Recent comments in /f/history

kromem t1_iwby3dm wrote

Reply to comment by claudecardinal in Slaves were brutally branded in ancient Egypt, research shows by Rear-gunner

No, the case for Israelites in Egypt is very weak.

You have the early Exodus theory around the Hyskos, who were a Semetic people in Egypt and expelled ~1530 BCE, but they are centuries before the earliest emergence of the Israelites as a distinct group (~12th century BCE).

Then you have the late Exodus theory around the Ramesside period (12th to 11th century BCE), and while Merneptah mentions Israel, it's not mentioned in terms of captives and there's no evidence of an Exodus or even large population from the Israelite sites.

But there's hope yet for clarity on this story, as there have been some interesting discoveries in the Early Iron Age archeology in the Southern Levant, specifically with the cohabitation of the Philistines and Israelites in Gath, the imported Anatolian bees in the apiary in Tel Rehov, and the Aegean style pottery made with local clay in Tel Dan.

This is interesting because while the Biblical account of the Exodus was ethnocentric, the Greek and Egyptian accounts described a multitude of different people including pre-Greeks.

It may be that the story of the Exodus related to the Aegean and Anatolian sea peoples, particularly their battles against Egypt alongside Lybia against Merneptah (the main subject of the Israel Stele) and thereafter, later appropriated by the Israelites after their forced relocation into Israelite areas by Ramses III.

For more, see this comment thread in /r/AcademicBiblical.

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