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Fidelis
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How many different pharaoh Ramese are featured in Exodus? Is the Rameses that ordred the death of the first born Hebrew males in Exodus 1 one and the same with the one that Moses dealt with later? Thanks.
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Nita
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I don’t think Scripture gives the names of any of the pharoahs while Moses was in Egypt. When the name “Rameses” is used in the Penteteuch, it’s referring to the town of Rameses.
Here’s some info from my Harper’s Bible Dictionary (Dates refer to length of reign, not length of life. It appears Rameses II had a very long reign!):
Seti I (Sethos) (about 1309 - 1290 BC), identified by many reliable scholars as “the Pharaoh of the Oppression”
**Ramesses II **(about 1290-1224 BC) rated by excellent scholars as “the Pharaoh of the Exodus.” …
Merenptah (about 1224-1216 BC) defeated Israelites in Palestine and included this victory (c. 1220) in his list of triumphs on a stele in his mortuary temple at Thebes.
And a little more commentary quoted from the same source:
Biblical scholarship has long interested itself in the problem of identifying the “Pharaoh of the Oppression” and the “Pharaoh of the Exodus”… The evidence in favor of locating the city of Raamses…at Tanis (Avaris) leads many to name Seti (Sethos) I… as the Pharaoh of the Oppression, who forced Hebrew labor for his Tanis construction enterprise. If Seti I is the Pharaoh of the Oppression, his son, Ramesses II is the Pharaoh of the Exodus; … Those who name Merenptah (c. 1224-1216 BC) as Pharaoh of the Oppression have insufficient evidence for their claim. An Egyptian monument of Merenptah boasts of his defeat of Israelites living in Palestine in the 5th year of his reign. This indicates Hebrews as already in their new home by c. 1220 BC.
Hope this helps a little.
Nita
Here’s some info from my Harper’s Bible Dictionary (Dates refer to length of reign, not length of life. It appears Rameses II had a very long reign!):
Seti I (Sethos) (about 1309 - 1290 BC), identified by many reliable scholars as “the Pharaoh of the Oppression”
**Ramesses II **(about 1290-1224 BC) rated by excellent scholars as “the Pharaoh of the Exodus.” …
Merenptah (about 1224-1216 BC) defeated Israelites in Palestine and included this victory (c. 1220) in his list of triumphs on a stele in his mortuary temple at Thebes.
And a little more commentary quoted from the same source:
Biblical scholarship has long interested itself in the problem of identifying the “Pharaoh of the Oppression” and the “Pharaoh of the Exodus”… The evidence in favor of locating the city of Raamses…at Tanis (Avaris) leads many to name Seti (Sethos) I… as the Pharaoh of the Oppression, who forced Hebrew labor for his Tanis construction enterprise. If Seti I is the Pharaoh of the Oppression, his son, Ramesses II is the Pharaoh of the Exodus; … Those who name Merenptah (c. 1224-1216 BC) as Pharaoh of the Oppression have insufficient evidence for their claim. An Egyptian monument of Merenptah boasts of his defeat of Israelites living in Palestine in the 5th year of his reign. This indicates Hebrews as already in their new home by c. 1220 BC.
Hope this helps a little.
Nita
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Fidelis
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It does. Thanks Nita.
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peary
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**Presuming you mean the pharaoh of the Exodus - the real name of this pharaoh was probably Amenhotep II since this is the pharaoh who was ruling at the time of the Exodus in c. 1441 BC. The name was not mentioned because this was a literary custom of those earlier times when Moses wrote, whereas we see later pharaohs such as Nechoh being mentioned by name.
Another possibility which is currently a view held by a number of scholars in the field is that the Egyptian chronology needs revision by several hundred years at least and so this would put it under an earlier pharaoh.**
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Fidelis
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Thanks for both replies.
I’ve had a chance to read up on this quite a bit since my OP. It seems that there are a number of possible candidates for the unnamed pharoahs in the Genesis/Exodus accounts and who one decides on depends very much on what date one holds as the date of the Exodus.
The traditional early dating, extrapolated from various biblical texts, is around 1555 BC, while the later dating is sometime in the 13th century. People who hold the traditional earlier date tend to be fiercely defensive of it, but I don’t have a problem with the earlier date myself, since it also makes a lot of historical sense for several reasons. The exatitude of dating as the Bible provides it has never been a big issue for me as it is clear that it is sometimes based on good theology rather than modern concepts of historicity.
I’ve had a chance to read up on this quite a bit since my OP. It seems that there are a number of possible candidates for the unnamed pharoahs in the Genesis/Exodus accounts and who one decides on depends very much on what date one holds as the date of the Exodus.
The traditional early dating, extrapolated from various biblical texts, is around 1555 BC, while the later dating is sometime in the 13th century. People who hold the traditional earlier date tend to be fiercely defensive of it, but I don’t have a problem with the earlier date myself, since it also makes a lot of historical sense for several reasons. The exatitude of dating as the Bible provides it has never been a big issue for me as it is clear that it is sometimes based on good theology rather than modern concepts of historicity.
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patrick457
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First off, whilst Cecil B. DeMille popularized Eusebius’ notion that Seti I and Rameses II (1303-1213 BC) were the Pharaohs of the Exodus, the Bible does not name them both, simply calling them ‘Pharaoh’ or the ‘King of Egypt’.
It is clear in the Biblical text that the Pharaoh who ordered the murder of the Hebrew children and the Pharaoh who was afflicted by the plagues were two different people, as it is said in Exodus 2:23-25:
Here are the candidates for the Pharaoh of the Exodus:
-Amenemhat IV (1815 BC-1806 BC)
-Tutimaios, aka Dudimose (ca. 1690 BC)
-A Hyksos king (ca. 1648 BC-1540 BC)
-Ahmose I (1550 BC-1525 BC)
-Thutmose III (1479 BC-1425 BC)
-Amenhotep II (1427 BC-1401 BC)
-Amenhotep IV, aka Akhenaton (1352 BC-1336 BC)
-Horemheb (ca. 1319 BC-1292 BC)
-Rameses I (ca. 1292 BC-1290 BC)
-Rameses II (1279 BC-1213 BC)
-Merneptah (1213 BC-1203 BC)
-Amenmesse (1203 BC-1199 BC)
-Setnakhte (1190 BC-1186 BC)
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peary
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Hey, what happened to King Tut??
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patrick457
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Those who identify Amenhotep III as the Pharaoh of the Exodus like to associate Tutankhamun with the firstborn son of the Pharaoh, because he was originally said to be Amenhotep III’s son. However, at present many other theories of Tutankhamun’s parentage have begun to appear, the most common one is that he was Amenhotep IV (Akhnaton)'s son; others associate his parentage with Smenkhkare.Hey, what happened to King Tut??
They also like to point out the ‘mysterious circumstances’ of Tutankhamun’s death as evidence. When his corpse was X-rayed in 1968, a dense spot at the lower back of his skull was interpreted as a subdural hematoma, leading to the popular theory that Tutankhamun was murdered by a blow on the back of the head.
However in 2005, when the mummy was CT-scanned, there were no evidence of any foul play; there was a hole in the head, but it appeared to have been drilled, presumably by embalmers. A fracture to Tutankhamun’s left thighbone was interpreted as evidence that the pharaoh badly broke his leg shortly before he died and his leg became severely infected; however, members of the Egyptian-led research team recognized, as a less likely possibility, that the fracture was caused by the embalmers.
Thus there is now a new cause of death for King Tut: He may have fractured his left leg, probably while riding a chariot. This fracture then became gangrenous and led directly to his death a few days later.
Also, while it was previously thought that Tutankhamun was buried in a hurry and his body prepared carelessly, it was revealed during this study that great care had been given to the body of Tutankhamun during the embalming process. They found five distinct embalming materials, which were applied to the body at various stages of the mummification process.
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peary
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**I only wanted to point out to the poster that Tut was left out of his list. Sheesh.
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patrick457
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I was the poster of the list. Then again, a lot of Pharaohs are left out of the list (Seti I isn’t even in there); the ones in there are perhaps the most likely candidates.**I only wanted to point out to the poster that Tut was left out of his list. Sheesh.
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Fidelis
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I agree. In fact, Seti I has my vote as the pharaoh who killed the first-born and/or sought to kill Moses for slaying the Egyptian.
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LilyM
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But the Bible mentions a second city upon which the Israelites worked, called Pithom. Is anything known about this second one?
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patrick457
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Pithom also called Per-Atum or Heroöpolis or Heroonopolis is an ancient city of Egypt known from both biblical and Ancient Greek and Roman sources. Pithom is one of the cities which, according to Exodus 1:11, was built for the Pharaoh of the oppression by the forced labor of the Israelites. The other city was Ramses; and the Septuagint adds a third, “On, which is Heliopolis.”
The meaning of the term, rendered in the Authorized Version “treasure cities” and in the Revised Version “store cities,” is not definitely known. The Septuagint renders it as “strong [or “fortified”] cities.” The same term is used of certain cities of King Solomon in I Kings 9:19.
The Greco-Roman Heroöpolis was a large city east of the Nile Delta, situated near the mouth of the Royal Canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea. Although not immediately upon the coast, but nearly due north of the Bitter Lakes, Heroöpolis was of sufficient importance, as a trading station, to confer its name upon the arm of the Red Sea which runs up the Egyptian mainland as far as Arsinoë (the modern-day Gulf of Suez). It was the capital of the Heroopolite nome (the 8th nome of Lower Egypt) later renamed the Arsinoite nome.
Édouard Naville (1844-1926), excavating at Tell el-Maskhutah (1883), found inscriptions suggesting the site was known by two names, Pi-Tum, “the house of Tum” referring to a temple erected for Tum/Atum, a god of Egypt, and Tukw/Tukwt, the region’s name, which he argued has been transliterated into the Hebrew form, Succoth. He also found what he regarded to be large mud-brickstorehouses which he attributed to the Israelites, and he argued that the site was known by two interchangeable names, religiously as Pithom, and civically as Succoth.
J. S. Holladay Jr. has concluded from the excavations conducted at Tell el Maskhutah in the 1980’s that this site was occupied from ca. 1750-1625 BC (Middle Bronze II-III) by Asiatics, then abandoned apparently until circa 610 BC, when Necho II established a fortress there to protect the canal he was creating from the Nile to the Red Sea.
Tell el Maskhutah was originally thought to have been a creation of Ramesses II because statues bearing his cartouche had been excavated there by Naville (1880’s). But the excavations of the 1980’s turned up no pottery debris of the Ramesside era, the 20th or 19th Dynasties. The only pottery debris was MB II-III, and Saite (Necho II, and later eras, Persian and Ptolemaic). The excavators came to realize that the Ramesside statues had been brought to the site most likely by Necho II, who probably used his canal to transport them. The storehouses Naville had earlier unearthed and attributed to the Israelites, upon closer inspection, were determined not to Ramesside, but of the Ptolemaic era, the 3rd-2nd centuries BC.
This identification was challenged by Sir Allen Gardiner (1794–1851), who identified Pithom with Tell er-Rebata, an identification which was later accepted by William F. Albright (1891-1971). More recently the Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen (1932-) endorsed the identification of Pithom with Tell er-Rebata. Ancient Near Eastern scholar John Van Seters (1935-) points out that the archeological excavations mentioned above show Tell er-Rebata to have been unoccupied during the same period when we find monuments relating to a town called Pithom.
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patrick457
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On an unrelated note, did anyone notice that the Pharaoh’s firstborn son is always depicted as a young boy in cinematic adaptations (as in DeMille’s 1923 and 1956 versions of the Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt, for example)?
The Bible also does not specify anything about his age so it may be possible that this firstborn son may have been already grown up when he got killed by the tenth Plague…
The Bible also does not specify anything about his age so it may be possible that this firstborn son may have been already grown up when he got killed by the tenth Plague…
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