They combed the area for evidence of a remarkably precise claim - that the Hebrews were press-ganged into making mud-bricks to build two great cities - Pithom and Ramses. Ramses II was the greatest Pharaoh in all of ancient Egypt - his statues are everywhere. Surely his city could be traced? But no sign could be found. There were suggestions it all been made up by a scribe.
Until a local farmer found a clue: the remains of the feet of a giant statue. An inscription on a nearby pedestal confirmed that the statue belonged to Ramses II. Eventually, archeologists unearthed traces of houses, temples, even palaces.
Using new technology, the archaeologists were able to detect the foundations and they mapped out the whole city in a few months. The city they had discovered was one of the biggest cities in ancient Egypt, built around BCE.
But was this city actually built by Hebrew slaves? There is a reference in ancient Egyptian documents to a Semitic tribe captured by Pharaoh and forced to work on the city of Ramses.
A clay tablet lists groups of people who were captured by the Pharaoh and one of the groups was called Habiru. Could these be the Hebrews? No-one can be sure. The story of the infant Moses being set adrift in a basket bears remarkable similarities to an old Babylonian myth about a great King called Sargon who was discovered as a baby in a basket in a river. Between and BCE, Jewish scribes in Jerusalem set out to record all the old tales of their people, handed down from generation to generation.
What if the scribes had wanted to add a bit of spice to their tales to make them more interesting? Could they have used the myth of Sargon and made up the tale of Moses? It's certainly possible as we know the Jews were captured by the Babylonians in BCE and held in exile in Babylon modern Iraq for some time.
They could have picked up the Sargon legend there. Egyptologist Jim Hoffmeier studied the original Hebrew text. He found that key words in the story - bulrushes, papyrus, Nile, riverbank - were all ancient Egyptian words, and not Babylonian.
But what about the name 'Moses'? It is an Egyptian name meaning 'One who is born'. It uses the same root as 'Ramses'. It's hard to believe that a Hebrew scribe, one thousand years later, could have come up with a story using authentic Egyptian words. Well actually there are many stories of babies being put in baskets and exposed or put in water. This was an ancient way of putting a child out to the fate of the gods.
Today people put babies in baskets and put them on church doorsteps. The Bible says that when Moses was 80, he was living peacefully as a shepherd in the desert. One day, as he was tending his flock, he heard the voice of God coming from a burning bush. God ordered Moses to go and force the Pharaoh to let his Hebrew people go.
At first Moses was afraid, he didn't think he could do this. Then God gave him special powers. Did Moses hear the voice of God? Clinton Bailey, an expert on Bedouin folklore, believes that such a desert experience is perfectly plausible:.
If you have to survive out here in this heat and in this desolation You're closer to God And I have seen Bedouin praying on their own in the middle of the desert Whatever happened, this was a turning point for Moses and the Hebrew people. Jews believe that at the moment the Hebrews forged a special and unique relationship with God. In return, God gave them the right to occupy a certain land.
It was the Promised Land: the land we now know as Israel. From that moment on, Moses resolved to lead his people out of Egypt to the land of milk and honey.
The Bible claims that Moses was rescued by the Pharaoh's daughter, who adopted him. He was then educated and brought up in the palace as a prince. Can this possibly be true? The picture we have here is very authentic because the young boys in ancient Egypt were under a tough master.
In fact we have the testimony of some of the scribes who talked about how their scribe master beat them when they were lazy and made sure they wrote their letters right. Of course we have no proof but what's interesting is that during the general period we place Moses, during this time non-royal children were also introduced. The royal children of foreign kings, kings from Canaan, Syria, were entered into this institution to learn how to read and write.
The Pharaohs did keep records, the records show that palaces had nurseries where royal children were educated, and that they did bring foreign children into these nurseries. It may have been easy for the Pharaoh's daughter to introduce a baby she had found into one of these nurseries.
Epidemiologist Dr John Marr believes most of the ten plagues could have been caused by polluted water in the Nile poisoning fish and setting off a tragic chain of events. Meanwhile, Professor Costas Synolakis, a leading tsunami expert, believes a massive volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini in BCE could have generated a giant tidal wave that struck the Nile Delta.
This incredibly powerful wave could be linked to the parting of a 'reed sea' in the delta that could explain how the story of the 'Red Sea' parting into two walls of water was written centuries later. In the Bible, the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea are miracles — acts of God working through nature. Can any of them be explained scientifically? Scientific experts such as climatologists, oceanographers and vulcanologists suggest that there is evidence that a string of natural events triggered phenomena that could explain the story of the plagues and the parting of the sea.
In an environmental catastrophe happened in the town of New Burn, North Carolina. The residents woke up to find the waters of their river - the Neuse - had turned red. More than a billion fish died. People working near the river found that they were covered in sores. The cause of this was found to be pollution. The pollution had come from a pig farm further up the river.
Millions of gallons of pig-waste had found its way into the river, causing a genetic mutation in a marine micro-organism called pfisteria; turning it from harmless into lethal. The river had been poisoned. John Marr, an epidemiologist specialising in environmental disasters, believes pollution in ancient Egypt could have caused the first six plagues. Pfisteria, or something like it, caused the fish to die, thus turning the river red; the pollution would have driven the frogs onto the land, on land the frogs would die, causing an explosion of flies and lice.
The flies could then have transmitted viral diseases to livestock, killing them. Ash columns were ejected into the atmosphere, circling the globe within two weeks and causing complete darkness over a radius of miles. John Marr, epidemiologist, thinks that fall-out of volcanic ash could have produced a toxic bloom of algae in the River Nile; thus setting off a chain of events similar to those produced by pfisteria.
The volcanic theory seems dubious because there is no active volcano in Egypt. But miles to the north of the Nile delta is the Greek island of Santorini. In the 16th century BCE, Santorini was blown apart by a gigantic volcanic eruption that was thousands of times more powerful than a nuclear weapon. It was one of the biggest explosions of the last 10, years.
The ash cloud from the Santorini blast would have been huge and far-reaching. When Santorini erupted, the wind was blowing in a south-easterly direction, towards Egypt. Samples of Santorini ash have been collected from the sea bed, the heaviest concentrations being in the direction of the Nile Delta. Oceanographer Dr Daniel Stanley, went to the Delta to drill for samples of mud and silt to see if the ash could have reached Egypt.
Born: c. Egypt Died: c. Moab, Syria Egyptian prophet. He created Israel's nationhood and delivered the Ten Commandments. Moses was the son of Amram and Yochebed of the tribe of Levi. Miriam and Aaron were his brother and sister. He was born in Egypt during the period in which the Israelites Hebrews had become a threat to the Egyptians simply because of their large population.
The Pharaoh had ordered that all newborn male Hebrew children be cast into the Nile to drown. Amram and Yochebed took their newborn son and placed him in a waterproof basket and hid him in the tall grasses of the Nile. Meanwhile, his sister Miriam hid and watched over the baby from a distance.
A group of women and servants were bathing nearby. The Pharaoh's daughter, hearing the baby cry, found and rescued him. She named him "Moses," meaning "drawn from the water. Moses was brought up in the splendor of the Egyptian court as the Pharaoh's daughter's adopted son.
Grown to manhood, he was aware of his Hebraic roots and shared a deep compassion for his confined kinsmen. He became furious while witnessing an Egyptian master brutally beating a Hebrew slave, and he impulsively killed the Egyptian. Fearing the Pharaoh's punishment, he fled into the desert of Midian, becoming a shepherd for Jethro, a Midianite priest whose daughter Zipporah he later married. While tending the flocks on Horeb Mountain in the wilderness, he saw a bush burning yet not turning to ash.
He heard a voice from within the bush telling him that he had been chosen to serve as one to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt. He was also told to declare the unity of God to his people. At that time most Israelites were worshipping many gods. Moses was to tell them that there was only one God. The tremendous responsibility of Moses's task, his shyness, and his own feeling of unworthiness brought forth a hesitancy and lack of confidence.
The Divine answer was "Who made your tongue? The promised destination for the Israelites' journey was a "land rich with milk and honey. Reproduced by permission of the Corbis Corporation. Moses returned to Egypt and persuaded the Hebrews to organize for a quick trip from their Egyptian slave drivers.
The Pharaoh refused to obey, bringing upon himself and his people nine terrible plagues diseases that spread rapidly and can cause death that Moses produced upon Egypt by using the miraculous staff he had received from God as a sign of his authority. The identity of Pharaoh in the Moses story has been much debated, but many scholars are inclined to accept that Exodus has King Ramses II in mind. As part of this effort, King Seti I ca — B. These two cities are quite possibly the biblical Ramses and Pithom.
Read how female pharaohs ruled ancient Egypt. This monument is dated around B. No record of the exodus has been found in any Egyptian tablets, but that is not unusual; the new dynasty did not make a habit of recording its defeats. All rights reserved. National Geographic explores notable biblical figures in our ongoing series People in the Bible, as part of our coverage of the history of the Bible and the search for sacred texts. Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants. Horeb far in the wilderness, he beheld a bush burning that was not consumed.
In the revelation that followed, he was informed that he had been chosen to serve as the liberator of the children of Israel. He was also told to proclaim the unity of God to his entire people, which doctrine heretofore had been known only to certain individuals.
The tremendous responsibility of his task, his innate humility, and his own feeling of unworthiness evoked a hesitancy and lack of confidence in Moses. He was assured, however, that Aaron, his more fluent brother, would serve as his spokesman both to the children of Israel and to the Pharaoh. Moses returned to Egypt and persuaded the Hebrews to organize for a hasty departure from the land of bondage. Together with Aaron, he informed the Pharaoh that the God of the Hebrews demanded that he free His people.
The Pharaoh refused to obey, bringing upon himself and his people nine terrible plagues that Moses wrought upon Egypt by using the miraculous staff he had received as a sign of his authority.
The tenth plague, the killing of the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, broke the Pharaoh's resistance and compelled him to grant the Hebrews permission to depart immediately. Moses thus found himself the leader of an undisciplined collection of slaves, Hebrew as well as non-Hebrew, escaping from Egyptian territory to freedom. Moses' immediate goal was Mt.
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