be due to a number of lesser eruptions of what was an extremely active volcano. A decade before the Vema survey of 1956, a Swedish survey ship called the Albatross conducted an analysis of the eastern Mediterranean, taking core samples from the seabed. These marine geologists discovered evidence of an earlier Thera eruption than the one uncovered by Ninkovich and Heezen, the fallout from which had drifted further to the north. The Vema itself found evidence of a third, and possibly a fourth, dating back some 25,000 years. The Albatross eruption has not been dated, but all these findings clearly demonstrate that Thera had erupted on a number of occasions with enough force to cover vast areas of the Mediterranean seabed with ash. Indeed, Thera is still active today, and last erupted on 26 June 1926. Although a minor event compared to the ancient eruptions, it was of sufficient magnitude for its accompanying tremors to destroy over 2,000 houses on the island itself and a further 50 on neighbouring Crete, with considerable damage to a further 300. There was only ever one massive explosion, however: the one with sufficient magnitude to have been responsible for the plagues described in Exodus.

  Datable archaeological evidence from outside Egypt which does suggest that the big one happened around 1365 BC comes from the Mitannian city of Ugarit, an ancient port on the coast of Syria, some twelve kilometres north of modern Latakia. Excavations conducted on the site since the 1930s have shown that a massive tidal wave washed away half the city sometime between the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries BC. By a remarkable stroke of luck, this event can be dated to within a few years of the Amarna period in Egypt. One of the Amarna letters sent to Akhenaten by King Abimilki of Tyre, talks of the king's horror on visiting Ugarit to find the population gone and half the city washed away into the sea. Some massive seismic activity must therefore have been responsible for the destruction either during – or shortly before – Akhenaten's reign.