Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah – Part 16

Part 1

Avaris, City of the Exodus: An Artist’s Impression

Israel in Egypt

When the Egyptologist Heinrich Karl Brugsch looked for documentary evidence in support of the Biblical account of the Israelites’ Sojourn in Egypt, he was not disappointed. Again and again he discovered that Egyptian toponyms, proper names and official titles which had been preserved in the Scriptures were also to be found in hieroglyphic inscriptions, often with only minor differences in orthography.

Beginning from the south of the country in question, the city of Anu, the same which Holy Scripture designates by the name of On, identifies for us the position of the Heliopolite nome [13th nome, or administrative district, of Lower Egypt] of the classic authors. Next, the mounds of Tell-Bast, near the modern village of Zagazig, enable us to fix the ancient site of the city of Pi-bast, a name which Holy Scripture has rendered by the very exact transcription of Pibeseth [Ezekiel 30:17], while the Greeks called it Bubastus. It was the chief city of the ancient Bubastite nome [18th nome]. Pursuing our course towards the north, the vast mounds, near a modern town called Qous by the Copts and Faqous by the Arabs, remove all doubt as to the site of the ancient city of Phacoussa, Phacoussse, or Phacoussan, which, according to the Greek accounts, was regarded as the chief city of the Arabian nome [20th nome]. It is the same place to which the monumental lists have given the appellation of Gosem, a name easily recognized in that of “Guesem of Arabia,” used by the Septuagint version as the geographical translation of the famous Land of Goshen [Genesis 45:10]. (Brugsch 207-208)

According to Genesis 45, the House of Israel settled in Egypt when Jacob’s son Joseph was Pharaoh’s vizier, or prime minister. In the model of the Short Chronology which I am following in these articles, these events occurred during the period of Hyksos domination—ie when Egypt was part of the Assyrian Empire. Happily, Brugsch’s own researches led him to the same conclusion. Of course, he dated the Hyksos era about a thousand years earlier than I date it, and he did not recognize the Hyksos as Assyrians. Also, he believed that the Sojourn in Egypt lasted for more than four hundred years. Nevertheless, it is an interesting convergence of opinions:

The supposition that Joseph was sold into Egypt and afterwards rose to great honor under the Hyksos, as results from the chronological relations we have mentioned, receives fresh support for its probability from a Christian tradition preserved by V. Syncellus. According to this tradition “received by the whole world,” Joseph ruled the land in the reign of king Aphophis (Apopi of the monuments), whose age within a few years corresponds with the commencement of the eighteenth dynasty.

Brugsch’s V. Syncellus is obviously a reference to George Syncellus, the 9th-century Byzantine monk whose Chronographical Extract explicitly links Joseph with the Hyksos Pharaoh Apophis, though why Brugsch gives Syncellus the initial V I do not know. Perhaps it is just a typo: on a QWERTY keyboard the letters G and V are adjacent.

The title Pharaoh bestowed on Joseph, Zaphnathpaaneah (Genesis 41:45), is good Egyptian for Governor of the Sethroitic Nome, the 14th administrative district of Lower Egypt, in the extreme east of the Nile Delta. Similarly, Joseph’s Egyptian wife is given a name in Genesis—Asenath—that is pure Egyptian, and found almost exclusively in texts that pre-date the 18th Dynasty. Joseph’s father-in-law, Potipherah, also has a pure Egyptian name. And Potiphar, the Egyptian name of the captain of the guard whose wife seduces Joseph, is similar in meaning: the former means Gift of the Sun, the latter Gift of the Risen One (Brugsch 133)

Table of Nomes for Lower Egypt. Note that the number of nomes, their borders and their capital cities varied over the long course of Egyptian history.

Land of Goshen

When Jacob and his extended family—the House of Israel—went down into Egypt during a prolonged famine, they were given land in which to pasture their flocks. In Genesis, this land is referred to by two names: the Land of Goshen and the Land of Rameses:

And Pharaoh spake unto Joseph, saying, Thy father and thy brethren are come unto thee: The land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land make thy father and brethren to dwell; in the land of Goshen let them dwell: and if thou knowest any men of activity among them, then make them rulers over my cattle ... 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 Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. (Genesis 47:5-6 ... 11)

As we have seen, Brugsch identified the Biblical Goshen with Gosem in the twentieth nome of Lower Egypt. The Swiss Egyptologist Édouard Naville agreed with this identification, though he placed Phacusa at Saft el-Henneh, while Brugsch identified it with Faqous, about 20 km to the north-northeast:

M. Naville’s researches at Saft-el-Henneh led him to identify it as the site of Pi Sopt (the Abode of Sopt) which was the religious capital of the xxth Nome of Lower Egypt. This Nome was known to the Egyptians as the Nome of Sopt or Soptakhem, and Professor Brugsch discovered that it was identical with the Arabian Nome of Greek and Roman writers. The civil capital of the Nome was Pa Kes, from which came its Greek name of Phacusa (Pha-Cusa). M. Naville found this name “Kes” in the inscriptions of the shrine of Nectanebo II (xxxth Dynasty, B.C. 367–350), at Saft-el-Henneh, and in such connections as showed that it was at the civil capital called “Kes,” that Nectanebo erected this shrine, in the religious capital, “Pi Sopt.” Therefore Phacusa (“Pa Kes”), the secular capital, and Pi Sopt or Pa Sopt, the religious capital of the xxth Nome, both stood upon the site now occupied by the modern village of Saft-el-Henneh. The names of Goshen and Phacusa have the same origin in ancient Egyptian. In the Septuagint the land of Goshen is called Gesem of Arabia, i.e., Gesem, which is in the Nome of Arabia, and the term, though strictly referring to a limited district, may yet have applied to the whole country occupied by the Israelites. Kesem (Gesem) is mentioned in such connections, and with such hieroglyphic determinatives in the Temple lists of offerings from the various districts, as to show that it is the civil name of the district and city in which stood the Temple of Sopt, the God of the Arabian Nome, and hence the land of Goshen was the country around Saft-el-Henneh, within the triangle formed by the villages of Saft, Belbeis and Tel-el-Kebir ... (Atlas of Ancient Egypt 10-11)

I believe that the writers of Genesis included the alternative name the land of Rameses because that was the current name of the place, whereas the land of Goshen was the original name. Rameses refers to the Pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty, who lived about 150 years after the Exodus according to the Short Chronology.

Whether Phacusa was at Faqous (Brugsch) or at Saft-el-Henneh (Naville), there is little doubt that the Land of Goshen corresponded approximately to the 20th nome of Lower Egypt, in the extreme east of the Nile Delta.

Map of Lower Egypt

Pithom and Rameses

Turning from Genesis to Exodus, in the very opening chapter of this book we read:

Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. (Exodus 1:8-11)

In the Jewish study Bible, Pithom and Rameses are called garrison cities:

Garrison cities, rather “store cities” of a type that usually served military purposes (1 Kings 9:19; 2 Chron. 8-4-6; 17:12-13; 32:27-28). Pithom and Rameses stood at strategic points guarding the entry to Egypt from the north and northeast. Pithom, Egyptian Pir-Atum, “House of (the god) Atum,” was probably Tel el-Retabeh or Tel el-Maskhutah in the Wadi Tumilat, the entrance to Egypt from the Sinai Peninsula; both sites have archeological remains from the time of Rameses II. The city of Rameses was Pir-Rameses-Meri-Amon, “House of Rameses, beloved of [the god] Amon,” capital of the delta region under the 19th and part of the 20th dynasties ... It occupied a very large area that extended over Kantir and Khataana and other nearby sites. Seti I ... built a summer palace there, and it was considerably expanded by Rameses II. (Berlin & Brettler 108)

Egyptologists have now reached a consensus that the Hyksos capital Avaris and the city of Rameses stood on the same spot—more or less. The location of that spot was a matter of heated debate for many decades. Pelusium and Tanis were favourite candidates. Even Immanuel Velikovsky entered the debate and suggested that the Hyksos capital was to be found at el Arish on the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula:

We need not repeat the long history of the search for Avaris and Per-Ramesses, since the identification with Tell el-Dabaa and Qantîr is now common knowledge in Egyptology. (Bietak & Forstner-Müller 23)

The Site of Avaris and Rameses (after Bietak & Forstner-Müller)

The identification of the other store city, Pithom, is not yet considered settled. In the 19th century Naville identified it with the ruins at Tell el-Maskhutah on the Wadi Tumilat, a seasonal distributary of the Nile that discharged into Lake Timsah. This was widely accepted at the time, but in the early 20th-century the Egyptologist Alan Gardiner offered an alternative identification: Tell el-Retabeh, which is also on the Wadi Tumilat, about 12 km west of Tell el-Maskhutah.

Today, Egyptologists seem to be approaching a compromise: Pithom was originally located at one of these sites before it was relocated to the other. But which came first? Currently, we are told that Tell el-Retabeh was first occupied during the latter part of the New Kingdom, while the city at Tell el-Maskhutah was established much later by Necho II (Hoffmeier 64). (In the Short Chronology Necho II came to the throne around 420 BCE.) But excavations at Tell el-Maskhutah in the 1970s and ’80s have shown that there was a Hyksos settlement there (Redford 50-51). After the expulsion of the Hyksos, the site was abandoned and not reoccupied until the time of Necho II. Is it possible, then, that Pithom was relocated twice: first from Tell el-Maskhutah to Tell el-Retabeh, and then from Tell el-Retabeh back to Tell el-Maskhutah? Or is the Bible simply referring to the Hyksos settlement at Tell el-Maskhutah under its contemporary name, in the same way that the Land of Goshen is also called the Land of Rameses? I believe that the latter is the more probable scenario.

Alan Gardiner’s Map of the Eastern Delta (Note that he placed Rameses and Avaris at Pelusium, about 80 km from the currently accepted site.)

Pithom comes from the ancient Egyptian Per Atum, meaning House of Atum. Atum was a sun god, and the centre of his cult was Heliopolis, the Egyptian I͗wnw (The Pillars), which was the capital of the 13th nome of Lower Egypt. In the Bible I͗wnw is rendered On (אן‬). The principal temple in Heliopolis was also known as Per Atum. What’s more, in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made in Ptolemaic Egypt, Exodus 1:11 is significantly different than the version found in the orthodox text:

καὶ ἐπέστησεν αὐτοῖς ἐπιστάτας τῶν ἔργων, ἵνα κακώσωσιν αὐτοὺς ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις· καὶ ᾠκοδόμησαν πόλεις ὀχυρὰς τῷ Φαραώ, τήν τε Πειθὼμ καὶ Ῥαμεσσῆ καὶ ῎Ων, ἥ ἐστιν ῾Ηλιούπολις.

And he set over them task-masters, who should afflict them in their works; and they built strong cities for Pharao, both Pitho, and Ramesses, and On, which is Heliopolis.
George Valsamis

First, note how the store cities or treasure cities of the Hebrew text are now πόλεις ὀχυρὰς, strong cities:

ὀχῠρός firm, lasting_, stout ... 2. of places, strong, secure ... esp. as a military term, of a stronghold or position, strong, tenable (Liddell & Scott 1102)

More significantly, however, is the inclusion of Heliopolis as one of the strong cities that the Israelites supposedly built for Pharaoh. Is this just a case of confusion because the temple of Atum at Heliopolis had the same name as Pithom? Or was Pithom another name for Heliopolis?

Before leaving this subject, there is a curious tradition preserved by Louis Ginzberg in The Legends of the Jews that deserves to be quoted:

The building of Pithom and Raamses turned out of no advantage to the Egyptians, for scarcely were the structures completed, when they collapsed, or they were swallowed by the earth, and the Hebrew workmen, besides having to suffer hardships during their erection, lost their lives by being precipitated from enormous heights, when the buildings fell in a heap. (Ginzberg 249)

If there is any truth to this legend, it supports the belief that the Exodus took place against the backdrop of cataclysmic events—events of such a nature as to level cities.

To be continued ...

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References

• Adele Berlin & Marc Zvi Brettler (editors), _The Jewish Study Bible , Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1999)
• Manfred Bietak & Irene Forstner-Müller, The Topography of New Kingdom Avaris and Per-Ramesses, in M Collier & S Snape (editors), Ramesside Studies in Honour of K. A. Kitchen, pp 23-51, Rutherford Press, Bolton (2011)
• Francis Brown, Edward Robinson, William Gesenius, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1906)
• Heinrich Karl Brugsch, The True Story of the Exodus of Israel, Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Francis H Underwood, Lee and Shepard Publishers, Boston (1880)
• Egypt Exploration Fund, An Atlas of Ancient Egypt, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co, London (1894)
• Alan H Gardiner, The Delta Residence of the Ramessides, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Volume 5, Number 4 (October 1918), pp 242-271, Sage Publications, Ltd, London (1918)
• Alan H Gardiner, The Geography of the Exodus: An Answer to Professor Naville and Others, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Volume 10, Number 2 (July 1924), pp 87-96, Sage Publications, Ltd, London (1924)
• Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Volume 3, Translated from the German by Paul Radin, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia (1911)
• James K Hoffmeier, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2005)
• Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Eighth Edition, American Book Company, New York (1901)
• Donald B Redford (editor), The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt, Volume 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2001)
• Georgius Syncellus, Chronographia, in William Dindorf (editor), Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae: Georgius Syncellus et Nicephorus Cp, Volume 1, Eduard Weber, Bonn (1829)
• George Valsamis, Septuagint Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy: The Greek Old Testament, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (2018)
• Immanuel Velikovsky, Ages in Chaos, Volume 1, Doubleday, New York (1952)

Image Credits

• Avaris, City of the Exodus: © Fabricio Baessa, Fair Use
• Heinrich Karl Brugsch: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
• Table of Nomes for Lower Egypt: From An Atlas of Ancient Egypt, p 41, Public Domain
• The Site of Avaris and Rameses: Based on Bietak & Forstner-Müller, The Topography of New Kingdom Avaris and Per-Ramesses, p 22, Figure 25, Fair Use
• Alan Gardiner’s Map of the Eastern Delta: Alan Gardiner, The Delta Residence of the Ramessides, Plate 35, © Emery Walker Ltd, Fair Use