The Exodus and the Ark of the Covenant – a brief re-evaluation of some Immanuel Velikovsky’s arguments in Ages in Chaos, by me
Abstract: Immanuel Velikovsky’s claims have many times been (correctly) refuted, but some of his observations in Ages in chaos deserve another look. Comparing the Exodus story with the El-Arish stone and the Tempest Stela suggests that the Exodus story is indeed based on the expulsion of the Hyksos, yet it reflects also other events in other times. The article proposes two eruptions of Thera: one in the time of Pharaoh Sewadjenre Nebiryraw and the second in the time of Ahmose I. Both eruptions caused a tsunami, the latter being stronger. From the identification of the Exodus with the Hyksos we also derive the probable content of the Ark of the Covenant and can deduce what happened to it. Lastly, the reception of Velikovsky’s theories may suggest some bias in the mass media and, combined with the reception of Einstein’s theories, also in the main science.
In Ages in chaos Velikovsky proposed that the chronology of Egypt is 500 years off: Hatshepsut lived at the time of Solomon around 950 BC and the biblical Pharaoh Shishak, who sacked Jerusalem, was not Shoshenq I but Thutmose III. This Velikovsky’s new chronology has been proven incorrect: the chronology of Egypt in the time of the New Kingdom does have some uncertainty, but not hundreds of years. Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Ramesses II and Ahmose I have been radiocarbon dated. The chronology of the New Kingdom is also dated by El Amarna letters that include letters to Amenhotep III and Akhneaton from the kings of Assyria and Babylon, which can be dated from the chronology of these countries. Additionally there is the traditional dating of Egyptian chronology by king lists and astronomical observations, i.e., moon eclipses and the position of Sirius. We can be quite certain that Hatshepsut, Thutmose III and Ramesses II lived very close to the times they are said to have lived. It is also equally clear that the biblical history cannot be shifted so much as to fit to this Egyptian chronology: if Solomon lived at the time of Hatshepsut, then there is a several hundred year break in the biblical history between Solomon and the first archeologically attested king of Israel, Omri.
Yet, some of Velikovsky’s observations do seem correct: the El-Arish stone does remind of the Biblical plagues of Egypt (notably the place Pi-ha-Hiroth in Exodus does resemble the place Pi-Kharoti in Goyon’s translation), and the trip of Hatshepsut to the Land of Put may have inspired the story of the trip of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. There is no possible way to synchronize the chronology of Egypt with the chronology in the Bible, assuming that Velikovsky is correct in these observations. We must conclude that the writers of the Bible have taken some of the stories from the history of other peoples. There are so many similarities between Amenhotep III the Magnificent and Solomon it does seem that Solomon is modeled after Amenhotep III, and the story of the Queen of Sheba may well be the trip by Hatshepsut. The most interesting of Velikovsky’s observations are his comments of the El-Arish stone. The Tempest papyrus from the time of Ahmose I also has similarities with the Exodus story.
Let us first look at the El-Arish stone. The writing on the stone is from Ptolemic period, about 300 BC, but it tells of the time when Apepi, a Hyksos king, invaded Egypt and finally Apepi was defeated. This places the content to the time frame 1650-1550 BC. (There were two kings with the name Apepi according to king lists, but actually Apepi seems to have been a title and all Hyksos kings could be called Apepi.) The text is badly damaged but written in one piece of stone, therefore the order of the events is known. Translations by F. L. Griffith (1890) and Georges Goyon (1936) are available at the post [2] that also discusses the topic. The text describes deeds of three primordial gods of Egypt: Atum-Ra, Shu and Geb (written as Seb). Atum-Ra, called alternatively Atum, Tum or Ra in the text, is the sun god and the first god. The name Atum-Ra appears (only) in the Heliopolis system, so it is clear that this is the system used in the text. In the Heliopolis creation myth the first god Atum-Ra spitted out two gods; his son Shu (air) and his sister-wife Tefnut (moisture, rain). Shu and Tefnet had two children: Geb (earth) and his sister-wife Nut (sky, i.e, the half-ball where the stars are fixed). Shu (air) went standing between Nut and Geb when they were making love, so we got the atmosphere. Nut gave birth to Osiris (Orion), Isis (Sirius), Seth (Ursa Major) and Nephthys (the stars below the horizon). Together these nine high gods make the Ennead of the Heliopolis system.
The text starts with a Pharaoh of Thebes building a shrine to the Ennead gods to North-Eastern part of Egypt. The place is in the Delta, on the way along which the Hyksos came to Egypt. The Pharaoh is called Shu (sky). His father, the previous Pharaoh, is dead and Shu is crowned as the Pharaoh. Pharaoh Shu’s father is called Ra-Harmakhis, so he is identified with Atum-Ra. The risen Ra-Harmakhis can be seen as the sun in the Eastern horizon. The text does not tell how the father Pharaoh died. We cannot conclude, like Velikovsky does, that the father Pharaoh was Seqenenre Tao, a Pharaoh of Thebes who died in a battle with the Hyksos. Because of this we cannot identify Pharaoh Shu with Kamose, the son of Sequenenre Tao. It seems to me that these two Pharaohs on the El-Arish text lived a bit earlier.
Apepi, the Hyksos king, invades the country on the way leading to the shrine. The Ennead gods are the protection of Egypt against the Hyksos. The shrine has an artificial lake, which Griffith translates as the Place of the Whirlpool and Goyon as the mound of two knives (Yat-Desoui=”la butte des deux couteaux”). The Ennead gods are in this lake.
Pharaoh Shu obtained all the country, meaning that a Thebes Pharaoh wore also the red crown of Lower Egypt, but with the bad guys (avec le concours des méchants). This seems to imply cooperation with the Hyksos. Griffith translates that Shu got confused. Evil fell to the land, a rebellion and disorder in the household of Shu. Probably there was a Hyksos takeover as a result of cooperation with the Hyksos. Pharaoh Shu departed to heaven with his companions, probably meaning that they all were killed.
Then the Ennead gods acted: Geb started desiring Tefnut.
In the Ei-Arish text Geb (earth) rapes Tefnut (moisture) as Griffith translates, or kidnaps her and takes her up violently as Goyon writes. The place were Geb rapes Tefnut is Pi-Kharoti on the Delta. Rape of Tefnut by Geb is known also from the Demotic Magical Papyrus. My understanding of this episode is that lava (earth, Geb) pours into the sea and creates water vapor (moisture, Tefnut). Velikovsky may be correct that Pi-Kharoti is the Biblical site Pi-ha-Hiroth in Exodus where Pharaoh’s chariots were taken by the sea. This would imply that the eruption of Thera caused a tsunami that reached Delta.
At the same time Shu (air) departs to heaven and in Egypt there is darkness for nine days. I understand this as a volcano eruption: the tephra cloud rising to heaven is Shu. The volcano is Thera in Crete and the time is between 1621-1605 BC. At this time the Hyksos already were in Delta, the Biblical land of Goshen. The cooperation of the Thebes Pharaoh Shu with the Hyksos was shortly before the eruption and the death of Shu.
A new Pharaoh appeared. He is called the son of Shu, but god Geb was the son of god Shu and the new Pharaoh need not (but may) be the son of the earlier Pharaoh. The new Pharaoh of Upper Egypt also puts on the crown of Lower Egypt, like Pharaoh Shu. However, the cobra uraeus of Lower Egypt spitted venom on him, his companions died and he was burned. He was cured by placing the wig into a stone coffin. Geb also means the earth and the one burned can be the land and not the Pharaoh Geb. The meaning may be that the plagues did not stop. The volcano in Crete was still erupting and causing at least darkness and abnormal weather in Egypt. After some time the eruptions stopped: the magma cap (or wig, or a red hat, like the red crown of Lower Egypt) of the volcano was placed into a stone coffin.
After several years the cap, wig, was taken out for washing, which may mean another eruption: again lava flew to the sea. I suggest that the Pharaoh Geb is not the same Pharaoh Geb as before, several years have passed. This time the eruption was under water and caused a major tsunami. The tsunami was understood as god Ra, Ra Harmachis, jumping to water and turning into a crocodile. Ra defeated the Hyksos. Horse chariots were the Hyksos weapon. It is unlikely Egyptian Pharaohs had many chariots before Thutmose III. Egyptians probably had more foot soldiers, but Hyksos were on top as long as they had the chariots. When a tsunami took most of these chariots to the sea, Hyksos superiority was gone and Egyptians defeated them. The Pharaoh asked the Hyksos to send messengers and gave them his decision: Hyksos children were to be massacred and the old nomes of Lower Egypt were re-established. Apepis children may also mean his people, not necessarily children, and if it is children, Hyksos may have sacrificed them. The text is unclear, but if may be the origin of the Biblical story of Pharaoh’s order to kill Israelite newborn or of the Passover night when Egyptian newborn were killed.
If this interpretation is correct, the Hyksos were living in Lower Egypt still for some 40 years after the first eruption of Thera before they were expulsed by Seqenenre Tao, Kamose and Ahmose I. Sequnenre Tao’s reign is dated to 1560-1555 BC. The first Pharaoh of this dynasty, 17th, was Rahotep, dated to 1580-1576 BC. We have to go back to the 16th dynasty. It was also based on Theban. The longest reigning Pharaoh was Sewadjenre Nebiryraw (1627-1601 BC). He would be Ra Harmachis. The throne name of his son Nebiriau II was”good god Neferkare, deceased”. Griffith’s translation starts as “The majesty of Shu was as a good.” The name good god Neferkare was found from a bronze statue of the Harpocrates cult in Ptolemian times. Harpocrates derives from Eqyptian Har-pa-khered, Horus the Child and Har-pa-khered may reming Harmachis/Harakhté. Harpocrates was also a solar deity, like Ra. El-Arish stone is also from Ptolemic times and may belong to the same tradition. For identifying the third Pharaoh in the El-Arish text we must look at another text, the Tempest Stela.
The Tempest Stela is erected by Ahmose I. This is certain from the other name of Ahmose I, Nebpehtra, that appears in the beginning of this stela. A further confirmation that the stela is from Ahmose I is from the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus: also this papyrus mentions heavy rain and it includes short texts describing military operations of Ahmose I in the siege of the Hyksos capital Avaris. The dating of the 25 year reign of Ahmose I is disputed. Radiocarbon dating places it around 1550 BC. The Tempest Stele describes heavy rain, hail, darkness, noise, flooding and pyramids falling. Many authors have argued that this exceptional weather was caused by an eruption of Thera, including the authors of [3] (the new translation of the full text of the stela is included in [3]). The stela tells that Ahmose I gave gifts of gold, silver, copper, oil and clothes. This agrees with Manetho’s information that Hyksos were bribed to leave Egypt, and with the Exodus story where Israelites took loot from Egypt. Three eruptions of Thera would already be highly improbable and the El-Arish stela only tells of two. Therefore the second eruption, causing a tsunami, was during the reign of Ahmose I.
Velikovsky also found similarities between the Ipuwer papyrus and the plagues of Egypt in the Bible. These similarities are only superficial, see the full translation of the papyrus in [4]. The papyrus does say: “Ïndeed, the river is blood, yet men drink of it.” The reason why the river is blood is given earlier: Egyptians bury dead in the river. This is not the same as Moses turning the Nile into blood and water undrinkable. The papyrus also says: “Indeed, [. . .] because of noise; noise is not [. . .] in years of noise, and there is no end [of] noise” and “Then would the land be quiet from noise and tumult be no more.” Nothing indicates that this noise comes from the ground (i.e., from earthquakes), as Velikovsky claims. The text of the papyrus fits the gentre of lamentations and is dated to the Middle Kingdom, though the only existing copy is from the New Kingdom. It does not tell of any darkness, rain, tempest, hails, or anything that could be a result of an eruption of Thera and there is no mention of Apepi or the Hyksos (Amu), only of Asiatics, but Asiatics were always a threat to Egypt. The lamentations do not fit the plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus and does not change the scenario proposed above. However, Velikovsky may be right in claiming that the papyrus can derive from the Second Intermediate Period, soon after the Middle Kingdom. The style need not have changed much. If so, the papyrus does not describe an imaginary situation but a real change of the society during the Second Intermediate Period: the reign of the Pharaohs of Thebes shrank and much of the country was ruled by the Hyksos. This fits to the lamentations that those who were poor servants are now rich rulers. The papyrus may date to the time before the eruption of Thera.
To credit Velikovsky, he identifies the Hyksos with the Biblical Amalekites. This may be correct. Hyksos were called Amu in Egyptian texts and several Hyksos kings had Amorite names. One Amorite kingdom in Syria-Lebanon had the name Amurru, their land was also called Amurru, and also their high god. Alamekites in Genesis 14:7 are living together with Amorites in the city of Kadesh in Southern Judah. There was another city with the name Kadesh in Lebanon-Syria, also in Amorite area. The origin of Hyksos is today placed to Northern Levant, but latest 1650 BC they moved to Southern Levant and to Egypt.
Why they moved may be explained by an example of the city Alalakh. Amorites built this city in Southern Turkey (Northern Levant) in the Bronze Age, c. 2000 BC. The Hittite king Hattusili I destroyed Alalakh in 1650 BC after which the people of Alalakh probably had to find another residence. Hyksos came to Egypt around 1650 BC. Hyksos were expelled from Egypt c. 1550 BC. At this time again apper written records in Alalakh: king Idrimi joined Canaanite Hapiru people and took control of the city, at that time a part of the Mitanni empire. In the mid 14th century BC the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I conquered the city and it become a part of the Hittite empire. When Ramesses II fought Hittites in the Battle of Kadesh 1274 BC, Hittites were called Amu (Amorites) in Egyptian records. The Battle of Kadesh took place in the city of Kadesh on the Orontes river in the Lebanon-Syria border, but the Biblical Kadesh is situated in Southern Judah, in Sinai, east of Wadi El-Arish. (The most commonly proposed site is Tell el-Qudeirat, but the site is dated to around 1000 BC and is too young for the Exodus story.) In Genesis 14:7 Amalekites and Amorites live in Kadesh. In Numbers 20 Israelites stopped in Kadesh during the Exodus.
After being expulsed from Egypt the Hyksos escaped to a city called Sharuhen in the Negev desert and Ahmose I laid a siege on it for three years. Manetho tells that Hyksos finally went to Jerusalem, but whether they went directly from Delta to Sharuhen and from Sharuhen to Jerusalem is not certain. They may have stayed for a long time in Kadesh and wandered in the desert of Param and in Jordania for all we know. The Exodus story of a 40 years time as wandering people may fit to Hyksos.
In the history of king Idrimi, who took over Alalakh the Canaanite Hapiru people are mentioned. Hapiru were the desert people who threatened Canaanite city states in Amarna letters. Hapiru have often been associated with Israelites, though equally often this connection has been rejected. However, the Song of Deborah does make a connection between Efraim (the main Israelite tribe) and Amalekites: Judges 5:14, “Some came from Ephraim, whose roots were in Amalek; Benjamin was with the people who followed you.” In light of this, the Ephraim tribe may be a descendant of Hapiru people with Hyksos kings.
Jerusalem is in the area of Benjamin. According to Manetho Jerusalem was built by Hyksos. In the time of Amarna letters there was a city with the name Urusalim. It may be a different city, but it may well be Jerusalem. In the Bible, when David conquered Jerusalem, it was called Salem, but the name may have been Urusalim, shorthened as Salim (like Atum is shortened as Tum in the El-Arish stone). The name may even have been Amurusalim, from Amurru, an Amorite god. The people of Jerusalem were a mix of Amorites and Hittites (Ezekiel 16:1). The protective god of Jerusalem when David conquered it was “blind and lame” 2. Samuel 5:6, “The Jebusites said to David, You will not get in here; even the blind and the lame can ward you off.” The blind and lame are in plural, but the protector of a city must be a god, or gods, and the phrase cannot refer to blind and lame people. Germanic people had a half-blind and lame supreme god Odin/Wotan/Wodanaz. Hittites were not Germanic, but they were Indo-European. Their storm god Tarhunna resembles Thor. They may have originally had a blind and lame god resembling Wodanaz, but we do not know it because Hittites adopted many gods from other peoples, their high god was from Hurrians.
As a conclusion, it is quite possible that the tribes of Ephraim and Benjamin do have a direct connection to the Hyksos, but it dates long before the time of Deborah. We can proceed solve another mystery: what was the Ark of the Covenant and what happened to it. The book of Maccabees says that prophet Jeremiah hid the Ark into a cave in Mount Nebo. The book of Jeremiah does list the items that Babylonians took from the temple in 587 BC and there is no Ark in the list. However, Jeremiah did not hide the Ark, he destroyed it as is fairly clear from the text Jeremiah 3:16, “And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith the Lord, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the Lord: neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more.” Why should anybody think of making a new Ark if the old one existed and was only hidden? The old Ark did not exist any more. And why should Israelites not remember the Ark, if it was an Ark of God? It was not an Ark of God, but an Ark of two other gods, El and Asherah.
Jeremiah found the items in the Ark as idols of the shame god who demands sacrifices of animals (2. Samuel 6:17) and children (Jeremiah 9:31) and whose worship includes cakes (2. Samuel 6:19). The cakes were for the Queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 44:19). According to the Exodus story the Ark of the Covenant contained stone tablets and the staff of Aaron, that is, stone and tree, which Jeremiah condemns as idols in Jeremiah 3:10. As stone is the stone that Jacob raised as an altar and the tree is an asorah, we need not assume that the stone was a stone tablet (broken or unbroken) with the Ten Commandments, not that the tree was the staff of Aaron that sprouted. Stone and tree are exactly the items that worship of El and Asherah required and what the Hyksos would have had in a transportable shrine. The Biblical story tells that Israelites built the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant from the loot they received from Egyptians. As the Hyksos received god as a bribe according to Manetho and we can interpret the Tempest Stela as referring to the same incidence, it is quite possible that the Hyksos had gold and they built an Ark.
Remember the story when David brought the Ark back (2. Samuel 6): he sacrificed, danced naked and dealt out cakes. If the Ark contained pieces of the Ten Commandments, why did David sacrifice? It fits much better if the Ark contained a sacrificial stone, an altar. Why did David dance naked if the Ark contained the staff of Aaron? Dancing naked fits better to Asherah: her worship included dancing under an Asherah tree or pole, sex rites and baking small cakes with a definite shape (which is usually assumed to be sexual).
Amos 5:25 says: “Did you offer Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? You also carried Sikkuth your king and Chiun, your idols, the star of your gods, which you made for yourselves.” Amos does not think that Israelites worshipped God during the Exodus, but these items suggest worship of El and Asherah. The star of your god must refer to Asherah, the wife of El, as Asherah was the worldpole, worshipped as trees. A wordpole is fixed to the North Star, which at this time was Kochab. The idol of Chiun could be a pole or a staff. The king Sikkuth must consequently be El. From history we learn that Hyksos worshipped Baal and Asherah. This Baal must be Baal El, the high god El, since the wife of Baal Hadad is Astrate (Venus), not Asherah. (Some think that Baal Hadad took his father’s wife as his consort. But Hadad was not the desert wind corresponding to Seth. The desert god was El or Yahwe. Egyptians said that the god of the Hyksos was Seth.) As El, like Baal, was often shown as a bull, the golden calf that was worshipped in the Northern kingdom of Israel was a quite natural idol of El. We see that Israelites worshipped the same gods as other Canaanite people and as Hyksos, but prophets were prophets of Yahwe and did not accept the worship of El and Asherah. This is why Jeremiah destroyed the Ark.
Several prophets condemned animal sacrifices, Jeremiah being one of them. Sadducee priests did not consider the books of prophets as holy, they accepted only the Torah (the five books of Moses). They ignored the books of prophets rejecting sacrifices and continued mass scale animal sacrifices. This is one reason why the two sects that read books of the prophets, Essenes and Pharisees, did not approve the temple.
There is another source to the story of the Ark of the Covenant. Manetho tells that the Exodus story is not only about the expulsion of the Hyksos but also of the expulsion of the lepers, believers in the religion created by Akhneaten, lead by a priest of Aten, a new solar deity of Amenhotep III and Akhneaten. Akhneaten is always shown in a particular artistic style in Egyptian art. His face is distorted as if it was reflected from a concave surface, while full-body images of Akhneaten seem to be distorted as if reflected from a convex surface. We can speculate that worship of the sun god Aten included a golden sun disk that was convex on one side and concave on the other. The Pharaoh, as a reflection of the sun god, was pictured as the reflected image on the sun disk. As a convex mirror concentrates sunlight, it gives a simple explanation why the Ark could give a beam of light that burned, killed or blinded people. There are traces of sun worship in the books of prophets: occasionally instead of the stone altar what is mentioned is a sun pillar or sun statue. Also sun worship was rejected by Jeremiah and a possible golden sun disk would have been destroyed as an idol.
Neither the eruptions of Thera, nor a burning sun disk explain all of the plagues of Egypt. The Nile turning into blood and undrinkable, fish dying, water smelling, frogs and other creatures escaping the river to human settlements could maybe better be results of a much later Pharaoh’s (Necho II in 610 BC, just before king Josiah died in a battle against Necho II) effort of joining the Nile with the Red Sea by a channel: it would cause salt water flowing into the Nile and to the destruction of the sweet water ecosystem of the Nile. We can assume that the Exodus story was originally composed in the time of Josiah, but elaborated later, as Jeremiah does refer to the Exodus. Checking references to Moses in the books of earlier prophets shows that the Exodus story, as it is in the Bible, is not older than Josiah, but the story may be influenced by events that happened shortly before the death of Josiah.
The final topic that I want to discuss is the reception of Velikovsky’s theories. His theories in the Words in Collision are physically impossible, such as that the solar system staying together with electromagnetic forces and that Venus was only recently was captured by the solar system as a planet. His chronology of moving the New Kingdom 500 years later in Ages in Chaos is clearly wrong. Most researchers in the 1950’s and 1960’s rejected his claims, but the media was quite positive. Alfred de Grazia wrote a book the Velikovsky Affair in support of Velikovsky’s theories. How could Velikovsky find any supporters in the main media and even one respectable person writing a book in his support?
Velikovsky was a Zionist and, with his father, one of the founders if the Hebrew University. Ages in Chaos of Velikovsky includes claims like that the loot that Thutmose III took from Canaanite states was Jewish treasures from Solomon’s temple and he also throws an antisemitism card: he claims that antisemitism was started by Manetho confusing Amalekites with Israelites, instead of the more probable explanation of economic competition between Greeks and Jews. This kind of an antisemitism card is often played, like that Christians are antisemites because the New Testament says that Jews killed Jesus and then it is explained that Romans killed Jesus, not Jews, but the death of Jesus was never the main reason for expulsion of Jews. The main reasons were usury, ritual murders and efforts to take over the country. The Hyksos were expulsed by Egyptians for some reasons and though Hyksos may have been Amalekites, the tribe of Ephraim may have had its origin in Hyksos kings and Hapiru warriors and Manetho did not confuse the issue. These Zionistic claims are one type of propaganda, which topic leads to Alfred de Grazia who supported Velikovsky. He was not Jewish, though his first wife was, but during the Second World War he was the commander of the US army propaganda unit. Apparently he was in Dachaus when Americans found a gas chamber where Jews had been killed in masses. The story of this gas chamber given much publicity, but later the story changed: there was a functional gas chamber, but it was never used. Doubters go further: a shower room was changed to a gas chamber after the liberation of the camp as a propaganda action.
Velikovsky was a kind of self-learned a polymath. I am not against self-learned polymaths (especially as my only qualification for writing about the Exodus is above average knowledge of the Bible), though in my opinion a polymath should also do some math as it improves logical thinking: Velikovsky’s claims are not especially logical. I think his theories got too much publicity and there is some bias in the main media, and also in science, shown by considering the success of the theories of Velikovsky’s long time Einstein. Still, I think that some of Velikovsky’s observations were correct and need to be re-evaluated, but I also feel that the same is true of Einstein’s theories.
References:
[1] Immanuel Velikovsky, Ages in Chaos, 1952.
[2] Translations of the El-Arish stone by F. L. Griffith (1890) and Georges Goyon (1936).
http://www.pibburns.com/smelaris.htm#tnotes
[3] Robert K.Ritner – Nadine Moeller, THE AHMOSE TEMPEST STELA – AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ACCOUNT OF A NATURAL CATASTROPHE (2014)
[4] A translation of the Ipuwer papyrus is included in this post: https://www.worldhistory.or