Chapter II · THE COMPOSITION OF THE PENTATEUCH (continued 2)

We can learn nothing, accordingly, from the books of the Old Testament about the chronology of Israel down to the time of David. For David’s reign we have the seven years of his rule at Hebron, followed by the thirty-three years of his sway over the whole of Israel. For the reign of Solomon we have again the indeterminate ‘forty years’; but since Rezon of Damascus, like Hadad of Edom, was ‘an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon,’ it is probable that the reign did not actually last more than thirty years at the most. Even the chronology of the divided kingdom after the death of Solomon, in spite of the synchronisms the compiler of the books of Kings has endeavoured to establish between the kings of Judah and those of Israel, has been the despair of historians, and scheme after scheme has been proposed in order to make it self-consistent. The Assyrian monuments, however, have now come to our help, and shown that between 147the time of Ahab and that of Hezekiah it is forty years in excess.

For Hebrew chronology, therefore, we must look outside the Bible itself. At certain points Hebrew history comes into touch with the monumental records of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria; and if we are to date the events it records, it must be by their aid. Egypt can assist us only after the rise of the eighteenth dynasty; before that period it is as much without a chronology as the Israelites themselves. But the case is different as regards Babylonia and Assyria. In Babylonia time was dated by the reigns of the kings and the events of the several years of each reign. The extensive commercial relations of the country, and the contracts that were constantly being drawn up, made accurate dating a matter of necessity. The Assyrians were even more exact than the Babylonians; they were distinguished among Oriental nations by their strong historical sense, and at an early epoch had devised an accurate system of chronology. The years were reckoned by a succession of officers called limmi, each of whom held office for a year and gave his name to it, the king himself, during the earlier period of Assyrian history, taking the office in the first year of his reign. Lists of the limmi were kept, and a reference to them would show at once the exact age of a document dated by the name of a particular limmu. None of the lists hitherto discovered are, unfortunately, older than the tenth century B.C.; but, thanks to those that have been found, from B.C. 909 to 666 we have a continuous and accurate register of time.

Abraham was the contemporary of Chedor-laomer and Amraphel, and the position of Amraphel among the Babylonian kings has been given us by the native annalists. He was the sixth king of the first dynasty of Babylon, and reigned fifty-five years. Unfortunately, the only copy we possess at present of the native Babylonian list of dynasties is broken, and owing to the fracture of the tablet, a doubt hangs over his precise date. The most probable restoration of the text would make 148it about B.C. 2300.^[146] Between this and the Exodus there would be an interval of more than a thousand years.

Dr. Mahler has attempted to fix astronomically the dates of the two leading Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, Thothmes III. and Ramses II., and his dates have been accepted by Brugsch and other Egyptologists. If his calculations are correct, Thothmes III. will have reigned from the 20th of March B.C. 1503 to the 14th of February B.C. 1449;^[147] and Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression, from B.C. 1348 to 1281. The eighteenth dynasty, accordingly, would have commenced about B.C. 1600, and the Exodus would have taken place subsequently to B.C. 1280.

If Apophis II. was the Hyksos king under whom Joseph governed Egypt, he would have lived four generations before Ahmes, the founder of the eighteenth dynasty.^[148] The ‘four hundred years,’ therefore, during which Israel was evil-entreated in Egypt (Acts vii. 6) will correspond with the era of four hundred years mentioned on a stela discovered by Mariette at San, the ancient Zoan.^[149] The stela commemorates a visit paid to Zoan in the reign of Ramses II. by Seti, the governor of the frontier, on the fourth day of the month Mesori, and ‘the four hundredth year of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Set-âa-pehti, the son of the Sun, who loved him, also named Set-Nubti, beloved of Harmakhis.’ Since Set or Sutekh was the Hyksos god, and Zoan the Hyksos capital, it is clear that we have here a Hyksos era, the four hundredth anniversary of 149which fell in the reign of Ramses II. It seems probable that it marked the accession of the third and last Hyksos dynasty. According to Manetho, as reported by Africanus, this lasted for one hundred and fifty-one years, which would take us to about B.C. 1720, and the same date is obtained if we calculate the four hundred years of the stela of Sân, back from the thirtieth year of Ramses II. One generation more—the thirty additional years given in Exod. xii. 40—will bring us to the period of the Exodus, which, as we shall see hereafter, must have taken place under Meneptah, the son and successor of Ramses II.

The precise connection between the Hyksos and Hebrew eras must be left to the future to discover. At present, the only reference found to the first is that on the stela of Sân. Some connection, however, there must be between them, like the connection between Zoan and Hebron indicated in Numb. xiii. 22, where it is said that ‘Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.’ The Hyksos were invaders from Asia, and between them and the Hebrews there may have been a closer relationship than we now suspect.

Two approximate dates have accordingly been found for early Hebrew history. One results from the synchronism between Abraham and Amraphel, and may be set down as about 2300 B.C.; the other is the synchronism with Egyptian history, which gives us about B.C. 1720 for the settlement of the Hebrew tribes in Goshen. We must now see what light can be thrown by the Egyptian monuments on the date of the Exodus.

Various reasons had led an increasing majority of Egyptologists to regard Ramses II., the most prominent figure in the nineteenth dynasty, if not in the whole history of the Pharaohs, as the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and the question was finally settled by Dr. Naville’s excavations at Tel el-Maskhûta on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund.^[150] Tel el-Maskhûta proved to be the site of Pi-Tum, the Biblical Pithom, and to have had the civil name of Thuku or Thukut from the nome of the district in which it was situated. Brugsch had already 150pointed out that Thukut is the Succoth of the Old Testament, the Egyptian th corresponding to the Hebrew ’s, and Succoth was the first stage in the flight of the Israelites after their departure from Raamses (Exod. xii. 37). Pi-Tum was the sacred name of the city, which was dedicated to Tum, the setting Sun.

The monuments found on the spot showed that the founder of the city was Ramses II.; and since the Pharaoh of the Oppression was also the builder of Pithom (Exod. i. 11), those who attach any credit to the historical character of the Biblical statement must necessarily see in him the great Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty. The conclusion is further supported by the name of ‘Raamses,’ or Ramses, the second of the two cities which it is said the Hebrews were employed in building. Ramses I., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, and the grandfather of Ramses II., was the first king of Egypt who bore that name; and the shortness of his reign, which does not seem to have exceeded two years, as well as the disturbed condition of the country, would have prevented him from undertaking any architectural works. Ramses II., however, was essentially a building Pharaoh; he covered Egypt from one end to the other with his constructions; he founded cities, erected or restored monuments, and not unfrequently usurped them. There was more than one city or temple of Ramses which owed its existence to his architectural zeal and was called after his name. As the date of the third Ramses of the twentieth dynasty is too late to fit in with any theory of the Exodus, there remains only Ramses II. for ‘the treasure-city’ mentioned in Exodus. Ramses II. restored Zoan, and made it a seat of residence; this will explain why, in Gen. xlvii. 11, Goshen is proleptically said to have been situated in ‘the land of Rameses.’ Brugsch has made it probable that ‘the city of Ramses’ referred to in an Egyptian papyrus was Zoan itself.^[151]

151If Ramses II. was the Pharaoh of the Oppression, the Pharaoh of the Exodus will have been one of his immediate successors. The choice lies between Meneptah II., who succeeded him, his grandson, the feeble Seti II., and the usurper Si-Ptah, with whom the dynasty came to an inglorious end. The Egyptian legend of the Exodus given by Manetho places it in the reign of Meneptah; and a stela discovered at Thebes in 1896 by Professor Petrie makes any other dating difficult. Here the ‘Israelites’ are spoken of as having been brought low, ‘so that no seed should be left to them’; and since their name alone is without the determinative of locality which is added to the names of all the other conquered populations associated with them, we may conclude that they had already been lost in the desert, and, so far at any rate as was known to the Egyptian scribe, had no fixed local habitation.^[152] As this was in the fifth year of Meneptah’s reign, B.C. 1276, according to Dr. Mahler’s chronology, the Exodus from Egypt may be approximately assigned to B.C. 1277. The period of oppression, according to the calculation in Gen. xv. 13, would consequently have commenced in B.C. 1677, or nearly a hundred years before the expulsion of the Hyksos.

It must be remembered, however, that the date is more precise in appearance than in reality. It depends partly on the accuracy of Dr. Mahler’s calculations, which is disputed by Professors Eisenlohr and Maspero, partly on our regarding the round number 400 as representing an exact period of time. If we knew in what year of Ramses II.’s long reign of sixty-seven years the stela of Sân was inscribed, we should be better able to check the reckoning. As it is, we have to be grateful for what we have already learned from the excavated monuments of the past, and to look forward with confidence to more light and certainty in the future.

152