If you picture the pharaoh of the Exodus, chances are you see Yul Brynner as Rameses in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), or the Rameses of DreamWorks’ The Prince of Egypt (1998). Hollywood made Ramesses II the default answer.
So who was the pharaoh of the Exodus? The honest answer is that the Bible never names him and no Egyptian text mentions Moses. Most popular accounts, and many scholars who accept some historical core, point to Ramesses II in the thirteenth century BC. A smaller group prefers an “early date” in the fifteenth century under Thutmose III or Amenhotep II. In Echoes of History I reject both. Moses was raised in the court of Amenemhat III of the Twelfth Dynasty, and the Exodus happened around 1807 BC, under his son Amenemhat IV.
In this article
- Why do most people say Ramesses II?
- Why I don't think it was Ramesses II
- The other candidates: Ahmose and Amenhotep II
- Amenemhat III: the case for a Middle Kingdom pharaoh of the Exodus
- Hawara or Pi-Ramesse? The Book and the Historian
Why do most people say Ramesses II?
The case for Ramesses rests on one verse. Exodus 1:11 says the enslaved Israelites built store cities for Pharaoh, Pithom and Raamses. A city called Ramesses suggests a king called Ramesses, and Pi-Ramesse, the great Delta capital of Ramesses II, has been located by archaeologists at Qantir in the eastern Delta, close to Tell el-Dab’a, the old Hyksos capital of Avaris. Ramesses I ruled for only two years, so the obvious choice is Ramesses II, who reigned from 1279 to 1213 BC.
The rival “early date” comes from 1 Kings 6:1, which places the Exodus 480 years before Solomon began building the Temple. Counted backwards, that gives roughly 1446 BC, inside the reigns of Thutmose III and Amenhotep II of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Why I don’t think it was Ramesses II
Start with the shape of the story. In both the Bible and the Qur’an, Moses grows up under a powerful pharaoh who oppresses the Israelites and who rules long enough for Moses to reach manhood. Moses leaves Egypt, and when he returns he faces that pharaoh’s son, a young ruler about his own age, whose death leaves Egypt weak and soon under foreign rule. Ramesses II reigned for almost seventy years, died old, and left a mummy we can still see. He does not fit either role.
Then there is the Merneptah Stele. Carved around 1207 BC for Ramesses II’s son Merneptah and found by Flinders Petrie at Thebes in 1896, it lists peoples defeated in Canaan and includes the line “Israel is laid waste and his seed is not.” If that reading is right, Israel was already a people in Canaan a few years after Ramesses died.
The Bible’s own chronology then breaks. After the Exodus come forty years of wandering, about thirty years of Joshua’s wars, and the period of the Judges, which by my count lasted at least 400 years, followed by Saul, David and Solomon. That is around 570 years in all. Put the Exodus at 1213 BC and end Solomon’s reign at 931 BC, and the Judges get about fifty years, forty of them belonging to Deborah alone. Jewish history cannot be squeezed that small.
Finally, Moses’ age. Tradition makes him eighty when he returned to confront Pharaoh. I think that makes no sense. He killed an Egyptian as a young man, around twenty-five, and lived in Midian for about twelve years, which makes him about forty when he came back to lead his people.
The other candidates: Ahmose and Amenhotep II
The filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici proposed Ahmose, the king who expelled the Hyksos. I find the theory weak. He argues that Ahmose means “brother of Moses”, but why would the pharaoh who adopted Moses name another son that? He also claims Avaris has been buried to block Israeli claims, and mentions seals bearing the name Jacob. Even if those seals exist, they could have been used by Egyptians and Israelites alike, given Joseph’s prominence.
The documentary Patterns of Evidence by Tim Mahoney, featuring David Rohl, argues that the conventional chronology is wrong, but in my reading it offers little evidence for its alternative, which points to Amenhotep II. If that were so and Moses was eighty at the Exodus, he would have been raised by Hatshepsut, which does not match the historical record. Rohl’s interest in Kahun as a Semitic settlement, and his placing of Joseph under Amenemhat III, is an intriguing idea worth considering. But every one of these theories keeps the Exodus within a 200-year window and none of them puts it before the New Kingdom. They overlook the succession of kings.
Amenemhat III: the case for a Middle Kingdom pharaoh of the Exodus
The pattern the scriptures require, a strong builder king followed by a weak, short-lived son, exists in Egyptian history. It is the end of the Twelfth Dynasty.
Senusret III was the most formidable ruler of the Middle Kingdom, and I believe he was the harsh king who first enslaved the Israelites, who had lived among Egyptians with some respect for nearly 800 years. They were gathered at Kahun, the planned town beside the pyramid of Senusret II at el-Lahun, near the capital. His son Amenemhat III ruled for about forty-five stable years, from 1860 to 1815 BC by my dating, mined turquoise and copper in Sinai, and built pyramids at Dahshur and Hawara, along with the great palace Herodotus called the Labyrinth: twelve courts and 3,000 chambers, half of them underground. I believe water channels ran beneath it, which is what Pharaoh boasts of in the Qur’an: “these rivers that flow beneath me” (43:51). The “river of blood” may refer to the Bahr Yusuf, the Joseph Canal of the Faiyum, rather than the Nile.
Amenemhat III had daughters and no son until late in life. When Pharaoh’s wife found the infant Moses she asked that he be spared as “a comfort to my eye and yours” (Qur’an 28:9). While Moses was away in Midian, Amenemhat III died and his son Amenemhat IV took the throne. He ruled for only about nine years, half during Moses’ absence and half during the confrontation and the Exodus. His tomb has never been found, and I suggest that is because he was lost at sea. With no male heir, his sister Sobekneferu ruled for a few years, and after that the Canaanites and later the Hyksos took control of the north.
Kahun adds physical evidence. Rosalie David, who studied the finds, noted the large number of tools and everyday objects left behind and read it as a sudden, unplanned departure. Under the floors of many houses were wooden boxes holding the bones of babies only a few months old, sometimes two or three to a box. I read that as the killing of the Israelite newborns.
The Ipuwer Papyrus, whose surviving copy is usually dated to the Nineteenth Dynasty but whose text is widely thought to be older, perhaps from the Middle Kingdom, describes an Egypt in chaos: “the river is blood, yet men drink of it”, and “barbarians from abroad have come to Egypt”. To me it reads like the aftermath of the Exodus at the end of the Twelfth Dynasty.
As I put it in the book, “relocating the Exodus to a period 500 years earlier is the only historical timeframe that accommodates both the narratives of Joseph and Moses.”
Hawara or Pi-Ramesse? The Book and the Historian
The Historian: Your dates for Amenemhat III are the standard ones, so we agree on that much. But the Twelfth Dynasty did not end in collapse. The Thirteenth Dynasty followed and held Egypt for well over a century. The Hyksos Fifteenth Dynasty only takes over around 1650 BC, a century and a half after your Exodus.
The Book: Egypt weakened after Amenemhat IV, just as the scriptures say. The Canaanites, and the Israelites who stayed behind, came to dominate the north. The Hyksos rose out of that, and the Thirteenth Dynasty that ruled in the meantime was already a weakened house.
The Historian: On that point the excavations back you. Manfred Bietak’s work at Tell el-Dab’a found a large West Asian population at Avaris growing from the late Middle Kingdom. That much is solid.
The Book: Then the setting fits. A people of foreign origin in the Delta, a great builder king, a short reign, a dynasty ending in a woman’s rule.
The Historian: But the Bible says Raamses. You’re throwing out the one Egyptian name the Exodus story gives us.
The Book: The Bible was written down roughly a thousand years after Moses. The Hebrews, hoping to be remembered as the master builders of Egypt, portrayed Ramses as Moses’ pharaoh and shaped their scriptures to fit. History says otherwise.
The Historian: Kahun, then. It was the pyramid town for Senusret II’s cult, built for workers and priests. Its papyri are Egyptian administration. And infant burials under house floors turn up at many sites in an age of terrible infant mortality.
The Book: I agree with the excavators on what Kahun was. I add who lived there: it was built for slaves, and above all the Israelite slaves. Rosalie David herself read the tools and goods left in the houses as a sign of a sudden, unplanned departure.
The Historian: Ipuwer never mentions Moses, Israel or a departure. Most specialists read it as a literary lament about disorder, a type of composition Egypt produced more than once.
The Book: It mentions blood in the river and foreigners in the land, written in the period I am pointing to. And it fits a requirement you have not answered: a powerful king who raised Moses, followed by a weak son who lost Egypt. No ruler in the Eighteenth or Nineteenth Dynasty matches that sequence. Amenemhat III and Amenemhat IV do.
FAQ
Was Ramesses II the pharaoh of the Exodus?
He is the most popular candidate because Exodus 1:11 mentions a store city called Raamses. In Echoes of History I argue against him: he reigned nearly seventy years, died old, and the Merneptah Stele shows Israel already in Canaan around 1207 BC, leaving too little time for the Bible’s later history.
What does the Merneptah Stele say about Israel?
The Merneptah Stele, carved around 1207 BC and found by Flinders Petrie in 1896, records the victories of Ramesses II’s son Merneptah. One line reads “Israel is laid waste and his seed is not.” It is widely accepted as the earliest mention of Israel outside the Bible and places Israel in Canaan by then.
Who was Amenemhat III?
Amenemhat III was a king of Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty who ruled about 1860 to 1815 BC. He built pyramids at Dahshur and Hawara and the temple complex Herodotus called the Labyrinth. In Echoes of History he is the pharaoh who raised Moses, and his son Amenemhat IV is the pharaoh of the Exodus.
When did the Exodus happen?
Mainstream estimates usually fall in the thirteenth century BC (Ramesses II) or around 1446 BC from 1 Kings 6:1, and many archaeologists doubt a large Exodus at all. Echoes of History dates it to around 1807 BC, during the reign of Amenemhat IV, near the end of the Middle Kingdom.
Sources
- Exodus 1 to 14; 1 Kings 6:1; Qur’an 28:9 and 43:51
- Merneptah Stele, Egyptian Museum, Cairo (discovered by W. M. Flinders Petrie, 1896)
- Rosalie David, The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt (1986), on Kahun
- Manfred Bietak, Avaris: The Capital of the Hyksos (British Museum Press, 1996)
- Herodotus, Histories, Book 2, on the Labyrinth
Keep Reading
- Did the Exodus Really Happen? Moses, Egypt and the Evidence
- Joseph in Egypt: Which Pharaoh Ruled When Joseph Arrived?
- How Old Is Ancient Egypt? Rethinking the History of Egypt
- The Origins of Judaism: Moses, the Torah and the Hebrew Faith
My full reconstruction, from Senusret III’s slave town at Kahun to the reign of Sobekneferu, is in the chapter on the Pharaoh of the Exodus in Echoes of History. Read it alongside the Ramesses case and see which fits the scriptures better.
Go deeper: explore our full guide in this topic hub, read a free sample, or get the complete argument in Echoes of History.