The Exodus Story - Between Historical Memory and Historiographical Composition PDF

Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions
Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969
brill.nl/jane
The Exodus Story: Between Historical Memory and Historiographical Composition

Nadav Naaman
Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel naaman.tau@gmail.com
Abstract The article seeks to explain the contrast between the central place of the Exodus in Israelite memory and the marginality of the event in history by shifting the focus of discussion from the historical question to the role the Exodus tradition played in shaping the self-portrait and consciousness of early Israelite society. It first examines the oppressive nature of Egyptian rule in Canaan at the time of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. It then examines the story of the Exodus in the context of Egypt under the Ramesside and Saitic Dynasties. It suggests that the bondage and the delivery from slavery as related in the biblical story actually took place in Canaan and that the memories were later transferred from Canaan to Egypt. The transfer of memory explains the omission of the memory of the long Egyptian occupation of Canaan in the Bible. The displaced memories of bondage were replaced by the memory of the conquest, which reflects the way early Israelite society sought to present its past. The subjugation, the suffering and the delivery were experienced by all tribal groups that lived at the time in Canaan, hence the centrality of the Exodus tradition within the Israelite society. Keywords Exodus, Canaan, Shasu, bondage, historical memory, collective memory
Introduction The theme of Egyptian subjugation and the Israelite Exodus is the most frequently mentioned historical event in biblical literature. Beside the detailed narrative in the Book of Exodus, it appears in all layers of biblical literature, including poetry, law, historiography, prophecy and the Psalms. The effort to establish the historical nucleus of the narrative is disputed among scholars. The range of opinions stretches from those who suggest that the nucleus of the story is basically authentic and the episode reflects an important event in the early history of Israel, on the one hand, to those who entirely dismiss the historicity of the episode, emphasize that the story was written at a later time and
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156921211X579579
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N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969
suggest that it mainly reflects the time of its composition, on the other hand. According to the latter view, the Exodus story is essentially myth that was formulated in late time and does not reflect the reality of the early history of Israel. Between the two extremes lie scholars who accept the historicity of a few details in the story and suggest that the story includes a nucleusalbeit smallof historical events that took place on Egyptian soil. Scholars agree that the Exodus tradition was mainly accepted in the Northern Kingdom and find clear expression in the prophecies of Amos and Hosea and in some early psalms of northern origin (Ps 77; 80; 81). However, the tradition is not mentioned in the original prophecies of late eighth century BCE Judahite prophets (Isaiah, Micah).1 But since the Exodus is so dominant in Judahite historiography written in the late First Temple period, including the celebration of the Passover in Josiahs eighteenth year (2 Kings 23:2123), it is inconceivable that it was unknown in Judah before the seventh century BCE. Scholars present the Song of the Sea (Exod 15:117) and some Psalms (Ps 78; 114) as evidence that the tradition was known in the Kingdom of Judah.2 We may further note that the Exodus is mentioned twice in the Book of the Covenant (Exod 22:20; 23:9)3 and quite a few times in the Book of Deuteronomy (5:15; 15:15; 16:12; 24:18, 22; 26:58), both probably written over the course of the seventh century BCE. The typology of the Exodus fit the reality of the exilic and early post-exilic periods well, and beyond doubt, the Exodus tradition was substantially expanded and revised at that time. But it is unlikely that the tradition was unknown in Judah until the seventh century and suddenly held such an important place in the mind of the ruler and elite in the late First Temple period. The suggestion is corroborated by the central place held by the Exodus tradition in the earliest layers of the Book of Exodus and the Deuteronomistic history. These early works emphasize the claim that the divine election of Israel in Egypt created a unified people out of a mixture of separate groups; Israel emerged as a people at a certain historical moment as a result of divine election. According to this literary analysis, the Patriarchs were not mentioned in the early strata of these works, and the Patriarchal stories were attached to
1 Y. Hoffman, A North Israelite Typological Myth and a Judaean Historical Tradition: The Exodus in Hosea and Amos, VT 39 (1989) 169182. 2 G. Davies, Was There an Exodus?, in J. Day, ed., In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel (Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar; London and New York: T&T Clark, 2004) 2627. 3 Some scholars suggest that verses written in the second person plural in the Covenant Law, among them Exodus 22:20b and 23:9b, were inserted in a later period. See N. Naaman, Sojourners and Levites in the Kingdom of Judah in the Seventh Century BCE, Zeitschrift fr Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 14 (2008) 242, with earlier literature.
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the story of the Exodus and the wandering in the desert only at a late stage of composition.4 Indeed, the early works of the history of Israel probably opened with the Exodus story. The covenant mentioned there is that of Horeb and not the oaths to the Patriarchs, which might have been unknown to the author(s). In the original sequence of these works, the people of Israel grew out of multitude of groups that lived in Egypt and their Aramaic ancestor migrated there at an unknown time (Deut 26:5).5 It was the God of Israel who united Israel, made it an ethnic entity and nominated a leader to lead them out of the bondage of Egypt. According to this view, two separate foundation stories were initially composed: the Patriarchal story cycle and the Exodus and wandering in the desert. They were combined by Priestly scribes whose work is dated to the late exilic or early post-exilic period.6 Redactors who operated in this period inserted all references to the Patriarchs into the story of the Exodus and the Deuteronomistic history.
4 T. Rmer, Israels Vter. Untersuchungen zur Vterthematik im Deuteronomium und in der Deuteronomistischen Tradition (OBO 99; Freiburg: Universittsverlag and Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990); idem, Nachwort, in N. Lohfink, Die Vter Israels im Deuteronomium (OBO 111; Fribourg: Universittsverlag and Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gttingen 1991) 111123; J.C. Gertz, Tradition und Redaktion in der Exoduserzhlung. Untersuchungen zur endredaktion des Pentateuch (FRLANT 186; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000) 380388; E. Blum, Die literarische Verbindung von Erzvtern und Exodus. Ein Gesprch mit neueren Endredaktionshypothesen, in J.C. Gertz, K. Schmid and M. Witte, eds., Abschied vom Jahwisten. Die Komposition des Hexateuch in der jngsten Diskussion (BZAW 315; Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2002) 119156; R.G. Kratz, The Composition of the Narrative Books of the Old Testament (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2005) 248308; T.B. Dozeman and K. Schmid, eds., A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006); K. Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story. Israels Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible (Winona Lake: Esenbrauns, 2010) 50281 (originally published in German in 1999), with earlier literature. 5 A. de Pury, Le cycle de Jacob comme lgende autonome des origins dIsral, SVT 43 (1991) 83; idem, The Jacob Story and the Beginning of the Formation of the Pentateuch, in Dozeman and Schmid, eds. (n. 4) 5556; J.C. Gertz, Die Stellung des kleinen geschichtlichen Credos in der Redaktionsgeschichte von Deuteronomium und Pentateuch, in R.G. Kratz and H. Spieckermann, eds., Liebe und Gebot. Studien zum Deuteronomium (FRLANT 190; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000) 3045; cf. A.R. Millard, A Wandering Aramean, JNES 39 (1980) 153155; J.G. Janzen, The Wandering Aramean Reconsidered, VT 44 (1994) 359375. 6 See the literature enumerated in n. 4; Kratz (n. 4) 225247, 319321; C. Nihan, The Holiness Code between D and Some Comments on the Function and Significance of Leviticus 1726 in the Composition of the Torah, in E. Otto and R. Achenbach, eds., The Deuteronomium zwischen Pentateuch und deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk (FRLANT 206; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004) 81122, with earlier literature; A. de Pury, PG as the Absolute Beginning, in T. Rmer and K, Schmid, eds., Les dernires rdactions du Pentateuqe, de lHexateuque et de lEnnateuque (BETL 203; Leuven: Peeters, 2007) 99128; Schmid (n. 4), 236257.
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The many questions involved with this reconstruction of the emergence and growth of the history of Israel in the Pentateuch and Former Prophets are not my concern here. What matters is the foundational status of the Exodus tradition in the early Israelite historiography and its presentation, again as a major establishing tradition, in the early (Amos, Hosea) and late ( Jeremiah and Ezekiel) prophecy and some early Psalms. Two competing foundation traditionsthat of Jacob/Abraham and that of the Exodusappear only in the books of Hosea (12:1314) and Ezekiel (20:510; 33:24), as against all other early works in which only one tradition appears: that of the Exodus.7 The exceptional place of the Exodus tradition in these early works and in the historical consciousness in the Northern Kingdom and probably also in the Kingdom of Judah further emphasizes the question of the authenticity of the historical memory reflected in the story of the Exodus. The late date at which the Exodus story was first composed in writing ( probably in the seventh century BCEsee below), as well as its literary and theological nature, present serious obstacles in clarifying its historical background. Scholars compared various details mentioned in the plot with the reality of Egypt at the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty (12951186) and the first half of the Twentieth (11861136), the period in which the episode is dated according to the sequence of biblical historiography.8 However, no evidence that might be connectedeither directly or indirectlyto the Exodus story was ever detected in the Egyptian texts (see below). Examination of the archaeological data from Iron Age I sites that were later integrated within the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah did not produce any evidence that sheds light on the Exodus story. Were this not mentioned in the Bible, no scholar would
7 A. de Pury (n. 5 1991) 7896; idem, Situer le cycle de Jacob. Quelques rflexions, vingtcinq ans plus tard, in A. Wnin, ed., Studies in the Book of Genesis: Literature, Redaction and History (BETL 155; Leuven: Peeters, 2001) 227235; idem, Le choix de lancestre, TZ 57 (2001) 105114; Schmid (n. 4), 7380. 8 Of the extensive literature written on the Exodus, see W. Spiegelberg, Der Aufenthalt Israels in gypten im Lichte der aegyptischen Monumente (Strassburg: Schlesier & Schweikhardt, 1904); H. Cazelles, Les localizations de lExode et la critique littraire, RB 62 (1955) 321364; idem, Peut-on circonscrire un vnement Exode?, in E.-M. Laperrousaz, ed. La Protohistoire dIsral: De lexode la monarchie (Paris: Cerf, 1990) 2965; K.A. Kitchen, Exodus, in D.N. Freedman, ed., Anchor Biblical Dictionary, vol. II (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 700708; B. Halpern, The Exodus from Egypt, Myth or Reality?, in H. Shanks, ed., The Rise of Ancient Israel (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeological Society, 1992) 87113; idem, The Exodus and the Israelite Historian, Eretz Israel 24 (1993) 89*96*; J.K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); M. Grg, Der sogenannte Exodus zwischen Erinerung und Polemik, in I. ShirunGrumach, ed., Jerusalem Studies in Egyptology (gypten und Altes Testament 40; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998) 159172.
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have guessed that even a small group from among those who settled in the highlands or the Negev arrived from Egypt.9 The assumption accepted by many scholars is that a small group of people of West Semitic origin was initially in Egypt and, upon migrating to Canaan, joined the pastoral groups that settled in the highlands and adjacent peripheral areas. Scholars attribute to this group the transfer of the tradition of bondage to Egypt and the miraculous escape by divine help. Researchers have suggested that a certain elite group whose identity cannot be established originated from Egypt, and in light of its political-social-cultural influence was able to transform its exclusive historical memory into an all-Israelite historical consciousness. As a result of this understanding, the Exodus story is related with the utmost brevity in some new books that describe in critical manner the history of Israel,10 and is even presented as a myth that mainly reflects the reality of late periods.11 However, the central place of the Exodus tradition in early biblical historiography and prophecy does not suit these assumptions, which fail to explain how an event that was originally connected to a small isolated group became the basis for the central claim of origin and establishment of the people of Israel. Indeed, the supposition that such early and deeply entrenched common Israelite religious consciousness could have grown from the experience of a small group does not make sense. We should look for another explanation for this central historical-religious perception. The historical investigation of the Exodus story has not yielded satisfactory results, no doubt on account of the well-known shortcomings of the biblical text for historical research. Thus we must turn research attention elsewhere, to concentrate on the way in which the historical memory of the Exodus has emerged and developed. In this context we may inquire regarding the background of the perception that Israel emerged as the people of YHWH at a time when the Israelite peoples were subjugated to Egypt. How did the tradition of liberation from Egyptian bondage became a foundational story of the
9 W.G. Dever, Is There Any Archaeological Evidence of the Exodus, in E.S. Frerichs and L.H. Lesko, eds., Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997) 6786; J. Weinstein, Exodus and Archaeological Reality, ibid., 87103. 10 G.W. Ahlstrm, The History of Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexanders Conquest (Sheffield: Academic Press 1993); J.M. Miller and J.H. Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah (2nd revised edition; Louisville and London 2006). 11 I. Finkelstein and N.A. Silberman, The Bible Unearthed. Archaeologys New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2001) 4871; D.B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: University Press, 1992) 408422; M. Liverani, Israels History and the History of Israel (London and Oakville: Equinox, 2005) 277282; L.L. Grabbe, Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2007) 8488.
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people of Israel? We must also explain why the perception of the Israelite past was shaped in this unique fashion and what function it filled in the historical consciousness of early Israelite society. To answer these questions, we must first present the material for discussion. I will first discuss the situation in Canaan under the Egyptian Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. This will be followed by a survey of comparisons between the Exodus story and the contemporaneous Egyptian sources. In light of the results of this historical discussion, I will re-examine the story of the Exodus, reconsider the elements by which it was constructed, and ultimately pose the questions of which historical memory is embedded in the Exodus story and what objectives this exceptional memory achieved in the identity construction of early Israelite society.
Egypt and Canaan during the Nineteenth Dynasty Following the campaigns of Thutmose III (14791425), Canaan became an Egyptian province. To administer the conquered province, Egypt annexed six Canaanite citiesfour along the coast (Gaza, Jaffa, Ullasa and Su mur) and two in the internal districts (Beth-Shean and Kumidi)and established there Egyptian centers of government. Egyptian garrisons and officials were settled in these centers and administered the conquered territories. The territory of Canaan was divided among many city-states, each governed by its ruler who was responsible to the Pharaoh for the territory under his command. The Canaanite rulers were commanded to obey the Egyptian officials, paid tributes and gifts to Egypt, served in the Egyptian garrison cities and, if requested, participated in Egyptian military campaigns. They were able to mobilize small armed forces to defend their kingdoms, but could not withstand the overwhelming military power of Egypt. The nomadic elements ( pastoralist groups and bands of refugees [Apiru]) formed the main threat to the local rulers and endangered stability in the land, and Egypt sometimes cooperated with the local rulers in an effort to curtail their movements and diminish their power.12 Overall, the Egyptian involvement in the internal affairs of Canaan during the Eighteenth Dynasty was minimal. They succeeded in controlling the entire
12 W. Helck, Die Beziehungen gyptens zu Vorderasien im 3. und 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (2nd revised ed.; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971) 107188, 246255; N. Naaman, Economic Aspects of the Egyptian Occupation of Canaan, IEJ 31 (1981) 172185; D.B. Redford, Egypt and Canaan in the New Kingdom (Beer-Sheva IV; Ben-Gurion University: University Press, 1990) 2739; idem (n. 11) 148177, 192213; M. Liverani, Prestige and Interest. International Relations in the Near East ca. 16001100 B.C. (Padova: Sargon SRL, 1990).
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region of Canaan by stationing some garrisons and officials in key places and placing responsibility on the vassals for all occurrences within their territories. The Pharaohs conducted a number of campaigns to defend the northern frontier of their Asiatic province and sometimes sent small military units to secure its internal stability. This status quo was shaken when the Hittites defeated Mitanni, Egypts ally, and conquered all of the kingdoms along the northern border of Canaan. But although the armed struggle between the two empires started already in the late years of the Eighteenth Dynasty, its effect on the Egyptian holding in Canaan was mainly manifest during the Nineteenth Dynasty. No major sources have been uncovered for the period of the NineteenthTwentieth Dynasties similar to the Amarna archive of the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The main sources available are the Egyptian royal inscriptions, some school texts and the archaeological artifacts unearthed in excavations conducted at Canaanite sites.13 Hence, our information on these two dynasties is limited and we should take into account the limitation of sources when trying to reconstruct the history of Canaan in the thirteenth-twelfth centuries BCE. The struggle between Egypt and Hatti was accelerated following the ascent of Sety I (12941279) to the throne. Upon his ascent, rebellions broke out in Canaan, but they were rapidly crushed. Sety conducted campaigns to the Egyptian-Hittite border in an effort to push the Hittites from central Syria. Ramesses II (12791212), his heir, continued this policy, but was defeated in a major campaign he conducted to central Syria in his fifth year as king (1275). Following his failed campaign, the Egyptian hold over the areas of Canaan was shaken and the Pharaoh conducted several campaigns to Canaan to suppress the rebellions. Sety and Ramesses topographical inscriptions mention many cities, but it is difficult to establish which cities were actually conquered and which were registered mainly to praise the Pharaoh and magnify his deeds. To fasten their control on Canaan, the rulers of the Nineteenth Dynasty built a network of fortresses, silos, way stations and centers of government
13 Helck (n. 12) 189223; Redford (n. 11) 177191; A. Spalinger, The Northern Wars of Seti I: An Integrative Study, JARCE 16 (1979) 2947; K.A. Kitchen, Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1983); idem, Ramesside Inscriptions Translated & Annotated: Translations, volume I: Ramesses I, Sethos I and Contemporaries (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); idem, Ramesside Inscriptions Translated & Annotated: Translations, volume II: Ramesses II, Royal Inscriptions (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); C.R. Higginbotham, Egyptianization and Elite Emulation in Ramesside Palestine, Government and Accommodation on the Imperial Periphery (Leiden: Brill, 2000, 1928).
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along the north Sinai route that led from Egypt to south Canaan.14 Ample evidence of the extensive Egyptian activity in north Sinai at the time of the Nineteenth-Twentieth Dynasties has been found in the excavations and surveys conducted there, corroborating the evidence of the Egyptian sources and reliefs.15 The inscriptions of Sety and Ramesses mention a series of wars they conducted against the pastoral-nomads (Shasu) located in Canaan. The wars were waged along the main route that led from Egypt to Canaan, along the southern periphery, in the area of Beth-Shean and the neighboring highlands.16 It seems that the number of nomads increased in this period and their presence was more strongly perceived than before. This growing magnitude obliged the Egyptians to conduct campaigns to restrain their power and curtail their movements in the land.
14 A.H. Gardiner, The Ancient Military Road between Egypt and Palestine, JEA 6 (1920) 99116; C. Broadhurst, The Artistic Interpretation of Sety I War Reliefs, JARCE 25 (1989) 229234; W.J. Murnane, The Road to Kadesh: A Historical Interpretation of the Battle Reliefs of Sety I at Karnak (2nd revised ed.; Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations 42; Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1990); G. Cavillier, The Ancient Military Road between Egypt and Palestine Reconsidered: A Reassessment, GM 185 (2001) 2333. 15 E.D. Oren, Migdol: A New Fortress on the Edge of the Eastern Nile Delta, BASOR 256 (1984) 744; idem, The Ways of Horus in Northern Sinai, in A.F. Rainey, ed., Egypt, Israel, Sinai: Archaeological and Historical Relationships in the Biblical Period (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1987) 69119; idem, The Establishment of Egyptian Imperial Administration the Ways of Horus: An Archaeological Perspective from North Sinai, in E. Czerny et al. (eds.), Timelines. Studies in Honour of Manfred Bietak, Vol. II (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 149; Leuven: Peeters, 2006) 279292; J.K. Hoffmeier, The Walls of the Ruler in Egyptian Literature and the Archaeological Record: Investigating Egypts Eastern Frontier in the Bronze Age, BASOR 343 (2006) 120, with earlier literature. 16 W. Helck, Die Bedrohung Palstinas durch einwandernde Gruppen am Ende der 18. und am Anfang der 19. Dynastie, VT 18 (1968) 472-480; R. Giveon, Les bdouins shosou des documents gyptiens (Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui 18; Leiden: Brill, 1971); W.L. Ward, The Shasu Bedouin. Notes on a Recent Publication, JESHO 15 (1972) 35-60; idem, Shasu, in D.N. Freedman, ed., Anchor Biblical Dictionary, vol. V (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 11651167; M. Weippert, Semitische Nomaden des zweiten Jahrtausends. ber die 3w der gyptischen Quellen, Biblica 55 (1974) 265-280, 427-433; M. Grg, Zur Geschichte der 3w, Orientalia 45 (1976) 424-428; idem, Tuthmosis III. und die 3w-Region, JNES 38 (1979) 199-202; idem, Namenstudien VII: 3w-Beduinen und Sut-Nomaden, BN 11 (1980) 18-20; Redford (n. 12) 6875; idem (n. 11) 269280; A.F. Rainey, Unruly Elements in Late Bronze Canaanite Society, in D.P. Wright, D.N. Freedman and A. Hurvitz, eds., Pomegranates and Golden Bells. Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 481496; idem, Amarna and Later: Aspects of Social History, in W.G. Dever and S. Gitin, eds., Symbiosis, Symbolism and the Power of the Past. Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina (Proceedings of the Centennial Symposium, W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and American Schools of Oriental Research, Jerusalem, May 2931, 2000; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003) 169187.
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With the rise of Merneptah (12131203) rebellion broke once again, and in one of his early years the new king conducted a campaign to Canaan, conquering Ashkelon, Gezer and Yenoam and defeating a tribal group named Israel.17 The location of Israel cannot be established with certainty and all attempts to locate it in the central highlandsin the area of the later Kingdom of Israelrest on a pre-conceived idea of its place. The campaign against Israel must be evaluated in the context of the struggle conducted by the rulers of the Nineteenth Dynasty against the pastoral-nomads (Shasu) and the bands (Apiru). The innovative element in Merneptahs inscription is the explicit naming of the group rather than using the common generic designation Shasu.18 It is well known that the ethnic identity of social groups is likely to develop under the pressures of powerful empires. The emergence of a peripheral entity called Israel whose members must have shared intensified ethnic sentiments was probably the outcome of the growing Egyptian pressure on the peripheral areas of Canaan in the thirteenth century BCE. Egyptian royal inscriptions relating to the wars against non-submissive population groups from Canaan with Egypt frequently mention these groups deportation to Egypt.19 It goes without saying that mass deportations were not
17 H. Engel, Die Siegesstele Merenptah, Bibica 60 (1979) 373399; G. Fecht, Die Israelstele, Gestalt und Aussage, in M. Grg, ed., Fontes atque Pontes. Eine Festgabe fr Hellmut Brunner (gypten und Altes Testament 5; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983) 106138; E. Hornung, Die Israelstele des Merneptah, ibid., 224233; L.E. Stager, Merneptah, Israel and Sea Peoples. New Light on an Old Relief, Eretz Israel 18 (1985) 56*64*; F.J. Yurco, Merneptahs Canaanite Campaign, JARCE 23 (1986) 189215; D.B. Redford, The Ashkelon Relief at Karnak and the Israel Stela, IEJ 36 (1986) 188200; I. Singer, Merneptahs Campaign to Canaan and the Egyptian Occupation of the Southern Coastal Plain of Palestine in the Ramesside Period, BASOR 269 (1988) 110; M.G. Hasel, Israel in the Merneptah Stela, BASOR 296 (1994) 4561; idem, The Structure of the Final Hymnic-Poetic Unit on the Merneptah Stela, ZAW 116 (2004) 7581; K.A. Kitchen, The Physical Text of Merneptahs Victory Hymn (The Israelite Stela), JSSEA 24 (1994) 7176; K.L. Sparks, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel. Prolegomena to the Study of Ethnic Sentiments and Their Expression in the Hebrew Bible, Winona Lake 1998, 94109, 122124; A.F. Rainey, Israel in Merneptahs Inscription and Reliefs, IEJ 51 (2001) 5775; L.D. Morenz, WortwitzIdeologie Geschichte: Israel im Horizont Mer-en-Ptahs, ZAW 120 (2008) 113. 18 In his second stele from Beth-shean, Sety mentions the Apiru of the mountain of Yarmutu who, along with a tribal group called Tayaru, attacked the Asiatics (ammu) of Ruhma. The identity of the Tayaru and the location of Ruhma are unknown, whereas the Apiru were probably located in the highlands of Issachar north of Beth-Shean. For the stele, see W.F. Albright, The Smaller Beth-Shan Stele of Sethos I (13091290 B.C.), BASOR 125 (1952) 2432; Kitchen (n. 13 1993) 1213. 19 J.J. Janssen, Eine Beuteliste von Amenophis II. und das Problem der Sklaverei im Alten gypten, JEOL 17 (1963) 141147; Helck (n. 12) 342369; E. Feucht, Kinder Fremder Vlker in gypten, SAK 17 (1990) 177204; D.B. Redford, Observations on the Sojourn of the Bene-Israel, in Frerichs and Lesko, eds. (n. 9) 5766; idem (n. 11) 207209, 221237;
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restricted to Canaan and took place in all countries where the Pharaohs conducted military campaigns (Kush, Canaan, north and central Syria and Libya). The number of deportees from Asia was sometime very high and included tens of thousands of prisoners that served in the royal household, or were donated in great numbers to temples and even delivered to private persons. The following passage from a papyrus of the Twentieth Dynasty illustrates the deportation of prisoners to Egypt:20
I have brought back in great numbers those that my sword has spared, with their hands tied behind their backs before my horses, and their wives and children in the tens of thousands, and their livestock in hundreds of thousands. I have imprisoned their leaders in fortresses bearing my name, and I have added to them chief archers and tribal chiefs, branded and enslaved, tattooed with my name, and their wives and children have been treated in the same way.
In some instances, the Egyptians conducted two-way deportation, transferring a certain population to a distant location and settling another group of deportees to take its place. This is evident from an inscription of Ramesses II from Abu Simbel:21
The perfect god, who kills the Nine Bows, who crushes the lands of the north, who is powerful in these lands, who bears the land of Nubia into the land of the north, and the Asiatics into Nubia. He has placed the Shasu Asiatics into the western land, he has settled the Libyans in the hills (of Asia), filling the fortresses that he has built with people captured by his mighty arm.
Two-way deportation is also mentioned in two cuneiform letters that the Pharaoh sent to two south Syrian Canaanite rulers ordering them to send the captured Apiru to Kush in place of the inhabitants of Kush, which were formerly deported to an unknown place.22 Canaanite rulers also sent slaves to the Pharaoh as part of their regular tribute or as a gift. For example, the king of Gezer sent 46 maidservants, five attendants and five guards, and the king of Jerusalem sent ten slaves, 21 young women and 80 prisoners. According to another letter, the Pharaoh sent an
A. Loprieno, Slaves, in S. Donadoni, ed., The Egyptians (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997) 200212; E. Bresciani, Foreigners, ibid., 221253. 20 Loprieno (n. 19) 204205. 21 Bresciani (n. 19) 235. 22 D.O. Edzard, Die Tontafeln von Kmid el-Lz, in D.O. Edzard, et al., eds., Kmid el-Lz - Kumidi. Schriftdokumente aus Kmid el-Lz. (Saarbrcker Beitrge zur Altertumskunde 7; Bonn: Rudolf Hablet Verlag, 1970) 5560.
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official to buy 40 women for 160 diban (1,600 shekels) of silver, emphasizing that the women must be very beautiful, in whom there is no defect.23 Scholars have emphasized the internal changes that took place in Egypt during the time of the New Kingdom as a result of the imperial policy. The Egyptian government had plenty of human resources of foreign extraction that could have been exploited for public and private works. The term slaves (h m.w) designated only people of foreign origin, whereas the term for enslaved Egyptians was the generic designation for slaves (b3k.w), although in reality there was no difference between slave of local and foreign origin. The negative biblical description of Egypt as house of bondage reflects well the Egyptian reality of the New Kingdom. The slaves arrived from all the countries bordering Egypt; slaves of Canaanite origin constituted a segment of the many prisoners and deportees that were brought to Egypt during this period.
Canaan and Egypt during the Twentieth Dynasty The three last Pharaohs of the Nineteenth Dynasty (Amenmesse, Sety II and Siptah12031188) do not mention in their inscriptions campaigns to Canaan, but the discovery of artifacts bearing their names indicates that Egyptian rule in the country continued uninterruptedly.24 After the death of Siptah, queen Tewosret (11881186), the widow of Siptah, ascended to the Egyptian throne. Her ascendance aroused a revolt headed by Sethnacht, who won the struggle and took the throne of Egypt. As he was not descendant of the Pharaohs of the former dynasty, Sethnacht was considered the founder of a new dynasty.25 The most remarkable ruler of the Twentieth Dynasty is Ramesses III (11841153), during whose reign the decisive battles against the Sea Peoples were conducted. Large emigrating groups of Sea Peoples arrived at the coast of Canaan after they destroyed the Hittite empire and the kingdoms of its vassals
23 For translation of the three letters, see W.L. Moran, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) 315, 331, 366. For discussion of their contents, see N. Naaman, Dispatching Canaanite Maidservants to the Pharaoh, ANES 39 (2002) 7682. 24 Most remarkable is a faience vessel engraved with the royal cartouche of Queen Tewosret that was unearthed in the excavations of Tell Deir Alla, near the confluence of the Jabbok River. See J. Yoyotte, Un souvenir du pharaon Taousert en Jordanie, VT 12 (1962) 464469. 25 On the rise of Pharaoh Setnacht, see R. Drenkhahn, Die Elephantine-Stele des Setnacht und ihr historischer Hintergrund (gyptologischr Abhandlungen 36; Wiesbaden 1980); A. Spalinger, Review of R. Drenkhahn, Die Elephantine-Stele, BiOr 39 (1982) 272288.
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in north Syria.26 In the inscriptions and reliefs of his eighth year on the throne (1178), Ramesses describes the battles at sea and on shore that he waged with the Sea Peoples.27 The sea battle was waged in the Nile Delta, whereas the location of the continental battle is unknown, but probably near the northern border of the Egyptian province in Asia. An analysis of the available sources indicates that the Pharaoh had between ten and 15 years to prepare for battle. Ramesses must have organized successfully for battle and succeeded in rescuing the coastal cities of Canaan from the sad fate of the coastal cities of the Hittite empire. The Egyptian hold over Canaan, which prevailed strongly throughout the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty, reached its peak in the Twentieth Dynasty. Existing sources do not convey the background of the policy, but it is probably the direct result of the growing danger to the Egyptian government in Canaan after the invasion of the Sea Peoples. It is possible, even likely, that the political-military situation brought about rebellions and the deterioration of internal security in Canaan. This might have compelled the Egyptians to take drastic measures in order to maintain their control in the area. Indeed, close examination of the Egyptian findings discovered in sites in south Canaan and the Beth-Shean and Jezreel valleys shows a change in the Egyptian imperial policy. Ostraca written in Hieratic have been discovered in several Canaanite locations including the southern locales of Deir el-Balah, Tell el-Farah (south), Tel Haror, Tel Sera, Ashkelon, Lachish, and Gath (Tell es S fi), as well as Beth-Shean in the northern plain, illustrating the Egyptian aim of increasing
26 M. Liverani, The Collapse of the Near Eastern Regional System at the End of the Bronze Age: The Case of Syria, in M. Rowlands, M. Larsen and K. Kristiansen, eds., Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World (Cambridge: University Press, 1987) 6673; R. Drews, The End of the Bronze Age. Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. (Princeton: University Press, 1993; idem, Medinet Habu: Oxcarts, Ships, and Migration Theories, JNES 59 (2000) 161 190; W.A. Ward and M.S. Joukowsky, eds., The Crisis Years: The 12th Century B.C.From Beyond the Danube to the Tigris (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1992); B. Cifola, The Role of the Sea Peoples at the End of the Late Bronze Age: A Reassessment of Textual and Archaeological Evidence, Oriens Antiqvi Miscellanea 1 (1994) 123; S. Gitin, A. Mazar and E. Stern, eds., Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BCE in Honor of Trude Dothan ( Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1998); E.D. Oren, ed., The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment (University Museum Monograph 108; Philadelphia: The University Museum, 2000). 27 W. Helck, Nochmals zu Ramses III. Seevlkerbericht, SAK 14 (1987) 129145; E. Edel, Der Seevlkerbericht aus dem 8. Jahre Ramses III., BIFAO 97 (1985) 223237; B. Cifola, Ramses III and the Sea Peoples: A Structural Analysis of the Medinet Habu Inscriptions, Orientalia 57 (1988) 275306; idem, The Terminology of Ramses IIIs Historical Records with a Formal Analysis of the War Scenes, Orientalia 60 (1991) 957; D.B. Redford, Egypt and Western Asia in the Late New Kingdom: An Overview, in Oren, ed. (n. 25) 120; D. OConnor, The Sea Peoples and the Egyptian Sources, in Oren, ed. (n. 25) 85102.
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the economic exploitation of their Asiatic province.28 Since the Egyptian occupation of Canaan in the time of Thutmose III, the correspondence between Egypt and Canaan was conducted in Akkadian cuneiform, and no evidence exists of writing hieratic Egyptian until the time of the Twentieth Dynasty. The discovery of small bowls and ostraca carrying hieratic script in various Canaanite sites indicates the presence of scribes of Egyptian origin in these places. Some inscriptions mention a very large amount of grain and it seems that the delivery of grain taxes to Egyptian temples in Canaan, or in Egypt, was imposed on the inhabitants of these places. Governors houses constructed in the Egyptian style were built in several places (Tell el-Farah [south], Tell Jemmeh, Tel Sera, Tell el-H esi, Aphek, Beth-Shean) and might have been built for Egyptian officials.29 A bronze object carrying the cartouche of Ramesses III was discovered at Lachish, a formerly Canaanite city-state,30 and Egyptian influence is recognized in other artifacts discovered in the city (Level VI). Three scarabs bearing the inscription house ( pr) of Ramesses governor of Heliopolis were discovered in Tell el-Farah (south) and BethShemesh. The scarabs served as administrative seals, probably of a local institution subordinate to Amuns temple at Gaza.31
28 J. erny, Egyptian Hieratic, in O. Tufnell, Lachish IV: The Bronze Age (London: Oxford University Press, 1958) 132133; M. Gilula, An Inscription in Egyptian Hieratic from Lachish, Tel Aviv 3 (1976) 107108; O. Goldwasser, The Lachish Hieratic Bowl Once Again, Tel Aviv 9 (1982) 137138; idem, Hieratic Inscriptions from Tel Sera in Southern Canaan, Tel Aviv 11 (1984) 7793; idem, An Egyptian Scribe from Lachish and the Hieratic Tradition of the Hebrew Kingdoms, Tel Aviv 18 (1991) 248253; idem, A Fragment of an Hieratic Ostracon from Tel Haror, Qadmoniot 14 (1991) 19 (Hebrew); S. Wimmer, Ein chtungstext aus Israel/Palstina, Sesto Congresso Internazionale di Egittologia, vol 2) Torino: Societa Italiana per il Gas, 1993) 571578; idem, Der Bogen der Anat in Bet-Schean?, BN 73 (1994) 3641; O. Goldwasser and S. Wimmer, Hieratic Fragments from Tell el-Farah (South), BASOR 313 (1999) 3942; idem, A New Hieratic Ostracon from Ashkelon, Tel Aviv 35 (2008) 6572; Higginbotham (n. 13) 6162; D. Sweeney, The Hieratic Inscriptions, D. Ussishkin, The Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (19731994) (Monograph Series of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, No. 22; Tel Aviv 2004) 1601 1617; A.M. Maeir, M. Martin and S.J. Wimmer, An Incised Hieratic Inscription from Tell es S fi, Israel, gypten und Levate 14 (2004) 125134; S.J. Wimmer and A.M. Maeir, The Prince of Safit?. A Late Bronze Age Hieratic Inscription from Tell es S fi/Gath, ZDPV 123 (2007) 3748. 29 E.D. Oren, Governors Residences in Canaan under the New Kingdom: A Case Study of Egyptian Administration, JSSEA 14 (1985) 3756. 30 R. Giveon, An Inscription of Rameses III from Lachish, Tel Aviv 10 (1983) 176177; R. Giveon, D. Sweeney and N. Lalkin, The Inscription of Ramesses III, in Ussishkin (n. 27) 16261628. 31 C. Uehlinger, Der Amun-Tempel Ramses III. in p3Knn, seine sdpalstinischen Tempelgter und der bergang von der gypter- zur Philisterherrschaft: ein Hinweis auf einige wenig beachtete Skaraben, ZDPV 104 (1988) 915.
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These artifacts in addition to others corroborate the assumption that large areas in south Canaan, including the former city-state of Lachish and possibly also Gath, were incorporated into the Egyptian center of Gaza. Egyptian officials or scribes were settled in those places and were responsible for delivering part of their production to the centres of Egyptian government in south Canaan (Gaza and Jaffa). Itamar Singer suggested that Ashkelon, the important coastal city, and Gezer, the central city in the northern Shephelahboth conquered by Merneptahwere also annexed by the Egyptians.32 Excavations conducted in the two cities did not produce clear evidence of annexation, and it is difficult to decide on this matter. Assuming for the moment that Singers suggestion is correct, it implies that under the Twentieth Dynasty, the entire area of south Canaan up to the sources of the Yarkon River was directly governed by the Egyptians. The Great Papyrus Harris registers many donations of serfs, cattle, grain and oil that Ramesses III made to temples in Egypt, in particular to the temple of Amun at Heliopolis. He also donated many towns in Egypt and nine cities in Khuru (i.e., Canaan) to the temple of Amun. We should not assume that temples of Amun were built in these nine cities (whose identity remains unknown); rather, the taxes of the cities were brought to the treasury of Amuns temple at Heliopolis.33 Another passage in this papyrus reads as follows:34
I built for you (i.e., Amun) a house of mysteries in the land of Djahi like the horizon of heaven which is in the sky. The House of Ramesses III, l.p.h., in P3Canaan is as bequest for your name. I created your great atatue resting within it, Amun of Ramesses III, l.p.h. The foreigners of Retenu come bearing their tribute before it according to its divinity.
32 Singer (n. 17) 110; idem, Egyptians, Canaanites, and Philistines in the Period of the Emergence of Israel, in I. Finkelstein and N. Naaman, eds., From Nomadism to Monarchy. Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel ( Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and Israel Exploration Society, and Washington: Biblical Archaeological Society, 1994) 286289; idem, An Egyptian Governor Residency at Gezer?, Tel Aviv 1314 (198687) 2631. For further discussions of the status of Gezer, see A.M. Maeir, Remarks on a Supposed Egyptian Residency at Gezer, Tel Aviv 1516 (198889) 6567; S. Bunimovitz, An Egyptian Governors Residency at Gezer, ibid., 6876. 33 A. Alt, gyptische Tempel in Palstina und die Landnahme der Philister, ZDPV 67 (1944) 120 (reprint: Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. I [Mnchen: C.H. Beck, 1953], 216230); J.A. Wilson, Egyptian Historical Texts, in ANET, 260261; S. Wimmer, (No) More Egyptian Temples in Canaan and Sinai, in Shirun-Grumach, ed. (n. 8) 100101. 34 S. Wimmer, Egyptian Temples in Canaan and Sinai, in S. Israelit-Groll, ed., Studies in Egyptology Presented to Miriam Lichtheim, vol II ( Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990) 10861089; Higginbotham (n. 13) 5659.
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Scholars identified P3Canaan as the city of Gaza, where according to the text an Egyptian temple of Amun was built and a statue of the God established.35 Gazas location near the southern border of Canaan determined its position as the most important Egyptian centre in Canaan. To strengthen its centrality, Ramesses III constructed there a temple for the Egyptian national god and made it an assembling place for the taxes and gifts of the vassals in Canaan. Gazas centrality is prominent in an Egyptian school exercise, which is a copy of a frontier diary dated to Merneptahs third year in power. The text mentions an accelerated movement of messengers that passed through Gaza either on their way to Canaan or on their way back to Egypt.36 Egyptian activity in south Canaan was not restricted to the inhabited areas. In the area of Timna, about 30 km north of the Gulf of Eilat, the Pharaohs of the Nineteenth Dynasty started quarrying copper and built a small temple dedicated to the Goddess Hathor.37 In Papyrus Harris I, Ramesses III wrote as follows:
I destroyed the people of Seir among the Shasu tribes. I razed their tents: their people, their property, and their cattle as well, without number, pinioned and carried away in captivity, as the tribute of Egypt. I gave them to the Ennead of the gods, as slaves for their houses.38
It is possible that Ramesses IIs and Ramesses IIIs campaigns against the Shasu who lived in Seir, namely, the Arabah and lands to its west, were directed to defend the copper mines in the Arabah.
35 Alt (n. 33) 14; Helck (n. 12) 275, 304; H.J. Katzenstein, Gaza in the Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom, JAOS 102 (1982) 111113; Wimmer (n. 34) 1088; Higginbotham (n. 13) 5859. 36 W. Wolf, Neue Beitrge zum Tagebuch eines Grenzbeamten, ZS 69 (1933) 3945; A. Alt, Neues aus der Pharaonen Palstinas, PJb 32 (1936) 2633; A.H. Gardiner, LateEgyptian Miscellanies (Brussels: Edition de la Fondation Egyptologique Reine Elisabeth, 1937) 3132; R.A. Caminos, Late Egyptian Miscellanies (Brown Egyptological Studies 1; London: Oxford University Press, 1954) 108113; Wilson (n. 33) 258; Helck (n. 12) 230232; S. Ahituv, Sources for the Study of the Egyptian-Canaanite Border Administration, IEJ 46 (1996) 219224. 37 B. Rothenberg, Timna: Valley of the Biblical Copper Mines, London: Thames & Hudson, 1972; idem, The Egyptian Mining Temple at Timna I (Metal in History 2, Researches in the Arabah 19591984; London: Institute for Archeometallurgical Studies, 1988); idem, Timna, in E. Stern, ed., The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land 4 ( Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Carta, 1993) 14751486; A.R. Schulman, The Royal Butler Ramessesemperre, JARCE 13 (1976) 117130; J.D. Muhly, Timna and King Solomon, BiOr 41 (1984) 275292. 38 Wilson (n. 33) 262a.
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Egyptian presence in the Jezreel and Beth-Shean valleys also intensified during the time of the Nineteenth-Twentieth Dynasties. Many Egyptian artifacts have been discovered in the excavations at Beth-Shean, the major Egyptian centre in the northern valleys. Among these artifacts are two stele of Sety I, a stele of Ramesses II of his eighteenth year as king, large number of architectural fragments carrying inscriptions, and many other Egyptian objects.39 The Egyptian inscriptions mention the name and titles of the fortress commander during the time of Ramesses III, indicating that he carried a military title of high rank and might have supervised the Egyptian royal estates in the valleys of Beth-Shean and Jezreel. A hoard of ivories, the largest collection of its kind from the second millennium BCE, was discovered at Megiddo. The ivories are diversely styled, many of them fashioned in an Egyptian design or made according to Egyptian prototypes. A magnificent Hittite ivory, made in one of the great centres of the empire, is likewise remarkable.40 Most important is a bronze basis of a statue of Ramesses VI (11411133) that was erected somewhere in the city.41 In light of evidence of the hoard and statue, Singer suggested that under the Egyptian Twentieth Dynasty, Megiddo was also incorporated to the Egyptian territories and served as a major Egyptian centre in north Canaan.42 The finds from south Canaan indicate that the Egyptians governed the area throughout the reign of Ramesses III and withdrew in the time of his heir, Ramesses IV (11531145). They might have ruled the northern valleys of Canaan up to the time of Ramesses VI as indicated by his statue uncovered at Megiddo. The Egyptians succeeded in holding Canaan for about three decades after the beginning of the struggle with the Sea Peoples, but finally gave up and withdrew. As a result of their withdrawal, the system of Canaanite cities collapsed and was utterly destroyed.
39 F.W. James, The Iron Age at Beth Shan: A Study of Levels VI-IV (University Museum, University of Museum Monographs; Philadelphia 1966) 48; W.A. Ward, The Egyptian Inscriptions of Level VI, James, ibid., 161179; F.W. James and P.E. McGovern, The Late Bronze Egyptian Garrison at Beth Shan. A Study of Levels VII and VIII (University Museum, University of Museum Monographs 85; Philadelphia 1993); Singer (n. 32) 292293; Wimmer (n. 34) 10771080; idem (n. 33) 106; C. Higginbotham, The Statue of Ramses III from Beth-Shean, Tel Aviv 26 (1999) 225232; idem, (n. 13) 6467; A. Mazar, Excavations at Tel Beth-Shean, 19891996 (The Beth-Shean Valley Archaeological Project, No 12; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2006). 40 G. Loud, The Megiddo Ivories (Oriental Institute Publications 52; Chicago 1939); I. Singer, The Political Status of Megiddo VIIA, Tel Aviv 1516 (198889) 102106; D. Ussishkin, The Destruction of Megiddo at the End of the Late Bronze Age and Its Historical Significance, Tel Aviv 22 (1995) 240246; idem, (n. 13) 7071, 134136. 41 J.H. Breasted, G. Loud, Megiddo II, Seasons of 193539 (Oriental Institute Publications 62; Chicago 1948) 135138, figs 374375; Singer (n. 40) 106107. 42 Singer (n. 40) 101112.
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Given these conclusions, it is clear that the Egyptian occupation of Canaanparticularly its southern districtswas intensified during the Nineteenth-Twentieth Dynasties. This heightened occupation is reflected in the strengthening of the main route leading from Egypt to Canaan; the fastening of the supervision on the quarry operations in the Arabah; the extensive annexation of Canaanite territories in south Canaan and the northern valleys; the increasing demand of taxes and gifts and the delivery of income from the conquered and incorporated territories to the royal treasury and temples in Egypt; and the intensified supervision of the movements of the pastoral nomads and Apiru bands. Nearly nothing is known about the magnitude of the Egyptian forces stationed in Canaan, but we may assume that they were fortified in this period. The burden imposed on the city-state rulers, the farmers and nomads must have greatly increased, hence the many rebellions and the Egyptian campaigns aimed at suppressing them. Archaeological research shows a drastic increase in the number of Egyptian finds and Egyptian-styled artifacts in the Canaanite strata of the thirteenthtwelfth centuries.43 We may doubt, however, whether the Egyptians sought to Egyptanize Canaan and operated in an effort to accomplish this goal. The objectives of the Egyptian government were imperialistic, aimed at maximal exploitation of its Asiatic province for the benefit of Egypt, not the propagation of Egyptian culture in Canaan. The sources indicate a growing tension at this point between the nomadic elements and the Egyptian government. With the intensification of their activity in the peripheral areas of Canaan, the Egyptians penetrated into the pastoral nomadic territories and clashed with their dwellers. But it is also possible that the collisions are the result of the ascending power of the pastoral nomadic groups and their gradual unification, as might be inferred from the appearance of the entity called Israel in the Merneptah stele (see above). The two groups must have both expanded their presence in the area, so their clash became inevitable. In sum, the Egyptian yoke in south and central Canaan increased with time and reached its height during the Twentieth Dynasty. The growing burden was strongly felt by all sectors of Canaancity dwellers, villages and pastoral nomadsso that the Egyptian withdrawal from Canaan was a great relief to all its inhabitants and opened the way for a new era in the history of the region.
43 J.M. Weinstein, The Egyptian Empire in Palestine: A Reassessment, BASOR 241 (1981) 1723; C. Higginbotham, Elite Emulation and the Egyptian Governance in Ramesside Canaan, Tel Aviv 23 (1996) 154169; idem, (n. 13) 132142.
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The Exodus in Light of the Egyptian Sources Since in most cases, nomads do not leave remains that archaeologists can identify in the area, it is insignificant that remains of pastoral nomadic groups have not been discovered either in the Egyptian Delta or in the Sinai Peninsula. Thus, clearly, archaeology is of no help in the debate over the historicity of the Exodus story. In an effort to examine the historicity of the Exodus story, scholars examined the place names mentioned in the story and compared them with the data extracted from the Egyptian sources of the Nineteenth-Twentieth Dynasties (the period to which the tradition is attributed) on the one hand, and the sources of the time of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty (664525) (the period in which the story was probably written), on the other hand (for details see below). Unfortunately, discerning between the two alternative periods in this context is difficult. Egypt was continuously settled, and many places persisted for hundreds of years, so that some named toponyms might fit both the early and the late periods. Moreover, the documentation of both periods is incomplete. Hence, it is possible that toponyms mentioned in sources dated to one period also existed in the other, and only by chance are missing from the available sources. The Exodus tradition was first written hundreds of years after the period to which it is ascribed. Authors describing events that antedated them by many years tend to unconsciously integrate data that is taken from the reality of their own time. A clear example in the Exodus story is the reference to the way of the land of the Philistines (Exod 13:17) in the description of the escape from Egypt. The Philistines first settled in the second half of the twelfth century, and many years passed until the south Canaanite coast was conceived as the land of the Philistines. The name clearly reflects the reality of the authors time. Moreover, the term r miskent (store cities; Exod 1:11) belongs to a late linguistic strata in the Bible. The noun miskent appears four times in 2 Chronicles (8:36; 16:4; 17:1213; 32:2729) and once in 1 Kings 9:19, in a short passage (vv. 1922) that was inserted at a late stage to the Solomonic story cycle. The noun miskent in the sense of store (lmsknt mqd; mn bwr msknt ) is mentioned several times in the ostraca of Makkedah, which were written in the fourth century BCE.44 The combination r miskent in Exod 1:11 reflects the late date at which the story was written.45
44 H. Lozachmeur and A. Lemaire, Nouveaux ostraca Aramens dIdume, Semitica 46 (1996) 131, with earlier literature in n. 21. 45 Schmid (n. 4, 216217, 224233) dated Exod 1:812, including v. 11b (and they built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Ramesses), to a late post-P redactional layer.
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Finally, we may recall that the detailed descriptions of the route from Egypt to the Sea of Reeds (Exod 12:37a; 13:20; 14:2, 9) were attributed from the beginning of modern biblical research to the Priestly Source that many scholars date to the second half of the sixth century BCE.46 The Exodus tradition might possibly preserve a few ancient memories, but it is unlikely that around 500/600 years after the assumed event (if there was an event), the exact details of the route were still remembered. It is not my intention to discuss in detail the identification of the toponyms mentioned in the Exodus story. An enormous amount of research has been published on this subject.47 It seems that the mention of Ramesses is the most prominent evidence for the antiquity of the biblical tradition. Yet the name Ramesses was known in late periods and does not appear exclusively in the early sources. Biblical Pithom (Pr-Itm, the house of the god Atum) was sometimes identified at Tell er-Rataba, located near Wdi Tumilat and inhabited in the time of the Nineteenth-Twentieth Dynasties. Later, the site was abandoned and the centre was moved to Tell el-Maskhuta, located about 13 km to the east. The latter site was built by Necho II (610595), remained inhabited until the Greek-Roman period and was also called by the name Pithom.48 The identification of biblical Pithomeither in a site of the late New Kingdom (Tell er-Rataba) or in a site dated to the Saitic Dynasty (Tell el-Maskhuta)cannot be determined.
46 R. Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period. Vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the End of the Monarchy (London: SCM, 1994) 2345; Kratz (n. 4) 225247, 319321; Nihan (n. 6) 81122, with earlier literature; de Pury, (n.6) 99128; Schmid (n. 4), 117151, 216257. 47 E.H. Naville, The Geography of the Exodus, JEA 10 (1924) 1839; A.H. Gardiner, The Geography of the Exodus: An Answer to Professor Naville and Others, JEA 10 (1924) 8796; D.B. Redford, Exodus i 11, VT 13 (1963) 401418; idem, An Egyptological Perspective on the Exodus Narrative, in Rainey, ed. (n. 15) 137144; M. Bietak, Comments on the Exodus, in Rainey, ed. (n. 15) 163171; Hoffmeier (n. 8) 176222; K.A. Kitchen, Egyptians and Hebrews, from Raamses to Jericho, in S. Ahituv and E.D. Oren, eds., The Origin of Early IsraelCurrent Debate. Biblical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives (Beer-Sheva XII; BenGurion University: University Press, 1998, 6579; J. Van Seters, The Geography of the Exodus, in J.A. Dearman and M.Graham, eds., The Land that I Will Show You. Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honour of J. Maxwell Miller (Sheffield: Academic Press, 2001) 255276; S. Israelit-Groll, The Egyptian Background of the Exodus and the Crossing of the Reed Sea: A New Reading in Papyrus Anastasi VIII, I. Shirun-Grumach, ed. (n. 8) 173192; idem, P3twf, in E.D. Oren and S. Ahituv, eds., Aharon Kempinski Memorial Volume. Studies in Archaeology and Related Disciplines (Beer-Sheva XV; Ben-Gurion University: University Press, 2002) 138142; J.K. Hoffmeier, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition (Oxford: University Press, 2005) 5368. 48 Hoffmeier (n. 47) 5368, with earlier literature.
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Succoth (Egyptian tk w) was probably the name of a district that ran on the two sides of Wdi Tumilat. Exod 12:37a (the Israelites journeyed from Ramesses to Succoth) describes a campaign that was conducted from the area of Qantir (ancient Ramesses) along Wdi Tumilat (Succoth) toward the Egyptian frontier in the east. The text of Exod 13:1718 (. . . God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines . . . So God led the people roundabout, by way of the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds) clearly states that the route of the campaign turned east/southeast rather then north. Thus, it is most likely identifying the Sea of Reeds (Egyptian p3 twf , the reed) with the Lake of Timsah, at the eastern end of Wdi Tumilat. The identification of the other toponyms mentioned in the story (Etham, Pi-hahiroth, Migdol, Baal-zephon) is disputed. Pi-hahiroth may probably be identified with p3h r, a name of a canal or lake mentioned in papyrus of the time of Merneptah (Papyrus Anastasi III). Migdol is a common name in the eastern Delta region as the first element of toponyms whose second element is a royal name. A place called Baal-zephon located in the eastern Delta does not appear in sources of the New Kingdom, whereas three temples of Baal-Zephon are known from the Saitic and Hellenistic periods. One is located in the northeastern border of Egypt, the second in Tahpanhes (Tell Defenne) and the third (called Migdol of Baal-zephon) is mentioned in a Seleucid papyrus. Accordingly, three identifications have been proposed: at Ras Qasrun, north of the Sirbonic lake; at Tell Defenne, in the southern end of the Menzeleh Lake; and in a site near the Bitter Lakes. We may conclude that there is neither clear evidence that connects the Exodus story to the period to which it is attributed in the biblical tradition, nor clear evidence that connects it to the Saitic periodthe time in which the story was written. To investigate the historical background of the Exodus story, we must examine broader, more general considerations. Kenneth Kitchen claimed that if the Exodus story was invented in a late period, the author would have mentioned late central places like Zoan and Bubastis (compare Ps 78:12, 48), and not Ramesses.49 However, all toponyms mentioned in the Exodus story are located in the district between the Pelusic arm of the Nile, Wdi Tumilat and Egypts eastern frontier, whereas the cities named by Kitchen are located outside this region. Some scholars have claimed that many Levites carried Egyptian names and hence participated in the historical Exodus.50 Moses is indeed an Egyptian name. However, from among the Levites mentioned in Exod 6:1625, only
Kitchen (n. 47) 8184. W.F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (New York: Doubleday, 1968) 165; A. Cody, A History of Old Testament Priesthood (Analecta Biblica 35; Rome: Pontifical Biblical
50 49
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the names Moses/Mushi and Phinehas are Egyptian, whereas several other names (Aaron, Hophni, Merari) are not Egyptians.51 Several derivations have been offered for the name Levi and there is no scholarly agreement regarding its origin.52 Thus, no real foundation exists for the assumption of the Egyptian origin of the Levites. Moreover, several Egyptian names appear in the Samaria ostraca,53 and other names are known from the Bible. Since Egypt ruled Canaan for hundreds of years, some Egyptian names might have been entrenched in Canaan and do not indicate the Egyptian origin of their bearers. Against the assumption of the antiquity and authenticity of the Exodus story, Donald Redford emphasized that the prisoners of war, deportees and immigrants who entered Egypt during the New Kingdom were distributed to various localities, and no evidence exists that they were able to keep their communal unity.54 The only ethnic group that settled in one place in great numbers is the Libyans who frequently migrated to Egypt through Egypts poorly-guarded western front (unlike its well-guarded eastern front). He further emphasized that pastoral nomads of West-Semitic origin were not a significant group, nor even a prominent minority group, among the population of the Delta. The biblical picture of the Israelites as a large community, with its own leadership and autonomy, living in segregation from the Egyptians, does not fit the reality of Egypt in the time of the New Kingdom, but reflects well the reality of Egypt from the Saitic period onward. The eastern Delta frontier was well guarded. It was defended by a system of fortresses and supervised by special police forces, and patrols surveyed the desert area in an effort to keep nomads out and prevent the escape of runaways from Egypt to Canaan.55 It is unlikely that a large group of pastoral nomads could have crossed this well-guarded frontier without clashing with its defenders. Thus, only small groups could have infiltrated through Egypts eastern border. Moreover, the motif of the well-guarded frontier is entirely missing in the Exodus story. Any reader of the story would conclude that the frontier was
Institute, 1969) 3940, 7071; W. Propp, Monotheism and Moses: The Problem of Early Israelite Religion, UF 31 (1999) 559560 and n. 107. 51 R. Zadok, Die nichthebrischen Namen der Israeliten vor dem hellenistischen Zeitalter, UF 17 (1985) 392395; idem, The Pre-Hellenistic Israelite Anthroponymy and Prosopgraphy (Leuven: Peeters, 1988); Redford (n. 11) 417419. 52 D. Kellermann, lwH ; lewH yH m, in G.J. Botterweck, H. Ringgren and H.-J. Fabry, eds., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 7, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995, 486490. 53 A. Lemaire, Inscriptions hbraques, vol. 1: Les ostraca (Paris: Cerf, 1977) 4950, 54. 54 Redford (n. 19) 5962. 55 Hoffmeier (n. 15) 120, with earlier literature.
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mainly open, closed by only a water obstacle, and that pursuit after runaways was the common practice to prevent escape from Egypt. Finally, scholars have noted that the description of the Egyptian bondage better reflects the reality of Western Asia in the eighth-seventh centuries BCE, in particular the organization of wide-scale building operations in the Assyrian empire, than the reality of Egypt at the time of the New Kingdom.56 Indeed, the descriptions of the building of Dr-arrukn, in the course of which governors were ordered to supply huge number of bricks and/or many workers for the building operations, are quite similar to the description of the hard labour imposed by the Egyptians on the Israelites in Egypt. In sum, the Exodus story contains a number of characteristics that reflect the late date in which it was written, while it is difficult to find distinct characteristics that reflect the period to which the story is attributed. It is clear that the late authors unintentionally integrated into the story many details of the reality of their time and thereby considerably distanced it from the reality prevailing in Egypt in the time of the New Kingdom.
The Exodus Story: Between Historical Memory and Literary-Theological Shaping Scholars conclusion that the Exodus tradition is mainly myth devoid of historical foundation does not take into account the antiquity of the tradition, its centrality in the historical memory of the Northern Kingdom and its central place in biblical historiography from the seventh century BCE onward. It is reasonable to suggest that such a fundamental claim of establishment would have emerged from a particular historical experience. Most likely, we should assume that it is rooted in a highly memorable past event of the people of Israel or at least some of them. The second Exodus in the Persian period considerably influenced the intensification of the biblical tradition and encouraged the reshaping of the biblical story, as it might have served as a useful paradigm for its readers and hearers. However, the intensification of the tradition in the late period does not really help explain the background of its emergence.
56 S. Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I (SAA I; Helsinki: University Press, 1987) 6062; idem, The Construction of Dur-arrukin in the Assyrian Royal Correspondence, in A. Caubet, ed., Khorsabad, le palais de Sargon II, roi dAssyrie (Paris: La documentation Franaise, 1995) 4777; F.M. Fales and J.N. Postgate, Royal Administrative Records, Part II (SAA XI; Helsinki: University Press, 1995) xvxviii, 1621; Redford (n. 19) 62.
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Of the many scholars who discussed the Exodus story, only two (to the best of my knowledge) have provided useful hints to solving the riddle of the traditions emergence. In the first part of his article on the Exodus, Ronald Hendel discussed the issue of cultural memory, in which authentic, legendary and fictive elements are mixed together.57 Cultural memory has been transmitted in both verbal tradition and writing and was discussed verbally by different social groups. He emphasized the importance of the concept of mnemohistory, namely, the past as remembered by the people, for the study of the Exodus tradition. The discussion of the biblical story should not be directed to the past as it really happened, but rather at the manner in which Israelite society shaped its identity by creating a certain image of its past. In order to entrench the Exodus tradition within Israelite society, it should fit the picture of the past as remembered by the settlers who did not emigrate from Egypt. In light of these assumptions, Hendel tried to define some elements in the Exodus story that could have been relevant for early Israelite society. The most remarkable element in this societys experience is the severe damage made to its internal structure by the Egyptians under the Pharaohs leadership. The deportation to Egypt, the trade of slaves and the long subjugation severely harmed many groups from among the future settlers in the hill country. In light of the experience of bondage and suffering, Pharaoh was remembered as symbol of the subjugating king and Egypt as the house of bondage. Following the withdrawal of the Egyptian empire, at least some of the settlers considered themselves victims of the Egyptian regime, and the memory of suffering was a powerful component in the creation of their ethnic-social identity. Thus, the story of the Exodus fit well the anti-Egyptian historical memory of early Israelite society. Hendel further suggested that the series of plagues described in the Exodus story was also relevant for the historical memory of Israelite society as plagues and pestilences infected many kingdoms of Western Asia in the 16th14th centuries BCE. However, this conclusion is unlikely. First, it is doubtful whether any connection existed between the plagues that happened in various places at different times in this vast region. Second, there is no obvious connection between the Western Asiatic plagues, the Exodus plagues and the experiences of early Israelite society. Hendel also suggested that early Israelite society regarded Moses as a deliverer from bondage who, resultantly, also obtained the status of mediator with God. Hence, the settlers in the highlands integrated the story in which Moses held the central place into the picture of
57
R. Hendel, The Exodus in Biblical Memory, JBL 120 (2001) 601608.
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their past. However, we know nearly nothing of the historical Moses and the way he was conceived among the settlers in the highlands and peripheral areas of Canaan in this early period. By turning the focus of discussion from the historical question to the shaping of historical memory, Hendel made an important contribution to the research on the Exodus story. His discussion of the traumatic memory of Egypt in the early Israelite society is a step in the right direction. However, Hendel left the events related in the Exodus story within the geographical framework in which they are included in the biblical story and did not try to explain the relation between the historical memory of the settlers in Canaan and the tradition of subjugation and delivery from bondage in Egypt. Given its lack of clarity on this crucial point, his article did not obtain the attention it deserves. Mario Liverani suggested that the theme of the Exodus was initially a metaphor reflecting the idea of a shift in sovereignty that is not accompanied by a movement of people. In his words: There was an agreed memory of the major political phenomenon that had marked the transition from submission to Egypt in the Late Bronze Age to autonomy in Iron Age I.58 To establish his daring hypothesis, Liverani presented Hittite and Amarna texts where verbs of movement (go in/go out) describe change in political status (subjugation/liberation). He hypothesized that Hebrew verbs like lh and wb that accompanied the theme of the Exodus in the early Israelite texts initially carried similar connotations. The metaphoric connotation of the verbs changed following the Assyrian conquest of Syria and Palestine and the beginning of large-scale deportations. Since then, the verbs were interpreted as expressing actual movement of people. As a result of the shift in connotation, the Exodus tradition was interpreted as describing a migration in and out of Egypt. The connection to Egypt was further fixed in the exilic and early post-exilic periods, when the early coming out of Egypt became an antecedent for the historical return of the deportees to Judah in the time of the late authors.59 I doubt the methodology of studying verbal forms in ancient Near Eastern texts for reconstructing the early meaning of verbal forms in biblical Hebrew, as well as the suggestion that verbs like lh and wb were initially metaphors and did not signify the movement of people. I can see no justification for assuming that there was a change of connotation of verbs under the influence of the Assyrian empire. Liverani sensed correctly that the tradition of the
58 59
Liverani (n. 12) 278. Liverani (n. 12) 277282.
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Exodus was initially connected to the deliverance from the Egyptian bondage in Canaan, but the explanation he offered for the shift of tradition from Canaan to Egypt is not convincing. Assuming that memory of the Egyptian withdrawal from Canaan and the deliverance from its bondage was reversed and turned into a story of deliverance and the emergence from Egypt, how should we account for the shift of historical memory? As Hendel suggested, the answer must be sought in the way memory was shaped within early Israelite society. Societies all over the world have shaped the image of the past in a way that matched their objectives. That the collective memory of society is the result of deliberate shaping has been discussed innumerable times in recent research and there is no need to reiterate it here.60 The great difficulty in discussing Israelite collective memory is the early date in which it was shaped. It was first molded through oral tradition at a stage that antedated by hundreds of years the emergence of biblical historiography, leaving behind no written sources by which it can be examined. We have only the literary-theological work that in its present shape was formed in the late sixth century BCE, and there is no way to establish the outlines of the story as related in the oral tradition. Hence, my explanation for the drastic change in the historical memory is a hypothesis that cannot be verified. The absence of Egypt from all biblical texts that describe Canaan before the destruction of its major cities provides remarkable evidence that potentially supports the assumption that the origin of the Exodus historical memory was
60 The extensive literature published in the last three decades on the theme of collective memory formation is too well known to be enumerated here. Enclosed are few works written in the context of the Bible and the ancient Near East: Y.H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor. Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982) 1148; P.G. Kirkpatrick, The Old Testament and Folklore Study ( JSOTSup 62; Sheffield: Academic Press, 1988) 5172, 97117; A. de Pury, ed., Histoire et conscience historique dans les civilisations du Proche-Orient ancien (Actes du Colloque de Cartigny 1986, Centre dtude du Proche-Orient Ancien [CEPOA], Universit de Genve; Leuven: Peeters, 1989); J. Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedchtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identitt in frhen Hochkulturen (Mnchen: C.H. Beck, 1992) 29160; idem, Moses the Egyptian. The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998) 2329; J. Jonker, The Topography of Remembrance. The Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995; B. Pongratz-Leisten, ffene den Tafelbehalter und lies . . .. Neue Anstze zum Verstndnis des Literaturkonzeptes in Mesopotamien, WdO 30 (1999) 6790; J. Blenkinsopp, Memory, Tradition and the Construction of the Past in Ancient Israel, in J. Blenkinsopp, ed., Treasures Old and New. Essays in the Theology of the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 2004) 117; R. Hendel, The Archaeology of Memory: King Solomon, Chronology, and Biblical Representation, in S. Gitin, J.E. Wright and J.Dessel, eds., Confronting the Past. Archaeological and Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006) 219230.
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in Canaan. As demonstrated above, Egypt ruled Canaan uninterruptedly for about 350 years. During that long period, its involvement was gradually intensified and reached its zenith shortly before the Egyptian withdrawal from Canaan. How can we explain the black hole that was opened wide in the biblical memory, in a place where we would expect the preservation of memory? In my opinion, the riddle is resolved by the assumption that the vivid memory of the Egyptian presence in Canaan was absorbed within the Exodus tradition and thus disappeared from the collective Israelite memory. Memory and forgetfulness complement and nourish each other so that the effect of one dictates in many ways the other.61 I suggest, with due caution, that the transfer of the memory of the bondage and liberation from Canaan to Egypt, and with it the memory of the long Egyptian occupation of Canaan, resulted from the newly shaping identity of the young Israelite society. A segment of the new settlers past was removed from its local context in Canaan and transferred to the land of the subjugator. The memory of bondage, suffering and humiliation was replaced by the heroic memory of the conquest of Canaan by force from its former owners, the kings of Canaan. The literary-theological expression of this heroicbut mainly inventedpast appears in the conquest stories of the Book of Joshua. We may recall that the system of Canaanite city-states, which in its final stages of existence was mainly dependent on Egyptian military power, collapsed shortly after the Egyptian withdrawal from Canaan, as all major city-states were destroyed. In an article published about twenty year ago I suggested that
[t]he collective historical memory of Israel retained the impression of the total destruction of the Canaanite urban system in the late thirteenth-twelfth centuries BCE. When the Dtr historian tried to portray the early history of Israel, he took this vague memory as his point of departure, describing how the Canaanite towns were captured and razed by the twelve tribes under the leadership of Joshua.62
In line with this assumption, I suggest that the historically close relations between the two major historical events that took place at roughly the same timethe liberation from the bondage of Egypt and downfall of the system of Canaanite city-stateswas gradually separated in the Israelite historical
The role of forgetting in culture has been discussed by some scholars. See A. Forty and S. Kchler (eds.), The Art of Forgetting (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1999), with earlier literature. Note the statement of David Lowenthal in the preface to the book ( p. xii): Common to all acts of forgetting discussed in this book is the sense, even the insistence, that they are part and parcel of a larger project of remembering. 62 N. Naaman, The Conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua and in History, in Finkelstein and Naaman, eds. (n. 32) 281.
61
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memory. The new settlers in the highlands preferred to retain the memory of the conquest and destruction of the Canaanite cities, an event in which they might have played some role, whereas the memory of subjugation and suffering was repressed and shifted to the land of the subjugating power. Thus, the memory of the long Egyptian occupation of Canaan disappeared from the Israelite historical consciousness and did not reach the late biblical authors. In this light, I suggest that the major event underlying the Exodus tradition is the dramatic Egyptian withdrawal from Canaan after the Egyptian bondage reached its peak during the Twentieth Dynasty. In the course of the thirteenth-twelfth centuries BCE, the Egyptians greatly expanded their grasp of Canaan, annexed large territories and increased the pressure on the city-state rulers. They conducted campaigns, destroyed settlements and deported many of their inhabitants to Egypt. They operated against the pastoral nomadic groups, among them the group called Israel, who lived in the peripheral areas. Elements like bondage, suffering and arbitrariness of the government well reflect the experience of the inhabitants of Canaan, including the pastoral nomads, in their contacts with the Egyptian government. Evidently, the Egyptian withdrawal brought relief to all those who lived in Canaan. This would explain the strong feeling of freedom from the bondage of foreign power in the memory of the Exodus. Also, the sense of a miracle that happened to the Israelites, so prominent in the Exodus tradition, well reflects the reality of mid-twelfth century BCE Canaan. The inhabitants of the highlands and the peripheral areas are not likely to have been aware of the new reality that developed in the lowlands and the coast after the invasion of the Sea People. For them, the withdrawal was a kind of miracle, and like all ancient Near Eastern people they attributed it to their God. For hundreds of years, Egypt occupied Canaan and none of its inhabitants could have remembered a different reality than that of the Egyptian governance of the land. Suddenly, Egypt retreated from Canaan and its inhabitants became free of foreign rule. My suggestion that the historical memory of the release from the bondage of Egypt was originally connected to Canaan fully explains the all-Israelite dimension of the memory, as most of the inhabitants of the early Israelite society were Canaanites (the periphery was naturally an integral part of Canaan). Hence, the memory of the Egyptian withdrawal and release from the Egyptian bondage was relevant for all those who lived in this region. The place of Moses in the early tradition of the Exodus deserves a short note. Scholars have suggested that the story of his birth and upbringing in the Egyptian court was modeled after the story of the birth of Sargon, king of Akkada story that was probably composed during the time of Sargon II
66
(721705).63 In light of the parallel of the Mesopotamian story, scholars suggested dating the writing of the early story of Moses in Egypt to the seventh century, when the Assyrians governed the whole area.64 The early story of Moses was reworked and elaborated in the late exilic or early Persian period by editors of the Priestly Source, who combined the Exodus story with the Patriarchal narratives and elaborated it in a way that fit their historical and religious worldview.65 What might the figure of Moses have actually been like before it was shaped under the influence of the Assyrian story? The only source available for discussion is Hosea 12:13 [MT 14]: By a prophet YHWH brought Israel up from Egypt and by a prophet he was guarded. Hosea presents Moses as a prophet by whose leadership YHWH brought Israel out of Egypt. It is evident that already in the eighth century BCE, Moses was regarded as a prophet who is part of the Exodus tradition. No wonder that later he was placed at the center of the Exodus story. It is possible that already in the oral tradition, Moses appeared as a leader and prophet who received orders from the God of Israel in the context of the Exodus. If this is indeed the case, the figure of Moses, probably as leader of a tribal group, might have influenced the shift of the story from Canaan to Egypt.66 Another element that might be connected to the shifting of memory from Canaan to Egypt is the tradition of YHWHs origin from the southern periphery of Canaan. This is evident from the Song of Deborah ( Judg 5:45), the Blessing of Moses (Deut 33:2) and the prophecy of Habakkuk (3:3a). Within the Exodus story as well, YHWH reveals himself to Moses in Midian, somewhere in the desert area south of Canaan. Some scholars suggested that
63 B.S. Childs, The Birth of Moses, JBL 84 (1965), 109122; T. Longman III, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography: A Generic and Comparative Study (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1991) 5360, 215216; E. Otto, Mose und das Gesetz. Die Mose-Figur als Gegenentwurf politischer Theologie zur neuassyrischen Knigstheologie im 7. Jh. v. Chr., in E. Otto, ed., Mose, gypten und das Alten Testament (Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 189; Stuttgart: Katholosiches Bibelwerk, 2000) 5167. H. Zlotnick-Sivan compared the legend of Moses birth to that of the birth of Cyrus and dated Exodus 2 to the Persian period; see Moses the Persian? Exodus 2, the Other and Biblical Mnemohistory, ZAW 116 (2004) 189205. 64 Otto (n. 63) 4367; F. Blanco Wissmann, Sargon, Mose und die Gegner Salomos. Zur Frage vor-neuassyrischer Ursprnge der Mose-Erzhlung, BN 110 (2001) 4254; T.C. Rmer, La construction dune Vie de Mose dans la Bible Hbraque et chez quelques auteurs Hllenistiques, Transversalits. Revue de lInstitut Catholique de Paris 85 (2003) 1321. 65 For a comparison of the early ( pre-exilic) Exodus tradition with that of the late (Persian) tradition, see Y. Hoffman, The Exodus-Tradition and Reality. The Status of the Exodus Tradition in Ancient Israel, in Shirun-Grumach, ed. (n. 8) 193202. 66 Although the biography of Moses was written in the seventh century BCE, the central place of Moses in the Exodus story indicates his original place in the tradition. See R. Smend, Mose als geschichtliche Gestalt, Historische Zeitschrift 260 (1995) 119, with earlier literature.
67
the Shasu land YHW mentioned in the topographical lists of Amenophis III (13911353) and Ramesses II (12791213) was named after the God of Israel.67 However, the connection between the territorial name YHW and the name of the God of Israel is not certain. Finally, several inscriptions dated to the mid-eighth century discovered at Kuntillet Ajrud, a site located in northern Sinai, south of Kadesh-Barnea, mention YHWH Teman, namely, the God of Israel who is directly connected to the desert area south of Palestine (Teman, i.e., the south).68 According to all these sources, YHWH, the divine leader of the Exodus story, originated from the southern periphery of the settled country (Seir, Sinai, Paran, Teman, Midian), an origin that fits well with the historical memory of Egypt. The changes that took place in the nature of the historical memory when it was shifted from Canaan to Egypt, as well as the identity of the agents of this change, are unknown. I suggest that the settlers fostered the memory of the conquest of the land by force. Through a long process, the painful memory of the bondage to Egypt and the miracle that took place causing the Egyptians to withdraw was severed from Canaan and attached to Egypt. The two rival sides of the historical memorythe Israelites and the Egyptiansremained at the center of the plot, but the arena was reversed, so that the retreat from Canaan to Egypt was replaced by a migration from Egypt to Canaan. The small group led by Moses that possibly arrived from Egypt to Canaan and the tradition of the southern origin of YHWH might have played some role in the shift of the historical memory. The memory connected with Egypt gradually absorbed all elements of memory that originally were connected to Canaan, and in this form reached the late authors who composed the Exodus story. The Exodus story was composed for the first time in the seventh century BCE and the early edition reflects the historical experience of life in Judah under the dominion of the Assyrian empire (see notes 56 and 63). As the origin of the Israelites was in Canaan and not Egypt, the author of the early story had no data by which he could explain how the Israelites arrived and settled
67 B. Grdseloff, dom, daprs les sources gyptiennes, Revue de lHistoire Juive en gypte 1 (1947) 7983; Giveon (n. 16) 7577; M. Grg, Jahweein Toponym?, BN 1 (1976) 714; E. Edel, Die Ortsnamenlisten in den Tempeln von Aksha, Amarah und Soleb im Sudan, BN 11 (1980) 68, 78; S. Ahituv, Canaanite Toponyms in Ancient Egyptian Documents ( Jerusalem: Magnes and Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984, 121122; H. Goedicke, The Tetragram in Egyptian?, JSSEA 24 (1994) 2427; M. Grg, YHWHein Toponym? Weitere Perspektiven, BN 101 (2002) 1014, with earlier literature. 68 Z. Meshel, Kuntillet Ajrud, in D.N. Freedman, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary 4 (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 103109; idem, Teman, H orvat, in Stern (n. 37), vol. 4, 14581464, with earlier literature. See recently J.M. Hutton, Local Manifestations of Yahweh and Worship in the Interstices: A Note on Kuntillet Ajrud, JANER 10 (2010), 177210.
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in Egypt and left the question in the dark.69 It was extensively edited in the second half of the sixth century by editors of the Priestly School, and the editors inserted into the story some elements borrowed from the reality of Egypt in the time of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty (664525).70 These new elements reflect the late experience of the Jewish community in Egypt in the time of the exilic and early post-exilic period. The late reworking is responsible for the description of the Israelites as a group situated in one place, for the dichotomy between the Egyptian and Israelite cultures, and for the presentation of Egypt as a negative mirror of Israel. The two communities are presented in the late work as two entities that lived side by side with full autonomy, while one entity was subjugated to the other. The Exodus story in its final form reflects a picture of the past that was shaped over a very long time: first as it was engraved in Israelite cultural memory, then when these old verbal memories were integrated into the first composition of the seventh century, and finally when the latter was edited by the Priestly editors. Since it was written hundreds of years after the events it describes, it is far removed from the ancient reality of the Late Bronze Age. Yet it illustrates how events of the early history of Israel that were initially engraved in the collective memory were carried and transformed for hundreds of years and finally expanded and reworked by able narrators in the form presented in the Book of Exodus. The cultural memory of the Exodus as shaped in oral tradition, and later as crystallized in a literary form, has had far-reaching impact on the shaping of Israelite consciousness for all generations to come. Elements like suffering from bondage to foreign people, aspiration for freedom and strong opposition to slavery, and deep gratitude to the God who liberated the people of Israel from slavery and brought them out of Egypt, became fundamental elements in the consciousness of Israelite society, probably already in its early stages of formation. From its beginning, modern historical research on ancient Israel tried to solve the riddle of the unique history of the people of Israel by searching for its origins, assuming that its beginning might explain its later development. But critical research demonstrated that the history of Israel was composed in writing at a later time, hundreds of years after the formation of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. For this reason, scholars gave up the effort to reconstruct the early history of Israel, and modern historical works skipped over the stories that relate these early stages. The understanding that the story of the Exodus reflects the historical memory of early Israelite society in Canaan
For discussion of this problem, see Schmid (n. 4), 122126, with earlier literature. Redford (n. 47 1963) 401418; idem (n. 47 1987) 137144; idem (n. 11) 408422; idem (n. 19), 5766; Weinstein (n. 9) 87103; Van Seters (n. 47), 255276.
70 69
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opens a small window for recognition of the consciousness of the early settlers in the highlands. The story might be considered the earliest source available for research into the cultural-religious worldview of early Israelite society. I opened the discussion by emphasizing the exceptional status of the Exodus story in Israelite historical consciousness and its centrality in all genres of biblical literature. Some scholars suggested that it is no more than a myth, alien to the reality of the early history of Israel. In this article, I tried to show that some elements in the Exodus story in fact make sense when understood as a reflection of the memory of the bondage to Egypt in the time of the Nineteenth-Twentieth Dynasties, and the perception of freedom gained after the withdrawal of Egypt from Canaan. The Exodus storyand with it the strong opposition to subjection to foreign nations and the aspiration for freedomreflects the Israelite experience from its emergence as nation. Although the storys shaping in historical consciousness underwent several changes, it has remained a central element in Israelite memory for all generations to come.

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Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions

Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

The Exodus Story: Between Historical Memory and Historiographical Composition

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

R. Hendel, The Exodus in Biblical Memory, JBL 120 (2001) 601608.

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

Liverani (n. 12) 278. Liverani (n. 12) 277282.

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

N. Naaman / Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 11 (2011) 3969

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