Pharaoh: Biblical History,Egypt, and the Missing Millennium by Alexander Hool (Mosaica Press, 2020)
Reviewed by Rabbi Reuven Chaim
Klein
Even before the advent of modern
Egyptology, scholars have long sought to positively identify the Pharaoh of
Egypt who lived in the time of the Exodus. With this book, Alexander Hool
chimes in and joins the fray, proposing a radically new view of Egyptian
chronology and who the Pharaoh of the Exodus was.
Throughout the Bible, the various
sovereigns of Egypt are always portrayed as important political players.
Nonetheless, their personal names are not always recorded. In fact, the
Pharaohs with whom Abraham, Joseph, Jacob, and Moses interacted are simply
named “Pharaoh” without any more specific hints as to their identity. The Bible
only provides us with the names of four later Egyptian kings: The Egyptian
king whose reign paralleled King Solomon (I Kings 11:40) and his son Rehoboam (I
Kings 14:25, II Chronicles 12:5–9) in the Holy Land was named Shishak, although
the Bible never uses the term Pharaoh when referring to him.
Archeologists typically identify Shishak with Pharaoh Shoshenq I. The
second Egyptian king named in the Bible was Pharaoh Necho (“lame” or “handicap”
Pharoah). According to the Midrash, he was called such because he became partially
paralyzed when he captured King Solomon’s Throne and dared to sit on it. He
lived during the reign of King Josiah in Judah (II Kings 23:29-35). The third Pharaoh is named So (II Kings 17:4) and he lived during the fall of the Kingdom of Israel. Finally,
the fourth king that the Bible mentions by name is Pharaoh Chafra, who lived in
the generation after Josiah (Jer. 44:30).
As mentioned above, the Bible
does not provide us with a given name for the Pharaoh who ruled in Egypt during
the Exodus. That said, a quasi-Midrashic source known as Sefer HaYashar
does give the names for two Pharaoh who lived in that time-period. According to
Sefer HaYashar, the Pharaoh who ruled after Joseph’s death was Pharaoh
Melol and he was reported to have reigned for ninety-four years. Sefer
HaYashar relates that Melol’s successor was his son Pharaoh Adikam, or
Adikam Achuz. It seems from Sefer HaYashar that the Jews’ Exodus from
Egypt happened under Adikam’s rule.
Alexander Hool notes that if one
follows the lists of Egyptian kings that Egyptologists have collected, the only
Pharaoh, who was said to have ruled for exactly 94 years is Pepi II (the
penultimate king of the Sixth Dynasty). It thus seems that Pepi II would match
up with Sefer HaYashar's Pharaoh Melol. Moreover, Hool notes that Pepi
II's successor Neferkare the Younger reigned for exactly 1 year, which—if Pepi is
identical to Melol—would be coterminous with the Exodus. This reviewer has
personal reservations about relying too heavily on Sefer HaYashar, but
given the facts as Hool presents them, his arguments are somewhat compelling.
Working from this data point, Hool
then surmises that Pharaoh Djedkare (the second-to-last king of the Fifth
Dynasty, who preceded Pepi II by about 100 years) reigned in the time of Joseph
and was the Pharaoh whom Jacob met. Hool then points out that this name resembles
the name “Dyen” found in Sefer Yuchasin, by Rabbi Avraham Zacuto (1452–1515), as
the name of the Pharaoh in the time of the Exodus.
Hool also tries to show how,
chronologically-speaking, the Exodus happened in the time of Pharaoh Thutmose
II of the Eighteenth Dynasty. To bolster this supposition, Hool cites the Greco-Egyptian
historian Manetho who wrote that God smote the Egyptians during the reign of
Tutimaos, which sounds like an allusion to the Exodus story and Hool takes as a
reference to Thutmose. Hool argues that Thutmose ruled Middle Egypt (i.e.
Memphis) at the same time that Neferkare the Younger ruled Northern Egypt and
the Thirteenth Dynasty ruled Southern Egypt.
Conventional Egyptologists date
the Thirteenth Dynasty and the Eighteenth Dynasty to long after Egypt’s Fifth
Dynasty. But, Hool draws on the works of James D. Long and David Rohl to
reconstruct a different chronology of Egypt’s past wherein the Thirteenth Dynasty,
the Eighteenth Dynasty, and the Fifth Dynasty all ruled concurrently with one
another. The bulk of Rabbi Hool’s work is devoted to presenting his
reconstruction of Egyptian Ancient History and adducing various facts that
neatly synchronize with his theory. In doing so, Hool uses the so-called
“Sothic dating” methodology and uses different astronomical observations to
confirm the dates he gives. He also refers to some of the conclusions of his
earlier work The Challenge of Jewish History (Mosaica Press, 2014)
regarding the alignment of Persian History with Egyptian History to support his
reconstructive history. This reviewer readily admits that he is unqualified to
pass judgement on the crux of Hool’s thesis, nor can he intelligently assess
Hool’s proofs.
Many historians and archeologists
believe that the Pharaoh who ruled during the Exodus was Ramsses II (of the
Nineteenth Dynasty). Scholars point to the appearance of the place-name Ramsses
(Genesis 47:11) — as the name of the land in which Jacob’s family settled — and
Raamses (Exodus 1:11) — as one of the storage-cities that the enslaved Jews
built — as evidence to the assumption that Ramsses was the Egyptian monarch at
the time of the Exodus.
Alexander Hool rejects their
findings and dates Ramsses II’s rule to the post-Exodus period, when the Jews
had already entered the Holy Land. He explains that Ramsses II lived in the
time of the Judges, and may have been named after the city which the enslaved Jews
were forced to build. This stands in stark contrast to the aforementioned
scholars who argued that, vice versa, the city was named after the king.
In light of Hool’s conclusion that Ramesses II lived after the Exodus, we can
explain all the similarities between the Kadesh Bas-Reliefs and the Mishkan
as stemming from Egyptian attempts to imitate Israelite cultic practices, as
opposed to vice versa. This is because if Ramsses lived in the time of Judges,
then the construction of the Mishkan obviously predated him.
One difficulty this reviewer had
with Hool's reconstructed chronology concerns the Fourth Dynasty. One of the
kings of that dynasty was Khafre/Chephren—which is almost certainly a reference
to the above-mentioned Pharaoh Chafra who lived after Josiah’s death. Now,
according to Hool’s version of Egyptian chronology, the rule of the Fourth
Dynasty happened before the Exodus, yet Pharaoh Chafra lived close to a
millennium later near the end of the First Temple period.
Despite wading into uncharted
territories, Hool always maintains an authoritative voice — even as he proffers
ideas that border on conspiracy theory. For example, Hool contends that Abraham
invented the paleo-Hebrew script (known as Ktav Ivri) and that Nimrod
was a member of the Sixteenth Dynasty (whom Manetho called the “Shepherd
Kings”) who built Zoan/Avaris. Hool points out that the next time in Egyptian
history that Zoan/Avaris achieves prominence is during the Twenty-Fifth
Dynasty—the “Nubian” dynasty whom Hool assumes descended from Nimrod. Hool even
builds on this story to explain the rivalry between Nimrod and Esau found in
Midrashic sources.
When all is said and done, Rabbi
Alexander Hool’s interesting book offers us a different perspective on Egyptian
Ancient History, and seeks to resolve difficulties that have long baffled
scholars. Hool’s reconstruction reduces Egyptian History by almost 1,000 years
and claims that kingdoms that were said to have reigned long after one another
actually ruled at that same time! Whether or not what Rabbi Hool proposes is
factually or historically correct, his charming book is chockful of information
on the history of Egypt and is certainly an entertaining read.
For some of my earlier reflections on this topic, see "Sefer HaYashar and the Pharaoh of the Exodus" and "The Pharaoh and the King."
