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A Matter Of Time

Posted: Wednesday September 29, 2004 11:11 PM EST

By Anthony E. Larson

Page 2 of 2 pages for this article  <  1 2

In the old chronology, Ramases II was thought to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus, if there was one at all.  There was little evidence for a large population of Hebrew slaves, for ‘plagues’ that swept the Nile Valley or for the decimation of the Egyptian armies, as the Old Testament relates.

In the new chronology, the Exodus occurred toward the end of the 13th Dynasty.  Pharaoh Tutimaeus, or Didimose, emerges as the ruler whom Moses confronted.  Thus, the corrected chronology gives new meaning to Josephus’ quote of the Egyptian scholar, Manetho, when he writes, “Tutimaos: in his reign, for what cause I know not, a blast of God smote us.”

The “blast of God” in the time of Tutimaos (Tutimaeus or Didimose) can now be seen as the Exodus plagues.

What is more, the Exodus story suggests that Egypt was left defenseless since Pharaoh’s army was drowned in the Red Sea.  So, the Amalkites that did battle with the Israelites, who were on their way to Canaan, went on to easily conquer Egypt and became known to history as the barbarous Hyksos.

The new chronology allows a reassessment of the archeological and historical record, offering many fascinating historical details and creating a much more complete picture of Hebrew history in Egypt.

Egyptian history and archeology now confirm that Joseph became a vizier under Pharaoh Amenemhat III, and the Egyptian Labyrinth at Hawara with its thousands of storerooms was nothing less than Joseph’s administration center for the distribution of grain during the famine.

Near Tell ed-Daba in the Nile delta region, archeologists excavated a large city beneath the city of Ramesses, mentioned in Exodus 1:ll.  This city, which was called Avaris, anciently, had a large Israelite quarter.  A magnificent palace with 12 pillars was excavated there and is thought to be Joseph’s.  Additional evidence for that conclusion was a tomb found in the palace garden with the desecrated remains of a twice life-size statue with a uniquely Hebrew hairstyle—likely a statue of Joseph, the most powerful Hebrew in Egyptian history.

Further, death pits discovered at Avaris attest to the deaths of the Egyptian first born during that plague.  What is more, immediately after this disaster, the remaining population left the city en masse—a startling corroboration of the Israelite Exodus following a terrible pestilence.

The same historical revision reveals evidence for the later Hebrew Monarchy in Palestine during the time of Saul, David and Solomon, which had been completely discounted under the old chronology.  It now shines forth to illuminate the Old Testament accounts of that era and give it a historical context that has been utterly lacking heretofore.

As it turns out, the Amarna letters, clay tablets found at Tell el-Amarna over a century ago, record the correspondence of the famous Pharaoh Akhenaten with rulers in Canaan, and contain information about the Israelite conquest of that area following the Exodus.  They paint a more complete picture of a tribal Palestine that corroborates the biblical picture described by the prophet Samuel.

Indeed, they tell of a king named Labayu, meaning “the great lion of Yahweh,” who shows scant respect for Pharaoh in his communique to that Egyptian potentate.  The career of Labayu in the Amarna letters is strikingly similar to that of Saul, who was also known as the “great lion of Yahweh.” Thus, we reach the astounding conclusion that we have had in our possession a letter from Saul to Akhenaten, warning off an Egyptian Pharaoh, for over a century without recognizing it for what it is.

Moreover, the Amarna letters yield dozens of names recognizable to scholars as equivalents to familiar, prominent biblical characters of that era.  Ayab is Joab, commander of David’s army.  Dadua is a form of the name David, and Yishuya is Jesse (Yishay in Hebrew), David’s father.

We can now also see that instead of reigning in the impoverished Early Iron Age where conventional chronology puts him, Solomon is now seen to rule in the Late Bronze Age, a period of wealth and prosperity in the Levant.  His contemporaries in Egypt were Haremheb and Seti I.  An ivory piece excavated at Megiddo, which the Bible tells us was built up by Solomon, depicts a king on his throne flaked by two sphinxes with his queen before him.  This could very well be Solomon and the Egyptian queen (I Kings 3:1) since Solomon is said to have had a throne flanked with lions.

Naturally, conventional historians and archeologists hotly contest such notions.  The reputations of some eminent scholars and well-established academic careers are at stake in this debate.

Any Christian wishing to better understand the characters found in the Old Testament and the history of God’s dealings with Israel and its prophets would do well to inform themselves of the revelations coming from these avant-garde archeologists and historians working on the revision the chronology of ancient history.

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