wall. In addition, the placement of a later “installation” that was used during both phases of LB II—in which a tall basaltic stele

ng the Late Bronze I Age, Yadin laments that many conclusions regarding the evaluation of structures, installations, and finds are difficult to make, owing to the enormous amount of leveling and looting that took place on the tel during the Solomonic period (Yadin, The Head, 125).55. Wood, “Let the Evidence Speak,” 78.56. Amnon Ben-Tor, “News and Notes,” IEJ 51:2 (2001), 238.57. Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 160.58. Yadin, The Head, 200.59. James B. Pritchard, ANET (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 242. Hazor is mentioned in a topographical list of Amenhotep II at Karnak (Bienkowski, “Role of Hazor,” 54).60. Omar Zuhdi, “Combined Arms Egyptian Style: Thutmose III Crosses the Euphrates,” KMT 18:3 (Fall 2007), 56.61. Pritchard, ANET, 239.62. Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 158.63. Hoffmeier emphasizes that the conquest list of Thutmose III for this campaign was not a record of destroyed cities (James K. Hoffmeier, “Reconsidering Egypt’s Part in the Termination of the Middle Bronze Age in Palestine,” Levant 21 [1989], 187).64. As Hoffmeier correctly explains during his discussion of the primary battle of this campaign, which was fought at Megiddo, “While it is true that Thutmose III was concerned to have order and loyalty in Canaan, he was not going to destroy cities that could be useful to him” (Ibid., 187). For this reason, Hoffmeier concludes that Megiddo was not razed either, despite this city’s distinction of being the site from where the king of Kadesh launched his rebellion against the Egyptians at the outset of Thutmose III’s sole rule.65. Thutmose III undoubtedly would have followed the same foreign policy as that of the earlier pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty, including his grandfather, Thutmose I, who set the precedent for his progeny by venturing through Canaan and into Mesopotamia. “Because of Egyptian economic interest in the region, it would make little sense to adopt a scorched earth policy in Canaan. . . . [W]hen Thutmose I acceded the throne, he was able to march, apparently unmolested, all the way to the Euphrates river” (James K. Hoffmeier, “Aspects of Egyptian Foreign Policy in the 18th Dynasty in Western Asia and Nubia,” in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World: Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Antoine Hirsch [Leiden: Brill, 2004], 133).66. One author calls the Egyptian advancement into upper Syria a direct attack on Mitanni, “which must long have been seen as one of Thutmose’s manifest goals” (Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 159). Another writer suggests, in reference to Thutmose III’s renowned campaign into Mesopotamia, that “[t]his campaign was perhaps intended as a capstone ending a series of military operations begun twelve years earlier with the daring strike through the Aruna Pass at Megiddo” (Zuhdi, “Combined Arms,” 55).



The Gebel Barkal Stele of Thutmose III states that this
conquering pharaoh “crossed the Euphrates after the one who had attacked him, at the head of his armies seeking that feeble enemy [from] the land of Mitanni.” The subsequent victory caused Thutmose III to boast, “There is no opponent of mine in the southern lands, northerners come bowing because of my awe. It was Re who ordained it concerning me, I having bound together the Nine Bows, the islands in the midst of the sea, the Aegean and rebellious foreign lands” (Thutmose III, “The Gebel Barkal Stela of Thutmose III,” in Context of Scripture, vol. 2 [trans. James K. Hoffmeier], 15). All of this causes Hoffmeier to look back on this pharaoh’s first campaign and conclude that it already “suggests that Egypt was moving towards an imperial model of domination” (Hoffmeier, “Egyptian Foreign Policy,” in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean, 134).67. Hoffmeier, “Egypt’s Part,” 187.68. Yadin, The Head, 32. Yadin’s reference to the middle of the 15th century BC for the timeframe of the occupational gap is purely speculative, as a connection to the Late Bronze I Age is the only certainty. The matter of import in his observation is that a large occupational gap did occur between Late Bronze I and Late Bronze II, before a later re-inhabitation finally took place.69. One may be tempted to accuse Amenhotep II of merely inflating the record, claiming to have conquered a city that he never actually defeated. This argument, however, is a weak and desperate one. If one randomly asserts that Hazor was not “destroyed” by Amenhotep II, why should this pharaoh not be accused of falsifying the conquest of some or all of the other sites on his conquest list? For that matter, why should Thutmose III be trusted to have “destroyed” Hazor as he stated in his conquest list? Thus one could dismiss the claims of any or every ancient conqueror who boasted of cities that he captured during his exploits abroad. The burden of proof should remain squarely upon the shoulders of the modern student of history to produce sufficient evidence when claiming that an ancient monarch falsified his records, rather than expecting the ancients to have justified their own claims somehow for the sake of future critics of history who might cavalierly distrust them. Amenhotep II, among others, deserves far better treatment than this.70. Yadin, The Head, 45.71. Betsy M. Bryan, “Antecedents to Amenhotep III,” in Amenhotep III: Perspectives on His Reign (ed. David O’Connor and Eric H. Cline; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 46. The latest documented year of Thutmose IV’s reign is Year 8, which is attested to on the Konosso Stele (Ibid., 48, 54–55).72. Yadin, The Rediscovery, 59.73. Ibid., 63–64.74. Ibid., 65; idem, The Head, 46; Yigael Yadin, Yohanan Aharoni, Ruth Amiran, Trude Dothan, Immanuel Dunayevsky, and Jean Perrot, Hazor II: An Account of the Second Season of Excavations, 1956 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1960), 153.75. Yadin et al., Hazor II, 153. Elsewhere, Yadin calls the pottery “the very end of the IIIA: 2 type” (Yadin, The Head, 46).76. Yadin, The Head, 46.77. Arne Furumark, Mycenaean Pottery II: Chronology (Stockholm: Skrifter Utgivna av Svenska Institutet i Athen, 1972), 115. In an earlier note, Kitchen’s quote reveals that he improperly dated Furumark’s Mycenaean pottery analysis to the 1940’s. Instead, the publication-date here reveals a time 30 years closer to the present than Kitchen declared; incidentally, Furumark lived until 1982.78. Examples of Yadin’s Late-Bronze-I finds include the following: Mycenaean vessels from Tomb 8144 and Tomb 8145, which are contemporaneous with a pear-shaped jar from Tomb 8065, all of which are characteristic of the later stage of IIIA:2; three jars (from Tomb 8065) that belong to the period of later IIIA:2; five stirrup-jars (from Tomb 8065), which are divided into three groups, two of which belong to later IIIA:2, and one Rosetta Stone

No princesses are known to have been mothered by Mutnofret,

but the possibility does exist; if Mutnofret did bear a daughter, undoubtedly this princess—given the ages of the princes—would have been old enough to qualify.e. Hatshepsut’s Position as the Most Likely Candidate. All of the evidence points to Hatshepsut as the most likely candidate for Moses’ stepmother, for several reasons: (1) Hatshepsut’s blood-sister, Princess Akhbetneferu, was the only other daughter whom Queen Ahmose is known to have borne, but her death in infancy eliminates her candidacy. (2) Lady Mutnofret bore several sons to Thutmose I before she died, but there is no indication that she ever bore him any daughters.166 (3) The text of Exod 2:10 states that after “the child [Moses] grew, she [his mother] brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son.” Therefore, Moses’ Egyptian stepmother obviously lived a considerable length of time after she retrieved him from the Nile, increasing the likelihood that an account of this “Daughter of Pharaoh” (Exod 2:5) would be documented and preserved somewhere in the Egyptians’ detailed records, a qualification true of Hatshepsut alone.2. Identifying the Defacer of Hatshepsut’s Image. At some indeterminable time after Hatshepsut’s death, a serious attempt was made to obliterate all record of her from history. Many inscribed cartouches of her were erased, while her busts were smashed or broken into pieces, perhaps by gangs of workmen dispatched to various sites throughout Egypt. In some cases, the culprits carefully and completely hacked out the silhouette of her image from carvings, often leaving a distinct, Hatshepsut-shaped lacuna in the middle of a scene, often as a preliminary step to replacing it with a different image or royal cartouche, usually that of Thutmose I or II.167 At Karnak, her obelisks were walled-up and incorporated into the vestibule in front of Pylon V, while at Djeser-Djeseru her statues and sphinxes were removed, smashed, and cast into trash dumps.168a. Thutmose III as the Defacer of Hatshepsut’s Image. According to most Egyptologists, this massive effort to destroy all record of Hatshepsut’s existence was launched by Thutmose III, with a predictable motive: out of sexist pride, he attempted to eliminate every trace of this dreaded female pharaoh’s rule, intending to rewrite Egyptian history to portray a smooth succession of male rulers from Thutmose I to himself.169 “Wounded male pride may also have played a part in his decision to act; the mighty warrior king may have balked at being recorded for posterity as the man who ruled for 20 years under the thumb of a mere woman.”170 But was Thutmose III actually the perpetrator? Did he seethe with hatred and resentment toward his former coruler before viciously attacking all remnants of her? Are cavalier accusations of sexism justifiable? The theory that Thutmose III was the culprit behind this vicious crime is severely weakened by several factors.(1) If Thutmose III did deface her image, it would be inconsistent with how he otherwise related to her memory. A scene on the dismantled Chapelle Rouge at Djeser-Djeseru portrays Hatshepsut and identifies her as “The Good God, Lady of the Two Lands, Daughter of Ra, Hatshepsut.”171 Thutmose III, who is pictured as steering his barque toward Deir el-Bahri, actually completed the Chapelle Rouge, added the topmost register of decorations in his own name, then claimed the shrine as his own. Also, Hatshepsut’s name is still preserved in her Monthu temple at Armant, which Thutmose III enlarged. Such preservation of her handiwork and further construction on her building projects would be extremely unlikely if he truly despised Hatshepsut so greatly. Furthermore, Thutmose III planned the construction of his own temple to Amun, called Djeser-Akhet, which was to be built at Deir el-Bahri, directly south of Djeser-Djeseru. Since Hatshepsut greatly built-up Deir el-Bahri, including massive terraces and her own temple next to the one that Thutmose III subsequently built, this construction site is inexplicable if he felt such overwhelming, sexist hatred toward her.172(2) If Thutmose III was the culprit, he waited at least 20 years after she left office before whimsically desecrating her image. He could not have accomplished the feat before his 42nd regnal year, a full 20 years after Hatshepsut left office. Thutmose III’s construction projects at Karnak—which include the Hall of Annals, whose texts were written no earlier than Year 42—inadvertently concealed a few inscriptions and illustrations related to Hatshepsut. The scenes were in place by Year 42, yet show no signs whatsoever of any desecration. Conversely, those parts of the scenes that were unprotected by his post-Year-42 construction were defaced during the anti-Hatshepsut campaign. It seems impossible that he would wait until over 20 years after she had left office to initiate a campaign of anti-feminism out of personal hatred. “While it is possible to imagine and even empathize with Thutmose III indulging in a sudden whim of hatred against his stepmother immediately after her death, it is far harder to imagine him overcome by such a whim some 20 years later.”173 Moreover, this whim would have been a schizophrenic one, given Thutmose III's recent positive disposition toward Hatshepsut, as displayed by his completion of her projects at Djeser-Djeseru and Armant.(3) If Thutmose III was the culprit, he must have had sufficient motive to attempt to prevent her from living eternally. According to Egyptian religion, removing the name or image of a deceased person was a direct assault on his/her spirit. For him to live forever in the Field of Reeds, his body, image, or name must survive on earth. If all memory of him were lost or destroyed, the spirit too would perish, initiating the much-dreaded “second death,” a total obliteration from which there could be no return. This act against Hatshepsut was an attempt to condemn her to oblivion – a fate worse than death for an Egyptian.174 Thus the extermination of Hatshepsut’s image from the earth was indeed a drastic step: the removal of her spirit from its perpetual existence in the afterlife.175 Such reprisal seems far too severe to fit the motive of mere sexism.(4) If Thutmose III was the culprit, why were there also attacks against the name and monuments of Senenmut, the foreign chief-advisor of Hatshepsut who disappeared from record in or after Hatshepsut’s 19th regnal year (ca. 1488/7 BC)? Occasionally his name was violated while his image remained intact, but some of his statues were smashed and literally thrown out of temples.176 This attack upon her male chief-advisor’s image can hardly be justified if Thutmose III was motivated purely by anti-feministic hatred toward Hatshepsut. Other options are offered to justify this extreme act committed by Thutmose III. (1) He wanted to atone for the offense of a female pharaoh against maat (“justice, truth”), a word used to describe the continuity in the universe that derived from the approval of the gods.177 (2) The unorthodox coregency might have cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of his own right to rule, so he wanted to ensure both the legitimacy of his reign and his legacy. Neither of these options, however, addresses why Thutmose III would wait so long before beginning his anti-Hatshepsut campaign. Certainly he did not learn of the compromise that Hatshepsut’s reign was to the state of maat only after he was an aged king; likewise, after 20 years of sole rule, his reign was secure, and his successful campaigning already had solidified for him a lasting legacy, so defiling her image would not, in any conceivable way, further legitimize his reign.b. Amenhotep II as the Defacer of Hatshepsut’s Image. No Egyptologist has answered satisfactorily the nagging question of who was responsible for the widespread campaign to obliterate Hatshepsut’s image from Egypt’s annals, and what possible motive there could be for such a severe act of rage. Since the responsible



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person carried out the act only after Year 42 of Thutmose III,

the desecration occurred no earlier than ca. 1464 BC. It is also difficult to envision that the culprit lived long after both Hatshepsut and her memory disappeared from the earth, since the movement of time and the existence of motive are inversely proportionate. Accordingly, two possible scenarios exist that could incriminate Amenhotep II as culpable for the crime. (1) Amenhotep II contributed in the campaign to destroy Hatshepsut’s image, but he was not the initial perpetrator. Tyldesley observes that “[i]t is perhaps not too fanciful a leap of the imagination to suggest that Thutmose III, having started the persecution relatively late in the reign, may have died before it was concluded. His son and successor, Amenhotep II, with no personal involvement in the campaign, may have been content to allow the vendetta to lapse.”178 Tyldesley does not explain why without personal involvement. Bryan believes that “Amenhotep II himself completed the desecration of the female king’s monuments,” adding that “when [he] had finished his programme of erasures on the monuments of Hatshepsut at Karnak, he was able to concentrate on preparations for the royal jubilee at this temple.”179(2) Amenhotep II was the sole culprit in the campaign to destroy Hatshepsut’s image. The responsible individual likely possessed pharaonic authority, and one legitimate motive for Amenhotep II to have committed this act is if Hatshepsut raised Moses as her own son in the royal court (Acts 7:21). After the Red-Sea incident, Amenhotep II would have returned to Egypt seething with anger, both at the loss of his firstborn son and virtually his entire army (Exod 14:28), so he would have had just cause to erase her memory from Egypt and remove her spirit from the afterlife. The Egyptian people would have supported this edict, since their rage undoubtedly rivaled pharaoh’s, as they also were mourning deceased family members and friends. The nationwide experience of loss also would account for the unified effort throughout Egypt to fulfill this defeated pharaoh’s commission vigorously. A precedent even exists for Amenhotep II’s destruction of her monuments early in his reign: At Karnak Hatshepsut left . . . the Eighth Pylon, a new southern gateway to the temple precinct. . . . Ironically, evidence of Hatshepsut’s building effort is today invisible, since the face of the pylon was erased and redecorated in the first years of Amenhotep II.180 Perhaps Year 9 was when it all began.X. CONCLUSIONNow it is possible to answer the questions posed earlier. Does Amenhotep II qualify as the pharaoh who lived through the tenth plague because he was not his father’s eldest son? Yes, records show that Amenemhet was the eldest son of Thutmose III, allowing Amenhotep II to have lived through the tenth plague. Could the eldest son of Amenhotep II have died during the tenth plague, which must be true of the exodus-pharaoh’s son? Yes, the eldest son of Amenhotep II could have died then. In fact, none of Amenhotep II’s sons claimed to be his firstborn, and one prominent Egyptologist theorizes that the eldest son died inexplicably during childhood. Did Amenhotep II die in the Red Sea, as the Bible allegedly indicates about the exodus-pharaoh? No, he died in typical fashion, and his mummified body is still preserved. Yet despite popular belief, this conclusion does not conflict with the Bible, since no Biblical text actually states that the exodus-pharaoh died there with his army.Can any of Amenhotep II’s military campaigns be related to the exodus events? Yes, his second Asiatic campaign coincides extremely well with the exodus events, and many of the details related to it and Egypt’s post-exodus future cannot be explained without these connections. Can the loss of over two million Hebrew slaves, certainly Egypt’s “slave-base” at the time, be accounted for in the records of Amenhotep II’s reign? Yes, the loss of the Israelite slaves can be accounted for by Amenhotep II’s acquisition of 101,128 slaves in Canaan during his second Asiatic campaign, the only such campaign of its era that was launched in late fall and took so many captives. Is there any evidence to confirm that Amenhotep II interacted with the Hebrews after they left Egypt? Yes, Amenhotep II captured 3,600 “Apiru” (Hebrews) during his second campaign, which was launched just under seven months after the exodus. Despite many futile attempts to disprove the association of the Hebrews with the Apiru of the New Kingdom, far more evidence exists that favors their being one-in-the-same.If Amenhotep II is the exodus-pharaoh, could the obliteration of Hatshepsut’s image from many Egyptian monuments and inscriptions be attributed to backlash from the exodus events? Yes, Amenhotep II surfaces as the only logical candidate for the pharaoh who ordered this nationwide campaign of desecration. If Hatshepsut indeed was Moses’ Egyptian stepmother—and she is the only legitimate candidate—Amenhotep II and all of Egypt had adequate motive to remove her image from Egypt and her spirit from the afterlife. These answers prove not only that Amenhotep II is the only legitimate candidate for the exodus-pharaoh, but that the Biblical chronology of that era functions as a canon against which Egyptian history may be synchronized.It is hoped that the principal purpose of this article has not been lost in the extensive historical detail contained within it. In this analysis of the exodus-pharaoh and ancient Egyptian history, the arguments of those who compromise Biblical historicity proved unable to undermine Biblical inerrancy. Compromising the Bible’s inspired historical framework invariably will lead to the demise of its reliability as an accurate source for determining doctrine and enhancing spiritual growth. Conversely, to connect the book more directly with ancient history can only enhance its theological meaning.181 Unfortunately, however, even the strongest argumentation cannot remove presuppositions or persuade readers of the Bible’s life-impacting truths.Douglas Petrovich is former academic dean at Novosibirsk Biblical-Theological Seminary in the city of Akademgorodok (Siberia), Russia. He has a BA in Evangelism at Moody Bible Institute, and both an MDiv and a ThM from The Masters Seminary. He also has an MA in Ancient Near Eastern history and archaeology from the University of Toronto, where currently he is enrolled in the PhD program. This article was first published in the Spring 2006 issue of the Master's Seminary Journal. Posted with permission.Footnotes:1. George Ladd, The New Testament and Criticism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 16. 2. William G. Dever, What did the Biblical Writers Know and When did They Know It? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 4. 3. Israel Finkelstein, “City-States to States,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past, ed. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 81. 4. Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), 206. 5. Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 408–409. 6. Ibid., 412. 7. Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 310. 8. Bryant G. Wood, “The Rise and Fall of the 13th-Century Exodus-Conquest Theory,” JETS 48:3 (Sep 2005), 476. 9. Rodger C. Young, “When Did Solomon Die?,” JETS 46:4 (Dec 2003), 603. 10. Both here and throughout the present work, any dating that follows the formula, “ca. xxxx–yyyy BC,” signifies the regnal years of a given monarch, unless otherwise noted. The reason for settling on these dates will be discussed subsequently. 11. It is probably more accurate to refer to the Red Sea as the “Sea of Reeds,” but the traditional designation will be used here for simplicity. For an excellent study on this topic, see Hoffmeier’s chap. 9, “The Problem of the Re(e)d Sea” (James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in



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