peacefully, but came to a sudden and disastrous end. The “Harris
papyrus,” found at Medinet-Abou in Upper Egypt in 1856, a state
document written by Rameses III., the second king of the Twentieth
Dynasty, gives at length an account of a great exodus from Egypt,
followed by wide-spread confusion and anarchy. This, there is great reason
to believe, was the Hebrew exodus, with which the Nineteenth Dynasty of
the Pharaohs came to an end. This period of anarchy was brought to a
close by Setnekht, the founder of the Twentieth Dynasty.
“In the spring of 1896, Professor Flinders Petrie discovered, among the
ruins of the temple of Menephtah at Thebes, a large granite stela, on which
is engraved a hymn of victory commemorating the defeat of Libyan
invaders who had overrun the Delta. At the end other victories of
Menephtah are glanced at, and it is said that ‘the Israelites (I-s-y-r-a-e-l-u)
are minished (?) so that they have no seed.’ Menephtah was son and
successor of Rameses II., the builder of Pithom, and Egyptian scholars
have long seen in him the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The Exodus is also
placed in his reign by the Egyptian legend of the event preserved by the
historian Manetho. In the inscription the name of the Israelites has no
determinative of ‘country’ or ‘district’ attached to it, as is the case with all
the other names (Canaan, Ashkelon, Gezer, Khar or Southern Palestine,
etc.) mentioned along with it, and it would therefore appear that at the
time the hymn was composed, the Israelites had already been lost to the
sight of the Egyptians in the desert. At all events they must have had as
yet no fixed home or district of their own. We may therefore see in the
reference to them the Pharaoh’s version of the Exodus, the disasters which
befell the Egyptians being naturally passed over in silence, and only the
destruction of the ‘men children’ of the Israelites being recorded. The
statement of the Egyptian poet is a remarkable parallel to Exodus
1:10-22.”
(6.) The Pharaoh of 1 Kings 11:18-22.
(7.) So, king of Egypt (2 Kings 17:4).
(8.) The Pharaoh of 1 Chronicles 4:18.
(9.) Pharaoh, whose daughter Solomon married (1 Kings 3:1; 7:8).
(10.) Pharaoh, in whom Hezekiah put his trust in his war against
Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:21).