Which Pharaoh?
There is no denying that Israel’s sojourn in Egypt and subsequent departure are as significant a set of events as you’ll find in the Old Testament. On any given day in the world, somebody somewhere is expounding on passages where an Egyptian pharaoh is involved.
Yet, relatively speaking, there is very little available material as to which pharaoh is being spoken of in a given passage. Much of this is owing to the rampant confusion in ancient Egyptian chronology. Frankly, a quick Internet study on the topic reveals how confused the subject is—there is no clear consensus on dates or reigns of pharaohs during the different events from secular history.
This is where archaeology has begun to clear things up. The more we learn about ancient Egypt, the more its history lines up with what is documented in Scripture.
Abraham enters Egypt
To begin, the word pharaoh is more like a title than a name. It is just the moniker given to the ruler of Egypt. (Incidentally, the “Candace” served by the Ethiopian eunuch, Acts 8:27, is a similar title given to the queens of Ethiopia.)
In Genesis 12:10, we read of a famine that caused Abraham and Sarah to leave Canaan and move down to Egypt. During this visit, a pharaoh took a particular liking to the patriarch’s wife. This resulted in the Lord bringing plagues on the Egyptian king’s household—no doubt a precursor of the events to come several centuries later. So who might this pharaoh be?
Egyptologists will refer to the 1st Intermediate Kingdom (2188–2055 BC). This came on the scene within a couple of centuries of the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza and within three of four centuries of the great flood of Noah’s day. Originating from the west (possibly out of Libya), this included Egypt’s 7th through 11th dynasties. Such pharaohs ruled intermittently between Thebes (Southern or Upper Egypt) and Memphis (where the Nile delta spreads out).
Joseph leads Egypt
In Genesis 37, Scripture begins to lay out the events of the life of Joseph. Key to this life was his being sold into slavery by his brothers. He ultimately landed in Egypt and, through the miraculous workings of the Lord, ended up as the Prime Minister of the fledgling superpower of the day. To paraphrase Joseph, though his brothers meant these events for evil toward him, God meant them for good (Gen. 50:20). As famine spread through much of the Middle Eastern world, God used Joseph to provide for not only his family but also countless others.
The Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BC) of Egypt supplanted the 1st Intermediate Kingdom. Because of Joseph, these rulers were favorably disposed toward the Israelites. As a result, Israel flourished in the land of the Nile. When we understand what took place in the Bible and look at the history of the Middle Kingdom, certain things begin to align quite well.
One such example has to do with Joseph’s father-in-law. We know that the Middle Kingdom focused a good deal of their pagan worship on the sun god, Re (also known as Ra or Amon-Re). In the Bible, we read that Pharaoh gave Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, to be Joseph’s wife. Potiphera was a priest from the town of On (Gen. 41:45), and On was the center of solar worship in ancient Egypt.
An even more striking example involves Egypt’s unification. It is the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Sesostris III that history most associates with uniting northern and southern Egypt. He came to power in 1876 BC, shortly before the famine predicted by Joseph took place (Gen. 41). The Bible tells us that the famine was so extreme that the territory’s inhabitants eventually bartered their land and possessions to Pharaoh in exchange for grain (Gen. 47:13-26). History reveals that this Pharaoh removed local magistrate rule across Egypt and started to expand Egypt’s territory to encompass Nubia (today’s Sudan and Ethiopia).
The background recorded in the Bible lines up perfectly with the events of history.
Israel sojourns in Egypt
“So Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen; and they had possessions there and grew and multiplied exceedingly” (Gen. 47:27).
There is an archaeological dig within the land of Goshen at the location of ancient Rameses (a.k.a. Raamses) known as Tel El Daba. It has garnered a great deal of attention in recent years. Archaeologists have discovered that people from Canaan lived here shortly after the time that Joseph and his family would have arrived. During the time of Joseph, the city would have been known as Rowaty (“door of the two roads”). This site is located along the Horus Road to Canaan.
Many of those who lived here resided in more eastern-style huts than what you would find elsewhere in Egypt. In the center of the community, however, seems to have been a villa different from the others. Associated with this villa is a burial area. The artifacts found thus far clearly show the residents to have been from the East and not native to Egypt. There is good reason to believe that this was the center of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt.
But Israel’s prosperity in Egypt lasted only as long as the Middle Kingdom was in power. “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.…Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel” (Ex. 1:8-12).
The Middle Kingdom fell into weak leadership and made a series of poor decisions. As a result, the Hyksos, or what Egyptologists refer to as the 2nd Intermediate Kingdom (1664-1555 BC), eventually overtook them. The Hyksos seem to have been from the East (the hieroglyph for Hyksos means “foreign ruler”). They could have been other Canaanites, possibly Hittite or Amalekite in origin.
The Hyksos saw the Israelites as rivals and began to subjugate them. The rulers forced them to construct the great storage cities of Pithom and Raamses (see Ex. 1:11). Such storage cities were viewed as the key to Egypt’s wealth, in accordance with what Pharaoh had learned from Joseph. In the Hyksos mind, it probably made sense to have the people of Joseph build these.
Incidentally, the Hyksos seem to have been worshippers of the Canaanite god Baal. One of the key pharaohs of the 2nd Intermediate Kingdom was a ruler named Yakubher, also called Yak-Baal. Thus began a millennia-long running battle between Baal and the God of Israel (note the final Victor, Hos. 2:16-17).
Moses departs Egypt
Eventually, the Egyptians drove out the Hyksos from the Nile delta. Ahmose I began the reunification of Egypt around 1570 BC. It took his regime about 15 years to complete the task. This led to the establishment of the New Kingdom (1554-1070 BC).
Egyptians resented the Hyksos and any others within their borders who were from the East. It’s clear they saw the Israelites as a continued foreign threat in their midst.
In the next issue of Uplook, we will consider the regime of the pharaohs that played a part in the life of Moses and the events of the Exodus.