Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

THE EXODUS 407The date of the Exodus, like most Eg57ptian dates, hithertoa matter of considerable contention, is now generally agreedas falling between 1300 and 1200 B.C. Petrie ^ fixes on"1220 B.C. or possibly rather later," Hanbury Brown placesthe Flight ten years earlier, i.e. 1230, for reasons based mainlyon the stele of King Menephtah.2So if the contention that the Israelites could not well knowof the Rod because of its invention after their flight holdswater, any representation of Rod fishing must obviously besubsequent to the year 1230 or 1220 B.C. Only two suchrepresentations exist : (A) (in Wilkinson's Plate 370) comesfrom the tomb (No. 93) of Kenamum at Thebes, and datesfrom about the second half of the XVIIIth Dynasty, or some200 years before the Exodus, while (B) (in Wilkinson's Plate 371,and in Newberry's Beni Hasan, vol. I. Plate XXIX.) goes backto the early Xllth Dynasty or some 750 years before theExodus. 3The Exodus, whatever date be assigned, probably occurredin the time of and was occasioned by a dynasty non-Semitic,and unfavourable to Israel. The corvee enforced doubtlessby the kourbash was exacted from the ahens, whose task(Exodus i, 11) included the building of two brick fortresses toblock the eastern road into Egypt.1 op. cit., p. 53.- The inscription mentions the existing conditions of foreign affairs withneighbouring 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 escapeagainst his will. The author of the inscription, who wrote from a point ofview which was not that of the Biblical account, seems not unsupported byExodus 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 referenceto Israel appears ": Israel is desolated : her seed is not. Palestine hasbecome a (defenceless) widow of Egypt " (Breasted), or " The Israelites areswept off: his seed is no more " (Naville). Petrie's translation, " The peopleof Israel is spoiled : it has no corn (or seed)," does not for various reasonsseem 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 firstPharaoh of the Oppression, and of Exodus ii. 15 (c. 1300), and Menephtahthe son of Rameses II. with the Pharaoh of the Plagues and the Flight fromEgypt (c. 1234).