In the fall of 1923, Howard Carter was excavating a site in the Valley of the Kings. On November 4 of that year, one of his workers made a momentous discovery - a step leading into the tomb of the "boy pharaoh," King Tutankhamun, who had died in 1322 BC.
News of the discovery spread across the globe like a lit trail of gunpowder. The media, scientists, politicians, and men and women in the streets, were all enraptured by this magnificent archeoiogicai discovery. After months of studying and classification, all the contents were removed from the tomb except the red granite sarcophagus in which the king's mummy had lain. The treasures, objects at least 3,250 years old, were all removed to the Cairo Museum and exposed to the view of admiring visitors.
The tomb itself was opened to tourists, who were often surprised by its small size compared to other buried tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
The tomb was studied from top to bottom, but it still withheld many of its secrets. On the east wall of the funerary chamber, above the figures of twelve priests bearing the mortuary catafalque, were eight painted columns of religious inscriptions. The figures and the inscriptions did not excite great interest at the time. More recently, however, they have been further studied, and have shed new light on that time in human history when monotheism was invented.
On the north wall of the tomb is an enigmatic figure, wearing the crown of Egypt. Attached to the crown is the uraeus - a rearing cobra - the ancient symbol of royalty. The name of this mysterious person appears on two royal cartouches1 placed above his face. He was called The Divine Father Ay — Pharaoh Ay. His name is written in double signed hieroglyphs.
Researchers noted that his name, Ay, is the name of God in the Aramaic Bible, Yod-Yod which is our earliest source for the Old Testament.
Researchers noticed that some of the objects found in the tomb bore close resemblance to articles mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. For instance, at the entry of the treasure room, seated on a pole-born chest, a statue of the Dog God, Anubis, guarded Tutankhamun's tomb. The dog and the chest were covered by a fringed linen shawl, "adorned with a double braid of blue lotuses, recalling the blue bands of the tallith with the tsitsit,"2 the fringed prayer shawl of the Hebrews.3
The pole-born chest of sculpted wood, covered inside and out with gold leaf, recalled, in its form and in its religious conception, the Ark of the Covenant.
The funerary chamber of Tutankhamun held four overlapping containers, one inside the other. The containers were covered by a large linen cloth, placed on a wooden frame, giving the whole thing the look of a tent, or tabernacle. This frame was compared at the time of its discovery with the tabernacle of the Old Testament, the Holy of Holies, constructed of gilded wood and holding the Ark of the Covenant.4
Canopic box of calcite-alabaster covered by a linen cloth (Tomb of Tutankhamun).
When Howard Carter opened the third container, he noticed on one of its lateral panels two angels with their wings spread high, evoking the angels placed on the Sacred Ark of the Biblical story. They were reproduced on the two sealed doors of the fourth and last container, as well as on the lid of the golden body mask.
These and other archeological finds caused researchers, both at the time of their discovery, and even more so recently, to consider that Egyptian archeology might shed a great deal of light on Hebrew scripture. In the tomb of King Tutankhamun there were indications that the Biblical story of the Exodus might have much closer ties to Egyptian religious beliefs than formerly believed.
The Book of Exodus tells of a people called the "Hebrews." Much is known of Egyptian history, yet nowhere at all is there a description of a people called the Hebrews. Nor, indeed, is there an account of any exodus from the country of any group of slaves. Historians and archeologists have searched in vain for any hint that the Exodus described in the Bible ever occurred.
In the Biblical story of the Exodus, the pharaoh of Egypt is never mentioned by name. He is described as "the one who never knew Joseph."5
Panel of the third box container of Tutankhamun. Sculpted wood plated with gold foil.
He believed that the Hebrew slaves were "more numerous and stronger" than the Egyptians: "Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us and leave the land" (Hebrew Bible, Exodus 1:106).
The Bible indicates that there were two kinds of people in Egypt at the time: the Egyptians and the Hebrews (Children of Israel). Pharaoh had no fear of the Hebrews as long as their numbers remained reasonable. His fear was mainly that he might lose the workforce he so sorely needed.
Conscious of the demographic danger of the growing slave population, he decided on a radical measure. He decreed that all the firstborn of the Hebrews be killed. Fearing God more than they feared Pharaoh, the midwives refused.
Then, Pharaoh ordered the people to throw the firstborn Hebrews into the river. Here is where the Moses story begins.
Saved from the waters of the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter, "he became her son."7 One day, Moses killed an Egyptian who was mistreating a Hebrew. Another day, he separated two Hebrews who were fighting. The fear of seeing himself denounced by one of them provoked his flight into the land of Midian. There, he married Zipporah, one of the seven daughters of Jethro, the high priest of Midian. After the miracles of the burning bush, the leprous hand, and the rod that turned into a serpent, Moses returned to Egypt and joined his brother Aaron.
Together they approached Pharaoh, who refused to let the Hebrews leave. A deluge of plagues followed. The tenth plague, bringing death to the firstborn of the Egyptians, overwhelmed Pharaoh. The defeated king of Egypt yielded and allowed the people to leave. However, he asked Moses and Aaron to bless him first.8
There then begins the story of the great exodus toward the Promised Land. The familiar story traces the crossing of the Red Sea, the wandering in the Sinai desert, the gift to Moses of the Tablets of the Law, the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle, the episode of the Golden Calf, then the rebellion of the common people. After forty years of wandering in the desert, and after the deaths of Aaron and Moses, the conquest, so long awaited by the Hebrew people, finally began with the capture of Jericho. Thereafter all the Canaanite cities submitted to the mighty armies of Joshua.
That is the story that is so familiar to Jew, Christian, and Muslim. It is a story at the heart of the continuing conflict between Israel and Palestine in the year AD 2000. For a different version of the story, it is necessary to turn our attention to what history and archeology tell us about a city located in Egypt in 1350 BC. To understand this alternate version of the Exodus story, we need to spend some time learning about that amazing ancient city.
Notes
1. Cartouche: an oval frame in which the name of the pharaoh is written in hieroglyphics.
2. Howard Carter, The Tomb of Tutankhamun. Pygmalian, 1978. See also Nicolas Reeves, The Discovery ofTutankharnun. Thames and Hudson, 1990, p. 133.
3. The Israelites wore a prayer shawl called tallith or tsitsit. In the CD Rom of Tutankhamun, Christiane Desroche-Nobelcourt shows a fringed shawl that closely resembles the prayer shawls of the Hebrews.
4. See Exodus 26 for a description of the tabernacle. Cf. Richard Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? Exerge, 1997, p. 191.
5. Exodus 1:8.
6. Translation from the Hebrew, and all subsequent Hebrew texts, by Art Banta.
7. Exodus 2:10.
8. Exodus 12:32.
World History
