The Oxford History of the Biblical World (21 page)

We have few corroborating sources for the Amarna letters. It is therefore difficult to assess the validity of the vassals’ complaints. Had Egypt really abandoned its empire? Originally, scholars assumed that the correspondence reflected a disintegrating Egyptian empire neglected by a religious fanatic. Today it is believed that the documents reflect only business as usual in the quarrelsome Asiatic provinces, with the vassals attempting to exploit each other and to extort Egyptian support. Leaving the vassals to their own divisive devices is seen as a laissez-faire technique of implementing a divide-and-conquer policy. Egypt was not so paralyzed by religious turmoil that it ignored its interests in Asia. In fact, territorial loss in Asia during the Amarna period resulted less from internal dissension than from an unfortunate combination of revived Hittite potency and increasingly virulent disruptive elements such as the Apiru and the Shasu.

The resurrection of the Hittite state under Suppiluliumas I in the mid-fourteenth century
BCE
heralded the dawn of a new international balance of power. As “great king” of the Hatti, Suppiluliumas I first annihilated Egypt’s ally Mitanni and absorbed the city-states of Syria formerly under Mitannian suzerainty. He then expanded southward, making his new frontier in southern Syria and appropriating Egypt’s northern vassals. This Hittite expansion triggered a superpower rivalry that dominated politics in Syria-Palestine for much of the next century.

Egypt’s Dynasty 19 ushered in both a new century and a new spirit. The Dynasty 19 kings started the thirteenth century
BCE
by returning to the ideals and practices of the great pre-Amarna pharaohs of Dynasty 18. Rameses I, the founder of Dynasty 19 (1295–1186), came from an eastern delta military family and ruled only briefly. He was succeeded by his son, Seti I (ca. 1294–1279), who set out to recapture the glory days of the empire. Invoking the optimism of the new age, Seti termed his first year of rule “the renaissance,” and marched forth to consolidate Egypt’s power over the Asiatic provinces. Control had grown so lax that Seti had to begin his campaign in Sinai battling Shasu bedouin who menaced traffic along the Ways of Horus, which connected Egypt and Gaza. In his vigorous reign, Seti I skirmished with the Apiru, defeated a local Canaanite alliance at Beth-shan, brought the northern coastal cities to heel, and even briefly returned Qadesh to the Egyptian fold.

Rameses II (1279–1213
BCE
) succeeded Seti I and ruled for one of the longest reigns in Egyptian history. He created a new eastern delta capital at Pi-Ramesse,
“Domain of Rameses,” identified with Qantir, a site adjacent to the Hyksos capital of Avaris/Tell ed-Dab’a. After consolidating his position at home, the young king marched into Syria, penetrating as far as the Dog River (Nahr el-Kalb) near Beirut and subduing the kingdom of Amurru. The return of Amurru to Egyptian control infuriated the Hittites, who recognized Egyptian aggression for what it was: an attempt to reclaim lost Syrian territories and resurrect Thutmose Ill’s empire. Major conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable.

In his fifth year, Rameses II again marched into Syria. This time, however, an enormous Hittite army lay in wait just east of the city of Qadesh. Cleverly, the Hittites permitted the capture of two of their spies, who led the Egyptians into a trap sprung by an estimated seventeen thousand Hittite soldiers. Only the pharaoh’s personal bravery prevented total annihilation of the Egyptians. Both Hittite and Egyptian accounts of the battle are preserved, and both sides declared victory. In reality, the battle was a draw that led to political and military stalemate. Rameses II continued to campaign throughout Asia in succeeding years, but never regained Qadesh. Eventually a changing world forced the two parties to the peace table. The growing power of Assyria pressured the Hittites from the south, and Libyans and their allies menaced Egypt from the west. In the twenty-first year of Rameses II’s reign, a full peace treaty was signed and hostilities between Hatti and Egypt ended. Copies of the treaty have been found in both Anatolia and Egypt. Essentially it enshrined the status quo: the Hittites retained Qadesh and northern Syria; Egypt kept southern Syria and Palestine. Thirteen years after its signing, the treaty was commemorated by the marriage of Rameses II to a Hittite princess.

Merneptah (ca. 1213–1203
BCE
), Rameses II’s thirteenth son, became king as a mature man of over fifty. During his reign, Egyptian territorial integrity in the western delta was threatened by a large Libyan army aided by an ominous assortment of Sea Peoples. Merneptah’s defeat of this Libyan coalition is immortalized on the “Israel Stela.” Unfortunately, Merneptah soon died, leaving the crown in dispute and Egypt teetering on the brink of anarchy. The murky remainder of Dynasty 19 left little obvious mark on western Asia beyond an occasional inscribed object. The last nominal ruler of the dynasty was a queen, Tewosret; the power behind her throne, as already noted, was apparently the foreigner Bay, a man of Syrian origin.

Eventually Setnakht restored order and inaugurated Dynasty 20 (ca. 1186–1069
BCE
). He ruled only briefly, leaving a temporarily renewed kingdom to his son Rameses III (ca. 1184–1153), the last great New Kingdom pharaoh. Rameses III successfully faced an immediate threat in the western delta from another Libyan coalition. A far greater menace, however, loomed just over the horizon. The Sea Peoples—who were neither a people nor, strictly speaking, entirely from the sea—were moving inexorably toward Egypt, spreading havoc throughout the eastern Mediterranean basin.

The enigmatic Sea Peoples seem to have been a shifting coalition of diverse population elements, probably originating in Anatolia and the Aegean. Egyptian records give us the names of their component groups—a total of fourteen are known—and occasional depictions. They first appear in the Amarna letters, and again in Rameses II’s accounts of the battle of Qadesh and Merneptah’s commemorations of his victory over the Libyans. They seem initially to have allied themselves with various Near
Eastern powers, alliances that probably kept them under temporary control. By the time of Rameses III, however, a new confederation of Sea Peoples was on the move independently. In the closing years of the thirteenth century
BCE
and the opening years of the twelfth, these Sea Peoples, their families in tow, left a trail of carnage throughout the eastern Mediterranean. What precipitated this mass movement of population is unknown, but its consequences are clear.

By the time the Sea Peoples menaced the borders of Egypt, they had sacked the Hittite capital and territories and plundered Cyprus and Syria. Vivid testimony of the passage of the Sea Peoples and the destruction in their wake comes from Ugarit, where a kiln full of clay tablets was abandoned during the fall of the city. These tablets report famine in the Hittite empire and Cyprus, and the urgent transfer to the north of Ugarit’s army and navy. The city-state was left defenseless to face the Sea Peoples’ fury; one tablet even records the sack of the city.

Rameses III was compelled to mount a massive defense of Egypt. He deflected the Sea Peoples in major land and sea battles in his eighth year. Although these Sea Peoples, identified as the Peleset (Philistines), Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen, and Weshesh, did not breach Egypt’s borders, it was a pyrrhic victory. Egypt entered a period of decline that would last for centuries. Initially, it sought to retain its hold on Palestine, and sporadic Egyptian control continued briefly until the middle of the twelfth century
BCE
. After this, however, Egyptian authority collapsed completely.

Archaeological data are our primary source for the history and culture of Syria-Palestine in the Late Bronze Age. Supplemented by some textual material, they inform us that population and settlement density declined in the area, a number of important cities were abandoned or shrank in size, and marginal areas were deserted. Southern Transjordan, Galilee, and the central hill country became sparsely populated; the few major cities in these areas, such as Shechem and Jerusalem, lay much farther apart than did lowland cities. The population that did exist was highly heterogeneous, and along with the settled occupants of the city-states it included such disruptive stateless elements as the Apiru and Shasu. Substantial destructions and the partial abandonment of major sites dominate the archaeological record of the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries
BCE
. The remainder of the fifteenth century gives evidence of severe population disruptions, likely triggered by mass deportations carried out by Thutmose III and his successors. Then, in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries
BCE
, archaeology in Syria-Palestine reveals a heightened Mediterranean trade; evidently superpower confrontations were not permitted to disrupt international commerce. From the Amarna period in the fourteenth century to the end of the thirteenth, archaeological evidence of Egyptian presence in Palestine grows much stronger. Fortified Egyptian citadels have been found in northern Sinai and Palestine; so-called Egyptian residencies are known in a number of cities; and Egyptian or Egyptian-inspired temples appear in several sites, notably Bethshan.

The Late Bronze Age ended with the death or exhaustion of all the major participants in its power struggles. International trade and cosmopolitanism declined sharply, as did the standard of living throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Many of the fortified cities, the centers of urban Canaanite culture, were destroyed. Out of the wreckage of the Late Bronze Age empires arose a changed world marked by a
new political pattern. In the early Iron Age, new settlements were smaller, and located in areas only sparsely populated during the Late Bronze Age. A series of small nation-states grounded in ethnic affiliations developed; in southern Canaan, these included Philistia, Israel, Ammon, Moab, and Edom.

Given the omnipresence of the powerful Egyptian empire in Late Bronze Age Palestine, even during the Amarna period, it is difficult to understand Egypt’s minimal role in the biblical account of the Exodus. After the Israelites leave Egypt, the Egyptians disappear from the narrative. If the Exodus occurred in the sixteenth or fifteenth centuries
BCE
, events prior to the establishment of the Israelite monarchy would have played out in the middle of Egyptian imperial might. Yet not a trace of Egyptian hegemony appears in the Bible. If, on the other hand, the Exodus occurred in the thirteenth century
BCE
, just prior to the dissolution of Egyptian power, the absence of Egypt from the Exodus account is understandable.

A study of the Exodus narrative raises many questions about the historicity and historical setting of the Exodus events, but provides few definitive answers. The biblical text has its own inner logic and consistency, largely divorced from the concerns of secular history. Over time, various hands shaped and edited the biblical narrative, combining and blending different sources and literary categories according to theological truths rather than historical imperatives. Historiographic methods alone can never do full justice to the spiritually informed biblical material; conversely, the Bible, never intended to function primarily as a historical document, cannot meet modern canons of historical accuracy and reliability. There is, in fact, remarkably little of proven or provable historical worth or reliability in the biblical Exodus narrative, and no reliable independent witnesses attest to the historicity or date of the Exodus events.

To some, the lack of a secure historical grounding for the biblical Exodus narrative merely reflects its nonhistorical nature. According to this view, there was no historical Exodus and the story is to be interpreted as a legend or myth of origins. To others, still in the majority among scholars, the ultimate historicity of the Exodus narrative is indisputable. The details of the story may have become clouded or obscured through the transmission process, but a historical core is mandated by that major tenet of faith that permeates the Bible: God acts in history.

It is most likely that the Israelite settlement of Palestine occurred in the period beginning about 1200
BCE
. Archaeologically, socially, politically, economically, and militarily, the twelfth century makes the most sense as the context of the conquest/settlement and of the judges, even if the historical and archaeological records do not match the biblical exactly. Granting the essential historicity of the Exodus and the wilderness wanderings, and assuming that the conquest/settlement followed directly, then the Exodus itself must have occurred in the thirteenth century
BCE
, a date that accords with our knowledge of contemporary sociopolitical and settlement patterns in the broader region.

Another alternative may be suggested tentatively, since it involves dislocation of the biblical text. If one posits initially separate Exodus and conquest/settlement traditions, then no longer must the Exodus events occur immediately prior to the
conquest/settlement. By this scenario, the descent, sojourn, and Exodus in the biblical narrative could reflect Hyksos occupation and rule over Egypt, the Exodus would date to the sixteenth century
BCE
, and the Exodus account would have a clear historical core. A fifteenth-century date is also possible, although one must discard adherence to the biblical narrative as the major criterion for evaluation, since separating the Exodus and conquest does violence to the narrative’s theological design. If one assumes more generally that the Exodus reflects an encapsulation and telescoping of Egyptian imperial power, then the events could be dated at any time in the Late Bronze Age.

Some future historical or archaeological discovery may provide concrete, indisputable evidence for the historicity of the biblical Exodus. Until then, however, the details of the biblical Exodus narrative and even its ultimate historicity will continue to be debated. Admittedly, we cannot prove that the Exodus took place; but we also cannot prove that it did not. As with so much else in the Bible, belief or disbelief in the historicity of the Exodus narrative becomes a matter of faith.