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Evidence for the Bible from the land of Egypt
The land of Egypt contains a great deal of historical and archaeological evidence evidencing the truth of the Bible. The following videos, taken on site in Egypt with leading Egyptologist and Old Testament scholar Dr. James K. Hoffmeier, discuss some of the evidence validating Scripture and providing illuminating background to Scripture from Egypt.
The Merneptah Stele: Early Proof of Israel in Canaan,
Museum of Egyptian Antiquities (Egyptian Museum), Cairo, Egypt
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The Merneptah Stele (Cairo 34025) found in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo, Egypt, is commented upon by leading Egyptologist, Biblical and Old Testament scholar, and evangelical Christian Dr. James Hoffmeier. Early Israel’s presence in the land of Canaan is validated by this stela. Pharaoh Merneptah (ruled c. 1224-1214 BC), boasting of victories over foreign nations to his north, claims to have badly defeated “Israel” in a series of comments about victories over groups in “Canaan.” The stele, dating to c. 1220 B. C., constitutes an official recognition of a people called Israel in extra-biblical documents. The word “Israel” is preceded by the Egyptian determinative for “people” or “ethnic group,” and Israel’s presence on the stele indicates that the Israelites were an important enough political force in Canaan at this early date for a Pharaoh in the 1200s B. C. to boast about a victory over them. Israel was well enough established by that time among the other peoples of Canaan to have been perceived by Egyptian intelligence as a possible challenge to Egyptian hegemony. Thus, Israel was definitely in Palestine by ca 1220 B. C.
Egyptologist William Dever notes: “The Merneptah Stele is … just what skeptics, mistrusting the Hebrew Bible (and archaeology), have always insisted upon as corroborative evidence: an extrabiblical text, securely dated, and free of biblical or pro-Israel bias. What more would it take to convince the naysayers?”
Pharaoh Merneptah (Mer-ne-Ptah) commissioned the victory hymn engraved on this granite stela to celebrate a military campaign in Syria-Palestine. Found in his funerary temple in western Thebes, among his list of fallen enemies Merneptah mentions the city-states of Ashkelon and Gezer, along with settled peoples such as the Hatti (Hittites). He also claims in line 27, “Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.” (Merneptah exaggerates here; the statement that the “seed,” i.e. offspring, of Israel had been wiped out is a conventional boast of power at this period.)
In the center of the symmetrical scene at the top of the stela, the god Amon-Re appears twice under the winged sun-disk. Merneptah stands to Amon’s right and left, saluting his divine patron. Horus, the falcon-headed god in his guise as the morning sun, stands at far right, the goddess Mut, wife of Amon, at far left.
The back side of the stela records information from Amenhotep III, grandfather of Tutankhamen / Tutankhaton.
The stela was discovered by 1896 by William Flinders Petrie. The relevant section reads:
Give him into the hand of Mer-ne-Ptah Hotep-hir-Maat, that he may make him disgorge what he has swallowed, like a crocodile. Now behold, the swift carries off the swift; the Lord, conscious of his strength, will ensnare him. It is Amon who binds him with his hand, so that he may be delivered to his ka in Hermonthis; the King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Ba-en-Re Meri-Amon; the Son of Re: Mer-ne-Ptah Hotep-hir-Maat.
Great joy has arisen in Egypt;
Jubilation has gone forth in the towns of Egypt.
They talk about the victories
Which Mer-ne-Ptah Hotep-hir-Maat made in Tehenu:
“How amiable is he, the victorious ruler!
How exalted is the king among the gods!
How fortunate is he, the lord of command!
Ah, how pleasant it is to sit when there is gossip!”
One walks with unhindered stride on the way, for there is no fear at all in the heart of the people. The forts are left to themselves, the wells (lie) open, accessible to the messengers. The battlements of the wall are calm in the sun until their watchers may awake. The Madjoi are stretched out as they sleep; the Nau and Tekten are in the meadows as they wish. The cattle of the field are left as free to roam without herdsman, (even) crossing the flood of the stream. There is no breaking out of a cry in the night: “Halt! Behold, a comer comes with the speech of strangers!,” (but) one goes and comes with singing. There is no cry of people as when there is mourning. Towns are settled anew again. He who plows his harvest will eat it. Re has turned himself around (again) to Egypt. He was born as the one destined to be her protector, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Ba-en-Re Meri-Amon; the Son of Re: Mer-ne-Ptah Hotep-hir-Maat.
The princes are prostrate, saying: “Mercy!”
Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows.
Desolation is for Tehenu; Hatti is pacified;
Plundered is the Canaan with every evil;
Carried off is Ashkelon; seized upon is Gezer;
Yanoam is made as that which does not exist;
Israel is laid waste, his seed is not;
Hurru is become a widow for Egypt!
All lands together, they are pacified;
Everyone who was restless, he has been bound by the King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Ba-en-Re Meri-Amon; the Son of Re: Mer-ne-Ptah Hotep-hir-Maat, given life like Re every day.
(See James Bennett Pritchard, ed., The Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. with Supplement. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], 376–378)
The Suez Inscription of Darius I Hystapses,
Museum of Egyptian Antiquities (Egyptian Museum), Cairo, Egypt
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The Suez Inscription of the Medo-Persian King Darius the Great (Darius I Hystaspes, 521-486 B. C.) of the Achaemenid Empire is found in the Cairo Museum in Cairo, Egypt. The inscription is commented on by leading Egyptologist, Biblical and Old Testament scholar, and evangelical Christian Dr. James Hoffmeier. The canal was built through the Wadi Tumilat, connecting the easternmost or Bubastite branch of the Nile with Lake Timsah, which was connected to the Red Sea by natural waterways. Darius the Great is frequently mentioned in the Bible (Ezra 4:5, 24; 5:5–7; 6:1, 12–15; Haggai 1:1, 15; 2:10; Zechariah 1:1, 7; 7:1). He is the Persian ruler who, in the time of Ezra the priest, confirmed the decree of the Persian king Cyrus for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem:
Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the house of the rolls … in Babylon. And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll … thus written: In the first year of Cyrus the king the same Cyrus the king made a decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, Let the house be builded, the place where they offered sacrifices … And also let the golden and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took forth out of the temple which is at Jerusalem, and brought unto Babylon, be restored, and brought again unto the temple which is at Jerusalem[.] . … [L]et the … Jews build this house of God in his place. Moreover I make a decree what ye shall do to the elders of these Jews for the building of this house of God: that of the king’s goods, even of the tribute beyond the river, forthwith expenses be given unto these men, that they be not hindered. And that which they have need of, both young bullocks, and rams, and lambs, for the burnt offerings of the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, and oil, according to the appointment of the priests which are at Jerusalem, let it be given them day by day without fail: That they may offer sacrifices of sweet savours unto the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king, and of his sons. Also I have made a decree, that whosoever shall alter this word, let timber be pulled down from his house, and being set up, let him be hanged thereon; and let his house be made a dunghill for this. And the God that hath caused his name to dwell there destroy all kings and people, that shall put to their hand to alter and to destroy this house of God which is at Jerusalem. I Darius have made a decree; let it be done with speed. (Ezra 6:1-12)
The Suez inscription of Darius reads:
I am a Persian; with Persia I seized Egypt. I commanded to dig this canal from the river named the Nile [Pirāva], which flows through Egypt, to this sea which comes from Persia. Then this canal was dug, according as I commanded. And I said, ‛Come ye from the Nile through this canal to Persia.’” (“Persians,” ed. James Orr et al., The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia [Chicago: Howard-Severance, 1915], 2336.)
The Greek historian Herodotus states that Pharaoh Necho / Neco started to build the 115 mile long canal to join the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Suez, while Darius I of Persia completed it. (He may have been unsuccessful, as Dr. Hoffmeier states.) Herodotus writes (Histories 2:158-159):
Psammetichus had a son Necos, who became king of Egypt. It was he who began the making of the canal into the Red Sea, which was finished by Darius the Persian. This is four days’ voyage in length, and it was dug wide enough for two triremes to move in it rowed abreast. It is fed by the Nile, and is carried from a little above Bubastis by the Arabian town of Patumus; it issues into the Red Sea. The beginning of the digging was in the part of the Egyptian plain which is nearest to Arabia; the mountains that extend to Memphis (in which mountains are the stone quarries) come close to this plain; the canal is led along the lower slope of these mountains in a long reach from west to east; passing then into a ravine it bears southward out of the hill country towards the Arabian Gulf. Now the shortest and most direct passage from the northern to the southern or Red Sea is from the Casian promontory, which is the boundary between Egypt and Syria, to the Arabian Gulf, and this is a distance of one thousand furlongs, neither more nor less; this is the most direct way, but the canal is by much longer, inasmuch as it is more crooked. In Necos’ reign a hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians perished in the digging of it. During the course of excavations, Necos ceased from the work, being stayed by a prophetic utterance that he was toiling beforehand for the barbarian. The Egyptians call all men of other languages barbarians. Necos then ceased from making the canal and engaged rather in warlike preparation[.]
The king Darius mentioned in the Bible was a real historical person. The Darius inscription is one of thousands of archaeological evidences validating the Bible is God’s Word.
Piankhy (Piye) Victory Stele & Isaiah 18
Museum of Egyptian Antiquities (Egyptian Museum), Cairo, Egypt
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The Piankhy (Piye) Victory Stele or Stela narrates Nubian King Piankhy’s victory over both Upper and Lower Egypt. It is the foremost historical inscription of the Egyptian Late Period. The Piankhy Victory Stela is commented upon by leading evangelical Egyptologist and Old Testament scholar James Hoffmeier, on site at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, Egypt, where the stela is currently located.
Dr. James Hoffmeier (Ph. D., University of Toronto; M. A., University of Toronto; B. A., Wheaton College) is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament and Near Eastern Archaeology at Trinity International University, the Director of the North Sinai Archaeological Project, and a Consultant with appearances on the Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, History Channel, National Geographic, and other similar sources. He has written many scholarly books, including:
Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
The Piankhy Victory stele was composed around 725 B. C. and discovered in A. D. 1862 by George Reisner in the temple of Amun at Napata, the Nubian capital, at the foot of Gebel Barkal. It is 1.8 x 1.84 meters and 0.43 m thick, inscribed on all four sides with a total of one hundred and fifty-nine lines.
Some modern scholars have concluded that the king whose name was traditionally read as “Piankhy” was really “Pi” or “Piye.” It is possible that the Nubian form was “Pi” or “Piye” while the Egyptians understood it as “Piankhy,” resulting in some scholars now writing it as “Pi(ankhy).”
For a translation of the Piankhy / Piye Stele, see William W. Hallo & K. Lawson Younger, Context of Scripture (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 42–53.
The Piankhy Victory Stele Validates Isaiah 18:
Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled! (Isaiah 18:1-2)
The Biblical Ethiopia, Cush, or Nubia was located south of Egypt, but somewhat further north than modern Ethiopia. In Isaiah’s day, as described in Isaiah 18, the Cushite, Ethiopian, or Sudanese King Piankhy took over Egypt. He and his successor, Shabako, instilled new energy into Egyptian affairs. Most likely both attempted to cement alliances with various surrounding countries in order to counter the Assyrian threat. The “sea” (Hebrew yam) of Isaiah 18:2 is likely a reference to Egypt’s Nile River (cf. Isaiah 19:5; Nahum 3:8). The plural “rivers” refers to the Nile and its tributaries.
Boats or rafts constructed of bound bundles of “bulrushes” or papyrus are sometimes pictured in Egyptian murals. (See John H. Walton, eds. Archaeological Study Bible. Accordance electronic ed. [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005], paragraph 8549.)
The Piankhy Stele portrays King Piankhy as forceful, shrewd, and generous. He meant to rule Egypt but he preferred treaties to warfare, and when he fought he did not glory in the slaughter of his adversaries in the manner of an Assyrian king. He was a faithful worshipper of Amun, serving the god both from his Nubian capital Napata and the gods hallowed city of Thebes.
The top of the Victory Stele shows Amun enthroned, with Mut standing behind him and King Piankhy before him. Behind Piankhy, King Namart of Hermopolis leads up a horse. With Namart is his wife, her right arm raised in a gesture of prayer. Prostrated figures are Kings Osorkon IV, Iuput II, and Peftuaubast. Behind them, also kissing the ground, are five rulers: the prince Pediese and four chiefs of the Libyan Ma (or, Meshwesh): Patjenfi, Pemai, Akanosh, and Djedamenefankh.
Piankhy, already controlling Upper of southern Egypt from Nubia, led an army into Egypt after finding out that Tefnakht of Sais, the Great Chief of the Ma, who ruled the entire western Delta, was extending his conquests southward.
In the twentieth year of Piankhy’s reign, he sailed to Egypt. After halting at Thebes to celebrate the Opet festival of Amun, he beseiged Hermopolis, where King Namart was stationed, achieving Namart’s surrender. Piankhy then rescued his besieged ally Peftuaubast at Heracleopolis and proceeded to capture the strongholds that stood between him and Memphis. The great walled city of Memphis, which refused to surrender, was stormed in heavy fighting. Then the rulers of the Delta hastened to surrender; only Tefnakht of Sais still held out. Eventually Tefnakht admitted defeat and, treating through an envoy, made his submission. Loaded with booty, the triumphant Piankhy sailed home to Napata. (See William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, Context of Scripture [Leiden: Brill, 2000], 42.)
Hebrews (Habiru) in Egypt Making Bricks for Store / Treasure Cities & Exodus 1-5
The Ramesseum, Edfo (near Luxor), Egypt
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On site at the Ramasseum (the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Rameses [Ramesses] II in the Theban Necropolis near Luxor, Egypt), Dr. James Hoffmeier discusses the evidence for the accuracy of the Exodus narrative of the ancient Hebrews (Habiru) making bricks (mudbricks) with straw for the Egyptian store cities. (Learn more about this topic in the study on Old Testament archaeology here.)
The Bible states:
“[T]he Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field … And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. … And Pharaoh commanded … the taskmasters of the people … saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof. (Exodus 1:11-14 & 5:6-9)
An Egyptian text dated close to the period of the Exodus likewise reports that Habiru foreigners were moving blocks for building projects in the city of Pi-Ramesses (cf. Exodus 1:11). The tomb of Rekhmire, a vizier of Pharaoh Thutmose III (possibly the Pharaoh during the time of Israel’s Exodus), shows Asiatic slaves making bricks while Egyptian taskmasters carrying rods look on, confirming the record of Exodus 5. Scholars note: “Obviously Exodus 5 was written by someone who actually saw the brickfields along the Nile. … This section reflects a remarkably accurate historical knowledge of Egyptian slave-labor organization and its building techniques. … [R]esearch … attests [t]o the very scenario portrayed in the Exodus narratives: a two-tiered administrative structure, the assignment of sometimes unattainable quotas, the problems of making bricks without straw, and the issue of allowing time off from work to worship one’s deity. … [T]he book of Exodus comes to us straight from the world of ancient Egypt. The story of the exodus is not fantasy but history … accurate down to the last piece of straw” (Ryken & Hughes, Exodus, 151–152).
Mudbricks were the standard construction material in the Nile Delta, but stones were not, while stone was the material of choice centuries later in Canaan and would have been the natural choice had the narrative been a fictional one invented centuries after the fact. What is more, straw was not typically used to make mudbricks in Canaan, while it was in Egypt (Hershel Shanks, ed., Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, 41).
Dr. Hoffmeier writes:
“After generations of sojourning in Egypt and tending flocks, herds, and cattle in the lush delta … conditions changed [for Israel, Exodus 1:8]. … Ahmose began an ambitious building program in Avaris, including a large mudbrick citadel to serve as Egypt’s military base to launch campaigns into the Near East. The presence of Egyptian rulers in the delta after more than a century of absence may account for the hostility toward the Hebrews in the delta, who would be associated with the hated Hyksos. Other major building projects at Avaris followed, possibly during the reign of Thutmose III (1479–1425 BC), when a massive palace complex, complete with storage facilities, was built, all of mudbrick. … That the Hebrews were engaged in forced labor making brick for royal building projects is certainly the most remembered feature of the Israelites’ labor in Egypt (Exod 1:8–14; 2:23–24; 3:7; 5:1–23). Beginning with the military campaigns to western Asia and Sudan of the fifteenth century, POWs were brought back to Egypt as slaves of the state[.] … The classic scene from the tomb of Rekhmire (ca. 1450–1400 BC) shows Levantine and African POWs making and hauling bricks for the construction of the Akh-menu Temple at Karnak. The caption over the tableau clarifies that the brickmakers were among the ‘plunder’ taken by the king on his campaigns. … When Ramesses II was making his new capital, Pi-Ramesses, adjacent to Avaris, Papyrus Leiden 348 reports that foreigners called ‘pr (Habiru) were dragging stone blocks for the construction of a “great pylon” in the new city. … The term ‘pr/ḫāpiru/ḫābiru (Habiru) corresponds to the word Hebrew; linguistically it is a match. … The Habiru in this stone building project at Pi-Ramesses could be biblical Hebrews[.] … New Kingdom era texts and illustrations show that foreigners, typically prisoners of war, were forced into hard labor for the state. It is not unreasonable to believe that the Hebrews could have received similar treatment during the New Kingdom as various royal building projects were undertaken in the northeastern delta.” (James K. Hoffmeier, in Five Views on the Exodus, 87–89)
The fact that Habiru were using mudbrick to construct storage cities at the time of the Biblical exodus is one of thousands of pieces of archaeological evidence validating the Bible as God’s Word.
Suzerain-Vassal Treaties & the Books of Moses or Pentateuch:
Dr. Joshua Berman, Bar-Ilan University
Luxor, Egypt
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“Suzerain-Vassal Treaties & the Books of Moses or Pentateuch” is an interview with Jewish scholar Dr. Joshua Berman, professor of Hebrew Bible at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Dr. Berman, a graduate of both Princeton University and Bar-Ilan University, discusses the powerful archaeological evidence from the suzerain-vassal treaty format in the Books of Moses–Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy-for the authorship of the Pentateuch by its traditionally recognized author-Moses-in the traditional time period, the Bronze Age.
The interview was conducted by Dr. Thomas Ross during a faculty tour of Egypt led by Egyptologist and Christian scholar Dr. James Hoffmeier in conjunction with Tuktu Tours. Scholars such as Kenneth Kitchen (On the Reliability of the Old Testament), James Hoffmeier (The Archaeology of the Bible), and Meredith Kline (Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy) are also quoted on the topic.
The Bible presents the true God-the God of Israel-as the great King, the suzerain, and Israel as the vassal, or subordinate, who needs to obey the great King or suzerain because the suzerain has delivered or saved the vassal. By God’s saving Israel from Egypt, He became the nation’s king, and Israel become God’s vassal.
Approximately one-hundred treaties and law codes have been discovered and translated of comparative value to the Sinai covenant the Bible declares that God gave to Moses. The covenants from the third millennium BC differ in structure from those of the second, and those of the second differ in structure from those of the first. Exodus 20-24 and Deuteronomy are written in a covenant structure employed in the second half of the second millennium BC-the Biblical time of Moses. This suzerain-vassal treaty format was consciously followed in both Exodus and Deuteronomy. Treaties from a thousand years later-when skeptics must date the Pentateuch if they wish to explain away its predictive prophecies-are radically different in format” from those of the time of Moses, in which the Sinai covenant was composed. The Biblical text shares intimate distinctions with the late-second-millennium documents not found in the first-millennium.
Dr. Kenneth Kitchen notes:
The particular and special form of covenant evidenced by Exodus-Leviticus and in Deuteronomy (and mirrored in Josh. 24) could not possibly have been reinvented even in the fourteenth/thirteenth centuries by a runaway rabble of brick-making slaves under some uncouth leader no more educated than themselves. The formal agreeing, formatting, and issuing of treaty documents belongs to governments and (in antiquity) to royal courts. Private citizens had no part in, and no firsthand knowledge of, such arcane, diplomatic procedures. Their only role was to hear the content of a treaty (if they were vassals of a suzerain-overlord), and obey it through their own ruler. So also today, treaties are agreed to by heads of state, and implemented by them; and any bills are picked up by the long-suffering taxpayers with never a sight of the original interstate document responsible for the cost.
So, how come documents such as Exodus-Leviticus and Deuteronomy just happen to embody very closely the framework and order and much of the nature of the contents of such treaties and law collections established by kings and their scribal staffs at court in their respective capital cities in the late second millennium? This is socially and conceptually a million miles away from serfs struggling to build … Pi-Ramesse (and Pithom) in the sweaty, earthy brickfields of Exodus 1:11–14 and 5:6–20! No Hebrew there could know of, or would care about, such high-level diplomatic abstractions.
Even a runaway rabble inevitably needs a leader. To exploit such concepts and formats for his people’s use at that time, the Hebrews’ leader would necessarily had to have been in a position to know of such documents at first hand—either because he knew people who shared such information with him or because he was himself involved with such documents. There is no other option.
In short, to explain what exists in our Hebrew documents we need a Hebrew leader who had had experience of life at the Egyptian court, mainly in the East Delta (hence at Pi-Ramesse), including knowledge of treaty-type documents and their format, as well as of traditional Semitic legal/social usage more familiar to his own folk. In other words, somebody distressingly like that old “hero” of biblical tradition, Moses, is badly needed at this point, to make any sense of the situation as we have it. … On the basis of the series of features in Exodus to Deuteronomy that belong to the late second millennium and not later, there is, again, no other viable option.
Since the Pentateuch was written by Moses, the Bible must be true, for the Pentateuch contains specific predictive prophecies that were fulfilled many centuries later. Only God can predict the future in this way!
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