For the last 150+ years, there have been a gazillion articles published in all sorts of scholarly journals about the historicity of Moses and the Exodus account.
It’s probably the most popular subject in Biblical archaeology.
For me, I like the
hypothesis of Amenhotep II being the Biblical pharaoh. Some points in its favor:
You’re looking for a Pharaoh who was not a firstborn (because he didn’t die in the tenth plague) and was also succeeded by a not-a-firstborn (because his presumptive heir died in the plague).
Amenhotep II was born to Thutmose III by a minor wife and his elder brother Amenemhat, son of the great chief wife, was the heir presumptive. Amenhotep II was succeeded by
Thutmose IV, of the famous Restoration of the Sphinx and the Dream Stele, so we know he wasn’t the presumptive heir, either.
Another issue is not having a solid narrative about whether or not Pharaoh died with his army at the Red Sea. Exodus says that Pharaoh’s army was destroyed, but it doesn’t specify that Pharaoh was destroyed with his army. The Psalmist talks about how “water covered their adversaries; not one of them remained alive” in reference to the Exodus account, which would imply that there were no exceptions, but again, that’s poetry, and it’s hard to tell what’s poetry and what’s factual. Still, with the Amenotep II theory, that would require a Pharaoh whose reign ended abruptly if you’re looking for pharaoh to die, and it doesn’t matter if you’re looking for a pharaoh who survived. We have a general idea of most of the regnal periods of that dynasty, and we know that Amenhotep II reigned for decades. (26? 30? 35 years?) So if the pharaoh survived the Red Sea incident-- there’s no problem. But if you want to argue that you’re looking for a Pharaoh who perished, you can get into looking at some inscriptions on steles commemorating the Asiatic campaigns. Which I
can’t really analyze without going way over the word limit.
There’s lots of theories. Each one has their own sets of facts that sound persuasive. This is one I happen to like. I’m also very fond of it because it puts Akhenaten within, say, a century of the Exodus account, and we all know how well-received his notions were. Much of it is put down to the Theban priests not wanting to surrender temporal power… but a lot of it could be flavored with “not this again”!
One thing that needs to be remembered is that we’re still trying to pin events in ancient Egyptian history to solid dates that match the way we calculate time. Over the last 100, 150 years, there’s been significant shifts in the way Egyptologists calculate dates. I have a book by Budge that pins Amenhotep II to 1566 BC— try comparing that guess to any of the current timeline theories. (
Hint)
