Damn you and damn your people! You will soon see that resistance to my words is the same as resistance to the God whom I represent, for I am His voice and you do not heed my words. I am his presence—His very visage!—and you spit at my feet and in the face of the One True God! He is a jealous God, of wrath and judgment who brings Hell to your footstool, yet you refuse to believe and accept His words through me! Therefore, we shall bring down a wrath upon you such as has never before been seen. You, your land, your people, and your household—to the very firstborn babe your nursemaid rocks in the cradle—shall all die at the sound of my voice. Because you refuse to heed my word and the word of the Lord, your heart is turned to stone and your people will perish. Woe to you, oh, great Pharaoh, for when you look upon me from this moment forward, you will see only fire and death!
And turning on his heel, Moses, once a prince of Egypt, stormed out of the sweet incensed alabaster courts of the Pharaoh and into the dusty haze of ancient history, the scant details of his life and the enormity of his deeds recorded for posterity only in the pages of sacred scripture and religious mythology. Outside of Judeo-Christian writings, there seems to exist no extant historical documentation of the Great Exodus of Hebrew slaves he led out of Egyptian bondage, however, the event has been held in high praise as the greatest of all stories that elevate the human spirit.
Despite the wonderful message of freed slaves and the overt presentation of the power of a holy God that runs through every thread and tendril of the story of the Great Exodus, it has taken on the time-hone timbre of religious myth and cultural legend in both its scope and language. From an enslaved race and the promise of a god-sent deliverer, to burning bushes and parting waters, the stories have morphed through time from their original writing to oral tradition through rewriting and teachings down to modern motion pictures and children’s storybooks. Sifting through theological dogma and religious mythology to find the real story that lay beneath the surface has been the task of a veritable myriad writers, historians, archaeologists, theologians, and story-tellers for countless centuries.
The very existence of Moses as a historical figure has been held in dubious question by academia and religious skeptics for centuries, relegating him to the realm of biblical myth and religious folk story. The Exodus has enjoyed the same sort of handling in that the historical records of the event simply do not exist, and any mention at all is generally extrapolated from ancient writings that seem to make some obscure Egyptian reference to a possible race of Semitic slaves, and even more obscure references to events that have some resemblance to possible events that may or may not resemble certain theories of the Ten Plagues and the mass exodus of people. But as you can tell by the woefully guarded language used here, none of this is conclusive, let alone accepted as solid fact.
What we are left with are ancient stories of ancient characters engaged in highly political ancient scenarios that have seemingly no evidential proof or historical correlation, backed only by stories found in ancient religious texts written from even more ancient oral traditions and tales. The resultant hazy obscurity through which one must gaze back in time has left many to simply ponder and speculate with little more than faith as the governing principle.
So many souls in the past have trodden the very same paths that we, the authors, are about to traverse with you in the pages of this book. Journeying together, you will need to discard what you think you may already know as we set out into an age-old world draped in mystery, filled with ancient religions, cults, and acts of ceremonial practice that will send shivers down your spine. We’ll explore megalithic edifices that were built to honor the ancient gods of Egypt, rivaling all other structures in the ancient known world, revealing a civilization far beyond anything we have learned and imagined. And yet, despite all the archaeo-anthropological research and study by academicians, its gods and its wonders still remain as much a mystery to us today as does the dark side of the moon.
With the advent of new, emerging religions in the region, the established ancient traditions eroded and the pantheons of gods were slowly assimilated and/or eradicated in the following centuries. One by one the grand temples closed their doors, forever sealing away behind them their mystery cults, ceremonies, and esoteric secrets, allowing the sands of Egypt to reclaim and bury them from sight. This dissolution from one generation to the next, one pharaoh to another, one religious cult to the next, bore great effect on the temples and monuments, as they were defaced, restructured, razed, and rebuilt in accordance with whatever power or spirituality held supreme sway at any given time. Upon viewing the colossal statue of Ramesses II, cracked and fallen to the ground, Percy Bysshe Shelley penned the poem “Ozymandias” to pay homage to the passing of historical ages:
I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said, Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Judaism, one of the new religions, quickly gathered momentum as its adherents began to settle in the thriving cities that emerged along the busy trade routes. With them, they brought their historical ancestral stories that spread among the general populace of their new homes. Handed down from tribe to tribe, these Judaic tales spoke of heroic men and women who fought against the establishment and won with the divine support of their God.
These stories were told and retold, and eventually passed down from generation to generation via oral tradition. One such traditional story was the Exodus, the epic tale of a mass migration of enslaved Hebrews, the descendants of the family of Jacob/Israel, who were liberated and brought up out of Egypt by the miraculous intervention of the divine. It was this God who delivered his people and led them to their ancestral home, the “Promised Land,” which the Hebrews were told was “flowing with milk and honey.” At the front of this migrating horde, leading the Hebrews into the desert, was the enigmatic Moses, a man of Hebrew blood, once the adopted son of an Egyptian princess now turned prophet of the Lord God.
It is interesting to note that in the story of Moses, only he, the individual prophet, was imbued with special enlightenment and leadership privileges as endowed and mandated by the God he claimed to have encountered and with whom only he communicated. And from that singular position and power of personality, it was he alone who re-entered the royal courts of his former life and made demands of the sitting Pharaoh. None of this divine right was granted to the mass of Hebrews over whom Moses imposed his God-given authority, but through act of will and force of imposition, he appointed himself into leadership and either displayed the works of the divine or took advantage of natural events to further his cause.
Likewise, these emerging Judaic-Christian religions—whose foundations are said to reside in the writings of Moses—not only affected those individuals who claimed leadership on the basis of their personal experiences in receiving religious enlightenment, but also reformed and converted entire nations that followed their claims. Either by forceful conversion or willing acceptance, whole nations were being converted to the word of Judaism and Christianity throughout the centuries, molding entire generations while subjugating and assimilating pre-existing religious practice native to its peoples. In so doing, Judaic law was imposed, as well as the values, morés, and rules by which to live one’s life in a devout and pious manner. Accordingly, these new religious devotees also pursued the teachings as laid out within these stories and traditions, passing the holy messages contained therein on to their descendants, as well as proselytizing other peoples around them. Some questioned the authenticity of the new religion’s message, while others blindly accepted it as truth.
Without the presence and zealous leadership of a charismatic leader, or the very presence of an incarnated deity, how does one process and quantify what is or is not truth within handed-down, processed, edited, orally transmitted, rewritten, repackaged Holy Scripture? That is the driving force behind the entire book. Together, with our thoughts, ideas, and theories, it is our fervent desire to reach a better understanding and clarity, resulting in the abandonment of some of the myths, legends, and half-truths surrounding the epic biblical story of the Great Exodus. It is high time we re-think and take an unfiltered approach to understanding the story’s events, chronologies, dating systems, and characters from a fresher, historical point-of-view than that which is conveyed to us from the leafy pages of the Old Testament. This is not to say that we seek to be dismissive of or stand in some sort of categorical opposition to the Bible, but rather that sometimes it is necessary to pull oneself out of the religious box in order to process the details, unhindered by denominational bias and theological dogma.
We will be expressing our own theories, hypotheses, and ideas on these pages, suggesting that you take a deeper look into one of the most historically significant events in history. Set aside your reliance on what you were taught in Sunday school and synagogue, and take a fresh view of the story and its evidences. In so doing, we hope to explore together some of the preexisting notions that have been placed forward, and at the same time revisit the actual religious text laid down in the scripture, helping us evaluate the historical and archaeological evidence that has been compiled. There are subtle clues, encoded messages, and truths hidden within those chapters that make up the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses) that have been and continue to be attributed to historical facts, but fall far outside the realm of verifiable history.
The Exodus and its congregation, the Hebrew slaves, while spoken of openly and matter-of-factly in the pages of scripture, remain a silent mystery within the annals of ancient Egyptian history—and we want to find out why. Then you, the reader, will be able to reach a conclusion based on all the material presented in these pages, and see for yourself what could be the most plausible scenario and set of circumstances that makes physical, geographical, and historical sense.
So, why another lengthy book appraising the exploits of Moses, his family, and the Children of Israel during the event and subsequent period better known to us as Exodus? What new evidence could we possibly bring to the table that might place the Exodus within the ancient Egyptian annals of history and the Chronologies of the Egyptian Kings, that the biblical story of Moses has credence within our own, recorded history? Despite the authors of this book having differing views on the dating of the Great Exodus, those views are merely separated by two kings and two generations of the same royal house, the personalities being of lesser importance than the credibility that such an event could even have taken place anytime during that 90-year span of time.
For some reason, the writers, scribes, editors, and rewriters of the book of Exodus have omitted the names of the royal personages whose names and reigns could have lent an accurate recounting and historical placing of the events of Exodus. When Moses wrote the original text, did he cite the names of these royal individuals, or did he have some reason for leaving them out of his book? Are there events, connections, linkages, and possible intrigues that prompted Moses to exclude these details? Or was it the product of an ancient game of “telephone,” where the oral retelling, generation after generation, simply muddled the names and dates to the point where the 72 scribes compiling the Septuagint could not find any modicum of coherent, cohesive Egyptian royal lineage, resulting in the complete omission of these names from the Old Testament text? Have we not traveled down all the routes of supplementing the biblical characters with those of ancient Egyptian personalities, such as Pharaoh Akhenaton, the so-called originator of monotheism during the Amarna Period of the 18th Dynasty, and the ever-popularized-yet-far-too-late-in-the-time line great Pharaoh Ramesses II, due mostly to the (extrapolated) inclusion of his cities within the book of Exodus 1:11? Is there anyone left to logically supplement? “Why supplement at all?” some would ask. Why not simply take the biblical narrative as the verbatim chronicle of events as they happened? After all, would not the Lord God be able to sustain the efficacious and accurate accounting of these events in His Holy Writ?
It is not our intention to sift through the veritable mountain range of existing research material, only to present it in a new light or some new angle to fit with our own suggestions or theories. But herein lies the problem: Which historical reference material do we present?
Furthermore, it is not the content of the Bible that we are bringing into question. Oh, contraire! The biblical account is what it is and it stands intact as a piece of history all on its own. The argument that the Bible cannot contain any accurate historical data on the sole basis that it is a book of compiled books of faith is nonsensical. One would be hard-pressed to find any ancient culture that separated its books of faith from its books of history. Look at historical cases such as the Salem Witch Trials in which government worked inseparably with religion. For good or ill, accurate history has been recorded in conjunction with issues of faith all through time. And when it comes to the Exodus, no matter what scholarship may be brought to an examination of the writing, editing, and scribal involvement through the centuries, the historicity of the biblical text has many times been found to be reliable, albeit obscured. What we do bring is the characters that pertain to the Exodus and the events that surround the Hebrews’ flight from Egypt.
As stated previously in the Introduction, what we wish to convey is that there are at least two conflicting ideas, both supported by historical facts and archaeological material, which could suggest two plausible alternative scenarios based around the story of Exodus. One of those theories relies heavily on dating systems and events found in several biblical narratives, whereas the other relies more heavily on archaeological data that suggests the events of the biblical Exodus were indeed recorded in Egyptian history. In essence, aligning the biblical characters with historical personalities who retain similar traits and who have partaken in exploits and events that could otherwise be mistaken with aspects of the Exodus story line. Then bring into the mix a few yet-unknown theories that pertain to a series of natural disasters that had a dramatic effect upon the ancient Egyptian kingdom and its people. These events could be seen as comparable to the infamous Ten Plagues of Egypt inflicted upon Pharaoh, his servants, and the population of the vicinity of Thebes by Moses and his brother Aaron, perhaps with the divine help of God, as mentioned in the biblical narrative in Exodus 7–12.
For many, it is the devastating scenes of carnage, death, and destruction across Egypt that draws them to the story of Exodus. It is the bloodied waters that drove the Egyptians to thirst for seven long, grueling days; the pestilence, sickness, fire, and death in every household, including the firstborn son of the Pharaoh. It is these images that cause us to ponder why Egyptian history makes no mention of such disasters—or does it?
Later, we will discuss the possibility that Lake Malkata, built by Pharaoh Amenhotep III, burst its protective levies during the Nile flood season and it was this natural disaster that gave rise to the apocalyptic migration out of Thebes, eventually resulting in the relocation of the Egyptian capital and the construction of Amarna by Akhenaton, son of Amenhotep III. Many of us remember the death and destruction that were inflicted upon the people of Japan during the earthquake and tsunami of 2011. Similar in its severity, the waters of the great lake would have destroyed everything in its path, the flimsy and poorly constructed mud brick abodes washed away in the torrents, leaving nothing in its wake. The sheer number of dead, both man and beast, would have been in their thousands, while those who survived were left with nothing more than a death sentence, as all the food supplies ran out and shelter from the scorching rays of the Egyptian sun would have baked the fresh mud hard, bringing disease and pestilence to those around the rotting corpses embedded in the mud. The flies and sheer smell of decomposing flesh would have had dramatic effects upon those who survived, giving rise to nothing more than an apocalyptic exodus out of Thebes in search for food and shelter. Meanwhile, the royal palace above the lake would have been completely untouched by the disaster.
We will also examine the character approach to uncovering these events of the Exodus, in which one could utilize certain keystone dates mentioned in Old Testament scripture linked to the later construction of Solomon’s Temple (Temple 1) in Jerusalem in 966 BC alongside elements of the biblical narrative combined with both Judaic and Christian traditional stories placing the event under the reign of Amenhotep II, two generations before the disastrous catastrophe of the destruction of Lake Malkata. Could Moses have correlated with the Egyptian official Senenmut, favored man to Queen Hatshepsut? Is there evidence that Hatshepsut was the “Pharaoh’s Daughter” who drew Moses from the Nile after his Hebrew slave mother hid him from the terrible edict of Pharaoh Thutmoses I, who decreed (according to the biblical account) that all Hebrew male children under the age of 3 be cast into the river and drown? Mothers, sons, lovers, queens, kings, princes, deeply set hatred, consequence, and unquenchable intrigue surround the characters of Thutmoses I, Thutmoses II, Thutmoses III, and Hatshepsut’s royal courts, creating unparalleled character association to the story of Moses as presented in the book of Exodus.
What most authors neglect to emulate within their works are the true atmosphere of the period and linkages between the historical characters and their place in the environment in which the Exodus was supposedly taking place. When reading the biblical narrative, we forget to ask ourselves what it was truly like to walk from ancient Thebes to the Red Sea across the eastern deserts. What was the route like and how many roadside diners and lavatory rest stops did they find along the way? How long would it have taken Moses to walk, post murderous encounter, from the capital of Thebes to the region of Midian as recorded in Exodus 2:15, where he met his future wife, Tzipporah, and father-in-law, Jethro, the high priest of Midian? Which ancient temples was Moses inspecting when he witnessed the Hebrew slave worker being beaten by his Egyptian task master? Were the Nile River and its banks and canals safe enough to feed people and be used as a transportation network throughout the Theban necropolis? Where was the royal court of the Pharaoh, and how did Moses and Aaron know of its existence some 40 years after Moses fled to Midian? Were they guided, or did Moses have a clear understanding of the Egyptian government from a former insider’s point-of-view?
Who was Aaron, Moses’ older brother, mentioned as being 3 years old when Moses was born, and what had he been doing for the 80 years (Exodus 7:7) that Moses spent between his adoption into the royal family of Egypt around age 5 to 7, and his flight from the courts of Egypt at age 40 and subsequently 40 more years in Midian? Had brother Aaron received an upbringing accustomed to the Hebrew customaries of his slave parents? Or was Aaron an Egyptian, having received an education as a Priest within the great stone walls of Karnak or Memphis, worshipping the sacred Apis Bull, foundational to his new position as the High Priest of Israel after the Exodus? Was this where he learned his skills as the great oratory he was acclaimed to be by God in Exodus 4:14? And what of their sister, Miriam, the one who sang the song of Moses in Exodus 15:20, after the Children of Israel were led safely to the eastern shores as the Red Sea was parted for them? What happened later when she was punished by God and she became leprous for seven days, according to Numbers 12:10? What if these three pivotal characters were not Hebrew by birth, but pure Egyptian, later substituted by the 72 Judaic scholars to be better suited to the needs and requirements of the religion they were asked to transcribe? Is there any evidence to conclude that when Moses was adopted by the royal woman whom the biblical text refers to only as “Pharaoh’s Daughter” (Exodus 2:5) that she, too, enriched his siblings? And is it at all interesting to note that all three of these siblings—Moses, Aaron, and Miriam—were all prohibited by God from entering the Promised Land that lay at the end of their Exodus wanderings, each dying before reaching their destination.
Addressing these questions that arise from taking an analytical approach to the later versions of the Old Testament is a minefield that opens one to criticism and debate. If you take the position that the Bible is completely un-erring in its historical accuracy, you end up standing in the same critical light as one who says that there must be more to what meets the eye in the biblical record. We cannot overlook the circumstances or the conditions of life during that period of time in which the ancient versions of the Old Testament were written. Ancient Alexandria, Egypt, would have had a considerable bearing on the 72 Judaic scholars that re-compiled the books of Moses—including Exodus—from oral traditional stories. It would be unwise and foolish to think that their contemporary situations did not have an impact upon their styles of writing and narrative, not to mention their interpretations and traditions that would have had a great bearing on their overall technique and style. To accept that the pages of Old Testament scripture reconstructed from the oral traditions of the Jewish faithful would be accurate to the point of not altering one jot or tittle from the original text, requires an enormous leap of faith on the part of adherents to Judaic-Christian theology.
Those 72 scholars who sat in their individual chambers in the Museion Library of Alexandria at the request of Pharaoh Ptolemy Philadelphus II and Queen Arsinoe, had a task set in front of them that would have a dramatic impact upon humanity for thousands of years. It has always been an historical fact that the victors write the history books, leaving the defeated and less fortunate to lick their wounds, so why would the events that surround the Exodus be any different? That event was an enormous defeat for the sitting Pharaoh at the time it took place, and was most certainly a phenomenal blow to the belief system and pantheon of Egyptians gods.
However, this leaves us with a dilemma. No matter how we wish to look at the Exodus or entertain any other suggestion other than that which is written, there still remains the obtusely overt fact that we possess no actual proof that the events detailed upon those Old Testament pages ever, really, truly took place. For some, it is faith alone that supports the story. For others it is a blind belief that the word of God is written and divinely maintained through the 72 Judaic scholars of Alexandria, and therefore cannot be called into question.
Let us pose this question, which primarily comes from John, but seems wholly relevant at this juncture: If, indeed, the all-powerful God of the Hebrews had inflicted so much damage and carnage upon their ancient ancestors in Thebes, why did they continue to worship their own gods, who failed to save the ancient Egyptians from such chaos? Surely there must have been mistrust that would have been bestowed upon the Hebrews after such an extreme and exaggerated migration out of Egypt, not to mention the slaughter of thousands left in their wake as they sojourned across the wilderness for the following 40 years it took to claim their Promised Land.
Have you ever wondered why Moses and Aaron were allowed to continue their oratory with the Pharaoh of Egypt, even after bringing chaos and destruction upon the land and its people? Why did Pharaoh not have them imprisoned, or at worst have them executed for sedition, inciting violence and bringing about the general strike as detailed in Exodus 5:4?
Each time a new plague would strike at the very heart of the Egyptian empire, both Moses and Aaron would walk, apparently unrestricted, up to the Pharaoh without any recorded hindrance. Further, they would freely continue their discourse with Pharaoh as if they were well accustomed to one another’s company, even though Egypt was in chaos. And this was all happening despite the fact that both Moses and Aaron repeatedly advertised that it was they who brought and inflicted the calamities in Egypt.
Some would say that this was divine intervention; we read that the Lord God of the Children of Israel hardened the heart of Pharaoh after each successive plague, and that it was this very same divine influence that allowed them to continue with their requests for the freedom of the enslaved Hebrew nation. And this was all carried out without so much as a harsh word from Pharaoh. Now, if Moses and Aaron were looked at as foreign ambassadors stating grievances and rattling chains of war against Egypt, they might have held some ancient form of diplomatic immunity, but these men were part of a slave race. Or perhaps what we need to ask is: Were the Hebrews an integrated people and the only slavery was the slavery of metaphor? Was Moses preaching a gospel of forgotten heritage and a liberation from the bonds of nationalistic enslavement in Egypt?
We will address these important issues by exploring the various alternative historical personalities of the times, which may have had the freedom of the royal court, either as courtiers or high viziers to the Pharaoh. It would have been this very freedom and familiarity that granted them an audience, and in turn allowed them to reiterate their demands in a tone that would have otherwise been deadly to any outsider. Were Moses a Prince of Egypt who had been groomed to one day sit on the throne, the animosity from that rightful heir would have been extreme. And it would also explain why he was so reluctant to return and make demands of the seated Pharaoh some 40 years later. Moses, the Prince of Egypt turned Fugitive of Egyptian Politic.
Not only during this discourse with you, our readers, is it our desire to present a series of alternatives, but at the same time bring into the question the authenticity of the original Septuagint, which many of the Old Testaments revisions are based upon, showing clear irregularities in their writing styles, narrative, and the historical inaccuracy of their interpretation of events. Again, these are only alternatives and suggestions. To suggest or consider that there be no possible issue with translation, interpretation, transmission of oral information, or corruption of details will have to remain a thing that can stand only on the merits of faith in a god who is able to perform in such a way. Doubting causes us to question, and without asking the questions, we may find that we believed something that may have all along been inaccurate. The late astral physicist, Richard Fyneman, contemporary to Einstein and Oppenheimer, once said of his belief in God: “To question and doubt is a fundamental part of who I am…I’d prefer to die not knowing something, rather than live my entire life believing something was so, only to find out later that it wasn’t true.”
Outlining the various alternatives within the book of Exodus will hopefully provide us with an opportunity to survey the parameters of organizing and bringing together the Hebrew nation in readiness for their Exodus, and how this was facilitated or organized to a greater extent.
John Ward, having explored extensively the western and eastern deserts of Egypt, is more than familiar with the sorts of preparations required to plan expeditions into the wild deserts of Egypt and the Sinai. The planning and preparation that would be required to facilitate the mobilization and transportation of what the biblical account in Exodus 12:37 states was “600,000 men on foot” (and their wives, children, elderly, livestock, and meager possessions; see Exodus 10:9) would be a monumental task of… wait for it… biblical proportions. It is here that certain physical flaws begin to emerge in the story line of the Old Testament. There have been various suggestions as to the time allotted to the planning of the Exodus and how long it took for the mass migration to take place. Was it over days, weeks, months, or even a year? The Old Testament tells us of the plundering of Egypt as prophesized in Genesis 15:14, yet it reads as if this all took place overnight, and furthermore, there is no mention of communications among cities or villages. For that matter, the enslaved Hebrew nation continued their labors unabated by the plagues or inflictions laid upon them by their task masters and daily quotas. As a matter of fact, the biblical account tells us that there was such a division of plague suffering that, during the Plague of Darkness (as recorded in Exodus 10:22–23), the Egyptians were engulfed in a blackness so deep that they could not move from their houses for three days, while the Hebrews enjoyed the sunshine.
Such a mass migration of people would have necessitated some kind of planning or an ample supply of provisions to be taken with them. Yet we are told in Exodus 12:34 that the Hebrews took their unleavened bread and mixing bowls wrapped in cloth on their shoulders. The entire affair becomes one that was driven by the hand of the divine in order for it to transpire, as we are told in the pages of scripture. We are not saying that this is not what happened, but we are driven to look at the mathematics and the logistics of pulling off such a major undertaking, and the alternatives we will present to you in these pages do suggest a more hurried and expedited migration, thus again falling in line with the biblical version, while also providing a backdrop to the entire Exodus scenario.
Both of the authors have traveled the eastern deserts of Egypt following in the same footsteps as those migrating eastward from the capital of Thebes, treading the same pathways the Hebrews once did in their sandals (if they possessed such luxurious items). We envisioned what it was like to be in the clustered line of people walking along the trade routes, the desert sun beating down them. With their livestock in tow, they carried their chattels upon their backs while stumbling over the rough, stony terrain, not to mention seeing those who may have perished along the wayside, stripped of their clothes and possessions, and left bare and baking upon the desert floor. Even harsher still, would be the families following their cultural/familial Hebraic traditions of carrying their dead with them to the Promised Land.
Night after night, they ate the meager rations that they carried with them, building fires to keep them warm in the coldness of the desert night. These images of despair and hopelessness are not recanted among the pages of the Old Testament; in fact, it all happens so quickly that we do not pause to think what it must have been like for them. The happiness and rejoicing of emancipation from their bondage under the hard fist of the Pharaoh must soon have been replaced by the grieving of the hungry and cracked rasping of the thirsty. The biblical account in Exodus 14:11–12 gives us some hint of their condition. In a matter of days, the people were complaining to Moses about how they’d prefer to die in their slave homes back in Egypt rather than in the harshness of the desert wilderness in which they now found themselves.
And they said unto Moses, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians.’” For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.
To picture a thousand campfires lighting up the night sky in one of the many rocky desert valleys conjures emotions that one would not otherwise feel while reading the scripture. Were they afraid of what might lay ahead for them, or were they simply content with just being free? And if they had been slaves for the entirety of their lives, were they terrified at the prospect of what existed along the journey? Again we turn to the question of familiarity between the Children of Israel and Moses and Aaron. Where and how did the trust and bond between the now-released Hebrew Children of Israel and Moses come from? One of the questions that remain unanswered is: How many of the participants in Exodus were actually Hebrew? We can agree that they were Hebrew by birth, but Egyptian by culture and upbringing. Was Moses seen as a prince of the Egyptian royal family, having turned his back on his adopted mother and family to free the Hebrew slaves, or was he leading his own people?
There were so many people dragging their few possessions through the harsh desert conditions, following a man that they believed would free them and provide them with the Promised Land. They must have been aware of the terrifying consequences that befell their Pharaoh at the hands of Moses and Aaron. Was it this fear of the Lord God that drove them and motivated them? Or was it their freedom in the desert that gave them strength?
We enter realms of imagination here, and our minds race with images of the massive corridor of water, opened, as the scripture says, “as a wall on the left and a wall on the right.” Exposed coral reefs and sandy plains spanned the pathway from one shore to the other. Few ever question the nearly impossible task it would have presented to walk along the exposed wet sea bed, not to mention the uneven terrain it must have presented to them.
Make no mistake: The accounts of the Ten Plagues, the Exodus, and the life of Moses were written mostly for the purposes of stirring our hearts and causing shock and awe to our emotions. But that is not to say that the stories are fraudulent, fake, or without historical efficacy. As seems to be the case in antiquity, the more fantastical the tale spun around the basics of a historical event, the easier it is to gain believers. The story of Moses and the Exodus has all the classical trappings of an amazing legend rife with mythological happenings. And, frankly, we would love nothing more than to sit back and say we have discovered that every word in the Holy Scriptures is true. What an amazing story that would be! But we know in our hearts that there is something more—or less—to the stories as we have heard them through the years. We do not question the logistics of such an epic feat; we merely read on with anticipation, the defeat of Pharaoh and his army still whets our appetite for glory.
Is it the human emotional response to the story of Exodus that has kept it so vigorously alive? Is it the classic struggle of good versus the perceived evil, and the cry for freedom that has stirred the hearts and minds of religious and non-religious believers alike? Even with the advent of film and television, the epic story of the Exodus has been presented to us on the silver screen, again bringing to life the various aspects of the tale while presenting plausible scenarios in which one finds, all at once, familiarity that carries us through the unbelievable. No matter how fantastically legendary the story may be, it is believable. With help from all the period costumes and special effects, we are drawn into a world that we could not imagine without reference. In a very real sense, the story of the Exodus, as written down from the oral traditions, became the Lord of the Rings of its day, combining believable people—and in the case of Exodus, real historical characters—with fantastical situations, filled with a brand of myth and magic that leads to a great triumph over the forces of evil. Only in the case of the Exodus, the God of the Universe, who is meant to be shown as a real, living force in our lives, was the divinely guiding force. These images now provide the visual reference that millions can draw upon providing the necessary tools to build a perfect mental picture—a scenario in which the biblical narrative can now take place and become absolutely plausible in the mind’s eye.
Before we leave the Introduction, we want to take you on one more excursion into the tale of Exodus: the Golden Calf and the Holy Mountain of God. It was here upon this mountain of fire that Moses retreats for 40 days to commune with God and receive the first chiseled stone tablets bearing the commandments. It is here that Aaron procures from the Children of Israel their pillaged Egyptian gold, from which he fashions a Golden Calf to represent their god who led them out of bondage, and to which they can give worship in the absence of Moses. It is this singular event that reminds us just how Egyptian these Hebrews truly are. After all the works and wonders of the Lord God they had seen displayed, from the plagues to the parting of the Red Sea, they still create a false idol to worship a mere two weeks into the Sinai desert. The Golden Calf scenario brings us to question the foundation and upbringing of the Moses family. Were they indeed Hebrew or were they Egyptian? The question of blood heritage versus national identity will be asked many times over, especially when dealing with the incorporation of implements of worship, such as the infamous Ark of the Covenant and its attributed chattels.
Together we will explore the ancient Temple of Serabit el Khadim, located in the southeastern deserts of the Sinai Peninsula, close to the shores of the Red Sea, near what is now known as the mouth of the Suez Canal. This Temple complex has a rich history reaching far back into the epochs of Egyptian history. Primarily, this was a place of worship for the Goddess Hathor, the cow goddess of fertility and growth. Is it synchronistic that this temple is located in the very spot where the trade routes of the Sinai converge? Would it be inconceivable to suggest that these ancient Egyptian trade routes would have existed at the time of the Exodus, and would it be presumptuous to suggest that the Golden Calf that Aaron fashions be one and the same as Hathor, and that the released Hebrew slaves who were by defacto Egyptian in their culture and upbringing, were of course more than familiar with the traditions and ceremonial customs of Hathor? Could this be the reason why Aaron allowed this religious transgression to take place?
While rewriting the Old Testament, the 72 Judaic scholars of the Ptolemaic period saw an opportunity to demonstrate that the Lord God was indeed a jealous God, and that the worship of any other God or Deity was considered a sin, and therefore punishable by death. When Moses returned from the mountain, carrying with him the first tablets of the law, he threw them to the ground in a fit of righteous anger at the reckless regression of the Children of Israel. Moses then took the Golden Calf and burned it in the fire until it was consumed, grinding its charred remains and scattering it upon the water supplies (according to Exodus 32:16–21), ordering the errant Hebrews to drink that same water. It is within the same chapter that 3,000 Hebrews were slain and the remaining Hebrews who sinned against the Lord God would be plagued on the day of punishment by the Lord God, akin to a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people, all at the site of the Temple of Hathor in western Sinai.
Normally within an introduction, one sets out the reasons for the forthcoming chapters and lays out the theories, ideas, and thought processes behind the authors, ending with a conclusion. The conclusion of our introduction is simple, and yet conflicting at the same time, as we did not set out on this journey free of worries or trepidation; it was not an easy decision to make. On the one hand both Scotty and John are Christian in their upbringing, both having the Bible taught to them from an early age. Scotty entered Bible college and theological seminary, while John works and lives on the very site of the ancient city of Thebes where Moses walked and from which the Exodus burst into history. So both of us have entered this hall of questions with a pre-conditioned thought process and a preconditioned set of parameters with which we had to come to terms in order to outline our ideas and thoughts as presented here. And we had to do this all without taking a definitive point of view, standing in a sort of biblical neutral zone that will most probably bear its own weight of critical response.
It is our hope that our theories, hypothesis, notions, and suggestions will help you come to a better understanding of the narrative employed in the Bible, thereby allowing you to travel alongside those ancient people who sought freedom, salvation, and a place they could call home. After all is said and done, we all desire a place that we can call home, where we can raise our children in peace and safety, grow old, and watch our children marry and raise their own children, perpetuating the never-ending cycle of humankind.
Now it is time to enter the following chapters with a clear and open mind, understanding that sometimes the things we deem as truth may sometimes be only the glorified stuffs of myth and legend. On the other hand, many of the things we may have considered to be too fantastical to accept as fact or truth may just be the at the core of what is the most relevant and real parts of the story.
It is our contention that the Exodus, in all its reality, is more than mere religious mythology or exaggerated happenstances blown into epic proportions. It is the tale, based on a true story, of the apocalyptic migration of an integrated people that followed on the heels of catastrophic events. And, now, let us take you on a journey into the past and show you how it really happened….