Exodus Pharaoh Article - Petrovich

EVALUATING THE CANDIDACY OF
AMENHOTEP II AS THE EXODUS-PHARAOH

BY DOUGLAS PETROVICH

I. INTRODUCTION

Few disciplines related to biblical inerrancy are scrutinized more intensely than historicity. Accordingly,
questioning the Bibles historicity is nothing new to biblical studies, as evidenced by Ladds remark, It is the
authors hope that the reader may be helped to understand that the authority of the Word of God is not
dependent upon infallible certainty in all matters of history and criticism.
1
A more extreme recent trend,
popular in the study of ancient Israels storied past, is a revisionistic version of biblical history.
2
A prime
example is seen in the words of Finkelstein, who speaks of the rise of the true national state in Judah [in the
eighth century BC]. . . . That national state produced a historical saga so powerful that it led biblical historians
and archaeologists alike to recreate its mythical pastfrom stones and potsherds.
3

Such attacks on the inerrancy of the Bibles historicity necessitate a reasoned defense of its historical
accuracy. As Lindsell writes, When inerrancy is lost, it is palpably easy to drift into a mood in which the
historicity of Scripture along with inerrancy is lost.
4
The danger of compromising the inerrancy of biblical
historicity became vivid to the present writer when he learned that a transfer student who entered the seminary
where he teaches was taught in another theological institution that biblical inerrancy does not even extend into
the realm of history. Such a position is unacceptable, and it must be opposed rigorously.
The present work examines the trustworthiness of biblical history by using the Hebrew exodus from
Egypt (hereinafter, simply exodus) as a test case. More specifically, an examination of the exodus-pharaohs
life will reveal whether biblical history can be harmonized and synchronized with Egyptian history, and whether
biblical chronology is clear and trustworthy when relevant passages are interpreted literally. The need for
evaluating the former premise is that many Egyptologists are leading the charge to deny the veracity of the
exodus, attempting to persuade biblical scholars and the Christian populace at large that the exodus never
actually occurred. Renowned Egyptologist Donald Redford concludes, The almost insurmountable difficulties
in interpreting the exodus-narrative as history have led some to dub it mythology rather than . . . a detailed
reporting of the historical facts and therefore impossible to locate geographically.
5
Redford then betrays his
affinity with this fraternity, stating that despite the lateness and unreliability of the story in exodus, no one can
deny that the tradition of Israels coming out of Egypt was one of long standing.
6

The need for evaluating the latter premise is that many biblical scholars who affirm the historicity of the
exodus now date it to the 13
th
century BC, a step that requires a redefinition of concrete numbers in biblical
passages that, if taken literally, would indisputably place the exodus in the 15
th
century BC. The eminent
Egyptologist and biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen is foremost among them: Thus, if all factors are given their
due weight, a 13
th
-century exodus remainsat presentthe least objectionable dating, on a combination of all
the data (biblical and otherwise) when those data are rightly evaluated and understood in their context.
7
While
Kitchen is a vital contributor in the field of OT history and chronology, the accuracy of his conclusion here is
disputable, along with whether he has evaluated all of the data correctly.

1
George Ladd, The New Testament and Criticism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 16.

2
William G. Dever, What did the Biblical Writers Know and When did They Know It? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 4.

3
Israel Finkelstein, City-States to States, in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past, ed. William G. Dever and
Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 81.

4
Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), 206.

5
Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 408409.

6
Ibid., 412.

7
Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 310.
2
Wood rejects the theory of a 13
th
-century-BC exodus, originally propagated by Albright, appealing to a
reevaluation of the archaeological evidence pertinent to key Palestinian cities in question.
8
Young also opposes
this trend: A date for the exodus in the mid-fifteenth century BC has been much maligned because of favorite
theories that identified various pharaohs of a later date with the pharaohs of the oppression and exodus. . . . It is
hoped that the present study has strengthened the case for the accuracy of the chronological numbers as
preserved in the Masoretic text, and at the same time has helped to discredit theories which put the exodus
anywhere but in the middle of the Fifteenth Century BC.
9
Just as Young established a 15
th
-century date for the
exodus by chronological means, the present writer seeks to accomplish this goal by historical means, namely by
examining the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep II (ca. 14551418 BC),
10
which coincides with that of the exodus-
pharaoh if adhering to conventional views of biblical and ancient Egyptian chronology.
By answering the following questions, it will be seen whether Amenhotep II remains a viable candidate
for the exodus-pharaoh, and whether biblical history can be exonerated under the scrutiny of synchronization
with Egyptian history. Does Amenhotep II qualify as the pharaoh who lived through the tenth plague because he
was not his fathers eldest son? Could the eldest son of Amenhotep II have died during the tenth plague, which
must be true of the exodus-pharaohs son? Did Amenhotep II die in the Red Sea, as the Bible allegedly indicates
about the exodus-pharaoh?
11
Can any of Amenhotep IIs military campaigns be related to the exodus events?
Can the loss of over two million Hebrew slaves, certainly Egypts slave-base at the time, be accounted for in
the records of Amenhotep IIs reign? Is there any evidence to confirm that Amenhotep II interacted with the
Hebrews after they left Egypt? If Amenhotep II is the exodus-pharaoh, could the obliteration of Hatshepsuts
image from many Egyptian monuments and inscriptions be attributed to backlash from the exodus events?

II. THREE INTRODUCTORY BACKGROUND MATTERS

1. The Reason for Moses Omission of the Exodus-Pharaohs Throne-Name. Every time Moses wrote
the dynastic title of the exodus-pharaoh, it was devoid of the pharaohs throne-name (e.g. Sesostris, Amenhotep,
etc.), which is known in Egyptology as the praenomen.
12
This, however, was not the practice of later biblical
writersespecially writers of the historical books, who routinely transliterated each pharaohs praenomen
beginning with the reign of Pharaoh Shishak. For example, Shishak is named in the OT seven times, though
never is he referred to merely as pharaoh.
13
The same is true of Pharaoh Neco, whose name appears nine
times.
14
The only exception to this ruleapart from the 21 references in the prophetic books of Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, where the Egyptian monarch is referred to only as pharaohis when the Hebrew
authors retrospectively write about the exodus-pharaoh, always leaving him unnamed.
15
The question that arises
is why Moses consistently omitted the throne-names of pharaohs, especially in the historical book of Exodus.

8
Bryant G. Wood, The Rise and Fall of the 13
th
-Century Exodus-Conquest Theory, JETS 48:3 (Sep 2005), 476.

9
Rodger C. Young, When Did Solomon Die?, JETS 46:4 (Dec 2003), 603.

10
Both here and throughout the present work, any dating that follows the formula, ca. xxxxyyyy BC, signifies the regnal
years of a given monarch, unless otherwise noted. The reason for settling on these dates will be discussed subsequently.

11
It is probably more accurate to refer to the Red Sea as the Sea of Reeds, but the traditional designation will be used here
for simplicity. For an excellent study on this topic, see Hoffmeiers chap. 9, The Problem of the Re(e)d Sea (James K. Hoffmeier,
Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition [New York: Oxford University Press, 1996], 199).

12
While any given pharaoh of Egypts New Kingdom received a throne-name (praenomen) upon his accessioneither as the
sole monarch or as the coregent for a senior pharaoh who wanted a smooth regnal-transition at the time of his imminent deathhe
merely appended this praenomen to his nomen, the birth name that had always been with him. Each name was enclosed in a cartouche.

13
See 1 Kgs 11:40, 14:25; and 2 Chr 12:2, 5 (twice), 7, and 9. The fact that this new trend began during the reign of Shishak
(Shoshenq I) should be of no surprise to the student of biblical history, since Shishaks reign signaled both the beginning of a new
ruling dynasty, the 22
nd
Dynasty of Egypt, and the beginning of foreign rule under pharaohs who hailed from Libya.

14
See 2 Kgs 23:29, 33, 34, 35; 2 Chr 35:20, 21, 22; 36:4; and Jer 46:2. Pharaoh Hophra is named once as well, though his
name appears only in a prophetic writing, where God calls him, Pharaoh Hophra, King of Egypt (Jer 44:30).

15
Any temptation to doubt the historicity of the biblical text on account of the presence of an unnamed pharaoh should be
avoided vigorously, since surely historians would not dismiss the historicity of Thutmose IIIs Megiddo campaign because the names
of the kings of Kadesh and Megiddo are not recorded in the ancient Egyptian accounts (Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, 110).
3
a. Omission of Pharaohs Throne-Name not Theologically Motivated. The absence of pharaohs
praenomen in the biblical history of the second millennium BC is often used either to support the assertion of
the legendary nature of the exodus narrative, or to demonstrate that the Hebrew writers were not truly interested
in history. These criticisms, however, dissipate under a closer examination of the practice of Moses day.
Hoffmeier nobly suggests that the absence of pharaohs name may ultimately be for theological reasons,
because the Bible is not trying to answer the question, Who is the pharaoh of the exodus? to satisfy the
curiosity of modern historians; rather, it was seeking to clarify for Israel who was the God of the exodus.
16
To
support this idea, Hoffmeier appeals to Exod 5:1, which he uses to suggest that pharaoh not only rejects Moses
petition to allow the Hebrews to worship Yahweh in the desert, but rebuffs Yahweh by denying knowledge of
him, setting the stage for a subsequent series of plagues in which Yahweh manifests his power both to pharaoh
and to Israel.
17
Moses thus avenges pharaohs reproach of God by leaving him unnamed.
Hoffmeier is certainly correct that Yahweh intended to demonstrate to the Israelites that he is the Lord
their God (Exod 6:7), and to show the Egyptians that he is the Lord (Exod 7:5). However, Hoffmeier is not
justified in suggesting that the absence of pharaohs name is motivated by a desire to exact revenge on pharaoh,
since Exod 7:5 clearly states that Yahwehs message was directed not toward pharaoh, but toward the
Egyptian people. Moreover, the battle that waged throughout the days of Moses audiences with pharaoh was
not between Yahweh and pharaoh, but between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt, whoduring Gods invoking of
the ten plagueswere proven to be powerless. The God of Israel himself said, And against all the gods of
Egypt, I will execute judgmentsI am Yahweh (Exod 12:12b). This conclusion is supported by the statement
of Jethro, Moses father-in-law, who had just heard a first-hand account of all the events: Now I know that the
Lord is greater than all the gods; because in the very thing in which they were proud, he proved to be above
them (Exod 18:11). Jethro understood the point: Yahweh resoundingly won the Battle of the Gods, proving
both to Israel, to Egypt, and to the rest of the Ancient Near East (hereinafter, ANE) that he alone is divine.

b. Pharaohs Throne-Name Omitted in accordance with Contemporary Egyptian Historiography. If
Moses did not omit pharaohs personal name for theological reasons, then why did he omit it? The answer is
found in the historical development of monarchial terms. The dynastic title, pharaoh, derives from the word
that literally means, great house. During Egypts Old Kingdom (ca. 27152170 BC), the word was used of
the royal palace. Not until sometime during the middle of the 18
th
Dynasty,
18
slightly before the reign of
Thutmose III (ca. 15061452 BC), the father of Amenhotep II, was it used as an epithet for the Egyptian
monarch. However, the standard practice of Thutmose IIIs time was to leave enemy kings unnamed on official
records. The campaign of Thutmose III against a rebellious coalition at Megiddo, instigated by the Empire of
Mitanni, was fomented by the King of Kadesh (on the Orontes River), whoin The Annals of Thutmose III
merely was called, that wretched enemy of Kadesh. Moreover, when Egyptian scribes listed the booty that
was confiscated after the Battle of Megiddo, they did not name the opposing king whose possessions the
Egyptians plundered, referring to him only as the prince, or the Prince of Megiddo.
19

The Amada Stele of Amenhotep II, which boasts of the kings successful battles against seven Syrian
tribes of Takhsi, identifies these foreign rulers only as seven chieftains, whose names are all left unrecorded.
20

16
Ibid., 109.

17
Ibid.

18
James K. Hoffmeier, The Memphis and Karnak Stelae of Amenhotep II, in The Context of Scripture: Monumental
Inscriptions from the Biblical World, vol. 2, ed. William W. Hallo (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2000), 21.

19
Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, 87, 109; Wood, The Rise and Fall, 478.

20
Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, 109110. Hoffmeier incorrectly identifies these enemies of Egypt from the first Asiatic
campaign of Amenhotep II as Nubian tribes, and Nubian chieftains, thus attributing them to the nation of Nubia, or Cush, located
directly to the south of Egypt. The partly defaced geographical name on the Memphis Stele is certainly not t3 Nhsy, the Nubian
Land, as some have restored it to read, but Takhsi (Anson F. Rainey, Amenhotep IIs Campaign to Takhsi JARCE 10 [1973], 71).
Der Manuelian remarks that the location of the district of Takhsi has been settled with little dispute, with the only difference being
whether it was situated north or south of Kadesh on the Orontes River (Peter Der Manuelian, Studies in the Reign of Amenophis II
[Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1987], 5152). Redford adds that the Syrian district of Takhsi probably lay close to, and perhaps
northwest of, Damascus (Donald B. Redford, The Coregency of Tuthmosis III and Amenophis II, JEA 51 [Dec 1965], 119).
4
In the Memphis Stele of Amenhotep II, reference is made to his campaigns in Edom, Canaan, and Syria. All of
the foreign kings whom he defeated, deposed, or killed also went unnamed in this victory stele. Mention was
even made of the chieftains of Naharin (the land to the east of the Euphrates River), Khatti (the Hittites), and
Babylon. Despite the prominence of these kings, they nonetheless remain anonymous as well.
21
During the
Ramesside period (ca. 13001100 BC), the singular term pharaoh was widely used, continuing to be popular
until the late period. As Hoffmeier states, From its inception until the tenth century [BC], the term Pharaoh
stood alone, without juxtaposed personal name. In subsequent periods, the name of the monarch was generally
added on.
22
Therefore, Moses practice of omitting pharaohs throne-name next to the dynastic title, pharaoh,
followed the standard practice of the day in ancient Egypt, not coincidentally the site of his literary training.
Moreover, Moses also refrained from writing the names of other pharaohs who are attested in the
Pentateuch, including the good pharaoh whom Jacob blessed and Joseph faithfully served (Gen 47:7). What
theological reason could there be for omitting the name of this blessed pharaoh? Certainly the answer cannot be,
To keep him humble!, since Moses wrote centuries after both this pharaoh and his dynasty had disappeared
from the earth. Therefore, the exodus-pharaohs name was neither omitted for theological reasons, nor to
discourage the curiosity of modern historians who desire to identify him. Instead, the exodus-pharaohs throne-
name is absent for one reason alone: a skilled writer named Moses, born in Egypt and trained as a prince in all
of the ways of the royal court of Egypt (Acts 7:22), followed the standard practice of his day by leaving
unnamed the foreign monarch who assumed the role of a dreaded enemy of his own nation, in this case Israel.

2. Biblical Chronology: Precisely Dating the Exodus. Before proceeding, the exact date of the exodus
must be established. The central text for this crucial historical event, 1 Kgs 6:1, connects the exodus to later
Israelite history by noting that Solomon began constructing the Temple in the 480
th
year after the exodus,
signifying an elapsed time of 479+ years.
23
All but the minimalists agree that the counting of the 479+ years
should begin with May of 967 or 966 BC, depending on whether one accepts Youngs or Thieles version of
Solomons regnal dates.
24
Thus the 479+ years began either in 1446 or 1445 BC, either of which can be
substantiated by the biblical text and harmonized with the conclusions drawn from the present work.

a. The Case for Dating the Exodus to 1446 BC. A compelling argument for choosing 1446 BC is that the
Jubilee cycles agree with this date exactly, yet are completely independent of the 479+ years of 1 Kgs 6:1. The
Jubilee dates are precise only if the priests began counting years when they entered the land in 1406 BC (cf. Lev
25:210). The Talmud (Arakin 12b) lists 17 cycles from Israels entry into Canaan until the last Jubilee in 574
BC, which is 14 years after Jerusalems destruction by using the Tishri calendar, a statement also found in chap.
11 of The Seder Olam, which predates the Talmud.
25
Consequently, 1446 BC is preferred over 1445 BC.
26

21
Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, 110.

22
Ibid., 87.

23
Young, When Did Solomon Die?, 602. A textual variant has arisen in 1 Kgs 6:1, with the original text reading either
480
th
year (MT and Vg), or 440
th
year (LXX). Though the antiquity of the LXX renders its text important for determining the
originality of any variant in the Hebrew Bible, the MT possesses greater authority than any ancient translation, including the LXX.
[The MT] has repeatedly been demonstrated to be the best witness to the [OT] text. Any deviation from it therefore requires
justification (Ernst Wrthwein, Text of the Old Testament, 2
nd
ed., trans. Erroll Rhodes [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995], 116).
Moreover, the LXX has been shown to be inferior to the MT in chronological matters (Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of
the Hebrew Kings [Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1994], 9094). Since no scribal error led to a faulty reading in the MT, 480
th
year is taken
to be the original reading. See http://exegesisinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=73&Itemid=85 for a
complete resolution of this textual variant in 1 Kgs 6:1.

24
Young, When Did Solomon Die?, 601602; Thiele, Mysterious Numbers, 80. As does Young and the present writer,
Kitchen also prefers 967 BC as the year of the inception of the Temples construction (Kitchen, Reliability of the OT, 203).

25
Young, When Did Solomon Die?, 599603. Advocates of a 13
th
-century-BC exodus have yet to explain the remarkable
coincidence of the Jubilee cycles, which align perfectly with the date of 1446 BC for the exodus.

26
Moreover, the exact month and day of the exodus can be deduced, as God both established for Israel a lunar calendar that
began with the month of Nisan (originally Abib, per Exod 13:4) and precisely predicted the day of the exodus. The new moon that
began the month of Nisan in 1446 BC reportedly occurred at 21:42 UT (Universal Time) on 8 April (as detailed on the webpage
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/phase/phases-1499.html), assuming there were no significant variations in the earths rotation, apart from
5

b. The Case for Dating the Exodus to 1267 BC. Some prefer dating the exodus to 1267 BC, interpreting
480
th
figuratively. Actually, Dating the period of the oppression and exodus to the fifteenth century B.C. has
largely been replaced in favor of a thirteenth-century date.
27
One reason for this surge is an alleged superior
correspondence with the historical and archaeological record, since (1) the earliest extra-biblical attestation to
Israels presence in Canaan is the Merneptah Stele of ca. 1219 BC, and (2) no evidence of the Israelites in
Canaan from ca. 14001200 BC even exists. However, late-exodus proponents should remember that there is
also an invisibility of the Israelites in the archaeology of Canaan between ca. 1200 and 1000 BC,
28
so the
extension of their invisibility by two more centuries should create no additional burden. Moreover, Millard
notes by analogy that the Amorites are absent from the archaeology of Babylonia, as only the texts attest to their
presence, yet no scholar doubts their impact on Mesopotamias history in the early second millennium BC.
29

A second reason for this surge is that Raamses, the store-city that the Israelites built (Exod 1:11), is
usually identified with Pi-Ramesses, which flourished from ca. 12701100 BC and was comparable to the
largest cities of the ANE, but was built only during the reign of Ramses II (ca. 12901223 BC).
30
Shea rebuts
that Raamses was used of the land to which the patriarchs traveled several centuries earlier (Gen 47:11), when
no ruler bore the name Ramesses, suggesting that both references may be a divinely-overseen updating of an
earlier place-name.
31
Whether or not Exod 1:11 is anachronistic, there is no guarantee that Pi-Ramesses is
biblical Raamses. Scolnic warns, The truth is that there are very few sites indeed that yield the kind of
evidence required to make the site identifications that we, especially we who are openly interested in religion,
yearn to make.
32
Yet the presumption that biblical Raamses could not have been inhabited before Ramses II

the roughly 25 seconds per century that NASA allows for the tidal retardation of the earths rotational velocity. However, two
variables must be factored into the equation: (1) The date used to mark the new moon varies slightly according to the point of
observation. In the Eastern Nile Delta, where the land of Goshen and the Egyptian royal city of Memphis were located, the time is 2.1
hours ahead of longitude zero at the Greenwich meridian, so the new moon should have been observable in Egypt at 21:42 + 2.1 hours
= 23.48 hours, or 11:48 pm. Since 11:48 pm was after sunset on 8 April, and sunset was the standard time for Egypts priests to
declare a new moon upon observing the moons crescent, they would not have declared a new month that night. Instead, they would
have waited until the next night, which for now can be assumed to be 9 April. However, (2) the earths rotational velocity has varied
on two prior occasions, beyond the variable of 25 seconds per century, a factor not acknowledged by NASA. The first occasion was
the long day of Joshua, in which the sun stood still and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies, an
event that transpired for about a full day (Josh 10:13). Strictly speaking, the earthand not the sunstood still, and of necessity the
moons relative proximity to the earth did not vary, so the moon stopped moving as well. The second occasion was during the days of
Hezekiah, in ca. 703 BC, when the shadow went back ten steps on the dial (2 Kgs 20:10), a terrestrial phenomenon that represents a
retrograde motion of the earth. Since the length of these ten steps and the position of the sun at the time are unknown, exactly how
much time this represents is unclear, but it probably did not exceed a few hours. Thus these two events together represent a variation
of about one full day, meaning that the first day of Nisan in Egypt actually fell on Friday, 10 April. From here, the biblical text can
extrapolate the exodus date. The Lord said that on the tenth day of the month (19 April), each Jewish family was to slaughter an
unblemished lamb and eat the Passover Feast (Exod 12:3). On the 15
th
day of the month (before sunset on 25 April), the morning after
the Death Angel came at about midnight and struck down all of the firstborn of Egypt (Exod 12:12, 29), the Israelites began their
exodus (Exod 12:33, 34, 39; Num 33:3). Since they counted their days from dusk to dusk, the 15
th
day of the month included both the
Friday night in which the Death Angel passed over them, and Saturdays daytime hours, during which they departed. Therefore, the
exodus may be dated with relative confidence to 25 April 1446 BC.

27

28
Alan Millard, Amorites and Israelites: Invisible InvadersModern Expectation and Ancient Reality, in The Future of
Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions, ed. James K. Hoffmeier and Alan Millard (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2004), 152153.

29
Ibid., 152.

30
Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, 119, 125; Wood, The Rise and Fall, 478; Kitchen, Reliability of the OT, 255.

31
William Shea, Amenhotep II as Pharaoh of the Exodus, Bible and Spade 16:2 (Spr 2003), 43. Shea compares such
updating to that which occurred with Moses reference to Dan (Gen 14:14), which was called Laish until sometime after Moses died.
He likely implies that this divinely-overseen updating was accomplished long before the OT canon closed, though this is not stated.
Wood criticizes Kitchen for allowing an editorial updating for Dan in Gen 14:14, and for Rameses in Gen 47:11, but not for Raamses
in Exod 1:11 (Wood, The Rise and Fall, 479). Kitchens inconsistency is both troubling and unexplainable.

32
Benjamin Edidin Scolnic, A New Working Hypothesis for the Identification of Migdol, in Future of Biblical
Archaeology, 91.
6
has driven the movement to advance the date of the exodus forward by two centuries, with the views
proponents interpreting 480
th
in 1 Kgs 6:1 as being merely a symbolical number.
Two options exist for allegorizing the 480
th
year. The first option is that the number 480 is the sum of
12 eras consisting of 40-year generations: 20 years for one generation to live to child-bearing age, then 20 years
for their children to do likewise. When totaled, these 12 eras of 2225 actual years supply the 288300 years
needed to support the late-exodus theory.
33
By counting back 300 years from 967 BC, the exodus dates to ca.
1267 BC, which falls within the exceedingly long reign of Ramses II.
34
The second option for the number 480 is
what Kitchen calls the nonoppressions aggregate theory. Here, the 480 years consist of nine periods of 40
years (=360 years), the third of which is actually 80 years (2 x 40), plus five aggregate periods of varying
lengths. When totaled, the sum is a neat 480 years.
35

c. The Inadequacy of Interpreting the 480
th
Year of 1 Kgs 6:1 Allegorically. One weakness with any
allegorical interpretation is that in 1 Kgs 6:1, the author used an ordinal number, not a cardinal, making a
figurative use even more inexplicable. Another weakness is that the exodus-pharaoh followed an exceedingly
lengthy reign, not boasted one, as does Ramses II. Moses fled from pharaoh, who sought to execute him for
killing an Egyptian (Exod 2:15), departing from Egypt when he was fulfilling 40 years of age (Acts 7:23).
Only after 40 years had passed did the angel speak to him at the burning bush (Acts 7:30), which immediately
follows the statement that in the course of those many days, the king of Egypt died (Exod 2:23).
Thus the pharaoh who preceded the exodus-pharaoh must have ruled beyond 40 years, a criterion not
met by the modest reign of Seti I (ca. 13051290 BC), Ramses IIs predecessor. In contrast, Thutmose III, the
father and predecessor of Amenhotep II, who ruled just under 54 years, is the only other pharaoh of the 18
th
or
19
th
Dynasty to rule over 40 years. This factor, combined with all of the other evidence, causes one writer to
declare, Thutmose III must be the ruler whose death is recorded in Exodus 2:23.
36

Finally, if 480
th
merely represents a collection of equally or non-equally divisible components, what is
to prevent the subjective periodization of other numbers within Scripture? In Exod 12:4041, Moses notes that
at the end of 430 yearsto the very dayall the hosts of the Lord departed from the land of Egypt. Does 430
also represent a compilation of time periods? If so, are they divided into 10-year spans, since the number is
indivisible by 20? Is the inclusion of the qualifier, to the very day, simply to be dismissed as a later scribal
gloss? Moreover, who is to be trusted to correctly allegorize the number, which otherwise is shrouded in
mystery? Opponents of biblical inerrancy even recognize the folly of such allegorization, with one calling it the
devising of ingenious solutions. The most common trick has been to reduce time spans to generations: thus the
480 figure must really represent twelve generations.
37
Simply put, no such creative ingenuity is necessary.

d. The Preference for Interpreting the 480
th
Year of 1 Kgs 6:1 Literally. Cassuto studied ascending and
descending Hebrew numbers.
38
As Wood notes from this study, a number written in ascending orderas with
eightieth and four-hundredth in 1 Kgs 6:1, where the smaller number (80
th
) is followed by the larger number
(400
th
)is always intended to be a technically precise figure.
39
Moreover, no subjectively allegorical use of
480
th
justifies the rejection of its natural use. Since the advocates of a late exodus are more driven by

33
Kitchen, Reliability of the OT, 203.

34

35
Kitchen, Reliability of the OT, 308309. The nine, 40-year periods include the following: (1) the journey from Egypt to
Sinai to Jordan (Num 11:33); (2) Othniels rule (Judg 3:11); (34) 80 years of peace after Ehuds victory over Moab (Judg 3:30); (5)
peace after the deeds of Deborah (Judg 5:31); (6) peace after the deeds of Gideon (Judg 8:28); (7) Elis judgeship (1 Sam 4:18); (8)
Samsons judgeship and Samuels floruit (Judg 15:20; 1 Sam 7:2); and (9) Davids reign (1 Kgs 2:11). The five aggregate periods
include the following: (1) 48 years for Abimelek, Tola, and Jair; (2) 31 years for Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon; (3) 32 years for
Sauls reign, (4) four years for Solomons reign; and (5) five proposed years for the rule of Joshua and the elders of his era.

36
John Rea, The Time of the Oppression and Exodus, Grace Journal 2:1 (Win 1961), 11.

37
Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 259.

38
Umberto Cassuto, The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961), 52.

39
Wood, The Rise and Fall, 486.
7
arguments from silence about the Israelites habitation of Canaan before the 13
th
century BC than by textual
evidence, this number should be taken literally, reinforcing 1446 BC as the exact year of the exodus.

3. Egyptian Chronology: Precisely Dating the Pharaonic Reigns of the 15
th
Century BC. The final step
before determining whether Amenhotep II is a viable candidate for the exodus-pharaoh is to synchronize the
date of the exodus with Egyptian history. While inspiration does not extend to extra-biblical literature or ancient
inscriptions, many extant writings do possess a high degree of trustworthiness.

a. The Astronomical Date in the Ebers Papyrus. The Ebers Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian MS that dates
the heliacal rising of Sothis to Year 9, Month 3, Season 3, Day 9 (ca. 15 May) of Amenhotep Is reign (ca.
15501529 BC), records this astronomical event that fixes its composition to an identifiable time in the 18
th

Dynasty.
40
Since astronomers can pinpoint this event by charting the positions of stars in antiquity, the papyrus
can be dated to ca. 1541 BC, making his initial regnal year ca. 1550 BC. This dating, accepted by numerous
Egyptological scholars, is based on the ancient capital of Memphis as the point of observation, despite the
Theban provenance of the papyrus. A Theban point of observation, which is accepted by other Egyptologists,
dates the papyrus to ca. 1523 BC.
41
While the Egyptians never stated from where they observed the Sothic
rising, Olympiodorus noted in AD 6 that it was celebrated at Alexandria, after having been observed at
Memphis.
42
Therefore, Memphis is taken to be the correct point of observation for the rising recorded in the
Ebers Papyrus.

b. The Reliability of the Dating of the 18
th
Dynasty. Even without depending on astronomical dating, the
chronology of Egypt in the mid-1400s BC remains sure. Ward notes that New Kingdom chronology can be
fairly well established on the basis of the monuments and synchronisms, without recourse to the astronomical
material.
43
As for the 18
th
Dynasty, he adds that the 25-year gap separating current theories on its starting date
narrows to a scant three or four years by the middle of the dynasty, meaning that most mainstream
Egyptologists consider the dating of Egypts exodus-era history to be fixed and reliable.
44

c. The Regnal Dates of the 18
th
-Dynasty Pharaohs from the Time of the Ebers Papyrus to the Exodus.
With firm regnal dates for Amenhotep I, the reigns of the subsequent 18
th
-Dynasty pharaohs down to
Amenhotep II are fixed with relative certainty: Thutmose I (ca. 15291516 BC), Thutmose II (ca. 15161506
BC), Queen Hatshepsut (ca. 15041484 BC), Thutmose III (ca. 15061452 BC), and Amenhotep II (ca. 1455

40
The 18
th
Dynasty of Egypt (ca. 15601307 BC) not only saw the reunification of Egypt after an era of foreign rule under the
Hyksos, but it initiated a radically new era. The northward thrusts of these Theban dynasts continued until Thutmose I crossed the
Euphrates River in ca. 1524 BC. Egypt also expanded into Sudan, building temples on a grand scale at Gebel Barkal, about 1,280 mi
south of Memphis. The vast riches that the state accrued through these foreign expeditions changed the fabric of Egyptian society. No
longer did the nation function in isolation, but in an age of intense political and diplomatic activity, Egypt interacted with Mitanni, the
Hittites, Assyria, Babylonia, and a host of principalities in Syria and Palestine (William W. Hallo and William Kelly Simpson, The
Ancient Near East: A History, 2
nd
ed. [Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998], 253).

41
William A. Ward, The Present Status of Egyptian Chronology, BASOR 288 (Nov 1992), 58, 59. Not all scholars are
convinced that astronomical evidence provides benchmark dates for the reigns of given pharaohs. The absolute chronology of
Egypt has been one of the major time-frames for ancient chronology in general, and it is important that scholars in other disciplines
understand that absolute dates for Egypt are not as clear and well established as they are often thought to be (Ibid., 53). Ward
suggests that as long as there is uncertainty as to whether any given coregency of the New Kingdom existed, and if so, how long it
lasted, any system of absolute dates must remain inexact (Ibid., 54). Uncertainty about dates, however, does not characterize all
regnal dating, but rather only that of selected rulers. Direct evidence of co-regnal lengths often exists, providing a greater level of
certainty about the exact regnal lengths of many rulers. Therefore, if an absolute date that is fixed to a time in the reign of a pharaoh is
connected to a series of predecessors or successors whose regnal lengths are certain, benchmark dates can be assigned to their reigns.

42
Ibid., 59.

43
Ibid., 56. Egypts New Kingdom (ca. 15601069 BC) consists of Dynasties 1820.

44
Ibid.
8
1418 BC).
45
With these reigns chronologically ordered, the evaluation of Amenhotep IIs candidacy for the
exodus-pharaoh may proceed.

III. THE SURVIVAL OF AMENHOTEP II DURING THE 10
TH
PLAGUE

The tenth plague upon Egypt specified that the firstborn of all classes of people, from pharaoh who sat
on the throne to the lowest slave girl behind the millstone, along with the firstborn among the livestock, would
all die at the hands of the Death Angel (Exod 11:5). Being that the throne was included in this edict, one might
expect that pharaoh himselfif he actually was the firstborn son of his father, which was the normal protocol
for succession under Egypts dynastic rulewould have died during this last and most terrible plague (Exod
12:2930). However, since the exodus-pharaoh obviously lived through the final plague, he could not have been
the kings eldest son, a title the Egyptians liberally used of pharaohs eldest son, who stood in line behind his
father as the heir apparent to the Egyptian throne. Therefore, in order for Amenhotep II to qualify as a
legitimate candidate for the exodus-pharaoh, he could not have been the kings eldest son.
Amenhotep II indeed would have survived the tenth plague, because he was not the firstborn son of
Thutmose III. In the words of Redford, the idea that Amenhotep II was the eldest son of Thutmose III does not
seem possible in the light of our present knowledge.
46
Toward the middle of Thutmose IIIs reign, in Year 24,
the heir to the throne was not Amenhotep II, but Amenemhet, who was called the kings eldest son. There is
little doubt that he was the older half-brother of Amenhotep II who died before he could assume the throne. In
an inscription from the Karnak Festival Hall that dates to Year 24, Amenemhet was being appointed to an
administrative position in the temple of Amun: . . . appointing the kings eldest son [Amen]emhet as overseer
of cattle.
47
Since Amenemhet probably was no longer a child when the inscription was composed, he would
have been born fairly early in the coregency of Thutmose III and Hatshepsut.
48
Therefore, Amenhotep II would
not have died during the tenth plague, as the record bears out that he was not the firstborn son of Thutmose III.

IV. THE TENTH PLAGUE AND THE FIRSTBORN SON OF AMENHOTEP II

1. God Predicts the Death of Pharaohs Eldest Son. God told Moses that he would harden pharaohs
heart, and that pharaoh would refuse to free the Israelites from bondage (Exod 4:21). God then instructed Moses
to tell pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn. And I said to you, Let my son go, that he
may serve me. But you have refused to let him go. Behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn (Exod 4:22b
23). After the ninth plague had passed, God repeated this prediction, stating that all the firstborn in the land of
Egypt will die, from the firstborn of the pharaoh who sits on his throne (Exod 11:5). Therefore, the eldest son
of the exodus-pharaoh must have died in the plague. Who are the candidates for the eldest son of Amenhotep II?

2. Thutmose IV as a Candidate for the Eldest Son of Amenhotep II. For the exodus-pharaoh, the worst
part of Gods prediction of judgment was that his own firstborn son would die. If Amenhotep II was the exodus-
pharaoh, his firstborn son had to die without the chance to rule, which the historical record should confirm. The

45
Egyptologists disagree over the year of Thutmose IIIs accession, with three views predominant: the high chronology
dates it to ca. 1504 BC; the middle chronology dates it to ca. 1490 BC; and the low chronology dates it to ca. 1479 BC (Redford,
Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 104). The high chronology is preferred here because of its exclusive agreement with the Ebers Papyrus
when assuming a Memphite point of observation for the rising of Sothis. Shea also asserts that the high-chronology view is correct
(Shea, Amenhotep II as Pharaoh, 43). The high-chronology date used by the present writer dates back two years from the standard
number, due to the need to harmonize it with the second Palestinian campaign of Amenhotep II, which will be discussed subsequently.
This alteration is justified both by the uncertain regnal length of Thutmose II, whose reign lasted no less than four years or more than
twelve years (Amlie Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East ca. 3000330 BC, vol. 1 [London: Routledge, 1995], 191; Sir Alan Gardiner,
Egypt of the Pharaohs [New York: Oxford University Press, 1976], 191), and by the existence of a variable of 6 years after
calculating the date for the rising of Sothis (W. S. LaSor, Egypt, in ISBE, vol. 2 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982], 40).

46
Redford, Coregency of Tuthmosis III, 109.

47
Der Manuelian, Amenophis II, 19.

48
9
son who succeeded Amenhotep II was Thutmose IV (ca. 14181408 BC), whose Dream Stelelocated
between the paws of the Great Sphinxreveals that he was not the original heir to the throne.
49
Moreover,
inscriptional and papyritious evidence confirms that Thutmose IV was not the eldest son of Amenhotep II.

3. Prince Amenhotep as a Candidate for the Eldest Son of Amenhotep II. The papyrus British Museum
10056 (hereinafter BM 10056) speaks of Prince Amenhotep. The only title used of him, apart from kings
son, is sm-priest.
50
To which Amenhotep is the scribe referring? Although the year is completely lost from
the regnal date on this MS, the surviving month (4) and day (1) mark precisely the date of Amenhotep IIs
accession, implying that Prince Amenhotep undoubtedly was his son.
51
This prince almost certainly resided in
or near Memphis,
52
due to his office being connected to the high priesthood of Ptah.
53

The late 18
th
Dynasty attests to numerous high priests of Ptah, and their order and tenures in no way
prohibit counting the Prince Amenhotep of BM 10056 among them. Actually, a significant gap occurs in the
sm-priest list between the end of Thutmose IIIs reign and the beginning of Thutmose IVs reign. This gap,
which encompasses the reign of Amenhotep II, can be filled partially with the service of Prince Amenhotep.
Redford confidently identifies this prince with another royal personage: the kings son whom Selim Hassan
dubbed Prince B, who erected the wall-carved stele in the Sphinx temple of Amenhotep II.
54
Three factors
support the identification of Prince B with Prince Amenhotep: (1) both were the son of a king; (2) Amenhotep II
was the father of both; and (3) they both resided at Memphis, functioning there in the role of sm-priest.
Prince B/Amenhotep undoubtedly was an important figure, as he was called the one who enters before
his father without being announced, providing protection for the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, and

49

50

51
Ibid., 110.

52
Upon Amenhotep Is death, Thebes was the most prominent city of the native Egyptians, who recently had regained control
of their land and embarked on what would become over 150 years of unbroken prosperity. Yet Thutmose I, who did not descend from
his predecessor, moved the chief residence of the Egyptian court from Thebes to Memphis, where he constructed a royal palace that
was used until the reign of Akhenaten (ca. 13691352 BC). Memphis also became the headquarters of the pharaonic braintrust, where
the great military campaigns were planned, and Egyptian soldiers were armed before pharaoh. In fact, all of the Asiatic military
campaigns of Thutmose III and Amenhotep II were launched from Memphis, which had become the residence for pharaonic
successors who came into office as coregents (Kuhrt, Ancient Near East, vol. 1, 177). Regarding Amenhotep IIs youth, Grimal notes,
That the young prince should have been active at Memphis is no surprise, for it was there that all young heirs to the throne had been
brought up since the time of Thutmose I (Nicolas Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, trans. Ian Shaw [Oxford, UK: Blackwell,
1992], 220). This makes Thutmose I an excellent candidate for the pharaoh who personally spoke with the chief Hebrew midwives
and instructed them to execute the newborn Israelite boys (Exod 1:15). The numerous summonings of these midwives, whose
authoritative rank necessitates their having resided among the core of national Israel in Goshen, also implies an extremely close
proximity between them and pharaoh. This requirement can be satisfied easily if pharaoh resided in Memphis, but not if he resided in
Thebes. The journey from Memphis to Thebes [alone] would have been a slow one of perhaps two to three weeks (Joyce Tyldesley,
Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh [London: Viking, 1996], 36). Even if one traveled at a similarly slow pace from Goshen to
Memphis, which did not entail the same grade of ascent as did a trip to Thebes, the journey could be made in a mere 1 to 2 days.
At a more realistic pace, the trip would be even faster. Pharaohs messengers probably traveled to Goshen on horseback, which would
shorten the travel time even more. Wood identifies Ezbet Helmi, located just over one mile southwest of Pi-Ramesses, as the royal
residence of the exodus-pharaoh during the Israelites stay in Goshen (Wood, The Rise and Fall, 482). Though this site indeed may
have possessed two palace structures of the 18
th
Dynasty (Ibid., 483; Manfred Bietak, Avaris: The Capital of the Hyksos [London:
British Museum Press, 1996], 6872), there is no epigraphical evidence confirming that Amenhotep II ever resided there, even
periodically. Moreover, the discovery of a scarab there with his royal cartouche no more proves his personal occupation of the city
(Wood, The Rise and Fall, 484) than the discovery of a scarab with his cartouche at Gibeon proves he resided on the Central
Benjamin Plateau (James B. Pritchard, Gibeon: Where the Sun Stood Still [Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1962], 156).
Memphis, a known royal residence of Amenhotep II and the headquarters for all of the Asiatic military campaigns of the era, is
currently a better candidate for the site where the exodus-pharaoh resided, though Ezbet Helmi does remain a legitimate candidate.

53
Other New-Kingdom princes who were sm-priests also functioned as chief pontiffs at Memphis, such as the kings son and
sm-priest, Thutmose, who appears with his father, Amenhotep III, at his burial in the Serapeum. This prince is attested on a canopic
box, where he is called the kings eldest son, his beloved, high priest of Ptah and sm-priest. He doubtlessly is to be identified with
the kings son and sm-priest, Thutmose, who appears on a statuette in the Louvre (Redford, Coregency of Tuthmosis III, 111).

54
Ibid., 112, 114.
10
commander of the horses.
55
Since his name was enclosed in a cartouche, he was the heir apparent when the
stele was carved, meaning that he stood in line for the throne ahead of Thutmose IV, who obviously was his
younger brother. Therefore, some conclusions about this prince may be drawn: (1) he was the royal son of
Amenhotep II; (2) he was never called the kings eldest son; (3) he served as the sm-priest and lived in the
royal palace at Memphis; (4) he was once the heir to the throne; (5) he lived approximately until Year 30 or 35
of his fathers reign; and (6) he never ascended to the throne.
56
If Prince B/Amenhotep was the heir to the
throne without being the firstborn son of Amenhotep II, then who was the eldest son of this noted pharaoh?

4. An Unattested Thutmose as a Candidate for the Eldest Son of Amenhotep II. Redford, who
considers the exodus account to be mythical, may supply the answer: The fact that he (Prince B/Amenhotep)
was named Amenhotep like his father might be taken to indicate that he was not the firstborn, that an older son
named Thutmose had been born to Amenhotep II. It would be necessary to assume, however, that this Thutmose
had passed away in childhood without leaving a trace.
57
Redford suggests that the practice of these pharaohs
was not to name their firstborn sons after themselves, but to use an alternative birth-name. If Prince Amenhotep
was not the eldest son of Amenhotep II, who by custom may have named his first son Thutmose, then the
Thutmose sitting on the lap of the royal tutor Hekreshu in a wall painting at Thebes may be the eldest son of
the king.
58
Therefore, if Amenhotep II was the exodus-pharaoh, perhaps his eldest son was Thutmose, who died
in the plague without leaving a trace, thus satisfying both the Egyptological and biblical records (Exod 12:29).

55
Ibid., 114.

56
Ibid., 110, 114.

57
Ibid., 114.

58
In Tomb 64 of the Theban necropolis is an important wall painting that displays two royal tutors: Hekreshu and his son,
Hekerneheh, who are in the company of their princely charges: Thutmose and Amenhotep. Hekreshu is seated, facing right, with the
young heir apparent, Thutmose, on his lap. Standing before him is Hekerneheh and a small Prince Amenhotep, who is carrying a
bouquet. Hekreshu is stated specifically to be a tutor of the kings eldest bodily son, Thutmose, whose nomen is represented in a
cartouche. Hekernehehs title is tutor of the kings son, Amenhotep. Behind Hekerneheh appear six other princes, originally all
named, but the hieroglyphs are now almost completely destroyed. One name alone can be made out, that of a certain Amenemhet. All
of the princes, including the seated Thutmose, wear pectorals bearing the nomen and praenomen of Thutmose IV (Ibid., 114, 115).
The presence of the birth name and throne-name of Thutmose IV on each of the princes drove Newberry to conclude that the child on
Hekreshus knee was undoubtedly the later Thutmose IV, and that the other princes, including Amenhotep, were his sons. The prince
named Amenhotep, according to Newberry, eventually ruled as Amenhotep III (Percy Edward Newberry, Akhenatens Eldest Son-in-
Law Ankhkhe-prure, JEA 14 [1928], 8384). Redford points out that Newberrys argument is not compelling, as all of the others in
the scene easily could be wearing the cartouche of Thutmose IV out of deference to the son who succeeded to the throne. He further
suggests that perhaps the six princes in the background are sons of Thutmose IV, while Amenhotep could be a brother, and for that
reason was singled out to be depicted in a position of honor (Redford, Coregency of Tuthmosis III, 113). The problem, however,
with the suggestion that the six princes are the sons of the seated Thutmose is that Thutmose and Amenhotep themselves, whoever
they might be in reality, are depicted in the scene as children, and it would be odd to depict in the same scene both a father and his
children as children. A possible rebuttal against Redfords suggestion that Thutmose and Amenhotep are brothers might take the
following form: Hekreshu is specifically stated to be the tutor of the kings eldest son, Thutmose, while Hekerneheh is the tutor of the
kings son, Amenhotep. Since a father-son relationship existed between the tutors, perhaps a father-son relationship existed between
their charges. Redford dismisses this idea by offering a parallel depiction found in graffiti from Konosso. A kings son, Amenhotep, is
mentioned twice at Konosso, once with Hekreshu and a second time with Hekerneheh. The presence of the cartouches of Thutmose IV
in the immediate vicinity lends support to the dating of the graffiti to his reign. More importantly, Amenhoteps name is accompanied
by that of another prince, Okheprure, and the parallelism in the graffiti between the two names strongly suggests a fraternal
relationship. Okheprure again is shown on the knee of an unidentified scribe in Tomb 226 of the Theban necropolis, along with three
of his brothers. If, as his name would indicate, he was a son of Amenhotep II, then most likely Prince Amenhotep was also his son. On
the wall painting from Tomb 64, therefore, Prince Amenhotep also should be considered a brother to Thutmose IV, and not a son
(Ibid.). If Princes Thutmose and Amenhotep from Tomb 64 are indeed brothers, who are the six princes in the background? Certainly
the fact that all of the princes, including the seated Thutmose, are wearing pectorals that bear the nomen and praenomen of Thutmose
IV seems to indicate that the princes are all on the same level, and therefore brothers, as was the case with the Konosso graffiti and
Tomb 226. The problem that remains, then, is that Thutmose IV is universally accepted as not having been the firstborn child, which is
both confirmed by Thutmose IVs own account on the Great/Sphinx Stele and by the fact that Prince Amenhotep was shown to be the
rightful heir to the throne of Amenhotep II before Thutmose IV. Thus one of two options must be true: either (1) the Tomb-64 painting
is falsifying the truth by assigning Thutmose IV the status of the kings eldest son, or (2) the Thutmose who sits on the lap of
Hekreshu is intended to portray a different Thutmose. The former option hardly seems possible, since the tomb-wall painting is
11

V. THE THEORY OF THE EXODUS-PHARAOH DYING IN THE RED SEA

Although the Christian community historically has accepted that the exodus-pharaoh died in the Red Sea
when his army drowned, there is no such statement to this effect in Exodus, the only first-hand source for the
event, or anywhere else in Scripture.
59
One of the most important principles that was taught to the present writer
during his seminary studies is this: Say everything the text says; say no more, and say no less! Saying more
than what is written in the text is known as eisegesis, or reading into the text what the interpreter presupposes it
to say. Eisegesis must be avoided here. What does the text actually say about the fate of this pharaoh? Moses
only states that the Lord would be honored through pharaoh by the destruction of his army (Exod 14:4), but
throughout the entire narrative of Exodus, Moses never explicitly states that pharaoh died along with his army.

1. Psalm 106:11 as a Proof-Text for the Death of the Exodus-Pharaoh in the Red Sea. Supporters of the
view that pharaoh died in the Red Sea often appeal to Ps 106:11. The setting is the Red-Sea rebellion that was
instigated by the (Israelite) fathers (who) were in Egypt (Ps 106:7). God parted the waters so that he might
make known his power (Ps 106:8). After describing the parting (Ps 106:9), the psalmist adds, And he saved
them from the hand of the hater and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy, and the water covered their
adversaries; not one of them remained (Ps 106:1011). The adversaries are obviously the Egyptian soldiers,
the enemies who were haters of the Jews. The sea covered them, and not one of them remained alive.
Allegedly, pharaohthe chief adversarywas among the smitten Egyptians. If Amenhotep II actually
was the exodus-pharaoh, then his reign would have ended abruptly during the year of the exodus, or ca. 1446
BC. Since he ruled at least 26 years, which will be proven below, his reign must have begun by ca. 1471 BC.
The weakness with the death-in-the-Red-Sea theory, though, is that it cannot be synchronized with the reigns of
the previous five pharaohs, whose regnal dates are known, being fixed by the Ebers Papyrus. Since regnal dates
are knownexcept for that of Thutmose II, whose rule lasted from four to twelve yearsAmenhotep IIs ninth
year could not have begun in or before ca. 1471 BC. Even if Thutmose II ruled for the minimum of four years,
the reign of Amenhotep II had to begin in ca. 1462 BC or later, leaving nine years too few for the reigns of all
of the intervening monarchs. Therefore, due to limitations that represent fixed points in biblical and Egyptian
chronologies, if Amenhotep II was the exodus-pharaoh, he could not have died in the Red-Sea incident.
If the exodus-pharaoh lived through the Red-Sea massacre, Ps 106:11 remains uncompromised. The text
never specifically mentions pharaoh, so there is no reason to conclude that he drowned with his army. The hater
and enemy of Israel is Egypt as a collective whole, and certainly not every Egyptian drowned in the Red Sea
when the water covered their adversaries, so God delivered his people from Egypt itself. Only those Egyptian
adversariesas national representativeswho chased the Israelites into the sea were consumed by water, and

located in a deeply secluded place, not at all prominently displayed where one would expect to see propagandistic depictions of a
kings grandeur. If Redford is correct that Prince Amenhotep, who never is called the kings eldest son, was not the eldest son of
Amenhotep II, and that by custom a king named Amenhotep would name his first son Thutmose, and thus that Amenhotep II did
name his first son Thutmose, the Thutmose sitting on the lap of the royal tutor indeed may be the eldest son of Amenhotep II, who
could have died a premature death during the tenth and most gruesome of the plagues on Egypt. The painting may be depicting the
entire entourage of Amenhotep IIs sons during the time when his firstborn son was still alive. The presence of Thutmose IVs
praenomen on the pectorals of all of the princes, even on that of the long-deceased plague-son, may indicate that the painting was
made during the reign of Thutmose IV. Newberry, for one, was convinced that Tomb 64 was constructed for Hekerneheh during the
reign of Thutmose IV (Newberry, Akhenatens Eldest, 82). The reason for the cartouche of Thutmose IV next to each of the princes,
which could be a later addition to the painting if instead it originally was painted during the reign of Amenhotep II, may simply be that
the painter wanted to demonstrate the sovereignty of Thutmose IV over all of his brothers, being that he was the only one from among
them who rose to the position of pharaoh. Certainly this interpretation would better explain why Amenhotep, who was in line for the
throne before his younger brother Thutmose IV, was being depicted as smaller in stature than the Thutmose who sat on his tutors lap.
This detail is highly problematic for any view that instead purports Thutmose IV to be the kings eldest son, since Prince
Amenhotep is known to have been in line for the throne before him.

59
Wood, The Rise and Fall, 478. Shea correctly notes that Ex 1415 is not directly explicit upon this point, though he
subsequently takes an unjustified logical leap by extrapolating, but it is the logical inference there [that pharaoh also drowned]
(Shea, Amenhotep II as Pharaoh, 46).
12
since they were the taskforce dispatched on this mission, their defeat signals the demise of the entire nation.
Moreover, not one of these representatives, who comprised the bulk of pharaohs vast imperial army, survived
after the dividing walls of the sea collapsed. This is confirmed by the Mosaic text that probably provided the
basis for the psalmists words: The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen, that is, in
relation to Pharaohs entire army that followed them into the sea; not one of them remained (Exod 14:28).

2. Psalm 136:15 as a Proof-Text for the Death of the Exodus-Pharaoh in the Red Sea. The text most
frequently used to assert that pharaoh died with his army is Ps 136:15. But he overthrew pharaoh and his army
in the Red Sea . . . . A cursory reading of the text leads most to believe that because God overthrew pharaoh
and his army, both parties must have died.
60
However, the Hebrew verb . . (nr, he shook off) shows that
God actually shook off the powerful pharaoh and his army, who were bothersome pests that Godwhose
might is far greater than theirsmerely brushed away. The same Hebrew verb is used in Ps 109:23, where
David laments, I am gone like a shadow when it lengthens; I am shaken off like the locust. Here, he describes
the sad condition of his suffering, as both lines of this synonymous parallelism indicate his feeling of being cast
away, or discarded. The picture painted by the verb is that David has become as a locust that is casually flicked
away from a mans garment. Surely David was not describing his own demise and death! The context of Ps 136,
which states that God brought Israel out from their midst . . . with a strong hand and an outstretched arm (Ps
136:1112), confirms that the unequalled might of God is the thrust of the passage, thus accentuating the ease
with which he shook off Israels adversary: the mighty Egyptian army.
Another argument against the view that Ps 136:15 signals the death of pharaoh is that this verse is
probably taken from Exod 14:27, which uses the same verb, to shake off, but (purposefully?) omits pharaoh
from the list of those whom the Lord shook off from the Israelites garments. Instead, the text clearly states, I
[God] will be honored through pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord (Exod
14:4; cf. 14:17). God was honored through pharaoh in the mass destruction of his army, but pharaoh did not
have to die for this to occur.
61
In Ps 136:15, the psalm writer was not rejoicing over the death of anyone, but
that almighty God shook off the Egyptians from Israels garments by freeing them from their enemys clutches.

3. The Death and Regnal Length of Amenhotep II. Under what circumstances, then, did Amenhotep II
die? Fortunately, his mummified corpse has been preserved.
62
Victor Loret, fresh from his discovery of the
tomb of Thutmose III in the Valley of the Kings, discovered the royal tomb of Amenhotep II on 9 March 1898.
Confirmation that this burial chamber belonged to Amenhotep II came when Loret identified his nomen and
praenomen on the painted, quartzite sarcophagus. This magnificent sepulcher represented a first for the
excavations in the Valley of the Kings, as the king actually was found in place in his own sarcophagus, albeit
lying in a replacement cartonnage coffin.
63

a. An Indisputable Regnal Length of at Least 26 Years. While Thutmose III is documented to have died
in Year 54, no evidence exists to date explicitly the regnal year of Amenhotep IIs death. The highest known
regnal date among the indisputable evidence, Year 26, is inscribed on a wine juglet from the kings Theban

60

61
Shea disagrees: Yahweh says that he will get glory over pharaoh. While some of that glory could be maintained by his loss
of troops in the Sea of Reeds, if he escaped with his own life, some of that glory could have been diminished (Shea, Amenhotep II
as Pharaoh, 46). This statement, though well intended, is not true whatsoever. God displayed his glory by decimating Sennacheribs
army when the Assyrians marched against Judah (2 Kgs 19:35), but his glory was not diminished when Sennacherib returned to
Assyria unscathed. A far greater shame for a defeated monarch is to be left in humiliation to rule over a shell of his former empire
after being defeated by God, depleted of his army, andin the case of the exodus-pharaohstripped of his servantile workforce.

62
No doubt exists among Egyptologists that this mummy is the corpse of Amenhotep II. Although he was taller than both his
father and his son who succeeded him, his physical features bear a marked resemblance to theirs, especially his sons, particularly in
respect to their crania and teeth (James E. Harris and Kent R. Weeks, X-Raying the Pharaohs [New York: Scribners, 1973], 138).

63
Nicholas Reeves, Ancient Egypt: The Great Discoveries (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 103.
13
funerary temple.
64
Redford, using questionable logic, asserts that since the juglet was found in the kings
funerary temple, Year 26 represents the end of his reign.
65
Wente and Van Siclen dispute this assertion, though,
showing evidence for the long-term storage of wine, and the active functioning of Egyptian mortuary temples
long before the deaths of the pharaohs for whom they were built.
66

b. A Possible Regnal Length of at Least 30 or 35 Years. One source contributing to the argument that
Amenhotep II reigned beyond 26 years is BM 10056. At least one scholar dates a fragmentary regnal year in v.
9,8 of this papyrus to Year 30, though he admits that the number also could be read differently, such as Year
35.
67
If one of these readings is correct, Amenhotep IIs reign lasted at least 30 or 35 years. Many scholars
have postulated that he reigned beyond 30 years because he observed a regnal jubilee called a sed festival, a
celebration that historically marked the 30
th
year of a pharaohs reign. While the sed festival was used for
centuries to honor this regnal anniversary,
68
Der Manuelian warns against concluding too much about the regnal
length of Amenhotep II just because he celebrated one: No dates accompany the jubilee monuments [of
Amenhotep II], and our understanding of the jubilee institution is too imperfect to allow us to assign an
automatic 30
th
year at every mention of a hb-sed festival.
69

c. A Possible Regnal Length of Exactly 37 Years. Certainly caution must be exercised before assigning
a 30-year reign automatically to every pharaoh who celebrated this event, but the sed festival of Amenhotep II
just may signify that his reign exceeded 30 years. More conclusive than the sed-festival evidence is that from
Thutmose IVs Lateran Obelisk, which was erected a full 35 years after the death of Thutmose III, to whom it
was dedicated. Wente and Van Siclen suggest that the 35 years marks the length of the interceding reign of
Amenhotep II minus the coregency with his father, which is known to be 2 years.
70
If their argumentation is
correct, Amenhotep II reigned exactly 37 years, making him 55 years of age at the time of his death.

64
The kings praenomen is inscribed on one side of the jar, while the other side is inscribed with Year 26 and Panehsy,
the name of the kings vintner (Der Manuelian, Amenophis II, 42).

65
Redford asserts that since pottery jars are relatively porous, the wine within them was consumed not long after the bottling
process, and since mortuary complexes were fully stocked with wine only after a kings (imminent) death, the Year-26 wine-juglet
was produced at the end of Amenhotep IIs life, and the mortuary temple probably was under construction until the kings death and
the stocking of the wine (Donald B. Redford, On the Chronology of the Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty, JNES 25:2 [Apr 1966], 119).

66
E. F. Wente and C. C. Van Siclen III, A Chronology of the New Kingdom, in Studies in Honor of George R. Hughes, in
Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 39 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 228.

67

68
The 12
th
-Dynasty pharaoh Sesostris I (ca. 19601916 BC) erected two obelisks in front of the temple pylon at Heliopolis on
the occasion of his first sed festival, commemorating his 30
th
regnal year (Grimal, History of Ancient Egypt, 164). During the 18
th

Dynasty, Thutmose III seemingly celebrated a sed festival in his 30
th
year, as well; Redford suggests that the year of rest from Asiatic
campaigning between Thutmose IIIs sixth and seventh campaigns, which corresponds precisely to his Year 30, signifies a holiday
year used to celebrate this landmark anniversary (Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 158).

69

70
Wente and Van Siclen III, Chronology of the New Kingdom, 227228. The occurrence of a coregency under Thutmose
III and Amenhotep II is essentially undisputed among conservative Egyptologists, as supporting evidence for it is plentiful. See
Redford, Coregency of Tuthmosis III, 116; Der Manuelian, Amenophis II, 24; and Richard A. Parker, Once Again the Coregency
of Thutmose III and Amenhotep II, in Studies in Honor of John A. Wilson, in Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 35 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1969), 228. Nevertheless, Shea firmly disputes the notion of such a coregency, though formerly he
advocated one. His current position is built on a foundational presupposition, namely that Amenhotep II died in the Red Sea. The
proof Shea presents for his position is that Amenhotep II reportedly launched two first campaigns. According to Sheas theory, a
successor (Amenhotep IIB) was secretly and deceitfully placed on the throne after Amenhotep IIA drowned in the Red Sea, but with
the caveat that the later pharaoh used the same birth name and throne-name as his deceased predecessor, thus completing the reign of
Amenhotep II as an imposter (Shea, Amenhotep II as Pharaoh, 4446). This outlandish theory, however, is fraught with
difficulties, creating far more problems than it solves, the foremost being that this entire leap of speculation is based on the falseyet
completely handicappingpresupposition that the exodus-pharaoh died in the Red Sea. Since this presumption was demonstrated to
be inaccurate, only Sheas arguments stand to be evaluated. If the two first campaigns of Amenhotep II were actually one campaign,
which will be proven subsequently, then Shea loses all impetus for his fantastic claim. Moreover, he provides no precedent in Egypts
long history for the practice of two pharaohs ruling under the same name, with the latter using his predecessors nomen and
praenomen as his own. Surely such an act would incite a court rebellion and turn the royal family against the officials who secretly
14

d. A Lifespan of 55 Years. A lifespan of 55 years for Amenhotep II is deduced by adding his 37-year
reign to the 18 years he lived before his coronation, a number taken from the larger of the two Sphinx Stelae of
Amenhotep II: Now his majesty appeared as king as a fine youth . . . having completed 18 years in his strength
. . . ; now after these things, his majesty appeared as king.
71
An X-ray investigation of the royal mummies may
assist in dating his regnal length. After an examination of the mummy of Amenhotep II, he was estimated to
have died at 44 years of age,
72
meaning that a 55-year lifespan exceeds the projections of the X-ray evidence,
and thus is an impossibly high result according to the medical evidence.
73
Yet Robins is convinced that when
identifying a pharaohs age at death, there is good reason to cast doubt on X-ray evidence as a whole.
74
Support
for this criticism is found in the discrepancy over Thutmose IIIs lifespan.
75
While he lived at least until age 55,
his mummy reportedly displays skeletal features of a man of 4045 years old, meaning that the X-ray evidence
makes him appear no less than 1015 years younger than his actual age at death.
76
Thus the 10-year discrepancy
with Amenhotep IIs mummy is not problematic, and a reign of 37 years remains a fully realistic option.

VI. THE SECOND ASIATIC CAMPAIGN AS THE RESULT OF THE EXODUS

1. The Great Reduction in Campaigning and Expansionism. The renowned conqueror Thutmose III led
17 military campaigns into the Levant, but his sonin stark contrastled only two or three. While many
scholars have attempted to determine the exact number, there exists a virtual dearth of discussion about this
sharp decline. Aharoni attributes it to an underlying diminishment of Egyptian power: Already in the days of
Amenhotep II, the son of Thutmose III, cracks began to appear in the structure of the Egyptian Empire.
77

Vandersleyen hints at the dissipation of Egypts might by the end of Amenhotep IIs reign: It seems possible to

placed the imposter on the throne. Shea also asserts that the two coronation celebrations for Amenhotep IIone after his father died
on ca. 22 March, and the other on ca. 22 November, as recorded on the Memphis Stelerepresent a contradiction, implying the reigns
of different rulers. However, three inescapable problems plague this assertion: (1) if Amenhotep IIB was coronated on 22 November,
the deception of the court officials would have been exposed; (2) the exodus occurred on 15 Nisan (25 April), which would render
inconceivable Amenhotep IIBs coronation as late as 22 November; and (3) the attestation of two accession dates actually supports a
coregency. In The Biography of Amenemheb, it is stated that Thutmose III died on vii, 30 (ca. 22 March) of his 54
th
year, and that on
the very next day Amenhotep II was established on the throne of his father (Der Manuelian, Amenophis II, 20). However, both the
Semna Stela and BM 10056 offer iv, 1 (ca. 22 November) as his accession date, and since on BM 10056 the year-number even
changes immediately after the mention of 22 November, a definitive conclusion can be made that Amenhotep IIs regnal years were
numbered from ca. 22 November, not from 23 March (Redford, Coregency of Tuthmosis III, 121). Shea claims that if indeed
Amenhotep II was inaugurated when he became coregent on 22 November of an earlier year, there would be no need for an
installation ceremony on the day after Thutmose III died. Actually, the Egyptian texts never refer to an installation ceremony on 23
March; they note only that he was established on his fathers throne. Before Thutmose III died, Amenhotep II ruled as a coregent with
his father, with full pharaonic authority; only after his father died, however, did he actually take the throne as the pharaoh with
ultimate authority. Yet even if there was a ceremony immediately after his fathers death, such an event at the outset of his sole rule
would serve to establish him on the throne and lessen the chance of a usurpation attempt by a potential challenger. In addition to all of
these problems with Sheas argumentation, what pharaoh of the proud and powerful 18
th
Dynasty would equate himself with a
deceased predecessor, especially one who lost his slave-base, lost the firstborn child of every Egyptian citizen, lost the worlds most
powerful army, and died shamefully in a mass drowning? Moreover, could such a grand scheme be expected never to be challenged,
or to surface at some later time during Egypts entire storied history? Thus the notion of two Amenhotep IIs is resolutely rejected.

71

72
Vandersleyen notes that in spite of the good physical development of Amenhotep II, an examination of his mummy reveals
that he was of average height and died at about 44 years of age (Claude Vandersleyen, LEgypte et la Valle du Nil, vol. 2 [Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1995], 336). Harris and Weeks, adding that his wavy hair was brown with gray at the temple, suggest
that he was 45 at death (Harris and Weeks, X-Raying, 138).

73

74
G. Robins, The Value of the Estimated Ages of the Royal Mummies at Death as Historical Evidence, Gttinger Miszellen
45 (1981), 6368.

75
While Thutmose IIIs exact age at his accession is unknown, his reign lasted into his 54
th
regnal year. According to
Brugsch-Bey, he reigned 53 years, 11 months, and 1 day (Heinrich Brugsch-Bey, Egypt Under the Pharaohs [London: Bracken
Books, 1902], 193), while Tyldesley claims that he reigned 53 years, 10 months, and 26 days (Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, 96, 215).

76
Harris and Weeks, X-Raying, 138.

77
Yohanan Aharoni and Michael Avi-Yonah, The Macmillan Bible Atlas (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 34.
15
consider this reign as unsuccessful, a time of decline: a few exploits abroad, a few preserved memorials, an
almost complete absence of sources after the ninth year of the reign.
78
Yet the intervening years featured
neither Egypts engagement/loss in war nor a significant change in the political climate. Der Manuelian writes,
Despite Thutmose IIIs military success, Mitanni remained Egypts primary adversary in Dynasty 18, and there
is no reason to doubt her continued aggressive policy in the reign of the young king Amenhotep II.
79

While this may be true, Amenhotep IIs Year-9 campaign was the last to pit Egypt against Mitanni.
During the reign of Thutmose IV, Mitanniunder threat from the Hittite King Tudhaliyas IIattempted to
forge an alliance with its Egyptian arch-enemy, demonstrating a complete reversal in relations between these
formerly incompatible superpowers. EA (Amarna Letter) 109 reveals that by the mid-14
th
century BC, Egypt
held only nominal control of Palestine, as they no longer struck fear into the Canaanite rulers.
80
One author
notes that this relative military inertness lasted until Horemhebs coming to power in ca. 1335 BC.
81
How
does one explain this great disparity in Egypts campaigning, the uncharacteristic change in political policy
toward their bitter enemy to the north, and Egypts general loss of power and imperialistic dominance?

2. The Motivation for the Recording of Amenhotep IIs Asiatic Campaigns. The relative shortage of
military activity during Amenhotep IIs reign cannot be attributed to timidity. He recorded his few military
excursions into Asia in The Annals of Amenhotep II, which contain not a complete, daily record of each stop on
the various routes, but only a selection of the events that accentuate his courage and present him in a positive
light.
82
Pritchard adds that Amenhotep II gloried in his reputation for personal strength and prowess. His
records, therefore, contrast with those of his predecessor and father, Thutmose III, in emphasizing individual
achievement.
83
Thus Amenhotep IIs exploits were motivated by a thirst to attain universal fame and glory.

3. The Number of Amenhotep IIs Asiatic Campaigns. Prior to the discovery of the Memphis Stele, most
scholars assumed that both Amenhotep IIs Asiatic campaign, as recounted on the fragmentary Karnak Stele,
and the operations against Takhsi, mentioned in the Amada and Elephantine Stelae, describe one event. With
the Memphis Steles discovery, it is still possible that the Karnak, Amada, and Elephantine Stelae refer to a
common campaign, but the notion of only one campaign was proven false, since the Memphis Stele clearly
delineates two distinct, separately numbered campaigns.
84
However, its text presents a dilemma: The translator
finds it impossible to reconcile the dates in these several stelae.
85
The available evidence allows for two views:
(1) Amenhotep II conducted three Asiatic campaigns; (2) Amenhotep II conducted two Asiatic campaigns.
Relevant inscriptional evidence from antiquity solves this dispute, which is critical to this pharaohs biography.

a. The Evidence from the Memphis Stele. Two sources record multiple Asiatic campaigns under
Amenhotep II: the Memphis and Karnak Stelae, which are partially duplicates in content. Both stelae are
attributable to this pharaoh with confidence, as they begin with his complete titulary. The Memphis Stele, later
reused by a 21
st
-Dynasty prince as part of the ceiling of his burial chamber (ca. 875 BC), offers the more
extensive text. It presents both an earlier campaign in central and northern Syria, and a later one in Palestine,
dating his first victorious campaign to Year 7, Month 1, Season 3, Day 25 (ca. 15 May) and his second
victorious campaign to Year 9, Month 3, Season 1, Day 25 (ca. 15 November).
86

78
Vandersleyen, LEgypte, vol. 2, 341.

79

80
Previously, on seeing a man from Egypt, the kings of Canaan fled bef[ore him, but] now the sons of Abdi-Ashirta make
men from Egypt prowl about [like do]gs (The Amarna Letters, ed. and trans. William L. Moran [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1992], 183).

81
Vandersleyen, LEgypte, vol. 2, 333. This and all subsequent quotes by Vandersleyen are translated into English from the
original French by Lydia Polyakova and Inna Kumpyak. Horemheb reigned from ca. 13351307 BC.

82
Yohanan Aharoni, Some Geographical Remarks Concerning the Campaigns of Amenhotep II, JNES 19:3 (Jul 1960), 177.

83
James B. Pritchard, ANET (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 245.

84

85
Pritchard, ANET, 245.

86
Ibid., 245, 246; Redford, Coregency of Tuthmosis III, 119.
16

b. The Evidence from the Karnak Stele. Another source that attests to the Asiatic campaigns, lying to the
south of the Eighth Pylon at Karnak, is the Karnak Stele, which survives in a more damaged state than the
Memphis Stele. The Karnak Stele consists of a two-part relief, with each displaying a pharaoh who is presenting
an offering to Amun-Re. Between the two parts is a vertical line of text that records Seti Is restoration of the
monument.
87
Whether this stele originally bore the same dates as those on the Memphis Stele is unknown, but
that it recounts the same two campaigns described on the Memphis Stele is now clear. Hoffmeier even refers to
them as two nearly identical stelae, though the Karnak Stele devotes much less space to the second campaign
than does the Memphis Stele.
88
Both stelae were hacked-up during the Amarna Revolution and restored during
the 19
th
Dynasty, with the Karnak Stele betraying poorer restoration.
89
Its postscript names Thutmose as the
erector, assumed to be Thutmose IV, who evidently erected the stele after his accession.
90

c. The Evidence from the Amada and Elephantine Stelae. The Amada and Elephantine Stelae also offer
evidence regarding the number of campaigns, as both speak of a first victorious campaign of Amenhotep II,
during which seven Syrian chiefs were captured in the region of Takhsi. Both texts state that they were erected
after his majesty returned from Upper Retenu, having felled all those who had rebelled against him while he
was extending the borders of Egypt.
91
His majesty came joyously to his father Amun, having slain with his own
bludgeon the seven chiefs who were in the district of Takhsi.
92
Both stelae commence with this date: Year 3,
Month 3, Season 3, Day 15 (ca. 4 July), which coincides with a celebration after the Egyptians returned from
the first campaign.
93
This date demonstrates that the first victorious campaign transpired no later than Year 3
of Amenhotep II. How can this date be resolved with the Year-7 date on the Memphis Stele, when both describe
his first campaign? These ancient sources allow for two theories on how many campaigns were launched.

d. The Theory of Three Asiatic Campaigns Launched by Amenhotep II. Many scholars believe that
Amenhotep II campaigned into Asia three times, with two options offered to resolve the conflicting information
on the stelae. (1) The numbering of campaigns is particular to individual stelae. Drioton and Vandier suggest
that Amenhotep II undertook Asiatic campaigns in Years 3, 7, and 9, and that the first victorious campaign on
the Memphis Stele is the first of two campaigns described on that particular stele.
94
Thus the scribe merely
used first and second to distinguish from one another the two campaigns commemorated on the stele. The
problem with this theory is that within Egyptian historiography, this supposed method of dating military
campaigns is unparalleled. The practice would be strange indeed among 18
th
-Dynasty pharaohs, since the
expression consistently refers not to successively numbered campaigns in one record, but to chronologically
tallied campaigns that occurred over the course of a kings reign.
95
The 17 campaigns of Thutmose III, for
example, are numbered successively throughout his reign.
(2) The numbering of campaigns differs from coregent status to sole-ruler status. This variation dates
one victorious campaign to his coregency with Thutmose III, and the other to his sole rule. Like Drioton and

87
Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 2 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 305.

88
Hoffmeier, Memphis and Karnak Stelae, in Context of Scripture, vol. 2, 19.

89
Pritchard, ANET, 245; Redford, Coregency of Tuthmosis III, 119.

90
Breasted, Ancient Records, vol. 2, 309.

91
The word Retenu, an Egyptian term used of Syro-Palestine, is found in the account of Thutmose IIIs first Asiatic
campaign, during which the Egyptians besieged Megiddo for seven months. When the city fell in December of Year 22, all of the
Canaanite leaderswith the exception of the king of Kadesh, who had fledfell in one stroke. Once these petty kings were in
Egyptian hands, they were required to take this vow: The lands of Retenu will not rebel again on another occasion, and, We will
never again act evilly against Men-kheper-Re (Thutmose III)who lives forever, our good lordin our lifetime (Pritchard, ANET,
238; Hoffmeier, Memphis and Karnak Stelae, in Context of Scripture, vol. 2, 16). Since city-states throughout Syro-Palestine were
involved in this rebellion, the territory of the kings of Retenu who pledged perpetual loyalty to Thutmose III must have comprised
both Syria and Palestine.

92

93

94
Eitienne Drioton and Jacques Vandier, LEgypte (Paris: Les Presses Universitaires de France, 1938), 406, 663.

95
17
Vandier, Badawy, Edel, and Alt also separate the Takhsi campaign from those described on the Memphis Stele,
postulating Asiatic campaigns in Years 3, 7, and 9. Alt asserts that the phrase, first victorious campaign, is
used correctly on the Amada, Elephantine, and Memphis Stelae. The earlier first victorious campaign
occurred in Year 3, during the coregency, while the latter transpired in Year 7, on his first military excursion as
an independent monarch. To accent his own achievement, Amenhotep II simply restarted his numbering once
he stepped out of his fathers shadow.
96
Yet once again, no precedent exists for pharaohs dating their military
campaigns separately: first as a coregent, then as a sole ruler. This theory would be far more tenable if an
inscription were found that dubbed the initial campaign described on the Memphis Stele as the first victorious
campaign of Amenhotep IIs sole rule. Moreover, a crippling weakness is that Amenhotep II launched his
Year-3 campaign as a sole ruler, in response to the Syro-Palestinian revolt waged after his fathers death.
By way of evaluation, insurmountable obstacles plague both versions of the three-campaign theory, thus
rendering this option insufficient and unacceptable. The greatest problem is the lack of precedent for any such
dual numbering of military campaigns by New-Kingdom pharaohs. Redford rightly notes, [T]hat two separate
systems of year-numbering were employed by Amenophis (II) is without other foundation and is a priori
unlikely.
97
Moreover, a comparison of lines 23 on the Memphis Stele with lines 1619 on the Amada Stele
both of which describe his first victorious campaignreveals some strong similarities, particularly in the
choice of words and the parallel actions depicted, so all of the various first campaigns of Amenhotep II surely
refer to a singular Asiatic campaign.
98

e. The Theory of Two Asiatic Campaigns. The inadequacies of the three-campaign theory have caused
many scholars to propose that Amenhotep II launched only two Asiatic campaigns, despite the victory stelae
attributing campaigns to Years 3, 7, and 9. This theory also has two variations. (1) The Year-3 campaign is
synonymous with the Year-7 campaign due to differing regnal counting systems. Its proponents assert that the
Amada and Elephantine Stelae record the same campaign as the Memphis Steles first campaign, but with the
stipulation that the latter stele counts regnal years from the beginning of the coregency, while the former stelae
count them from the outset of the sole rule. As Pritchard calculates, A possible reconciliation would be that the
7
th
year after the coregency began was the 3
rd
year of the sole reign.
99
One problem with this variation is the
lack of precedent for dating pharaonic regnal years using two different methods: sometimes coregent
numbering, and other times sole-regent numbering. Another problem is that the coregency now is known to
have lasted exactly 2 years, making it mathematically impossible to equate the two campaigns, since the
coregency would have to have lasted for a minimum of three years and one day for Pritchard to be correct.
(2) The Year-3 campaign is synonymous with the Year-7 campaign due to an inaccurate date displayed
on the Memphis Stele. This version also assumes that the first campaign on the Karnak Stele, the campaigns
described on the Elephantine and Amada Stelae, and the first campaign on the Memphis Stele, all refer to the
same event. However, it purports that the Amada and Elephantine Stelae correctly date the first victorious
campaign to Year 3, while the Memphis Stele displays a wrongly-reconstructed date etched onto it by a 19th-
Dynasty stelae-restoration crew that attempted to repair the damage it suffered during the Amarna Age.
Vandersleyen observes that the Memphis date is on the part of the memorial that was seriously damaged in the
Amarna Age; the date that we read today is the result of Rameside restoration.
100
He concludes, Thus the
initial date of Year 7 on the Memphis Stele is a[n inaccurate] restoration made by the Ramesides.
101

96
Ibid.

97
Ibid., 121.

98
Rainey, Amenhotep IIs Campaign to Takhsi, 71.

99

100
Vandersleyen, LEgypte, vol. 2, 324. Rainey affirms the activity of later restoration on the Memphis Stele, remarking that
its opening lines are difficult to read due to faulty restoration by a later scribe (Rainey, Amenhotep IIs Campaign to Takhsi, 72).

101
Vandersleyen, LEgypte, vol. 2, 325. Shea correctly asserts that the identification of the campaign of Year 7 is not a
scribal error because the campaign of Year 9 is identified as his second campaign of victory in the same text (Shea, Amenhotep II
as Pharaoh, 46), but he fails to account for the possibility that while the original scribe etched the year of the pharaohs first
campaign onto the stele correctly, it was subject to damage by alteration and subsequently faulty reparation.
18
f. Conclusion for the Number of Asiatic Campaigns. Both variations of the three-campaign theory
proved to be weak and indefensible. Vandersleyen perceptively notes, The simplest and most logical solution
is that there was only one first campaign, . . . more plausibly in Year 3 than in Year 7.
102
Therefore, based on
the strong likelihood of a singular error on the Memphis Steledue to inaccurate restoration by Ramesside
craftsmenas the best explanation to harmonize the conflicting evidence on the stelae, the two-campaign
theory is preferred. The Elephantine Stele, whose events are set in Takhsi,
103
even provides a terminus ad quem
for the first campaign, as line 26 dates the stele to Year 4. It is only reasonable to conclude that the events
including the Takhsi campaign recounted in the text before this postscript are earlier than Year 4. Thus there is
no reason to deny the clear implication of the text that the expedition against Takhsi transpired before [the end
of] Year 3.
104
Also supporting the view that the Memphis Steles first campaign was waged in Year 3, and not
in Year 7, is the evidence from Amenhotep IIs cupbearer. During Year 4, the cupbearer Minms remarks that a
stele was built for pharaoh in Naharin, located to the east of the Euphrates River, the inscription of which
confirms that the first Asiatic campaign occurred before Year 4 ended.
105

4. The First Asiatic Campaign of Amenhotep II. For the sake of brevity, Amenhotep IIs first campaign
will be referred to as A
1
, while his second campaign will be called A
2
. As was proven already, he launched A
1

in Year 3, and the events surrounding this campaign can be dated chronologically in the following sequence: (1)
Thutmose III died on ca. 22 March 1452 BC; (2) Amenhotep II presided over the funeral and was confirmed as
sole ruler; (3) the Syro-Palestinian city-states rebelled after hearing of Thutmose IIIs death; (4) Amenhotep II
assembled his army from throughout Egypt and the nearby garrisoned cities; and (5) Amenhotep II launched A
1
,
arriving at his first destination on ca. 15 May 1452 BC.
The death of Thutmose III led to a massive revolt in his Syro-Palestinian territories, which propelled the
launching of A
1
.
106
Amenhotep II officiated at his fathers funeral as the new Horus, as Thutmose III was
buried on the west bank of the Nile River at Waset, in his elevated, cliff-cut mansion of eternity.
107
His
presence at the funeral, combined with the nearly two-month gap between his fathers death and the armys
arrival at their first destination, dispels the notion that he was already engaged in A
1
when his father died. The
energetic son of Egypts greatest imperialist wasted no time, as he probably left Egypt in April of ca. 1452 BC,
just as his father had done on his first Asiatic campaign, exactly 32 years prior. The undisputed epicenter of the
rebellion was the coastal cities of Syria, the focal point of the discussion in The Annals of Amenhotep II.
Undoubtedly, the coastal cities of Syriaand perhaps Palestine, as wellhad rebelled, and hence the young
pharaoh was forced to proceed by land in order to quell this revolt.
108

102
Vandersleyen, LEgypte, vol. 2, 323, 324.

103
Critics of the two-campaign theory argue that Takhsi, a region in Syria already known as such at the time of Thutmose
III, does not appear on the Memphis and Karnak Stelae, where another first campaign is discussed, thus suggesting a variance in
destinations. For one, Shea objects that while the Year-3 campaign identifies Takhsi as the region of the campaigning, this term is
never mentioned in the account of the Year-7 campaign, thus implying that these two accounts cannot describe the same campaign
(Shea, Amenhotep II as Pharaoh, 46), despite both of them documenting a campaign that was waged in Syria. This objection is
weak, however, since the purpose of the Amada Stele was not to boast of military exploits, but rather to commemorate the work
completed on the Amada temple in Nubia. Its brief allusion to the expedition in Syria is included to note that Amenhotep II captured
seven rulers of Takhsi, executed them by his own hand to make an example of them, and had six of them hanged upside down for
public exhibition on the walls at Thebes, while the seventh was to be hanged similarly at Napata, just downstream from the Fourth
Cataract in Nubia. This graphic display functioned to remind the Nubians that pharaoh was to be revered and obeyed. The Memphis
and Karnak Stelae had only one goal in mind: to boast of pharaohs military victories in Asia (Vandersleyen, LEgypte, vol. 2, 323
324; Hallo and Simpson, Ancient Near East, 261262). Since the commissioners of these stelae had no need to mention the capture of
the rulers of Takhsi, which was only one of the regions on the campaigns itinerary, they simply chose not to include the term.

104

105
Wolfgang Helck, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Heft 18 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1956), 1448; Vandersleyen, LEgypte,
vol. 2, 324.

106
The view that A
1
was launched in response to an Asiatic revolt is held by Breasted and most modern Egyptologists
(Breasted, Ancient Records, vol. 2, 304; Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 163; Grimal, History of Ancient Egypt, 218).

107
Dennis Forbes, Menkheperre Djehutymes: Thutmose III, A Pharaohs Pharaoh, KMT 9:4 (Win 19981999), 65.

108
Breasted, Ancient Records, vol. 2, 304. Curiously, the universally accepted location of Syria as the site of the rebellion is in
stark contrast to the opinion of Vandersleyen, who states that the first campaign, instead of reaching Ugarit and the middle of the
19

5. The Second Asiatic Campaign of Amenhotep II. Amenhotep II indisputably launched A
2
in Year 9. If
his reign began in ca. 1455 BC, which harmonizes with the Ebers Papyrus and the regnal lengths of the
intervening pharaohs, his ninth year lasted from ca. 22 November 1447 22 November 1446 BC. Therefore,
the exodus date of ca. 25 April 1446 BC should be placed within this particular regnal year, unless the Year-9
reading on the Memphis Stele is ever proven to be an inaccurate reconstruction also. Ancient sources and
modern commentators both expend far less energy writing about A
2
than they do about A
1
. Clearly A
1
was
launched to squelch a rebellion, but why did Amenhotep II embark on a second trip into Asia six years later?
Two principal theories have been proposed to identify the occasion.

a. The Second Asiatic Campaign Launched to Finish the Task of the First Campaign. The first theory for
the motive of A
2
is that it was launched to correct the shortcomings of A
1
. According to Aharoni, The failure
of the first campaign may be inferred by Amenhotep IIs setting out two years later on a second campaign in
order to put down revolts in the Sharon and in the Jezreel Valley.
109
Aharoni sees in A
1
an excursion that never
accomplished its primary mission: the conquest of Mitanni. Grimal concurs, noting that these two campaigns
were the last to pit Egypt against Mitanni.
110

The first problem with this view is its dependence on the three-campaign theory, since Aharoni assumes
that a Year-7 campaign was fought two years prior to the Year-9 campaign. However, there was no Year-7
campaign, as the first campaign of the Memphis Stele actually occurred in Year 3. Given the six-year gap
between the two campaigns, the theory that A
2
was launched to rectify the failures of A
1
crumbles from within,
due to the longevity of the interval. Of even greater weight, the failure of A
1
would have resulted in another
campaign directed principally into Syria, if not into Mitannian territory further to the north, not simply a brief
raid into southern Palestine that accomplished little more than the acquisition of slaves and booty.

b. The Second Asiatic Campaign Launched to Replenish Egypt after Their Losses. The second theory for
the motive of A
2
is that it was launched to replenish the Egyptian slave base and many of the valuable
commodities that were lost when the Israelites plundered and fled Egypt. According to this theory, pharaohs
motive is related to the exodus. If the exodus and Amenhotep IIs Year-9 campaign transpired in the same year,
which is highly possible given the chronological harmonization demonstrated earlier, a brief campaign into
southern Palestine to recover some of his critical losses would be both logical and expected. The feasibility of
this theory will be determined by a study of the details related to A
2
.

6. The Unique, Pre-Winter Launching of the Second Asiatic Campaign. The date of Year 9, Month 3,
Season 1, Day 25 (or ca. 16 November 1446 BC) recorded on the Memphis Stele represents either the Egyptian
armys launching date from Memphis or the arrival date at their first destination, though more likely the latter.
Either way, in antiquity a November date represents an extremely odd time for a military campaign. The

Orontes Valley, hardly crossed the latitudinal equivalent of Lake Hula and the city of Tyre; as a result, it was no more significant than
the second campaign (Vandersleyen, LEgypte, vol. 2, 328). On the contrary, A
1
was far more significant, especially considering the
post-victory celebration, the post-campaign executions at Thebes, and the erecting of the Elephantine Stele in Year 4. Moreover,
during A
1
, the Egyptians passed so far up the Western Levant that they probably reached the border of Mitannian territory, which is
known from The Annals of Amenhotep II. Aharoni even infers an unsuccessful Egyptian invasion of Mitanni, relying on the passage,
His majesty, going south, reached Niy (in the Northern Orontes Valley) (Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, Macmillan Atlas, 34). The
Egyptians later encountered a Mitannian spy during the concluding phase of A
1
, making Aharonis conclusion quite believable. When
Amenhotep II was passing through the Sharon Plain, a messenger of the King of Mitanni, called the Prince of Naharin here, was
captured by the Egyptians. This messenger was carrying with him a letter in the form of a clay tablet that hung from his neck like a
necklace, which undoubtedly dealt with matters that concerned the Mitanni-inspired rebellion (Ibid.). All of this demonstrates the
great importance of this vassal-rebellion, both to Egypt and to Mitanni, as Mitanni was seeking to usurp Egypts stranglehold on the
prestigious position of the ANEs dominant super-power. In contrast to all of this international intrigue revolving around A
1
, A
2
was
far less significant on an international level and far less illustrious, as will be seen momentarily.

109
Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, The Macmillan Atlas, 34.

110
Grimal, History of Ancient Egypt, 219.
20
present date would fall in the early part of November, an unusual season for an Egyptian campaign in Asia.
111

The reason for November being an unusual launch-time is that the campaign would be fought throughout the
cold, rainy winter, when ancient monarchs typically remained within their borders, dealt with internal affairs,
and planned for springtime military campaigns.
112
The biblical text confirms the normalcy of springtime
launchings: Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that Joab led out the army
and ravaged the land of the sons of Ammon, and he came and besieged Rabbah (1 Chr 20:1).
Der Manuelian comments on A
1
, Hardly one to break with the blossoming military tradition of the
early New Kingdom, Amenophis set out in April of his seventh year, the preferred season for embarking on
such ventures.
113
Vandersleyen contrasts this with the unprecedented timing of A
2
: The second Asiatic
campaign began on the 25
th
day of the 3
rd
month (akhet) of the 9
th
year, during an unusual season for military
campaigns. It was probably induced by the necessity of urgent intervention.
114
Amenhotep IIs decision to lead
an attack force into Palestine in November was extremely unorthodox, so obviously the situation did require
urgent Egyptian intervention, which Vandersleyen perceptively notes. But in what did Amenhotep II need to
intervene? Unlike A
1
, which was launched to quell a rebellion, A
2
had no obvious occasion.

7. The Contrast between the Two Asiatic Campaigns Launched by Amenhotep II. Marked differences
exist between A
1
and A
2
. The names of the geographical sites on A
1
are mostly unknown, and those that are
considered known are too far apart to belong to one region. In contrast, the sites mentioned on A
2
are located
only in Central Palestine, between Aphek and Anaharath. When comparing the courses of both campaigns, the
disproportionate nature of the two routes is striking, as the locations on A
1
are distant and scattered, while the
sites on A
2
are nearby and closely positioned in relation to one another.
115
Moreover, every early campaign of
Thutmose III through his illustrious eighth campaign into Mesopotamia, which represents the maximum extent
of Egypts expansionism, pushed further into foreign territory. In contrast, A
1
and A
2
followed exactly the
opposite trend, going from an itinerary further away from to closer to Egypt.

8. The Drastic Change in Foreign-Policy after the Second Asiatic Campaign of Amenhotep II. Another
oddity of A
2
is that after its conclusion, the Egyptian armyestablished by Thutmose III as the 15
th
-century-
BCs most elite fighting forcewent into virtual hibernation. Their previous policy of unwavering
aggressiveness toward Mitanni became one of passivity and the signing of peace treaties. The reason for this
new policy is missing from the historical record, but Amenhotep II evidently was the pharaoh who first signed a
treaty with Mitanni, subsequent to A
2
.
116
Redford connects this event to the arrival (after year 10, we may be
sure) of a Mitannian embassy sent by [Mitannis King] Saussatar with proposals of brotherhood (i.e., a
fraternal alliance and renunciation of hostilities).
117
Redford adds that Amenophis II seemed susceptible to
negotiations, and that he was apparently charmed and disarmed by the embassy from Naharin, and perhaps
even signed a treaty.
118
Yet such a treaty is completely out of character for imperial Egypt and this prideful
monarch, especially since the pharaonic state of the Eighteenth Dynasty could, more easily than Mitanni,
sustain the expense of periodic military incursions 800 km into Asia.
119
Support for Amenhotep II being the

111

112
Examples of campaigns launched in spring are plentiful: (1) Thutmose IIIs first Asiatic campaign, as he arrived at his first
destination (the border fortress of Tjel) on ca. 20 April 1484 BC; (2) Amenhotep IIs first Asiatic campaign, as he arrived at his first
destination (Shamash-Edom) on ca. 15 May 1452 BC; (3) Raamses II and his battalions of infantry and squads of chariotry, who
departed for Kadesh in late April of ca. 1274 BC (Kenneth A. Kitchen, Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II
[Warminster, Eng.: Aris & Phillips, 1982], 53); (4) Nabopolassars expedition against mountain tribes in the month of Sivan, or ca.
May/June of 607 BC (D. J. Wiseman, Chronicles of the Chaldean Kings [London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1961], 65); and (5)
Nebuchadnezzars expedition to Syria in Sivan of the first full year of his reign, or ca. 604 BC (Ibid., 28, 69).

113
Der Manuelian, Amenophis II, 59. As proven above, seventh year should be corrected to third year.

114
Vandersleyen, LEgypte, vol. 2, 321.

115
Ibid., 324325.

116

117
Ibid., 164.

118
Ibid.

119
Ibid., 165.
21
first to sign a pact with Mitanni is found in the actions of Thutmose IV: Only by postulating a change of reign
can we explain a situation in which the new pharaoh, Thutmose IV, can feel free to attack Mitannian holdings
with impunity.
120
Why would Amenhotep II do the unthinkable, and opt to make a treaty with Mitanni?
This mysterious reversal in foreign policy would remain unexplainable and unthinkable if not for the
possibility of a single, cataclysmic event. If the Egyptians lost virtually their entire army in the springtime
disaster at the Red Sea in Year 9, a desperate reconnaissance campaign designed to save face with the rest of
the ancient world and to replenish their Israelite slave-base would be paramount. Certainly the Egyptians would
have needed time to rally their remaining forces together, however small and/or in shambles their army may
have been, and it would explain a November campaign that was nothing more than a slave-raid into Palestine as
a show of force. The Egyptians could not afford to live through the winter without the production that was
provided by the Hebrew workforce, and they could not allow Mitanni or any other ancient power to consider
using the winter to plan an attack on Egyptian territories, which would seem vulnerable. If this scenario
represents what actually transpired in ANE history, however, tangible proof is needed to verify its veracity.

VII. THE LOSS OF THE EGYPTIAN SLAVE-BASE

According to Num 1:4546, the Israelites post-exodus, male population over 20 years old totaled
603,550, which does not include the 22,000 Levite males of Num 3:39. When women and children are added,
they well would have exceeded 2,000,000 people.
121
A populace of this magnitude must have provided the
backbone of the Egyptian slave-force, given both their vast numbers and rigorous labors (Exod 1:1114). To
most Egyptology students, however, the exodus-narrative is considered little more than a fanciful folktale
designed to impress Jewish children with grand illusions of a glorious, ethnic past. The virtual absence of
historical and archaeological evidence to verify the Israelite occupation and mass exodus from Egypt serves
only to bolster this skepticism. One prominent Egyptologist suggests that to the historian, [the exodus] remains
the most elusive of all the salient events of Israelite history. The event is supposed to have taken place in Egypt,
yet Egyptian sources know it not. . . . The effect on Egypt must have been cataclysmicloss of a servile
population, pillaging of gold and silver (Exod. 3:2122, 12:3136), destruction of an armyyet at no point in
the history of the country during the New Kingdom is there the slightest hint of the traumatic impact such an
event would have had on economics or society.
122
But is there truly no hint of a traumatic impact on Egypt?

1. The Absence of an Exodus-Account in the Egyptian Records. Redford alludes to the most popular
reason for rejecting the veracity of the exodus, namely that nowhere in Egypts vast records is there any
documentation of it. However, this dearth can be explained by the lack of Egyptian censuses and the tendency
to write comparatively little about foreigners, especially slaves.
123
Nonetheless, the Hebrew slaves not only
exited Egypt en masse, but they were responsible for the extermination of pharaohs vast army, the mightiest
military force on earth at the time. Yet the proud Egyptians should not be expected to have documented their
own humiliating defeat, which would smear their records and tarnish the glorious legacy left behind by
Thutmose III. Kitchen articulates this principle with an example from a later pharaoh: No pharaoh ever
celebrates a defeat! So, if Osorkon [I] had ever sent out a Zerah [the Cushite], with resulting defeat, no Egyptian

120
Ibid., 164.

121
John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (Nashville: Word, 1997), 198.

122

123
A notable exception to this trend is the Hyksos, the western Asiatics who overtook Egypt and controlled her commerce.
The Royal Turin Canon, a papyrus that derives from Ramesside times and reflects a kinglist that was begun during the Middle
Kingdom, fixes a 108-year rule (ca. 1668 to 1560 BC) for the Hyksos (Ibid., 107), who were driven out by the native Egyptians of the
17
th
Dynasty. Yet such documentation about the Hyksos is warranted, as they played a prominent role in Egyptian history, having
produced pharaohs who ruled in place of the native Egyptians. Moreover, when Moses wrote that the Egyptians feared the possibility
that the Hebrews will multiply, and in the event of war, they will also join themselves to those who hate us, and fight against us and
depart from the land (Exod 1:10), he probably was referring to the Hyksos, who just beforehand had retreated to southern Canaan
after their expulsion.
22
source would ever report on such an incident, particularly publicly. The lack (to date) of external corroboration
in such a case is itself worth nothing, in terms of judging history.
124

Such a non-reporting of personal defeat would be standard practice for Amenhotep II. Aharoni observes,
Amenhotep [II]more than any other pharaohset up monuments to glorify his personal valor, passing over,
however, some of the major but less complementary events of his campaigns, especially his defeats.
125

Amenhotep II spared no effort to portray himself as a great warrior who could pierce metal targets with his bow
and arrow during shooting practice.
126
He combined strength with a cruelty intended to demoralize his
enemies,
127
which the Amada Stele affirms: His strength is so much greater than (that of) any king who has
ever existed, raging like a panther when he courses through the battlefield; there is none fighting before him; . . .
trampling down those who rebel against him, instantly prevailing against all the barbarians with people and
horses.
128
A king with such enormous pride cannot be expected to have commissioned his scribes to preserve
the exodus-tragedy in the annals of Egyptian history for subsequent generations to read and memorialize.

2. The Booty Lists from the Asiatic Campaigns of Amenhotep II and Thutmose III. Redford declares that
at no point in the history of the country during the New Kingdom is there the slightest hint of the traumatic
impact [that] such an event as the loss of a servile population must have had upon Egypt.
129
This bold
declaration must be strongly contested. At the conclusion of both campaign narratives recorded on the Memphis
Stele, the scribe meticulously listed the spoils, with their quantities, that were taken as plunder. By comparing
the booty lists recorded after the conquests of Amenhotep II and Thutmose III, it will be seen whether A
2
is
distinguished among these campaigns, and if it might attest to the exodus or the post-exodus events.
The focus of A
2
was upon the spoils that Amenhotep II reaped. A record of the plunder that his majesty
carried off: 127 princes of Retenu; 179 brothers of princes; 3,600 Apiru; 15,200 Shasu; 36,300 Kharu; 15,070
Nagasuites/Neges; 30,652 of their family members; total: 89,600 people, and their endless property likewise; all
their cattle and endless herds; 60 chariots of silver and gold; 1,032 painted chariots of wood; 13,500 weapons
for warfare.
130
Regarding the 89,600 total prisoners, the sum is actually 101,128 when the numbers are
added.
131
The error may be a mere mistake in addition, as the individual numbers are probably more reliable
than the recorded sum.
132
Therefore, a final tally of 101,128 is preferred over 89,600 for the total number of
prisoners. Before contrasting A
2
with other contemporary campaigns, it should be noted that the Egyptians
confiscated 1,082 chariots, which, along with the 13,500 weapons, would be critical for replacing the 600
select chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt that were lost in the Red Sea (Exod 14:7).
The military campaigns of Thutmose III, which derive from The Annals of Thutmose III, also will be
abbreviated: his first Asiatic campaign (T
1
), sixth (T
6
), and seventh (T
7
). The prisoners taken on the various
campaigns are compiled as follows: T
1
= 5,903 captives; T
6
= 217 captives; T
7
= 494 captives; A
1
= 2,214
captives; and A
2
= 101,128 captives.
133
The most glaring detail is obviously the disparity between the number of
captives taken during A
2
versus the other four campaigns, which together averaged 2,207 prisoners, or 2.2% of
the prisoners taken during A
2
. Put differently, A
2
yielded 46-times more prisoners than all of the other
campaigns combined! Why is there such a tremendous disparity? Is it merely coincidental that such a vast

124
Kitchen, Reliability of the OT, 11. The biblical text to which Kitchen alludes is 2 Chr 14:915.

125

126
Hallo and Simpson, Ancient Near East, 262.

127

128
Breasted, Ancient Records, vol. 2, 310.

129

130
Hoffmeier, Memphis and Karnak Stelae, in Context of Scripture, vol. 2, 22; Pritchard, ANET, 247.

131
Pritchard laments, Even though two of the figures give questionable readings, no clear alternatives will supply the total
given on the stele (Pritchard, ANET, 247). Although Pritchard does not elaborate, the questionable readings most likely are the
36,300 Kharu and the 30,652 family members of the Nagasuites/Neges. But since this part of the stele shows no sign of damage or
repair, there is no reason to doubt these numbers.

132
The total given, 89,600, is actually wrong, the correct total being 101,128! (Hoffmeier, Memphis and Karnak Stelae,
in Context of Scripture, vol. 2, 22).

133
Ibid., 21; Pritchard, ANET, 239, 246; Hoffmeier, The Annals of Thutmose III, in Context of Scripture, vol. 2, 12. These
are the only campaigns of Thutmose III that list the amount of captives taken.
23
number of prisoners was taken during the last Asiatic campaign of the 18
th
Dynasty? If the exodus and A
2

occurred in the same year, Amenhotep II would have had just cause to launch a November campaign, as he
desperately would need to fill the enormous void left behind by the evacuation of the Hebrew slaves.
134

3. The Goal of Amenhotep II to Impress the Kings of Egypts Rival Empires. Other information on the
booty lists may attest to the connection between A
2
and the events of the exodus. Now when the Prince of
Naharin, the Prince of Hatti, and the Prince of Shanhar heard of the great victories that I had made, each one
tried to outdo his competitor in offering gifts, from every foreign land. They thought on account of their
grandfathers to beg his majesty for the breath of life to be given to them: We will carry our taxes to your
palace, son of Re, Amenhotep (II), divine ruler of Heliopolis, ruler of rulers, a panther who rages in every
foreign land and in this land forever.
135
Amenhotep II makes the fascinating statement that the King of
Mitanni, the King of the Hittites, and the King of Babylon all heard of the victories that he had accomplished
in southern Palestine. This reference to the effect of a military campaign upon kings of distant nations, all of
whom ruled empires in their own right, is unique among contemporary Egyptian booty lists and annals.
Why was Amenhotep II so concerned with how these kings viewed his Year-9 conquests? Not many
propositions suffice, especially considering the exceedingly limited scope of A
2
. Yet if he needed to save face
after the devastating loss of his army, a victorious campaign could convince his rivals of his continued ability to
wage war successfully. Joshua notes that the Lord dried up the waters of the Red Sea expressly so that all the
peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty (Josh 4:23, 24). This goal was realized even
40 years after the exodus, as Rahab of Jericho testified that all the inhabitants of the land . . . have heard how
the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea (Josh 2:9, 10), and as the Hivites of Gibeon told Israel of the fame
of the Lord your God, since they heard the report of Him and all that He did in Egypt (Josh 9:9). Thus news
of the exodus also would have spread to the distant empires that posed a threat to Egypts expanded domain.

4. A Summary of Egypts Losses after the Exodus. Thus Amenhotep IIs boasting to his rival kings, the
weapons and chariots taken as booty, and the disproportionate number of slaves taken during A
2
, when
considered together, argue strongly for a connection between A
2
and Egypts losses after the exodus. This
circumstantial evidence obviously will not satisfy critics whose presuppositions militate against tying the
exodus to A
2
. Yet for objective onlookers, one question is begged by the implication that the booty-list reveals
an Israelite connection to A
2
and its material acquisitions: is there tangible evidence linking the Israelites to A
2
?

VIII. THE APPEARANCE OF 3,600 APIRU ON THE BOOTY LIST

1. The Identification of the Term Apiru/Habiru and Its Early Association with the Hebrews. Among
the conquered peoples listed on A
2
were 3,600 Apiru, the Egyptian equivalent of the Akkadian Habiru, a
word that also appears in the Amarna Letters.
136
Who are the Apiru whom Amenhotep II captured during A
2
?
Earlier biblical scholars unashamedly equated the Apiru/Habiru with the Hebrew word : . (bri, Hebrew).

2. The Later Trend to Reject the Association of the Apiru with the Hebrews. Subsequently, many have
rejected the equation of the Apiru with the Hebrews, often arguing that Apiru has more of a sociological than
an ethnic connotation. Beitzel advocates the impossibility of (the) equation of Habiru and Hebrews in biblical
studies.
137
The fashionable scholarly opinion is that the Amarna Letters portray the Apiru as marauding

134
As Shea notes, While some have questioned the very high number given here, if one looks at the needs for state labor
right after the exodus, the number does not look so high after all (Shea, Amenhotep II as Pharaoh, 47).

135
Ibid.; Hoffmeier, Memphis and Karnak Stelae, in Context of Scripture, vol. 2, 22. The Prince of Shanhar, or biblical
Shinar, is to be equated with the King of Babylon (Pritchard, ANET, 247).

136

137
Barry J. Beitzel, Habiru, in ISBE, vol. 2, 588, 589.
24
brigands who seize, loot, burn towns, and generally ravage the landscape. Moreover, since the Habiru are found
at different locations and times around the ANE, the term allegedly cannot refer to the Hebrews.
138

3. The Case for Identifying the 3,600 Apiru of A
2
with the Hebrews. Scholars have not completely
abandoned the association of the Habiru with the Hebrews. Many who equate them say that perhaps Habiru
originally designated groups of outlaws or was a derogatory expression, and only later it was used of the
Hebrews as a distinct, ethnic group.
139
But should one concede that the designation of outlaw-marauders, if
accurate, actually preceded that of the ethnically distinct Hebrews? While it goes beyond the present work to
identify the limitations of the term Habiru, it must be addressed whether or not the Apiru of A
2
might be
Hebrews. Either way, the appearance of the Apiru on a formal list of Asiatic captives is quite unusual.
140

a. Renewed Support for the General Association of the Apiru with the Hebrews. Bryant Wood notes that
the [Amarna] Letters are taken up with . . . the hostilities of the Habiru in the hill country. The references to
the Habiru in the Amarna Letters appear to be allusions to the mopping-up operations of the Israelites at this
time, but no individual Habiru is mentioned by name.
141
At least one Egyptologist also considers that the
Apiru are synonymous with the Hebrews mentioned in the Amarna correspondence; by Amenhotep IIs time,
they seem to have become integrated into the societies to which they had emigrated, playing marginal roles as
mercenaries or servants, as in the events described in The Taking of Joppa. In Egypt, they appear during the
reign of Thutmose III as wine-makers in the Theban tombs of the Second Prophet of Amun Puyemre (TT 39)
and the herald Intef (TT 155).
142
While Apiru served in Egypt as winemakers during the days of Thutmose III,
there is no record of Egyptians having captured any as slaves before A
2
, which is consistent with the biblical
record. In his discussion of A
2
, Aharoni concludes, Apiru-Habiru = Hebrews.
143

b. The Impossibility of the Apiru as Marauding Brigands. The popular designation of the Habiru as a
band of marauding brigands faces a major obstacle in that 3,600 Apiru were captured on A
2
. Hoffmeier, calling
this number a rather large figure,
144
elsewhere notes, If the large numbers are to be believed, Apiru/Habiru
were not just small bands of marauders in Amenhoteps day.
145
This number far exceeds that of a loosely-
organized gang of bandits, and without proof from antiquity that bandits congregated in such large numbers, it
cannot be accepted that the 3,600 Apiru of A
2
were mere brigands or thieves. Besides, would a makeshift army
on a slave raid attempt to enslave a mobile outfit of bandits when the acquisition of peaceful townspeople was
far simpler? Moreover, why would pharaoh desire to pollute his subservient slave population with rank bandits?
The Amarna Letters, written as early as the reign of Amenhotep III (from ca. 1395 BC), provide more
reason why the Apiru cannot be brigands. Two dispatches of the King of Hazor are among the Letters, and two
others mention Hazor and its king. In EA 227, the King of Hazor, writing to the ruling pharaoh, refers to
himself as the king of the city of Hazor, which throughout the el-Amarna archive is an unparalleled royal title
for a Canaanite ruler. Furthermore, in EA 148, the ruler of Tyre refers to him by the same kingly title. In the

138
Hoffmeier, Memphis and Karnak Stelae, in Context of Scripture, vol. 2, 22. SA.GAZ, the Sumerian logographic
equivalent of Habiru, and its variants are found in cuneiform texts from ca. 2500 BC to the 11
th
century BC. In light of this early
attestation, many are unwilling to associate the Apiru of the 15
th
century BC with the Hebrews. However, Abram was known as a
Hebrew in the 21
st
century BC (Gen 14:13), so the solution to the dilemma is that the two non-guttural consonants found in the tri-
consonantal root of bri, the exact consonants that appear in Akkadian and Ugaritic (br, possibly meaning cross over, go beyond),
are also found in Eber (Gen 10:21), the ancestor of Abram from whom the word undoubtedly derives. Thus Abram is one of
numerous Eberite peoples, all of whom are known as Habiru due to their retention of Ebers ancient namesake (R. F. Youngblood,
Amarna Tablets, in ISBE, vol. 1 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979], 108; Barry J. Beitzel, Hebrew (People), in ISBE, vol. 2, 657).

139

140

141
Bryant G. Wood, One Thousand Years Missing from Biblical History? A Review of a New Theory, Bible and Spade 6:4
(Aut 1993), 98.

142

143

144

145
25
fragmentary EA 227, the King of Hazor reassures pharaoh that he is safeguarding the cities of pharaoh until the
Egyptian monarchs arrival.
146
As Yadin writes, This indicates that the King of Hazors rule embraced more
than the city itself, which is further corroborated by the letters of the rulers of Tyre and Ashtaroth.
147

In EA 228, the King of Hazor, who names himself Abdi Tirshi, loyally informs pharaoh of hostile acts
perpetrated against Hazor and its king: Let my lord, the king (of Egypt), remember all that was done against
Hasura (Hazor), your city, and against your servant.
148
However, a change in the allegiance of Hazors king is
seen in EA 148, written by Abi-Milki, King of Tyre, who abruptly blurts, The King of Hasura has abandoned
his house and aligned himself with the Apiru. Abi-Milki concludes his letter by warning, Let the king (of
Egypt) know that they (the Apiru) are hostile to the palace attendants. These are treacherous fellows. He (the
King of Hazor) has taken over the land of the king (of Egypt) for the Apiru. Let the king inquire of his
commissioner, who is familiar with Canaan.
149

It is unclear why the once-loyal King of Hazor forsook pharaoh, his overlord, and aligned himself with
the Apiru, but EA 228 implies that the Apiru wore down and eventually overpowered Hazor and its king, which
is confirmed by this act of treason. The King of Hazor was the only so-called king in Canaan, overseeing
numerous Canaanite cities for pharaoh. This exalted status matches well with the 14
th
-century-BC account in
the book of Judges, as Hazors King Jabin is referred to four times as the King of Canaan, while only once is
he called the King of Hazor. He is even called the King of Canaan, who ruled in Hazor (Judg 4:2).
150
Why
would mighty Hazor align itself with a group of bandits, exchanging allegiance to powerful Egypt, as their
longstanding overlords, to allegiance to meddlesome thieves, as their new overlords? Would its king truly fear
wandering brigands more than pharaohs army? How could a band of social misfits subserviate Hazor, the
greatest local dynasty in Canaan? It is absurd to assert that mere nomadic bandits could persuade mighty Hazor
and its great king simply to surrender their municipal and regional sovereignty to hoodlums such as they. If the
Apiru were national Israel, however, opposing the peoples of Canaan with divine assistance as portrayed in
Judges, one easily can envisage the King of Hazor buckling under the enormous pressure that was applied to
him by the persistent Hebrews. Wood correctly concludes that [t]he apiru of the highlands of Canaan
described in the Amarna Letters of the mid-14
th
century BC conform to the biblical Israelites.
151

c. The Apiru of A
2
Recognized by the Egyptians as a Distinct Ethnic Group. Beitzel, who zealously
opposes the association of the Apiru with the Hebrews, states that the Amarna Hapiru seems to be composed
of diverse ethnic elements from various localities.
152
While the dispersion of the Apiru throughout Canaan
should be expected if they are the 2,000,000+ Israelite settlers (Josh 11:23), nothing in the Amarna Letters
implies or requires that the Apiru be characterized as ethnically diverse, leaving Beitzels claim curious and
unfounded. Hoffmeier even underscores the certainty of the Apirus ethnic homogeneity: It is clear from the
occurrence in the [Memphis] stele of Amenhotep II that they were identified as a specific group like the other
ethnic groups taken as prisoners by the king.
153
This claim of homogeneity is correct for two reasons.
(1) The ethnic homogeneity of the Apiru is certain since they were listed among the ethnic groups on the
booty list of A
2
. Listing the habiru alongside of other ethnic groups from Hurru, Retenu, and the Shasu
suggests that the Egyptians may have viewed the habiru as a distinguishable ethnic group.
154
The Apiru appear
third on the list, preceded by princes and brothers of the princes, and followed by three names with geographic

146
Yigael Yadin, Hazor: The Head of all those Kingdoms, The 1970 Schweich Lectures of the British Academy (London:
Oxford University Press, 1972), 78.

147
Ibid., 8.

148
Amarna Letters, ed. and trans. Moran, 290, with modifications according to Yadin, Hazor: The Head, 8.

149
Ibid., 235, with modifications according to Yadin, Hazor: The Head, 8.

150
For a fuller treatment of the destructions of Hazor described in Joshua 11 and Judges 4, see Douglas Petrovich, The
Dating of Hazors Destruction in Joshua 11 by Way of Biblical, Archaeological, and Epigraphical Evidence, JETS 51:3 (Sept 2008),
489512.

151

152
Beitzel, Habiru, in ISBE, vol. 2, 588.

153

154
26
connotation: the Shasu, who were Bedouin to the south of Palestine; the Kharu, who were Horites, residents
of Syro-Palestine; and the Nagasuites/Neges, who dwelled in Upper Retenu, near Aleppo.
155
Grimal compares
the ethnic distinctiveness of both the Apiru and the Shasu Bedouin: Among the prisoners of war were said to
be 3,600 Apiru, an ethnic group clearly distinct from the Shosu Bedouin, who are enumerated separately.
156

The Annals of Thutmose III confirm the Kharus ethnicity: That feeble enemy of Kadesh has entered Megiddo,
and he is [there] at this moment, having rallied to himself the chieftains of [every] foreign land [who had been]
allies of Egypt, as well as (those) from as far away as Naharin in/being [. . .], Kharu, and Kedy, their horses,
their armies, and [their people].
157
Since the Kharu are listed among peoples with armies and horses, along
with Mitanni (Naharin), their distinct ethnicityand thus that of the Apiru, as wellcannot be doubted.
(2) The ethnic homogeneity of the Apiru is certain due to their prominent position among the ethnic
groups on the booty list of A
2
. The 3,600 Apiru are notably more numerous than the princes and brothers of the
princes who appear before them, and notably fewer than the three people-groups listed after them.
158
The scribe
of the Memphis Stele attributes the initial position to royalty, and only afterward does he name distinct ethnic
groups, among which the Apiru appear first, despite their number being far fewer than that of the subsequent
ethnic groups. This initial, prominent position among non-royal captives is easily explainable if these were
Hebrews, and the exodus had occurred half of a year before A
2
. Amenhotep II obviously would desire to
accentuate his enslavement of loathsome Israelites, whom he held responsible for humbling Egypts pantheon
and depleting her mighty army, even if their number paled in comparison to the 2,000,000+ whom he had lost.

d. Accounting for the Bibles Silence about the 3,600 Captured Israelites. How does the Bible account
for the Egyptians capture of 3,600 Hebrews when the main body of Israelites was wandering in the wilderness
in the distant Sinai Peninsula under Moses leadership (Num 14:33)? The date for A
2
in November of the
exodus-year coincides with a silent period in biblical history. Exodus concludes with Israel near Mount Sinai,
though Moses parenthetically adds a retrospective summary of how the Lord guided them during their
subsequent journeys (Exod 40:3638). Meanwhile, Numbers begins in the 14
th
month after the exodus (Num
1:1), about five months after A
2
concluded. Therefore, A
2
fits into this silent period, with no inherent conflict
between the capture of the 3,600 Israeliteswho probably left the Israelite camp and journeyed toward
southern Palestine, near the travel route of A
2
and the biblical events that transpired after the exodus.
159

IX. AMENHOTEP II AND THE DESECRATION OF HATSHEPSUTS IMAGE

Egyptian history itself may confirm that Amenhotep II was the exodus-pharaoh. The Thutmosid
succession entered into an extraordinary phase at the death of Thutmose II, as the throne was given first to his
son, Thutmose III, and later assumed as well by his widow, Hatshepsut. Her rise to power resulted from her
position as the child-kings regent; given his youthfulness, her self-appointment to the rank of coregent
probably met little or no opposition within the royal court.
160
Sometime between Year 2 and Year 4 of
Thutmose III, Hatshepsut assumed full royal titulary, making herself a female pharaoh of equal rank.
161

1. Identifying Moses Adoptive Mother. Moses evidently was born during the reign of Thutmose I,
whose daughter, Hatshepsut, qualifies as a legitimate candidate for the pharaohs daughter who drew Moses

155

156

157
Hoffmeier, The Annals of Thutmose III, in Context of Scripture, vol. 2, 9.

158

159
Such periods of silence are not unusual. The book of Numbers concentrates on events that take place in the second and
fortieth years after the exodus. All incidents recorded in 1:114:45 occur in 1444 B.C., the year after the exodus. Everything referred
to after 20:1 is dated ca. 1406/1405 B.C., while there is a complete lack of material devoted to this 37-year period that intervenes
between the second and 40
th
years after the exodus (MacArthur, Study Bible, 195).

160
Hallo and Simpson, Ancient Near East, 259.

161
William Petty, Redating the Reign of Hatshepsut, KMT 13:4 (Win 20022003), 51, 53.
27
from the Nile River (Exod 2:5).
162
Was she old enough during her fathers second regnal year, most likely the
time in which Moses was born (ca. 1527 BC), to qualify as his Egyptian stepmother?

a. Hatshepsuts Age Viewed as Being Insufficient. One scenario may preclude Hatshepsut from being the
princess who drew Moses from the Nile. The chief wife of Thutmose I, Queen Ahmose, was called the Kings
Sister, but never the Kings Daughter, a title given only to a princess. Egyptians generally were not reserved
about recording ranks and titles, so this reticence may indicate that Ahmose was not a pharaohs daughter, and
thus was neither the daughter nor the sister of Amenhotep I. Instead, she may have been the sister or half-sister
of Thutmose I. If this were true, a brother-sister marriage almost certainly would have occurred after Thutmose
I was promoted to heir apparent, as incestuous marriages are extremely rare outside of the immediate royal
family, and such political matches that consolidated a would-be successors claim to the throne were standard
procedure in ancient Egypt.
163
Perhaps, then, Hatshepsut was born after Thutmose I was coronated (ca. 1529
BC), and thus was barely over twelve years old when she married her (half-)brother (ca. 1516 BC). This means
that Hatshepsut would have been less than three years of age at the time of Moses birth, at which age she
hardly could have ventured down to the Nile, let alone draw out an infant-bearing reed basket from the river.

b. Hatshepsuts Age Viewed as Being Sufficient. Yet there is no proof that Hatshepsut was born after her
fathers accession, and the current lack of attestation to Queen Ahmose being a Kings Daughter does not
preclude her from being the daughter of Amenhotep I. In addition, the uncertainty about when Thutmose IIs
reign began means that he may have served as co-regent with his father, Thutmose I, for several years before he
ruled alone. Hatshepsut thus would have been of sufficient age to draw Moses out of the Nile during her fathers
second regnal year, so she remains a legitimate candidate for Moses Egyptian adoptive-mother, especially
since her father was already over 35 years old when he assumed the throne.

c. Hatshepsuts Sister Akhbetneferu as a Candidate. Is Hatshepsut the only candidate for Moses royal
adoptive-mother? Confusion exists over the number of children actually born to Thutmose I and Queen
Ahmose. Only two daughters, Hatshepsut and her sister, Princess Akhbetneferu, are known to have been born to
the royal couple. However, Princess Akhbetneferu died in infancy, so she cannot qualify as a candidate for the
princess who found Moses, leaving Hatshepsut as the only known daughter of Thutmose I who does qualify.
164

d. Hatshepsuts Potential Step-Sister as a Candidate. One other option exists for Moses adoptive-
mother, but not through Queen Ahmose. Thutmose I had a secondary wife named Queen Mutnofret, the mother
of Thutmose II. Little is known of her but that she was a person of rank, probably even royal blood, as an
inscription at Karnak calls her the Kings Daughter. Mutnofret, and not Ahmose, actually appears in the
kings mortuary chapel alongside the royal princes Ramose and Wadjmose, both of whom probably died before
their father.
165
Therefore, perhaps even numerous princes were born before their father married Ahmose. No
princesses are known to have been mothered by Mutnofret, but the possibility does exist; if Mutnofret did bear a
daughter, undoubtedly this princessgiven the ages of the princeswould have been old enough to qualify.

e. Hatshepsuts Position as the Most Likely Candidate. All of the evidence points to Hatshepsut as the
most likely candidate for Moses stepmother, for several reasons: (1) Hatshepsuts blood-sister, Princess
Akhbetneferu, was the only other daughter whom Queen Ahmose is known to have borne, but her death in
infancy eliminates her candidacy. (2) Lady Mutnofret bore several sons to Thutmose I before she died, but there
is no indication that she ever bore him any daughters.
166
(3) The text of Exod 2:10 states that after the child
[Moses] grew, she [his mother] brought him to Pharaohs daughter, and he became her son. Therefore, Moses

162
Rea, Oppression and Exodus, 10.

163
Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, 65, 77.

164
Ibid., 75.

165
Ibid., 77.

166
Ibid.
28
Egyptian stepmother obviously lived a considerable length of time after she retrieved him from the Nile,
increasing the likelihood that an account of this Daughter of Pharaoh (Exod 2:5) would be documented and
preserved somewhere in the Egyptians detailed records, a qualification true of Hatshepsut alone.

2. Identifying the Defacer of Hatshepsuts Image. At some indeterminable time after Hatshepsuts death,
a serious attempt was made to obliterate all record of her from history. Many inscribed cartouches of her were
erased, while her busts were smashed or broken into pieces, perhaps by gangs of workmen dispatched to various
sites throughout Egypt. In some cases, the culprits carefully and completely hacked out the silhouette of her
image from carvings, often leaving a distinct, Hatshepsut-shaped lacuna in the middle of a scene, often as a
preliminary step to replacing it with a different image or royal cartouche, usually that of Thutmose I or II.
167
At
Karnak, her obelisks were walled-up and incorporated into the vestibule in front of Pylon V, while at Djeser-
Djeseru her statues and sphinxes were removed, smashed, and cast into trash dumps.
168

a. Thutmose III as the Defacer of Hatshepsuts Image. According to most Egyptologists, this massive
effort to destroy all record of Hatshepsuts existence was launched by Thutmose III, with a predictable motive:
out of sexist pride, he attempted to eliminate every trace of this dreaded female pharaohs rule, intending to
rewrite Egyptian history to portray a smooth succession of male rulers from Thutmose I to himself.
169

Wounded male pride may also have played a part in his decision to act; the mighty warrior king may have
balked at being recorded for posterity as the man who ruled for 20 years under the thumb of a mere woman.
170

But was Thutmose III actually the perpetrator? Did he seethe with hatred and resentment toward his former co-
ruler before viciously attacking all remnants of her? Are cavalier accusations of sexism justifiable? The theory
that Thutmose III was the culprit behind this vicious crime is severely weakened by several factors.
(1) If Thutmose III did deface her image, it would be inconsistent with how he otherwise related to her
memory. A scene on the dismantled Chapelle Rouge at Djeser-Djeseru portrays Hatshepsut and identifies her as
The Good God, Lady of the Two Lands, Daughter of Ra, Hatshepsut.
171
Thutmose III, who is pictured as
steering his barque toward Deir el-Bahri, actually completed the Chapelle Rouge, added the topmost register of
decorations in his own name, then claimed the shrine as his own. Also, Hatshepsuts name is still preserved in
her Monthu temple at Armant, which Thutmose III enlarged. Such preservation of her handiwork and further
construction on her building projects would be extremely unlikely if he truly despised Hatshepsut so greatly.
Furthermore, Thutmose III planned the construction of his own temple to Amun, called Djeser-Akhet, which
was to be built at Deir el-Bahri, directly south of Djeser-Djeseru. Since Hatshepsut greatly built-up Deir el-
Bahri, including massive terraces and her own temple next to the one that Thutmose III subsequently built, this
construction site is inexplicable if he felt such overwhelming, sexist hatred toward her.
172

(2) If Thutmose III was the culprit, he waited at least 20 years after she left office before whimsically
desecrating her image. He could not have accomplished the feat before his 42
nd
regnal year, a full 20 years after
Hatshepsut left office. Thutmose IIIs construction projects at Karnakwhich include the Hall of Annals,
whose texts were written no earlier than Year 42inadvertently concealed a few inscriptions and illustrations
related to Hatshepsut. The scenes were in place by Year 42, yet show no signs whatsoever of any desecration.
Conversely, those parts of the scenes that were unprotected by his post-Year-42 construction were defaced
during the anti-Hatshepsut campaign. It seems impossible that he would wait until over 20 years after she had
left office to initiate a campaign of anti-feminism out of personal hatred. While it is possible to imagine and
even empathize with Thutmose III indulging in a sudden whim of hatred against his stepmother immediately

167
Ibid., 79. See the webpage http://exegesisinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=77&Itemid=89
for photos of the erasure of Hatshepsuts image from various artifacts.

168
Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, 114115, 216.

169
Hallo and Simpson, Ancient Near East, 259, 261; Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 156; Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, 216.

170
Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, 225.

171
Ibid., 219.

172
Ibid., 219220; Grimal, History of Ancient Egypt, 216.
29
after her death, it is far harder to imagine him overcome by such a whim some 20 years later.
173
Moreover, this
whim clearly would have been a schizophrenic one, given Thutmose IIIs recent positive disposition toward
Hatshepsut, as displayed by his completion of her projects at Djeser-Djeseru and Armant.
(3) If Thutmose III was the culprit, he must have had sufficient motive to attempt to prevent her from
living eternally. According to Egyptian religion, removing the name or image of a deceased person was a direct
assault on his/her spirit. For him to live forever in the Field of Reeds, his body, image, or name must survive on
earth. If all memory of him were lost or destroyed, the spirit too would perish, initiating the much-dreaded
second death, a total obliteration from which there could be no return. This act against Hatshepsut was an
attempt to condemn her to oblivion a fate worse than death for an Egyptian.
174
Thus the extermination of
Hatshepsuts image from the earth was indeed a drastic step: the removal of her spirit from its perpetual
existence in the afterlife.
175
Such reprisal seems far too severe to fit the motive of mere sexism.
(4) If Thutmose III was the culprit, why were there also attacks against the name and monuments of
Senenmut, the foreign chief-advisor of Hatshepsut who disappeared from record in or after Hatshepsuts 19
th

regnal year (ca. 1488/7 BC)? Occasionally his name was violated while his image remained intact, but some of
his statues were smashed and literally thrown out of temples.
176
This attack upon her male chief-advisors image
can hardly be justified if Thutmose III was motivated purely by anti-feministic hatred toward Hatshepsut.
Other options are offered to justify this extreme act committed by Thutmose III. (1) He wanted to atone
for the offense of a female pharaoh against maat (justice, truth), a word used to describe the continuity in the
universe that derived from the approval of the gods.
177
(2) The unorthodox coregency might have cast serious
doubt on the legitimacy of his own right to rule, so he wanted to ensure both the legitimacy of his reign and his
legacy. Neither of these options, however, addresses why Thutmose III would wait so long before beginning his
anti-Hatshepsut campaign. Certainly he did not learn of the compromise that Hatshepsuts reign was to the state
of maat only after he was an aged king; likewise, after 20 years of sole rule, his reign was secure, and his
successful campaigning already had solidified for him a lasting legacy, so defiling her image would not, in any
conceivable way, further legitimize his reign.

b. Amenhotep II as the Defacer of Hatshepsuts Image. No Egyptologist has answered satisfactorily the
nagging question of who was responsible for the widespread campaign to obliterate Hatshepsuts image from
Egypts annals, and what possible motive there could be for such a severe act of rage. Since the responsible
person carried out the act only after Year 42 of Thutmose III, the desecration occurred no earlier than ca. 1464
BC. It is also difficult to envision that the culprit lived long after both Hatshepsut and her memory disappeared
from the earth, since the movement of time and the existence of motive are inversely proportionate.
Accordingly, two possible scenarios exist that could incriminate Amenhotep II as culpable for the crime.
(1) Amenhotep II contributed in the campaign to destroy Hatshepsuts image, but he was not the initial
perpetrator. Tyldesley observes that [i]t is perhaps not too fanciful a leap of the imagination to suggest that
Thutmose III, having started the persecution relatively late in the reign, may have died before it was concluded.
His son and successor, Amenhotep II, with no personal involvement in the campaign, may have been content to
allow the vendetta to lapse.
178
Tyldesley does not explain why Amenhotep II would continue this campaign
without personal involvement. Bryan believes that Amenhotep II himself completed the desecration of the
female kings monuments, adding that when [he] had finished his programme of erasures on the monuments
of Hatshepsut at Karnak, he was able to concentrate on preparations for the royal jubilee at this temple.
179

173
Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, 220, 224225. Bryan asserts that the dishonoring of Hatshepsut began in ca. Year 46 or 47, and
that this event may have paved the way for the joint rule with Amenhotep II, but she provides no support for her conclusions (Betsy
M. Bryan, The Eighteenth Dynasty Before the Amarna Period, in The Oxford History of Ancient History, ed. Ian Shaw [New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000], 248).

174

175
Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, 216.

176
Ibid., 206, 222.

177
Ibid., 8, 225.

178
Ibid., 224.

179
Bryan, Eighteenth Dynasty, in Oxford History, 250, 251.
30
(2) Amenhotep II was the sole culprit in the campaign to destroy Hatshepsuts image. The responsible
individual likely possessed pharaonic authority, and one legitimate motive for Amenhotep II to have committed
this act is if Hatshepsut raised Moses as her own son in the royal court (Acts 7:21). After the Red-Sea incident,
Amenhotep II would have returned to Egypt seething with anger, both at the loss of his firstborn son and
virtually his entire army (Exod 14:28), so he would have had just cause to erase her memory from Egypt and
remove her spirit from the afterlife. The Egyptian people would have supported this edict, since their rage
undoubtedly rivaled pharaohs, as they also were mourning deceased family members and friends. The
nationwide experience of loss also would account for the unified effort throughout Egypt to fulfill this defeated
pharaohs commission vigorously. A precedent even exists for Amenhotep IIs destruction of her monuments
early in his reign: At Karnak Hatshepsut left . . . the Eighth Pylon, a new southern gateway to the temple
precinct. . . . Ironically, evidence of Hatshepsuts building effort is today invisible, since the face of the pylon
was erased and redecorated in the first years of Amenhotep II.
180
Perhaps Year 9 was when it all began.

X. CONCLUSION

Now it is possible to answer the questions posed earlier. Does Amenhotep II qualify as the pharaoh who
lived through the tenth plague because he was not his fathers eldest son? Yes, records show that Amenemhet
was the eldest son of Thutmose III, allowing Amenhotep II to have lived through the tenth plague. Could the
eldest son of Amenhotep II have died during the tenth plague, which must be true of the exodus-pharaohs son?
Yes, the eldest son of Amenhotep II could have died then. In fact, none of Amenhotep IIs sons claimed to be
his firstborn, and one prominent Egyptologist theorizes that the eldest son died inexplicably during childhood.
Did Amenhotep II die in the Red Sea, as the Bible allegedly indicates about the exodus-pharaoh? No, he died in
typical fashion, and his mummified body is still preserved. Yet despite popular belief, this conclusion does not
conflict with the Bible, since no biblical text actually states that the exodus-pharaoh died there with his army.
Can any of Amenhotep IIs military campaigns be related to the exodus events? Yes, his second Asiatic
campaign coincides extremely well with the exodus events, and many of the details related to it and Egypts
post-exodus future cannot be explained without these connections. Can the loss of over two million Hebrew
slaves, certainly Egypts slave-base at the time, be accounted for in the records of Amenhotep IIs reign? Yes,
the loss of the Israelite slaves can be accounted for by Amenhotep IIs acquisition of 101,128 slaves in Canaan
during his second Asiatic campaign, the only such campaign of its era that was launched in late fall and took so
many captives. Is there any evidence to confirm that Amenhotep II interacted with the Hebrews after they left
Egypt? Yes, Amenhotep II captured 3,600 Apiru (Hebrews) during his second campaign, which was launched
just under seven months after the exodus. Despite many futile attempts to disprove the association of the
Hebrews with the Apiru of the New Kingdom, far more evidence exists that favors their being one-in-the-same.
If Amenhotep II is the exodus-pharaoh, could the obliteration of Hatshepsuts image from many
Egyptian monuments and inscriptions be attributed to backlash from the exodus events? Yes, Amenhotep II
surfaces as the only logical candidate for the pharaoh who ordered this nationwide campaign of desecration. If
Hatshepsut indeed was Moses Egyptian stepmotherand she is the only legitimate candidateAmenhotep II
and all of Egypt had adequate motive to remove her image from Egypt and her spirit from the afterlife. These
answers prove not only that Amenhotep II is the only legitimate candidate for the exodus-pharaoh, but that the
biblical chronology of that era functions as a canon against which Egyptian history may be synchronized.
It is hoped that the principal purpose of this article has not been lost in the extensive historical detail
contained within it. In this analysis of the exodus-pharaoh and ancient Egyptian history, the arguments of those
who compromise biblical historicity proved unable to undermine biblical inerrancy. Compromising the Bibles
inspired historical framework invariably will lead to the demise of its reliability as an accurate source for
determining doctrine and enhancing spiritual growth. Conversely, to connect the book more directly with

180
Ibid., 240.
31
ancient history can only enhance its theological meaning.
181
Unfortunately, however, even the strongest
argumentation cannot remove presuppositions or persuade readers of the Bibles life-impacting truths.

181
Shea, Amenhotep II as Pharaoh, 42.

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What evidence does the author provide to support Amenhotep II as the Exodus pharaoh?

EVALUATING THE CANDIDACY OF

AMENHOTEP II AS THE EXODUS-PHARAOH

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