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More on Ancient Jews, Pyramids, Pharaohs, and the Exodus

by Brian Dunning, Feb 04 2010

Don’t think for a minute that I didn’t know it would be controversial. When I recorded this week’s Skeptoid episode Did Jewish Slaves Build the Pyramids, I knew it was going to upset Christians who hold that belief dear. I wasn’t disappointed, as you can tell from the comments.

As you may or may not know, the Bible doesn’t even contain the word pyramid, at least not an online King James Version that I searched. This is quite interesting. All the evidence points to Herodotus of Halicarnassus as the originator of the tale of Jewish slaves laboring under Egyptian whips to build the pyramids [In fact Herodotus only mentions the number of workers on the pyramids, he did not identify them as either Jews or slaves. - BD]. However, the Book of Exodus was written nearly exactly the same time as Herodotus wrote this in his book The Histories (about 450 BCE), and it seems strange that these two contemporaneous accounts would match up so well on all details except the one that should appeal most to storytellers: the pyramids.

The other glaring difference between the accounts of Herodotus and Exodus is the Exodus itself. Despite a few poor attempts by some Christian scholars to try and shoehorn other events recorded by Herodotus into excuses for an Exodus, it’s clear that the Biblical account, where Moses led hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees out from the Egyptian labor camps, is wholly absent from Herodotus’ version.

Whether they were slaves or not, Jewish or not, or had worked on pyramids or something different, no group that large could possibly have camped for even one day and left no archaeological evidence. We find prehistoric camps tens of thousands of years old where hunters spent a single night. To claim that a group of thousands (let alone hundreds of thousands) could camp for even a week (let alone forty years) and leave no archaeological evidence displays gross naivete. A group numbering anywhere close to a million would have constituted the world’s largest city in those times, and short of a tectonic subduction, entire cities do not disappear. Whatever the Exodus was, if it happened at all, was certainly not what was depicted in the Book of Exodus.

No, I’m not trying to be controversial, and not trying to rub Christians or Jews or anyone else the wrong way. But I would like to be enlightened as to why some who hold such texts dear sometimes regard them as mere lists of events, rather than being otherwise meaningful. Whatever value they have is demonstrably not as lists of events. Might it lie elsewhere?

The criticism I received has been of two general varieties. First, that I’m an “Exodus denier”. Well, sorry to say, it’s not me who’s denying it: It’s virtually every historian and archaeologist, based on the evidence. I merely report what has been thoroughly established – that the evidence that must necessarily exist if the Exodus happened has never manifested itself. Second, that the Egyptians never recorded their losses in battle, only their victories; and it is this that explains the lack of evidence for the Exodus. Whether this is true or just an apologetic argument is irrelevant. The lack of Egyptian corroboration is certainly consistent with the lack of archaeological evidence, but it is hardly the reason historians don’t support the Exodus story. Again, your beef is with the evidence, not with the researchers who report the findings.

I submit that all efforts to prove that which is to be taken on faith with scientific evidence are not only doomed to fail, they are ultimately illogical and counterproductive to the purpose of faith.

21 Responses to “More on Ancient Jews, Pyramids, Pharaohs, and the Exodus”

  1. CW says:

    As if there weren’t enough sacred cows/idols already smashed by skeptics. (see what I did there?) *grins*

  2. Max says:

    “But I would like to be enlightened as to why some who hold such texts dear sometimes regard them as mere lists of events, rather than being otherwise meaningful.”

    Are you saying they don’t consider the events meaningful, or should your “rather than” be “in addition to”?

    Here’s why the events are meaningful
    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hebegypt.html

    “Several salient aspects give this narrative its foundational role in the Hebrew view of history. First, Moses is especially chosen by Yahweh to deliver Yahweh’s people. In other words, Yahweh directly intervenes in history in order to bring about his purposes for his people. Second, the people of Yahweh become a national entity, identified by the name, ‘bene yisrael,’ rather than simply being a diverse group of tribes. They are united around a specific leader, Moses. Third, the events in Egypt, including the plagues and the miraculous deliverance of the Israelites at the Sea of Reeds when pursued by the king’s army, are meant to serve as the primary proof of God’s election of the Hebrews.”

  3. Akusai says:

    As you say, Brian, it’s no revelation to archaeology that the Jews had no hand in building the pyramids. Hell, it’s no revelation to hardcore apologists, either; when I visited the Creation Museum last summer (shudder), I picked up a book the title of which I forget but the general gist of which was “Archaeology proves the Bible to be true.” It had a rather convoluted argument to “prove” that Jewish slaves actually build the pyramids. If I remember correctly, it went something like “Assuming all of Egyptian history is off by about 600 years, and assuming that every time Egyptians said ‘Asiatics,’ they actually meant ‘Israelites,’ and assuming there were far more ‘Asiatics’ in Egypt than all available records actually show, and assuming that those ‘Asiatics’ were used as slaves, then yes, we can say with confidence that Jewish slaves built the Pyramids.”

    When professional apologists have to tie themselves in knots with such a ridiculous series of hypotheticals, it seems silly for laypeople to be unaware of this basic fact about Egyptology. I suppose we’ve all seen “The Ten Commandments” one to many times.

  4. Tvorse says:

    Really sucks to find out that people you thought were your enemies turn out to have been allies at one point. Amazing how perspective changes happen based around stories and tales past down. Humankind is sometimes our own worst enemy when it refuses to teach from all sides of an event.

  5. itzac says:

    Of course all of these apologetics ignore the preponderance of evidence the pyramids were built by free labourers, rather than slaves.

    They left graffiti naming their work gangs and so forth. The wages and logistics are all well recorded.

  6. stargazer9915 says:

    We all know that ‘the facts’ have no bearing on reality for bible literalists. However, the podcast was enlightening for those of us not familiar with this part of history and archeaology.

    Let the skeptoids roll!

  7. baiskeptic says:

    When I was in high school taking a mythology class, I intended to use “The Prince of Egypt” to compare with the Exodus myth. I went to a Catholic school, and the class had discussed Noah’s Arc as a flood myth adopted from other civilizations in the same area (Epic of Gilgamesh for example). My mom convinced me not to do my project on Exodus because she wasn’t sure it was a myth and she didn’t want my school to get the wrong impression. Even so, I’m fairly confident that some of the items in your podcast were mentioned in that class.

    As always, awesome podcast. If you’re getting a reaction, you’ve probably made some people think.

  8. Mike Duquette says:

    Ah yes the fabled story of a “chosen” people by god that are lead to freedom from a tyrant, so they could in turn invade and kill other nations.Is this the moral good story of the bible that the majority of Americans follow as their reality? Sadly yes.
    These religious literalists need and embrace these myths and any evidence that may disspell their belief system is ignored. The powers that be have tried to kill these heritics for all of recorded history since.
    Fortunatly these days heritics cannot be killed legaly. The evolutionary urge to cling to myths in spite of facts will although probabably never dwindle to healthy numbers.

  9. One of my favorite episodes of your podcast already. This is one of those Christian myths that is so deeply engrained into our culture. I’ll admit that even as skeptical as I am, I never thought to even question this. I knew that the Exodus wasn’t likely but I didn’t even realize that there is no mention of the pyramids in the Bible. You need to do more episodes like this. One on the Rapture would be interesting since that isn’t in the Bible either.

  10. MadScientist says:

    Why is any fable meaningful? Where is the evidence for the mouse that pulled a thorn from the lion’s paw? Even if Egypt had no official records of Jewish slaves leaving in droves, surely one of the other civilizations of the time would have such records – especially the civilizations around modern Iraq and Iran (and one of the world’s most ancient cities – Damascus)? Keep in mind that even attempts in Egypt to expurgate evidence of previous dynasties has not been very effective; you can destroy a lot of evidence, but destroying all evidence is quite a feat. There are also many accounts through history of Jews being driven from some area or other and settling in other regions – for example during the Roman Diaspora – and what is now Iran has been a frequent host to Jews fleeing hostility (though at the moment the government is quite hostile to Jews).

  11. Kurt says:

    There is a minority view in Egyptology that there are errors in the chronology starting around 750 BCE. Unfortunately, chronological revision in archaeology is tainted by Velikovsky’s attempts at the issue so arguing for chronology changes in ancient history is not exactly a path to career success.

    With regard to the Exodus you can say three things:
    1) No one can with any credibility claim that the Old Kingdom pyramids were built by Hebrew slaves.
    2) The expected period for the Exodus based on the accepted chronology is the New Kingdom period where evidence of Hebrews is very thin and the idea of a successful slave revolt is fairly implausible.
    3) The only period which does feature Asiatic slaves and political instability is the early part of the Second Intermediate period. This works for the Exodus (as far as Biblical chronology) but would require numerous other Biblical-Egyptological connections in the accepted chronology to be wrong.

    As far as I know, option 3 is not actually ruled out by the evidence, it just goes against the grain of a lot of scholarship. Thus, the accepted view is that the Bible takes a lot of liberties with ancient Hebrew history and is not reliable as a historical document (even when it’s not talking about acts of God).

  12. Badger3k says:

    From what I remember, the bible states that (in Exodus 1:11) “Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.” I had heard, from somewhere, so this is unprovenenced, that there is some evidence – burials, I believe, for some kind of Israelite/Hebrew/Canaanite presence in these some city at the Nile Delta. A quick search reveals that, at least for Pithom, the argument is not settled and even this bit that I heard may be false or irrelevant. If I recall correctly, the dates for this evidence are from around the time of the Hyksos. Sorry I can’t offer more information – I think I had heard it in a podcast, but I listen to so many I cannot be sure where or when.

  13. UNRR says:

    This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 2/5/2010, at The Unreligious Right

  14. DocB says:

    To start with the praise: I really liked the episode. I’m not sure if you citation of the movies is correct (as has been pointed out on your own site), and it may have been nice if you had stressed the point that all of Exodus is very probably nearly pure myth a bit more, but you juggled hot potatoes there, and did it well.

    A small criticism regarding your post here: In my opinion it is very well possible to miss the archeological evidence for a large number of people running around the desert. The desert in this area can be pretty big, and not much of it has been thoroughly searched. In addition, your “short of a tectonic subduction” hints at how easy it can be to lose whole cities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleion
    Of course, that is no argument at all for any possible truth in Exodus.

    Anyway, I’d be happy to listen to more episodes like that one.

  15. tim dugan says:

    what if, instead of hundreds of thousands, it was a few dozen jews that escaped?

  16. Mike Duquette says:

    Tim Dugan says what if it was only a few dozen that escaped? Well if that’s the case then why would you believe all the other probable exaggerations in the bible? If I read a document that claims to be a perfect and true work inspired by a perfect, all-knowing being and can clearly see many false facts then why should I believe other extraordinary claims may be true?

  17. Ian says:

    I don’t really follow your line of reasoning at all.

    Hebrews obviously didn’t build the pyramids since the pyramids are freakin’ old. There weren’t even slaves building the pyramids. And what Herodotus had to say about who built the pyramids… its like if someone from the year 4000 took what we said about the the year 1 AD as accurate since we are so close to that time. Why even respond to this guy?

    Did I mention, the pyramids are really old? The Hebrews, not so much, at least not on the scale of middle eastern civilization. If I was Egyptian I would be offended to have Hebrews being given credit for it. Of course it diminishes the accomplishments of the Egyptian people, but really because it makes the pyramids more then a thousand years younger which IMO lowers some of their wonder.

    However at about the time the Hebrews were around, there was a lot of big monument building being done by slaves. There’s even written evidence of a group with a name vaguely close to Hebrew being enslaved. The basic outlines of a group of enslaved people who then went and founded Israel (whether by fighting or by just leaving… ancient slavery wasn’t much like modern slavery) is overall not an unlikely story. A group of people moving around the middle east wasn’t uncommon. It would be an exodus, though perhaps not Exodus.

    Every group has its founding story. Do you think Australia would’ve chosen their story to be “founded by a penal colony” if they had the choice? Why be ex-slave? Moses is an Egyptian name (and the Bible even says otherwise!). Overall as far as events in the old testament goes, the Hebrews being a group of ex-slaves from Egypt doesn’t seem so odd.

    So I disagree that the lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus means much. What if they just took a road and walked to their destination. Or maybe they did wander around various areas. Okay so it doesn’t match up with Biblical Exodus, but um, does that really need debunking? We can put parting the water in the same column as talking snakes.

  18. Tony H says:

    Perhaps the reason there is no record of the Israelites in Egyptian history is that they were in fact the Hyksos (shepherd kings/foreign rulers), or at least a faction of them. These were Semitic people who first appeared in Egyptian history around the 11th dynasty (2134 – 1991 BC) and stayed around at least until they were apparently expelled/defeated by Ahmosis around 1560 BC. Perhaps however it was just the leadership that was defeated and the common people remained and were “enslaved” until the Exodus which many believe to have been in the rein of Ramses II.

    Perhaps also the Hyksos were present in Egypt even before they are recognised in history, let’s say in the days of the old kingdom pyramid building era. They were unlikely to have been slaves at that time however as they subsequently became the Pharaohs of the 15th dynasty.

    I think there’s a lot of mythology in the Old Testament, but it’s good to keep an open mind on all possibilities. When we look so far back in history it’s all pretty cloudy and it often depends on who is telling the story. The victors in any conflict usually write the history from their viewpoint that puts them in a good light.

  19. it’s all myth. My ancestors came here to escape Judaism and Calvinism and the Lutherans.
    Our name was Bethe. The people on Ellis Island said the name was too hard to pronounce. Over night we went from being a Jewish temple to being a girls name. AND we lost Hans as a family member… grrrrrr

  20. Michael David says:

    The naiveté and silliness exhibited here is actually laughable. Brian Dunning, I’m sorry, sir, but you are no archeologist. More importantly, you have no inkling of the religious/political machinations going on here by the Egyptian government (and the Israeli government). You don’t even take into account the underlying reasoning for a biased reading of the so-called “evidence”. There has been a war raging between Jews and Muslims for centuries (14 in fact) to undermine, ridicule, dismiss and eradicate the historical record of one another. Muslim countries, and their scholars do their Sharia-best to undermine or erase the contributions and history of the Jews. Why? Because Muhammad said the Jews had it all wrong, and Muhammad can’t be wrong or be a liar. Do you, for one moment, believe that the Egyptian people want to admit the Jews built the pyramids? The pyramids, which are one of the great wonders of the world? How foolish you are to completely dismiss this very important factor, not to even mention national pride. Of course, every bit of evidence they find is going to appropriated in such a way as to prove their point-of-view. Scholars aren’t above trying to fit the facts to prove their read of things. Uh, neither are “skeptics”. ;-)

    Of equal importance are the laughable attempts by atheists, agnostics and liberal theologians to undermine every factual piece of evidence that lends credence to the Biblical record. For example, the German liberal theologians assertion that the Gospel of John was written several hundreds of years after the life of Christ. It was supposedly a false gospel, quoting Jesus making claims He had never made in life. It was all bogus. A record written much later to bolster the claims that Jesus claimed He was God. Oh how many papers and books and articles were written, the preponderance of evidence of which was considered “overwhelming”. Because of this, there was a time when the majority view was, John indeed was written much later and could not be counted upon. Christian apologists actually avoided using John when defending Christ’s deity, to keep from being dismissed out-of-hand – in fact that (unfortunately) continues today because of the whole Q, M-Source, and L source, et. al. arguments.

    Then, oops, P52 was found. The Rylands Library Papyrus P52 – a tiny fragment of John, which purportedly was originally found in an Egyptian garbage dump, ironically relegated all those papers, books and articles that had so ASSUREDLY placed the authorship of John in the third for fourth century to… the garbage dump. The most accepted date of the fragment is between 117 AD and 138 AD. Some like to date the fragment later, even as late as 170 AD, but no matter. The point is, here we have a fragment of the Gospel of John found in EGYPT dated to (at the latest) the second half of the second century. Because the original isn’t going to be found in an Egyptian location, this must therefore be a copy (of possibly many generations) of the original (or some variation thereof). This copy made it’s way all the way to Egypt, which means the original was written much, much sooner. This places the time of authorship in the first century, when John lived, and all those papers, books and articles which assert that the beliefs that Jesus was God and eternal with God didn’t come about until the third or fourth century, also ended up on the *garbage heap*. One tiny fragment was the undoing of the so-called “preponderance of evidence” and ironically it came from a Muslim land (though not when it was finally discovered and exposed). Had this fragment been in Muslim hands when it was ultimately discovered, would it have been presented to the world? Evidence that Jesus did assert Himself to be God, and people believing that in the first century, when Muslim assert that Jesus never made such claims? Unlikely.

    Why did I write all that? To make two points; first, all it takes is one *tiny* bit of papyrus to topple the supposedly ironclad preponderance of evidence. One moment everyone is soooo sure something is true, then a little flake of paper appears and… what do you know? Suddenly those beliefs that just couldn’t be true, are now grounded in fact and the Bible is (once again) supported with factual evidence. Secondly, only fools believe that conclusions made from archeological “evidence” are without partisan religious politics or uncolored by national pride. The Egyptian nationals want us to believe that the pharaohs were friendly and fair fellows who never had SLAVES! Goodness forbid! They’ll read any archeological evidence as supporting that fact. They find some quarters where people lived, drank beer and had furniture, and suddenly this was the lot of ALL of the workers. Of course, an equally accurate reading is that these quarters were for those men who were bosses, designers, paid workers, while the majority of those that worked on the pyramids didn’t have permanent quarters, nor were they paid. They lived in tents and were slaves. The archeological evidence – from the Egyptian (Muslim) point of view is that, no Jews ever built the pyramids, whereas plenty of Jewish scholars read the same evidence and come up with far different conclusions. Also, the Egyptian (and so-called “skeptics” here) seem to gloss over the fact that many Jewish scholars don’t try to assert that Jews built the pyramids, but rather they build two cities, Pithom and Raamses. So the skeptics charge in boldly and arrogantly armed with their archeological evidence that Jews didn’t build the pyramids, and they assert that NO Jewish slaves ever existed, while they completely miss the fact that just because Jewish slaves didn’t build the pyramids, doesn’t mean they didn’t EXIST building other things. Conclusions, the skeptics here have their own axe to grind (as do the Egyptians and Muslims have a different axe to grind), but the skeptics here grind away without one scintilla of archeological education to keep them from making Archeology 101 mistakes. Actually, they’re even more fundamental than that, they are Logic 101 mistakes. Biased Sample, anyone? How about a helping of Hasty Generalization for good measure? Oh, why not toss in a wagonload of Misleading Vividness, for extra laughs?

    Oh and, TexasOdysseyCoach… tell us exactly how your ancestors came to the U.S. to escape, “Judaism, Calvinism and the Lutherans”? Came to escape all three, huh? Please regale us with that tale, it should be fun to hear.