THE EXODUS 407 



The date of the Exodus, like most Egyptian dates, hitherto 

 a matter of considerable contention, is now generally agreed 

 as falUng between 1300 and 1200 B.C. Petrie ^ fixes on 

 " 1220 B.C. or possibly rather later," Hanbury Brown places 

 the Flight ten years earlier, i.e. 1230, for reasons based mainly 

 on the stele of King Menephtah.2 



So if the contention that the Israelites could not well know 

 of the Rod because of its invention after their flight holds 

 water, any representation of Rod fishing must obviously be 

 subsequent to the year 1230 or 1220 b.c. Only two such 

 representations exist : (A) (in Wilkinson's Plate 370) comes 

 from the tomb (No. 93) of Kenamum at Thebes, and dates 

 from about the second half of the XVIIIth Dynasty, or some 

 200 years before the Exodus, while (B) (in Wilkinson's Plate 371, 

 and in Newberry's Beni Hasan, vol. I. Plate XXIX.) goes back 

 to the early Xllth Dynasty or some 750 years before the 

 Exodus. 3 



The Exodus, whatever date be assigned, probably occurred 

 in the time of and was occasioned by a dynasty non-Semitic, 

 and unfavourable to Israel. The corvee enforced doubtless 

 by the kourbash was exacted from the aliens, whose task 

 (Exodus i, 11) included the building of two brick fortresses to 

 block the eastern road into Egypt. 



1 op. cit., p. 53. 



2 The inscription mentions the existing conditions of foreign affairs with 

 neighbouring countries as satisfactory. It is in this connection that the 

 " people of Israel " come in. Their Exodus, according to Pharaonic fashion, 

 would have been described by the King as an expulsion and not as an escape 

 against his will. The author of the inscription, who wrote from a point of 

 view which was not that of the Biblical account, seems not unsupported by 

 Exodus xii. 39, " Because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not tarry." 

 Even stronger is the Revised Version marginal rendering in Exodus xi. i, 

 " When he shall let you go altogether, he shall utterly thrust you out hence." 

 Sir Hanbury Brown, Journal of Egyptian ArchcBology (Jan. 1917), p. 19. 



' In connection with, perhaps even helping to fix, the date of the Exodus, 

 it is in the victorious hymn of Menephtah that the earliest written reference 

 to Israel appears : " Israel is desolated : her seed is not. Palestine has 

 become a (defenceless) widow of Egypt " (Breasted), or " The Israelites are 

 swept off: his seed is no more " (Naville). Petrie's translation, " The people 

 of Israel is spoiled : it has no corn (or seed)," does not for various reasons 

 seem to find favour. The majority of Egyptologists now identify Aahmes I. 

 with the " new king who knew not Joseph," c. (1582), Rameses II. as the first 

 Pharaoh of the Oppression, and of Exodus ii. 15 (c. 1300), and Menephtah 

 the son of Rameses II. with the Pharaoh of the Plagues and the Flight from 

 Egypt [c. 1234). 



