Chapter 9, Moses and The Pharoah, Page 1

When the rule of Hyksos was brought to an end by the Egyptian king, Ahmoses, He was kind enough to leave an inscription that deals with His battle for Avaris. He drove them into Canaan, where some of them settled in Jerusalem and some in Jericho. With the removal of the foreign kings, Ahmoses ruled both upper and Lower Egypt. He was, however, worried that the same thing could happen to Egypt again. That may have had something to do with enslaving the Israelites, along with other Asiatics. The Bible echoes that same thing in Exodus 1:8-11, when it speaks of the Israelites becoming such a large number as to scare the King into taking drastic measures. It also claims that the reason was so that they could not join the enemies of Egypt if there was a war. That war may have been on the horizon. The Historian Manetho wrote that the Hyksos were planning another attempt to take control of Egypt. Legend has it that the Israelites were involved in the conspiracy and the Dead Sea Scrolls tell of Amram making a trip to Canaan through permission of the King of Egypt. He apparently deceived the King into thinking He was picking up supplies.

According to Bible chronology, figured from I Kings 6:1, Moses was born during the reign of Ahmose. That is based on the agreed date of the reign of Siamun, the Egyptian contemporary of Solomon. Archeologists know that the first year of Siamun was 978 bce. Solomon was given Siamun’s daughter to marry, which could not have been earlier that 978 be. Kings 2:39 makes reference to three years, which according to 1 Kings 3:1, was before Solomon’s marriage. The marriage must have taken place in the first year of Siamun’s reign, or 978 bce. Solomon’s first year would be around 982 bce. The temple would have been started, also in 978 bce with the Exodus 480 years earlier, or 1458 bce.  Moses was 80 years of age when He left Egypt, placing his birth in 1538 be. His name may have come from Ahmose the Egyptian, who would have been the only king after He captured the double crown. The Bible does not mention a new King on the throne until Moses was ready to return to Egypt from Median. It is doubtful that Ahmose would have wanted to kill him over killing an Egyptian since He was a crown prince by adoption. Moses would have grown up in the palace as a son of Ahmose which makes it doubtful that even Amenhotep I, the predecessor of Ahmose, would have issued a warrant against Moses. The dates make the culprit more likely Thutmose II who ruled from 1506 to 1493 bce. Moses would have been 40 in 1498 bce. Since the dates of Egyptian Kings are not agreed on by archeologists, any reign could vary by several years.

Ahmose also noted that the strongholds were called by his name. Although Avaris was a very ancient city by the reign of Ahmose, He did rebuild it and added
on to it, to accommodate the Asiatics that were moved into the city, although it must have been a very large city during the rule of the Hyksos. Flavius Josephus on quoting Manetho wrote that there were 240,000 military men there. If Ahmose settled tens of thousands more Asiatics in Avaris, it would have been a very large city 200 years prior to the reign of Ramesses II. It would have required a lot of rebuilding, and possibly new structures if the commander Kamose son of Abana is correct:

“When the town of Avaris was besieged,
I fought bravely on foot in his majesty’s presence.
Thereupon I was appointed to the ship khaemmennefer (“Rising in Memphis”).
Then there was fighting on the water in “P’a-djedku” of Avaris.
Then Avaris was despoiled, and I brought spoil from there:
one man,three women; total, four persons.”

The Exodus does not depend on the King Ramesses II for the Bible to be correct about the building of a city of Ramesses. Ahmose also took the same god
name as Ramesses; Re and Amon. Since He was King around the time Moses would have been born, he was most likely one who placed the Isrealites in forced labor. He also rebuilt much of the city, destroyed in the battle, and added onto it. It would have been referred to by Per-Ra-Ahmose, or the city of Ra-Ahmose. It would not have been necessary for Ramesses the Great to have built a city to have his name attached to it, especially since He was, as archaeologists have, dubbed him, “the great chiseler”. In many cases, the actual name of a King, or the name most used, was not the one that history gives us. The names Re-Ahmose, and Ramesses (Re-Ahmesses)are interchangeable, and could have very well been spelled the same by Egyptians. According to archeologists, some of the projects of Ahmose included brick Temples in the south country, additions to the existing temple of Amun at  Karnak and to the temple of Montu at Armant, White limestone temples to Ptah and the southern harem of Amun, but did not finish either project. He built a cenotaph for his grandmother,  Queen Tetisheri, at Abydos, constructed a palace on the site of the former Hyksos capital city’s fortifications, rebuilt the pyramids of his predecessors at Thebes that had been destroyed by a major storm, a  pyramid in  Abydos, another  large pyramid dedicated to his grandmother, a large pyramid dedicated to his grandmother and a terraced temple built against the high cliffs, featuring massive stone and brick terraces. The palace at Avarus would naturally have been given His name, and could have been understood by later scribes as Pi-Ramesses rather than Pi-Re-Ahmose.

Flavious Joseph wrote:

“And having, in length of time, forgotten the benefits they had received from Joseph, particularly the crown being now come into another family, they became very abusive to the Israelites, and contrived many ways of afflicting them; for they enjoined them to cut a great number of channels for the river, and to build walls for their cities and ramparts, that they might restrain the river, and hinder its waters from stagnating, upon its running over its own banks: they set them also to build pyramids, and by all this wore them out; and forced them to learn all sorts of mechanical arts, and to accustom themselves to hard labor”.

Page 2