The one contemporary reference to Israel thus far found in the
Egyptian inscriptions comes from the reign of Merneptah the son of
Ramses II. It implies that at the time at least part of the
Hebrews were in the land of Palestine:
Plundered is Canaan with every evil;
Askalon is carried into captivity,
Gezer is taken;
Yenoam is annihilated,
Israel is desolated, her seed is not,
Palestine has become a widow for Egypt.
All lands are united, they are pacified.
Every one who is turbulent has been found by King Merneptah.
The testimony of the oldest Biblical narratives regarding the
sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt is, also, in perfect accord with
the picture which the contemporary Egyptian inscriptions give of
the period. Furthermore, the Egyptian historians never
distinguished the different races in their midst, but rather
designated the foreign serf class by a common name. The absence of
detailed reference to the Hebrews is therefore perfectly natural.
It seems probable that not all but only part of the tribes which
ultimately coalesced into the Hebrew nation found their way to
Egypt. The stories regarding Joseph, the traditional father of
Ephraim and Manasseh, imply that these strong central tribes,
possibly together with the southern tribes of Benjamin and Judah,
were the chief actors in this opening scene in Israel's history.
The Biblical narratives apparently disagree regarding the duration
of the sojourn in Egypt. The reference in Gen. 15:16, which, some
writers think, comes from the northern Israelite group of stories,
implies that it was a period of between one hundred and one hundred
and fifty years. The same duration is suggested by the priestly
writer in Numbers 26:57-59. The later traditions tend to extend
the period. If, as seems probable, the Hebrews first found their
way to Egypt during the reign of Amenhotep IV, who reigned between
1375 and 1358 B.C., the older Hebrew chronology would make Ramses
II, who reigned between 1292 and 1225, the Pharaoh of the
oppression. Of all the Pharaohs of this period in Egypt's history
the great builder and organizer Ramses II corresponds most closely
to the Biblical description. He it was who filled Egypt from one
end to the other with vast temples and other buildings which could
have been reared only through the services of a huge army of serfs.
The excavations of the Egypt Exploration fund have identified the
Biblical Pithom with certain ruins in the Wady Tumilat near the
eastern terminus of the modern railroad from Cairo to the Suez
Canal. This probably lay in the eastern boundary of the Biblical
land of Goshen, which seems to have included the Wady Tumilat and
to have extended westward to the Nile delta. Here were found
several inscriptions bearing the Egyptian name of the city P-Atum,
house of the god Atum. The excavations also laid bare a great
square brick wall with the ruins of store chambers inside. These
rectangular chambers were of various sizes and were surrounded by
walls two or three yards in thickness. Contemporary inscriptions
indicate that they were filled with grain from the top and were
probably used for the storing of supplies to be used by the armies
of Ramses II in their Asiatic campaigns. This city was founded by
Ramses II, who during the first twenty years of his reign,
developed and colonized the territory east of the Nile delta
including the Biblical land of Goshen. A contemporary inscription
also states that he founded near Pithum the house of Ramses, a city
with a royal residence and temples. Thus the inferences in the
first chapter of Exodus regarding the historical background are in
perfect accord with the facts now known from other sources
regarding the reign of Ramses II. In transforming the land of
Goshen into a cultivated, agricultural region the nomadic Hebrews
were naturally put to task work by the strong-handed ruler of
Egypt. That the Hebrews were restive under this tyranny was
natural, inevitable. Apparently their rebellious attitude also
increased the burden which was placed upon them. The memory of the
crushing Hyksos invasion, which meant the rule of Egypt by nomadic
invaders from Asia, was still fresh in the minds of the Egyptians.
They both looked down upon and feared the nomad immigrants on their
eastern border. In the light of these facts it is possible to
understand the motives which influenced Ramses II cruelly to
oppress the Hebrews. He endeavored, by forced labor and rigorous
peonage, not only to avail himself of their needed services, but
also to crush their spirit and by force to hold in subjection the
alarmingly large serf class which was found at this time in the
land of Egypt. Was any other procedure to be expected from a
despotic ruler of that land and day?