Hebrew exodus from Egypt
Possible sources and parallels[edit]
Ipuwer Papyrus
The Hyksos
The Hyksos ruled over the Nile Delta in the 2nd millennium BCE until expelled by the Egyptians.[44] The Hyksos and the Israelites were both Canaanites and connected to the land of Canaan, and it is possible that a collective memory of these events may have formed the basis for the Israelite exodus tradition.
Manetho and other Greek-period texts
The Greek author Hecataeus of Abdera (c.320 BCE) wrote a history of Egypt in which he told how the Egyptians blamed a plague on foreigners and expelled them from the country, whereupon Moses, their leader, took them to Canaan. The most famous Greek-era mention of an exodus-like event is by the Egyptian historian Manetho (3rd century BCE), known from two quotations by the 1st century CE Jewish historian Josephus. In the first, Manetho describes the Hyksos, their lowly origins in Asia, their dominion over and expulsion from Egypt, and their subsequent foundation of the city of Jerusalem and its temple. Josephus (not Manetho) identifies the Hyksos with the Jews. In the second story Manetho tells how 80,000 lepers and other "impure people", led by a priest named Osarseph, join forces with the former Hyksos, now living in Jerusalem, to take over Egypt. They wreak havoc until eventually the pharaoh and his son chase them out to the borders of Syria, where Osarseph gives the lepers a law-code and changes his name to Moses, although the identification of Osarseph with Moses in the second account may be a later addition.
Ipuwer
The "Ipuwer Papyrus" is thought to have been written in the Thirteenth dynasty of Egypt (18th century BCE), and certainly no earlier than the 12th Dynasty.Written in the form of a dialogue, the sage Ipuwer accuses both the creator-god Ra and the king of having neglected their roles, as a result of which the social order is overturned and disasters fill the land. Ipuwer has been put forward in popular literature as an Egyptian confirmation of the exodus account, most notably because of its statement that "the river is blood" and its frequent references to servants running away, but these arguments ignore the many points on which Ipuwer contradicts Exodus, such as the fact that Ipuwer's Asiatics are arriving in Egypt rather than leaving, and the likelihood that the "river is blood" phrase refers to the red sediment colouring the Nile during disastrous floods. Scholars have identified this and similar works (Ipuwer being the most ambitious) as examples of a common Egyptian literary genre, with little or no basis in historical events.
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