In Part 2 of our video series highlighting segments of the “The David Rohl Lectures,” we examine some of the finds made at the ancient city of Avaris. Despite the claims made by many that there is no evidence of the early Israelites in Egypt, David Rohl covers specific evidence matching the Bible’s account of the arrival of Jacob’s family in the Nile Delta during the Middle Bronze Age. Many of David’s ideas were seen in the film Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus.
The site of Avaris lies underneath (and therefore is several centuries older than) the city of Rameses built by the famous pharaoh of Egypt’s 19th Dynasty. Because the name “Rameses” is mentioned in the Bible, many scholars have restricted their search for the biblical Exodus to his time (conventionally dated to the 1200s BC). The problem for the Exodus account is that there is no evidence for large numbers of Semitic people (the cultural group that the Israelites were part of) in the city built by Pharaoh Ramesses II. However, Avaris was a city teeming with Semites.
The problems for the Exodus story at the time of Rameses II are not limited to the Arrival step of the biblical sequence. Of the six major steps of Arrival, Multiplication, Slavery, Judgment, Exodus, and Conquest, the time of Ramesses II has strong physical evidence matching the Bible for none of them. On the other hand, the earlier Middle Bronze Age (during Egypt’s Middle Kingdom) has powerful evidence matching all six of the steps. This makes this evidence for Arrival at Avaris even more intriguing.
In this video series we look deeper into David’s proposals which he presents in The David Rohl Lectures. Read the full series of articles here.
