Featured Episode - The Exodus: An Egyptian Story?
Featured Episode - The Exodus: An Egyptian Story?
Issue 25
In This Episode
In this episode, host, Petros Koutoupis, sits down and interviews historical researcher and author, Dr. Peter Feinman. They discuss Feinman’s latest published research, The Exodus: An Egyptian Story. Can we find evidence of a Semitic exodus in the Egyptian record? Who was the Pharaoh of the Exodus? When did it happen? Why did it happen? Tune in for the answers and more.
You can listen to this episode on:
Glossary
Ahmose - Pharaoh and founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, the first dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt. He is best known for reclaiming the Northern delta region from the Hyksos.
Amarna Period - An era of Egyptian history which took place during the later half of the Eighteenth Dynasty and when the royal residence of the pharaoh and his queen was shifted to Akhetaten in what is now Amarna.
Amorites - An ancient Northwest Semitic-speaking people from the Levant who also occupied large parts of southern Mesopotamia.
Anatolia - The region that is Turkey today.
Apophis - Also known as Apepi, was a Hyksos ruler of Lower Egypt during the Fifteenth Dynasty at the end of the Second Intermediate Period.
Avaris - The capital of Lower Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period and under the rule of the Hyksos.
BCE - Before the Common Era, the equivalent of B.C.
Bronze Age - Defines a historic period dated to approximately between 3300 BCE and 1200 BC. It is characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization.
Canaan - The region that is the Levant and what is Israel and Syria today.
Gilgamesh - An ancient Sumerian king and Mesopotamian hero. Many tales and an entire epic were written about him as early as the 3rd millennium BCE.
Hittite - An ancient civilization and empire that controlled most of the Anatolian mainland.
Hyksos - The Hyksos was an ethnic identity for foreign rulers (likely of Semitic origin) who migrated into the Egyptian Delta region and ruled Lower Egypt for the century that defined the Second Intermediate Period (c. 1650 - 1550 BCE) and just before the New Kingdom Period.
Kadesh - Sometimes spelled “Qadesh”, the ancient city is located in modern-day Syria and right next to the Orontes River.
Late Bronze Age - A historical period defining the end of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean that began at c. 1500 BCE and ended c. 1200 BCE.
Levant - The general geographical region of the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia, more centralized around modern-day Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
Minoan - An ancient civilization that inhabited (and dominated) the Aegean during the Bronze Age and just before the Mycenaean Greeks. Early archaeological evidence identifies the civilization as early as 3500 BCE.
New Kingdom Period - The period in ancient Egyptian history between the 16th century and the 11th century BCE, covering the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth dynasties of Egypt.
Second Intermediate Period - A period when ancient Egypt fell into disarray for a second time. It is placed between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the start of the New Kingdom.
Seqenenre - Father of Ahmose, he ruled over the last of the local kingdoms of the Theban region of Egypt in the Seventeenth Dynasty during the Second Intermediate Period.
Shardana - Also referred to as the Sherden, they were one of the several ethnic groups the Sea Peoples.
Thebes - An ancient Egyptian city located along the Nile in central Egypt. It was known to the ancient Egyptians as Waset.
Seti I - The second pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt. He ruled c.1294 or 1290 BCE to 1279 BC. He was the father of Ramesses II.
Ramesses II - Also known as Ramesses the Great, he was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt. He is often regarded as the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh of the New Kingdom.
Recommended Books
The Exodus: An Egyptian Story
By Dr. Peter Feinman
Did the Exodus occur? This question has been asked in biblical scholarship since its origin as a modern science. The desire to resolve the question scientifically was a key component in the funding of archaeological excavations in the nineteenth century. Egyptian archaeologists routinely equated sites with their presumed biblical counterpart. Initially, it was taken for granted that the Exodus had occurred. It was simply a matter of finding the archaeological data to prove it. So far, those results have been for naught.
The Exodus: An Egyptian Story takes a very real-world approach to understanding the Exodus. It is not a story of cosmic spectaculars that miraculously or coincidentally occurred when a people prepared to leave Egypt. There are no special effects in the telling of this story. Instead, the story is told with real people in the real world doing what real people do.
Peter Feinman does not rely on the biblical text and is not trying to prove that the Bible is true. He places the Exodus within Egyptian history based on the Egyptian archaeological record. It is a story of the rejection of the Egyptian cultural construct and defiance of Ramses II. Egyptologists, not biblical scholars, are the guides to telling the Exodus story. What would you expect Ramses II to say after he had been humiliated? If there is an Egyptian smoking gun for the Exodus, how would you recognize it? To answer these questions requires us to take the Exodus seriously as a major event at the royal level in Egyptian history.
Recommended Articles
What Do Egyptologists Think of the Exodus? (January 30, 2022)
Passover and Pharaoh Smites the Enemy (February 19, 2022)
Egyptologists, Biblical Scholars, and The Exodus (March 10, 2022)
Minimalists Declare Victory: Not So Fast (August 2, 2022)
“Exodus, Conquest, and the Alchemy of Memory” by Ron Hendel (October 21, 2022)