The dual cartouches of Ramesses III discovered in Jordan’s Wadi Rum. Courtesy Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Jordan.

The Jordanian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery of the cartouche of Pharaoh Ramesses III (1186–1155 BCE) carved into a rock face near Wadi Rum in southern Jordan. A first-of-its-kind discovery in the country, it has been hailed as “rare, tangible evidence of pharaonic Egypt’s historical presence in the region.” Although it is the first such inscription discovered in Jordan, a series of cartouches belonging to Ramesses III have been discovered elsewhere, marking out an ancient trade route between Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula.

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Leaving a Mark

Among the countless carvings found throughout Wadi Rum, the inscription features two cartouches, one with the birth name of Ramesses III and the other with his throne name. “This is a landmark discovery that enhances our understanding of ancient connections between Egypt, Jordan, and the Arabian Peninsula,” said Lina Annab, the Jordanian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities.

Several other inscriptions of Ramesses III have been discovered outside of Egypt, carved along a lengthy trade route that connected Egypt with the Arabian Peninsula. These inscriptions have helped archaeologists pinpoint the route itself, with several cartouches found throughout the Sinai and Israel and one as far south as Tayma in Saudi Arabia. The Wadi Rum inscription, which is located close to the border between Jordan and Saudi Arabia, provides yet another marker on that route.

According to Zahi Hawass, the former Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, “The discovery is crucial. It could open the door to a deeper understanding of Egypt’s interactions with the southern Levant and Arabian Peninsula over 3,000 years ago.”

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Canopic jars discovered in the area of the Ramesseum. Courtesy Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

A joint Egyptian-French expedition made an incredible discovery while carrying out excavations and restoration work at the mortuary temple of Ramesses II, the pharaoh often associated with the Exodus. The excavations revealed several new areas of the massive temple complex and numerous tombs dating to a few centuries after the temple’s original construction.

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Commemorating the Great Pharaoh

The mortuary temple, known as the Ramesseum or the “Temple of Millions of Years,” was one of the grandest construction projects carried out by Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BCE), one of the greatest pharaohs to ever reign over Egypt. Located in the Theban necropolis across the Nile from the modern city of Luxor, the temple served as a place of commemoration and worship of the pharaoh, both before and after his death. Today, the temple is recognized as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

While carrying out excavations inside the temple, the Egyptian-French team uncovered the “House of Life,” an ancient scientific school that was attached to most major temples. Inside, they discovered the remains of drawings and school games. The team also identified administrative buildings, workshops, and cellars to the east of the temple. The workshops included kitchens, bakeries, and areas for stonework and textile production. The cellars served as storage for olive oil, honey, wine, and more. According to a press release by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the various buildings indicate that the temple featured a complex administrative apparatus and served as both a place of worship and a local distribution center for manufactured goods.

Ushabti figurines discovered in the area of the Ramesseum. Courtesy Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Excavations to the northeast of the temple also revealed many tombs dating to the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1070–664 BCE). Most of these were shaft tombs that contained well-preserved canopic jars, funerary tools, coffins, and ushabti figurines.

The Egyptian-French expedition has been working at the mortuary temple since 1991 and has systematically carried out excavations and restoration work. Although one of the grandest construction projects of Ramesses the Great, the temple suffered more damage through history than some of Ramesses’s other construction projects, such as the famous temple at Abu Simbel. This may be because the location of the mortuary temple near the Nile’s floodplain damaged its foundations, leading to large areas of collapse.

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Exodus

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The post Revealing the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses II appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Ramesses II’s Lost Sarcophagus

While the mummy of Ramesses II—known as Ramesses the Great and suggested by some to be the infamous pharaoh of the Exodus—was discovered in 1881, it was not found inside its original coffin, as the body had been moved to a plain wooden coffin in antiquity to protect it from grave robbers. Now, it appears that part of the original granite sarcophagus from his burial has been discovered in a Coptic monastery in Abydos.

Deep Sea Late Bronze Age Shipwreck

While surveying the floor of the Mediterranean 55 miles off Israel’s coast, an international energy company made a startling find: the oldest deep-sea shipwreck ever discovered. Located over a mile below the waves, this shipwreck could rewrite the history of ancient seafaring, showing that Mediterranean sailors left the safety of the coastline much earlier than previously thought.

Archaeologists examining storage jars from the shipwreck. Courtesy Emil Aladjem, IAA

Hercules, Hydra, & Hazor?

What do a Mesopotamian cylinder seal, a Greek vase, and the Book of Revelation have in common? Seven-headed serpents. The only issue is that scholars are not certain why. Now, a small stamp seal discovered at the site of Hazor in northern Israel may finally provide a clue as to how the myth of the seven-headed serpent was transmitted between cultures across the millennia.

A Genie in Jerusalem

How did an Assyrian genie end up in Jerusalem during the First Temple period? During continued excavations of the City of David in Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered a rare stone seal bearing two names in paleo-Hebrew script and a depiction of a Neo-Assyrian winged genie. Likely belonging to a high official in the Judahite court, the seal would have served as both a signature and a protective amulet.

Rare stone seal with an Assyrian genie and paleo-Hebrew writing. Courtesy Eliyahu Yanai, City of David.

Herculaneum Scrolls Deciphered

The 2,000-year-old Herculaneum Scrolls make up one of the largest extant libraries from antiquity, whose importance might well rival that of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But ever since their discovery in the 18th century, they have been almost completely unreadable, having been turned into little more than ash when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. Now, in what may be one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in decades, the Herculaneum Scrolls have been unlocked.

Pompeii Tiny House Frescoes

Archaeologists working in Pompeii have discovered yet another incredible home buried by Mt. Vesuvius. Nicknamed the House of Phaedra, the walls of the house preserve several beautiful wall paintings. The best preserved depicts a scene from Euripides’s tragedy Hippolytus, where a barely dressed Phaedra reclines before a nude Hippolytus, with an unidentified man between them. Another painting shows a satyr and a nymph in an intimate embrace, and a third may be a rendering of the Judgement of Paris.

Scene of Phaedra (left) and Hippolytus (far right) discovered during new excavations in Pompeii. Credit: Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

Paul’s Prison in Caesarea

The final story highlighted by the scholars involves a fascinating room built into the Herodian Promontory Palace at Caesarea Maritima, a city where the apostle Paul spent several years in jail before being sent to Rome for trial before Caesar. According to some scholars, this complex, built as a basement of the seafront palace, may be the same room where Paul was imprisoned.

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A helmeted god stands guard over one of the principal entrances to ancient Hattusa. From the 17th to the early 12th century B.C., Hattusa served as the capital of the Hittite empire. Credit: Gianni Dagli Orti/Corbis.

From his capital, Hattusa, in central Anatolia, the last-known Hittite king, Suppiluliuma II (1207 B.C.-?), ruled over a people who had once built a great empire—one of the superpowers (along with Egypt, Mittani, Babylon and Assyria) of the Late Bronze Age. The Kingdom of the Hittites, called Hatti, had stretched across the face of Anatolia and northern Syria, from the Aegean in the west to the Euphrates in the east. But now those days were gone, and the royal capital was about to be destroyed forever by invasion and fire.

Did Suppiluliuma die defending his city, like the last king of Constantinople 2,600 years later? Or did he spend his final moments in his palace, impassively contemplating mankind’s flickering mortality?

Neither, according to recent archaeological evidence, which paints a somewhat less dramatic, though still mysterious, picture of Hattusa’s last days. Excavations at the site, directed by the German archaeologist Jürgen Seeher, have indeed determined that the city was invaded and burned early in the 12th century B.C. But this destruction appears to have taken place after many of Hattusa’s residents had abandoned the city, carrying off the valuable (and portable) objects as well as the city’s important official records. The site being uncovered by archaeologists was probably little more than a ghost town during its final days.¹

Excavations at Hattusa have turned up beautifully crafted ritual objects, such as the 1½-inch-high, 15th-century B.C. gold pendant, which represents a Hittite god. Credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.

From Assyrian records, we know that in the early second millennium B.C. Hattusa was the seat of a central Anatolian kingdom. In the 18th century B.C., this settlement was razed to the ground by a king named Anitta, who declared the site accursed and then left a record of his destruction of the city. One of the first Hittite kings, Hattusili I (c. 1650–1620 B.C.), rebuilt the city, taking advantage of the region’s abundant sources of water, thick forests and fertile land. An outcrop of rock rising precipitously above the site (now known as Büyükkale, or “Big Castle”) provided a readily defensible location for Hattusili’s royal citadel.

Although Hattusa became the capital of one of the greatest Near Eastern empires, the city was almost completely destroyed several times. One critical episode came early in the 14th century, when enemy forces launched a series of massive attacks upon the Hittite homeland, crossing its borders from all directions. The attackers included Arzawan forces from the west and south, Kaskan mountain tribes from the north, and Isuwan forces from across the Euphrates in the east. The Hittite king Tudhaliya III (c. 1360?-1350 B.C.) had no choice but to abandon his capital to the enemy. Tudhaliya probably went into exile in the eastern city of Samuha (according to his grandson and biographer, Mursili II, Tudhalia used Samuha as his base of operations for reconquering lost territories). Hattusa was destroyed, and the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III (1390–1352 B.C.) declared, in a letter tablet found at Tell el-Amarna, in Egypt, that “The Land of Hatti is finished!”

In a series of brilliant campaigns, however, largely masterminded by Tudhaliya’s son Suppiluliuma I (1344–1322 B.C.), the Hittites regained their territories, and Hattusa rose once more, phoenix-like, from its ashes. During the late 14th century and for much of the 13th century B.C., Hatti was the most powerful kingdom in the Near East. Envoys from the Hittite king’s “royal brothers”—the kings of Egypt, Babylon and Assyria—were regularly received in the great reception hall on Hattusa’s acropolis. Vassal rulers bound by treaty came annually to Hattusa to reaffirm their loyalty and pay tribute to the Hittite king.²

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The most illustrious phase in the existence of Hattusa itself, however, did not come during the floruit of the Hittite empire under Suppiluliuma, his son Mursili II (c. 1321–1295 B.C.) or grandson Muwatalli II (c. 1295–1272 B.C.). At this time Hattusa was no match, in size or splendor, for the great Egyptian cities along the Nile—Thebes, Memphis and the short-lived Akhetaten, capital of the so-called heretic pharaoh Akhenaten (1352–1336 B.C.). Indeed, during Muwatalli’s reign Hattusa actually went into decline when the royal seat was transferred to a new site, Tarhuntassa, near Anatolia’s southern coast. Only later, when the kingdom was in the early stages of its final decline, did Hattusa become one of the great showplaces of the ancient Near East.

A 7-inch-high, 13th-century B.C. silver rhyton, cast in the shape of a stag, discovered at Hattusa. Credit: Werner Forman/Art Resource, NY.

This renovation of the city was the inspiration of King Hattusili III (c. 1267–1237 B.C.), though his son and successor, Tudhaliya IV (c. 1237–1209 B.C.), did most of the work. Not only did Tudhaliya substantially renovate the acropolis; he more than doubled the city’s size, developing a new area lying south of and rising above the old city. In the new “Upper City,” a great temple complex arose. Hattusa could now boast at least 31 temples within its walls, many built during Tudhaliya’s reign. Though individually dwarfed by the enormous Temple of the Storm God in the “Lower City,” the new temples left no doubt about Hattusa’s grandeur, impressing upon all who visited the capital that it was the religious as well as the political and administrative heart of the Hittite empire.

Hattusili’s son Tudhaliya IV (1237–1209 B.C.) greatly expanded Hattusa to include a new Upper City, doubling the size of the Hittite capital. Tudhaliya also built dozens of new temples and massive fortification walls encircling the entire city. Credit: Life And Society in the Hittite World.

Tudhaliya also constructed massive new fortifications. The main casemate wall was built upon an earthen rampart to a height of 35 feet, punctuated by towers at 70-foot intervals along its entire length. The wall twice crossed a deep gorge to enclose the Lower City, the Upper City and an area to the northeast; this was surely one of the most impressive engineering achievements of the Late Bronze Age.

The great Temple of the Storm God, Teshub, once dominated the Lower City at Hattusa. The temple is clearly visible at left-center in the photo (which looks northwest over the ancient Lower City to modern Boghazkoy), surrounded by ritual chambers and storerooms. The temple was built by Hattusili III (1267–1237 B.C.)—perhaps on the site of an older temple to Teshub—just northwest of Hattusa’s ancient acropolis (not visible in the photo). Credit: Yann Arthus Bertrand/Corbis.

What prompted this sudden and dramatic—perhaps even frenetic—surge of building activity in these last decades of the kingdom’s existence?

One is left with the uneasy feeling that the Hittite world was living on the edge. Despite outward appearances, all was not well with the kingdom, or with the royal dynasty that controlled it. To be sure, Tudhaliya had some military successes; in western Anatolia, for instance, he appears to have eliminated the threat posed by the Mycenaean Greeks to the Hittite vassal kingdoms, which extended to the Aegean Sea.³ But he also suffered a major military defeat to the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta, which dispelled any notion that the Hittites were invincible in the field of battle. Closer to home, Tudhaliya wrote anxiously to his mother about a serious rebellion that had broken out near the homeland’s frontiers and was likely to spread much farther.

The collapse of the Hittite Empire is just one of many destructions at the end of the late Bronze Age. Learn more about the Bronze Age collapse and new evidence of droughts in the region >>

Excavators at Hattusa found this five-inch-high, 15th-century B.C. ceramic fragment that may depict the cyclopean walls and defensive towers that surrounded the acropolis. Credit: Hirmer Fotoarchiv Muenchen.

Within the royal family itself, there were serious divisions. For this, Tudhaliya’s father, Hattusili, was largely responsible. In a brief but violent civil war, he had seized the throne from his nephew Urhi-Teshub (c. 1272–1267 B.C.) and sent him into exile. But Urhi-Teshub was determined to regain his throne. Fleeing his place of exile, he attempted to win support from foreign kings, and he may have set up a rival kingdom in southern Anatolia.

Urhi-Teshub’s brother Kurunta may also have contributed to the deepening divisions within the royal family. After initially pledging his loyalty to Hattusili, he appears to have made an attempt upon the throne when it was occupied by his cousin Tudhaliya. Seal impressions dating to this period have been found in Hattusa with the inscription “Kurunta, Great King, Labarna, My Sun.” A rock-cut inscription recently found near Konya, in southern Turkey, also refers to Kurunta as “Great King.” The titles “Great King,” “Labarna” and “My Sun” were strictly reserved for the throne’s actual occupant—suggesting that Kurunta may have instigated a successful coup against Tudhaliya.

The seal of Tudhaliya IV (1237–1228 B.C.) is stamped on this 4-inch-high fragment of a letter sent to the king of Ugarit. Although the letter is written in cuneiform, the seal is in Hittite hieroglyphics. Credit: Erich Lessing.

Kurunta had every right to mount such a coup. Like Urhi-Teshub, he was a son of the legitimate king, Muwatalli. Urhi-Teshub’s and Kurunta’s rights had been denied when their uncle, Hattusili, usurped royal power for himself and his descendants. If Kurunta did indeed rectify matters by taking the throne by force around 1228 B.C., his occupancy was short-lived, for Tudhaliya again became king, and he remained king for many years after Kurunta disappeared from the historical record.

Nevertheless, the dynasty remained unstable. In an address to palace dignitaries, Tudhaliya made clear how insecure his position was:

The Land of Hatti is full of the royal line: In Hatti the descendants of Suppiluliuma, the descendants of Mursili, the descendants of Muwatalli, the descendants of Hattusili are numerous. Regarding the kingship, you must acknowledge no other person (but me, Tudhaliya), and protect only the grandson and great grandson and descendants of Tudhaliya. And if at any time(?) evil is done to His Majesty—(for) His Majesty has many brothers—and someone approaches another person and speaks thus: “Whomever we select for ourselves need not even be a son of our lord!”—these words must not be (permitted)! Regarding the kingship, you must protect only His Majesty and the descendants of His Majesty. You must approach no other person!

Another serious problem confronted the last kings of Hatti. There may well have been widespread famine in the Hittite kingdom during its final decades. The Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah (1213–1203 B.C.) refers to grain shipments sent to the Hittite king “to keep alive the land of Hatti.” Tudhaliya himself sent an urgent letter to the king of Ugarit, demanding a ship and crew for the transport of 450 tons of grain. The letter ends by stating that it is a matter of life or death! Was the Hittite kingdom being slowly starved into oblivion?

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The Hittite economy was based primarily on agriculture, requiring a substantial labor force. At the same time, the annual Hittite military campaigns were heavily labor-intensive—draining off Hatti’s strong young men from the domestic workforce. To some extent this was compensated for by captives brought back to the homeland and used as farm laborers. Even so, the kingdom faced chronic shortages of manpower.

Increasingly, the Hittites came to depend on outside sources of grain, supplied by vassal states in north Syria and elsewhere. After 1259 B.C., when the Hittites signed a treaty with the Egyptians,⁴ Hatti began importing grain from Egypt.

In times of peace and stability, foreign imports made up for local shortfalls. But once supply routes were threatened, the situation changed dramatically. Grain shipments from Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean were transported to Ura, on the Anatolian coast, and then carried overland to Hatti. The eastern Mediterranean was always a dangerous place for commercial shipping, since it was infested with pirates who attacked ships and raided coastal ports. As conditions throughout the region became more unsettled toward the end of the 13th century B.C., the threats to shipping became ever greater.

This provides the context for the Hittite military operations around the island of Cyprus during the reigns of Tudhaliya and his son Suppiluliuma II. The operations were almost certainly aimed at destroying enemy forces that were disrupting grain supplies. These enemies were probably seaborne marauders who had invaded Cyprus to use its harbors as bases for their attacks on shipping in the region. Dramatic evidence of the dangers they posed is provided by a letter from the last king of Ugarit, Ammurapi, to the king of Cyprus, who had earlier asked Ammurapi for assistance:

My father, behold, the enemy’s ships came (here); my cities(?) were burned, and they did evil things in my country. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots(?) are in the Land of Hatti, and all my ships are in the Land of Lukka? … Thus the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it: The seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us.⁵

On a wall of his mortuary temple at Thebes, called the Ramesseum, the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II (1279–1213 B.C.) carved scenes showing the Battle of Kadesh—a clash between the Egyptians and the Hittites fought in 1274 B.C. near the Orontes River in modern Syria. Thirteen years later, Ramesses signed a peace treaty with the Hittite king Hattusili III (1267–1237 B.C.), putting an end to the protracted war between the two Late Bronze Age superpowers. Credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

So, while a grave crisis was mounting in the land, with periods of famine, unrest and war aggravated by a dysfunctional royal dynasty, the Hittite kings decided to rebuild Hattusa!

This project obviously required enormous resources. Where did the workers come from? It would have been dangerous to deplete the ranks of the army during a period of conflict with Assyria in the east, rebellion near the homeland’s frontiers (the one Tudhaliya described to his mother) and attacks by marauders in the Mediterranean. The construction workers had to be recruited from among the able-bodied men working the farms—yet another strain on the already taxed Hittite economy.⁶

How do we explain this?

The new city was the brainchild of Tudhaliya’s father, Hattusili, who was always conscious of the fact that he was not the legitimate successor to the throne. Hattusili thus made great efforts to win acknowledgment from his royal peers: the kings of Egypt, Babylon and Assyria. It was also important for him to win acceptance from his own subjects. His brother and predecessor King Muwatalli had transferred the royal seat to Tarhuntassa.

Very likely Hattusili decided to win favor from his people—and the gods—by reinstating Hattusa, the great ancestral Hittite city, as the kingdom’s capital, and to do so on a grander scale than ever before. In this way, Hattusili-the-usurper could assume the role of Hattusili-the-restorer-of-the-old-order.

Did this provide a compelling motive for his son, Tudhaliya, who actually undertook the project? Or was Tudhaliya’s commitment to rebuilding the capital as a city of the gods an expression of religious fervor,⁷ especially as his kingdom was beginning to crumble around him? Or was he engaging in a gigantic bluff—creating a spectacular mirage of wealth and power in an attempt to delude subjects, allies and enemies into believing that the fragile empire he ruled was embarking upon a grand new era? Dramatically appealing as such explanations may be, they do not square with the picture we have of Tudhaliya as a level-headed, responsible and pragmatic ruler.

In short, the massive rebuilding of Hattusa at this time remains a mystery, one of the many mysteries attending the collapse of the Bronze Age.⁸

Only a handful of texts survive from the reign of Tudhaliya’s son Suppiluliuma II, and these tell a mixed story. On the one hand, some texts point to continuing unrest among his own subjects, including the elite elements of the state, and to acts of outright defiance by vassal states. On the other hand, military documents record conquests in southern and western Anatolia and naval victories off the coast of Cyprus. These conflicting documents from Suppiluliuma’s reign bring our written records of the Hittite kingdom abruptly to an end. Suppiluliuma, the last known monarch to rule from Hattusa, was almost certainly the king who witnessed the fall of the kingdom of Hatti.

The tablet, found at Hatttusa, is the Egyptian version of the treaty of Kadesh, written in Akkadian. Credit: Erich Lessing.

What happened at the royal capital? The evidence of widespread destruction by fire on the royal acropolis, in the temples of both the Upper City and Lower City, and along stretches of the fortifications, suggests a scenario of a single, simultaneous, violent destruction in an all-consuming conflagration. The final blow may have been delivered by bands of Kaskan peoples from the Pontic zone in the north, who had plagued the kingdom from its early days.

As we have seen, however, recent archaeological investigations indicate that by this time the city had already been largely abandoned. The Hittites saw the end coming!

Perhaps Suppiluliuma arranged for the departure of his family while it was still safe, and ordered the evacuation of the most important members of his administration, including a staff of scribes (who carried off the tablets), and a large part of his troops and personal bodyguards. The hoi polloi were left to fend for themselves. Those who stayed behind scavenged through the leavings of those who had departed. When Hattusa was little more than a decaying ruin, outside forces moved in, plundering and torching a largely derelict settlement.

This raises an important question. If the elite elements of Hittite society abandoned Hattusa, where did they go? Did Suppiluliuma set up a new capital elsewhere? That is not beyond the realm of possibility, for we know of at least two earlier occasions when king and court left Hattusa and re-established their capital in another place (Samuha and Tarhuntassa). We know, too, that at Carchemish on the Euphrates River, which had been made a vice-regal seat in the 14th century B.C., a branch of the Hittite royal family survived for perhaps several centuries after the fall of Hattusa. In fact, northern Syria became the homeland of a number of so-called neo-Hittite kingdoms in the early part of the first millennium. Did Suppiluliuma and his entourage find a new home in Syria?

It may be that the final pages of Hittite history still exist somewhere. In the last few decades, thousands of tablets have been found at sites throughout the Hittite world. This inspires hope that more archives of the period have yet to be found, including the last records of the Hittite empire. If Suppiluliuma II did in fact arrange a systematic evacuation of Hattusa, taking with him everything of importance, the stuff had to go somewhere. Maybe it still lies beneath the soil, awaiting discovery.

The Minoans, like the Hittites, shaped Bronze Age history in the Eastern Mediterranean. Who were they? Despite extensive research at palatial Minoan sites, many questions are yet to be answered. Learn what recent DNA studies have revealed about the ancestry of Crete’s great civilization >>

How We Know What We Know: The Hittite Archives

Credit: Erich Lessing.

The Hittites were perhaps the world’s first historians. On numerous clay tablets recovered largely over the last century by archaeologists, they wrote down what we today recognize as history, rather than merely relating myths or the acts of the gods.⁹ Much of what we know about the Hittites, therefore, comes from the pen (or stylus) of the Hittites themselves. The earliest excavations on the site of Hattusa were conducted by the German archaeologist Hugo Winckler in the first decade of the 20th century. They brought to light thousands of tablets, often fragmentary, from Hattusa’s palace and temple archives. A total of eight languages are represented in the tablets, all inscribed in the cuneiform script developed in Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C. Many of the tablets found at Hattusa are written in Akkadian, a Semitic language used by the Babylonians and Assyrians. During the Late Bronze Age, Akkadian also functioned as the international language of diplomacy; many of these tablets are thus correspondence between Hittite kings and their vassal states in Syria or foreign kingdoms (such tablets have also been found, for example, at Tell el-Amarna, Egypt, site of the pharaoh Akhenaten’s capital).

Most of the tablets, however, are written in a language that was unknown to Hattusa’s first excavators. This language turned out to be Hittite, the language of the Hittites themselves (though they called it Nesite). The Hittite language was deciphered during the First World War by a Czech scholar named BedrŠich Hrozny´, who concluded (correctly) that it was a member of the Indo-European family of languages and thus related to Sanskrit, Greek and Latin.

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The tablets vary widely in content: historical annals, treaties and diplomatic correspondence, collections of laws and prayers, ritual texts, lists of festivals, literary and mythological texts, and lists of towns with ties to the Hittite empire, such as the 13th-century B.C. tablet shown. In 1986, an intact bronze tablet—the first metal tablet from the Hittite world—was discovered near Hattusa’s Sphinx Gate. This tablet is inscribed with the text of a treaty between the Hittite king Tudhaliya IV (1237–1209 B.C.) and his cousin Kurunta, ruler of the Hittite appanage kingdom of Tarhuntassa.

On seals and in monumental rock-cut inscriptions, the Hittites used a hieroglyphic script written in the Luwian language. Luwian is an Indo-European language closely related to Hittite. The only writing found so far in Late Bronze Age Troy, for example, is a bronze seal inscribed with Luwian hieroglyphics.¹⁰

Hittite archives have also come to light in outlying parts of the Hittite empire (at Emar on the Euphrates River in modern Syria, for instance) and at administrative centers in and near the Hittite homeland. Archaeologists recently found over 3,000 tablets at the site of ancient Sapinuwa (modern Ortaköy), northeast of Hattusa. Although these tablets have not yet been published, provincial archives from other sites have taught us much about the day-to-day administration of the kingdom’s provinces and the lives of local officials.

“The Last Days of Hattusa” by Trevor Bryce originally appeared in the January/February 2005 issue of Archaeology Odyssey. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily on September 27, 2013.

Trevor Bryce is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and Honorary Research Consultant at the University of Queensland, Australia. His publications include The Kingdom of the Hittites (Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), Life and Society in the Hittite World (Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), and The World of the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms: A Political and Military History (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012).

Notes:

1. Jürgen Seeher, “Die Zerstörung der Stadt Hattusa” in Akten des IV. Internationalen Kongresses für Hethitologie Würzburg, 4.-8. Oktober 1999, StBoT 45, ed. Gernot Wilhelm (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001).

2. See Eric H. Cline, “Warriors of Hatti,” review-article on Trevor Bryce’s The Kingdom of the Hittites (Oxford, 1999), Archaeology Odyssey, January/February 2002).

3. One of the Hittite vassal kingdoms was almost certainly Troy (called “Ilios” and “Troia” by Homer and “Wilusa” by the Hittites). See the following articles in Archaeology Odyssey: “Greeks vs. Hittites: Why Troy is Troy and the Trojan War Is Real” (interview with Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier), July/August 2002; and “Is Homer Historical?” (interview with Gregory Nagy), May/June 2004.

4. For more on this treaty, signed with the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II (1279–1213 B.C.), see Jack Meinhardt, “‘Look on My Works!’ The Many Faces of Ramesses the Great,” Archaeology Odyssey September/October 2003.

5. Document from Ras Shamra, trans. M.J. Astour, “New Evidence on the Last Days of Ugarit,” American Journal of Archaeology 69 (1965), p. 255.

6. Given the fragile condition of Hittite food production at this time, any number of events could have precipitated a crisis, such as severe drought or earthquakes (see Amos Nur and Eric H. Cline, “What Triggered the Collapse? Earthquake Storms,” Archaeology Odyssey, September/October 2001).

7. Tudhaliya IV was also responsible for the impressive sculptural decorations in the sanctuary at Yazilikaya, about a mile northeast of Hattusa (see E.C. Krupp, “Sacred Sex in the Hittite Temple of Yazilikaya,” Archaeology Odyssey, March/April 2000).

8. Hattusa was one of many cities in the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean—including Ugarit, Troy, Knossos and Mycenae—that were destroyed toward the end of the second millennium B.C. See the following articles in Archaeology Odyssey, September/October 2001: William H. Stiebing, Jr., “When Civilization Collapsed: Death of the Bronze Age”; and Amos Nur and Eric H. Cline, “What Triggered the Collapse? Earthquake Storms.”

9. See Richard H. Beal, “History’s History: Learning to Distinguish Fact from Fancy,” Origins, Archaeology Odyssey, January/February 2003.

10. See Birgit Brandau, “Can Archaeology Discover Homer’s Troy?” Archaeology Odyssey, Premiere Issue 1998.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Who Were the Hittites?

Bronze Age Collapse: Pollen Study Highlights Late Bronze Age Drought

The Decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Did Climate Change Bring Sumerian Civilization to an End?

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A bronze sword inscribed with the cartouche of Ramesses II. Courtesy Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Archaeologists with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities have uncovered a fortress from the reign of Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BCE), the Egyptian pharaoh often associated with the Exodus. Located in the northwest Nile Delta, about 60 miles south of Alexandria, the fortress defended against encroaching Libyan forces from the west and Sea Peoples coming from the Mediterranean. The most magnificent find, however, was the discovery of a well-preserved bronze sword, bearing the cartouche of Ramesses II.

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Defending Egypt

The fort consisted of a barracks along with warehouses for storing weapons and food. The mudbrick buildings were meticulously organized into two identical groups separated by a narrow passageway. Among the finds were weapons, tools, and the personal effects of Egyptian troops stationed at the fort. The latter included necklaces made with semi-precious stones, a bronze ring, and numerous scarab seals. Excavators also discovered two inscribed limestone blocks mentioning Ramesses and an official named Bay. The most impressive find was the bronze sword bearing the cartouche of Ramesses II.

“The weaponry demonstrates the place was well armed and may even have been able to produce some weapons on site,” Peter Brand, a professor at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, told Live Science. The bronze sword was “likely given to a high-ranking officer as a royal reward. The king’s name and titles engraved on it increased the prestige of its owner and advertised the [king’s] wealth, power, and generosity.”

Ramesses II, known as Ramesses the Great, ruled Egypt at the height of its power when its borders stretched from Syria to Nubia. Despite Ramesses’s many military victories, his reign was also a time of threats, including raids from Libya and the marauding Sea Peoples.

Read more in Bible History Daily:

Intact Burial from the Reign of Ramesses II

Ramesses III in Arabia?

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BAR Jr.: Gamma Rays Halt Deterioration of Mummy of Ramesses II

Exodus

Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History

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“After the conclusion of the treaty they left with their families and chattels, not fewer than two hundred and forty thousand people, and crossed the desert into Syria. Fearing the Assyrians, who dominated over Asia at that time, they built a city in the country which we now call Judea. It was large enough to contain this great number of men and was called Jerusalem.”
–Josephus, Against Apion 1.73.7, quoting Manetho’s Aegyptiaca

Excavations at Tel Habuwa, thought to be ancient Tjaru, reveal evidence of the expulsion of the Hyksos by Ahmose I at the end of the Second Intermediate Period.

In the Second Intermediate Period (18th–16th centuries B.C.E.), towards the end of the Middle Bronze Age, the West Asian (Canaanite) Hyksos controlled Lower (Northern) Egypt. In the 16th century, Ahmose I overthrew the Hyksos and initiated the XVIII dynasty and the New Kingdom of Egypt.

Archaeological discoveries at Tel Habuwa (also known as Tell el-Habua or Tell-Huba), a site associated with ancient Tjaru (Tharo), shed light on Ahmose’s campaign. A daybook entry in the famous Rhind Mathematical Papyrus notes that Ahmose seized control of Tjaru before laying siege the Hyksos at their capital in Avaris.

Excavations at the site, located two miles east of the Suez Canal, have uncovered evidence of battle wounds on skeletons discovered in two-story administrative structures dating to the Hyksos and New Kingdom occupations. The site showed evidence of burned buildings, as well as massive New Kingdom grain silos that would have been able to feed a large number of Egyptian troops. After Ahmose took the city and defeated the Hyksos, he expanded the town and built several nearby forts to protect Egypt’s eastern border. Tjaru was first discovered in 2003, but until now, the excavation only uncovered the New Kingdom military fort and silos. This new discovery confirms a decisive moment in the expulsion of the Hyksos previously known from textual sources.

Tomb painting from Beni Hasan, Egypt. A figure named Abisha and identified by the title Hyksos leads brightly garbed Semitic clansmen into Egypt to conduct trade. Dating to about 1890 B.C.E., the painting is preserved on the wall of a tomb carved into cliffs overlooking the Nile at Beni Hasan, about halfway between Cairo and Luxor. In the early second millennium B.C.E., numerous Asiatics infiltrated Egypt, some of whom eventually gained control over Lower Egypt for about a century and a half. The governing class of these people became known as the Hyksos, which means “Rulers of Foreign Lands.”

The Hyksos are well known from ancient texts, and their expulsion was recorded in later ancient Egyptian historical narratives. The third-century B.C.E. Egyptian historian Manetho–whose semi-accurate histories stand out as valuable resources for cataloging Egyptian kingship–wrote of the Hyksos’ violent entry into Egypt from the north, and the founding of their monumental capital at Avaris, a city associated with the famous excavations at Tell ed-Dab’a. After the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt, Manetho reports that they wandered the desert before establishing the city of Jerusalem.

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While Josephus cites Manetho’s history associating the Israelites with the Hyksos, many modern scholars see problems with Manetho’s conflation of the expulsion of the Hyksos and the Biblical narrative. Manetho lived many centuries after these events took place, and he may have combined two different narratives, wittingly or unwittingly, when associating the Hyksos and Israelites. Ahmose’s defeat of the Hyksos occurred centuries before the traditional date of the Exodus. In addition, the basic premise of the Hyksos and Exodus histories differ: the Hyksos were expelled rulers of Egypt, not slaves, and they were forced out, not pursued.

Learn more about the fortress excavated at Tel Habuwa—the largest discovered to date in Egypt.

The expulsion of the Hyksos may not have been a single event, and many still read Manetho’s texts on the Hyksos expulsion as a record of the Israelites’ Exodus. After the Hyksos were defeated by Ahmose, some Hyksos people likely remained in Egypt, perhaps as a subjugated class. The Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut (1489–1469 B.C.E.) recorded the banishment of a group of Asiatics from Avaris, the former Hyksos capital. While this second expulsion would still have been centuries before the traditional date of the Exodus, there may exist parallels between these events and the Exodus narrative, or the earlier Biblical accounts of Abraham, Sarah and Lot’s own expulsion from Egypt in Genesis 12:19.

Watch full-length lecture videos by top Exodus scholars, including Hyksos capital excavator Manfred Bietak, online for free.

This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in March 2013.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Reinterpreting the Tempest Stela

Severed Hands: Trophies of War in New Kingdom Egypt

The Exodus: Fact or Fiction?

Who Were the Minoans?

The Last Days of Hattusa

Bronze Age Collapse: Pollen Study Highlights Late Bronze Age Drought

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Out of Egypt: The Archaeological Context of the Exodus by James K. Hoffmeier

“Look on My Works”: The many faces of Ramesses the Great by Jack Meinhardt and O. Louis Mazzatenta

An Ancient Israelite House in Egypt? by Hershel Shanks

Jacob in History by Aharon Kempinski

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Statue of Ramesses the Great. Courtesy British Museum, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR, via Wikimedia Commons.

More than 3,200 years after the death of Ramesses the Great (r. 1279–1213 BCE), a large piece of his burial sarcophagus has been identified. Publishing in the journal Revue d’Égyptologie, Frédéric Payraudeau, a professor of Egyptology at Sorbonne University, has proposed that an inscribed granite fragment discovered nearly 15 years ago once belonged to the outer coffin of one of Egypt’s most famous monarchs.

Discovering Ramesses the Great

While the mummy of Ramesses II—known as Ramesses the Great and suggested by some to be the infamous pharaoh of the Exodus story—was discovered in 1881, it was not found inside its original coffin, as the body had been moved to a plain wooden coffin in antiquity to protect it from grave robbers. Now, it appears that part of the original granite sarcophagus from his burial has been identified.

Long side of the granite sarcophagus identified as that of Ramses II. Courtesy Kevin Cahail.

Discovered in a Coptic monastery in the Abydos region of central Egypt in 2009, the sarcophagus was reused by the high priest Menkheperre during the 21st Dynasty (c. 1069–943 BCE), who had much of the original hieroglyphic text written over. Despite this, Payraudeau was able to spot the telltale signs the sarcophagus originally belonged to the mighty pharaoh. “My colleagues thought that the cartouche preceded by the word ‘king’ referred to the high priest Menkheperre who ruled southern Egypt around 1000 BCE,” Payraudeau told CNRS Le Journal. “However, this cartouche actually dated from the previous engraving and therefore designated its first owner.”

While the royal cartouche was certainly a hint that something was off, it did not answer the question of who was the previous royal owner. “We see in the Book of the Gates,” continued Payraudeau, “an initiatory story reserved for kings during the time of the Ramesses, which could only indicate a royal sarcophagus. The royal cartouche bears the name of the coronation of Ramesses II, but this was masked by the state of the stone and by a second engraving, added during the reuse.”

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With these clues, Payraudeau concluded the sarcophagus must have originally belonged to none other than Ramesses II. It would not have been his only coffin, however. Like other pharaohs, Ramesses’s burial would have included three nested coffins: an inner golden one, an intermediary alabaster coffin, and finally a granite outer sarcophagus.

The inner golden coffin would have been an especially prized target for ancient grave robbers, which necessitated the transfer of the pharaoh to a wooden coffin—and even a different tomb—just a short time after his death. However, it was not only grave robbers that posed a threat; even pharaohs were known to steal the grave goods and coffins of their predecessors. Indeed, one of the coffins of Ramesses’s successor, Merneptah (r. 1213–1203 BCE), was taken from the Valley of the Kings to Tanis and reused by the later pharaoh Psusannes I (r. 1047–1001 BCE).

Ramesses II is often considered the greatest and most powerful of ancient Egypt’s pharaohs, having waged numerous military campaigns in the Levant, Nubia, Libya, and Syria. He also fought successfully against the Sea Peoples, signed the famous treaty of Kadesh with the Hittites, and, as the builder of the city Pi-Ramesses in the Nile Delta, is frequently identified as the pharaoh of the Exodus.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Intact Burial from the Reign of Ramesses II

Ramesses III in Arabia?

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BAR Jr.: Gamma Rays Halt Deterioration of Mummy of Ramesses II

When Pharaohs Ruled Jerusalem

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THE PYRAMID OF PHARAOH DJOSER (27th century B.C.E.), in Saqqara, was the first built in stone. Rooted in the tradition of monumental architecture built with mudbricks and light materials, Djoser’s pyramid complex exhibits many features developed for those materials, only “translated” into stone. This includes the pyramid itself, which consists of multiple mastabas (bench-shaped structures) piled on top of each other; hence the nickname, the Step Pyramid. Photo: Xiquinhosilva; CC BY-NC-SA.

Contrary to popular belief, the Bible does not assert that during their sojourn in Egypt the Israelites were involved in building the pyramids. Although fundamental questions remain regarding the presence of Israelites in Egypt and the Exodus—including the dating and scale—it is certain that the most impressive, stone-built pyramids of the Old Kingdom (27th–22nd century B.C.E.) predate the biblical Exodus by hundreds of years. Moreover, there is now plenty of contemporary evidence showing that the pyramids were constructed by indigenous professional builders, not enslaved foreigners.

So what is it the Bible really claims about the Israelites’ forced labor for the Pharaoh? Writing for the Spring 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, David A. Falk of the Vancouver School of Theology examines the question of Israelites in Egypt and their building activities in his article “Brick by Brick.” Falk scrutinizes the biblical account and looks for the most plausible match in ancient Egyptian architecture.

BRICK MAKING IN EGYPT. Painted on the walls of the Theban tomb of Rakhmire (mid-15th century B.C.E.), who was the Egyptian vizier (or prime minister), these realistic scenes depict slaves manufacturing mudbricks. Included are all stages of brick making (bottom, left to right): fetching of water, kneading of clay, and carrying of moistened clay to brick makers. The top register depicts (right to left): forming of the bricks using a mold, turning of formed bricks out of a mold, and leaving the bricks to dry in the sun. Straw, which is added to the clay mix as opening material, does not appear. Photo: Kairoinfo4u; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Book of Exodus makes two basic assertions: prior to the biblical Exodus, the Israelites in Egypt were forced to make mudbricks, and they built “supply cities.” In Exodus 5:6–8, we read: “Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the [Israelites], as well as their supervisors, ‘You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But you shall require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously.’” This makes it clear that the Israelites’ task was to manufacture mudbricks, which is, in less specific terms, further confirmed in Exodus 1:14: “[The Egyptians] made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor.”

WAREHOUSES OF GODS. Belonging to the mortuary temple of Ramesses II at Thebes (13th century B.C.E.), known as Ramesseum, these large mudbrick buildings were designed to store food supplies in an economy built around the cult of a pharaoh. Photo: Public domain.

Exodus 1:11 adds a rather puzzling statement: “They built supply cities, Pithom and Ra’amses, for Pharaoh.” What were these “supply [or “storage”] cities” (‘ārê (ham) miskenôṯ, in Hebrew)? The biblical name Pithom most likely stands for Per-Atum, “Estate of Atum,” which has only tentatively been identified with modern-day Tall al-Maskhutah. Ra’amses must be Per-Ramesses, “Estate of Ramesses,” the new capital of Egypt built by Ramesses II (13th century B.C.E.) near ancient Avaris. Apparently located near to one another, both cities lay in the northeast Nile Delta, where there is abundant historical evidence for West Semitic peoples starting at least in the Middle Bronze Age II (c. 2000–1570 B.C.E.).

Falk argues that these two cities cannot properly be described as “storage cities”; the Bible here more likely refers to some enormous mudbrick buildings within these cities. Falk then suggests that the term could denote a series of mudbrick depots or warehouses associated with temples. In Egyptian temples, extensive storage capacities were necessary to provide for daily offerings and the numerous personnel. In the case of royal mortuary temples, it was furthermore critical to assure that a temple would continue operating even after the king’s death.

THE EARLIEST EGYPTIAN ROYALTY chose to be buried at Abydos in southern Egypt. The extensive necropolis at desert’s edge contains royal tombs that predate the first Egyptian dynasty. The most impressive structures at Abydos, however, are the massive mudbrick enclosures identified as funerary sites for the kings of the first and second dynasties (c. 2925–c. 2650 B.C.E.), at the site known today as Shunet el-Zebib. The recessed wall pictured here belongs to the enclosure of King Khasekhemwy (c. 2780 B.C.E.). Photo: Kairoinfo4u; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Mudbrick architecture in Egypt has a very long tradition going back to the predynastic period and continuing to this day. Starting with Djoser (27th century B.C.E.), Egyptian pharaohs built their tombs and temples in stone, but most other structures continued to be built with sun-dried mudbricks and light materials, such as wood and reed. This was especially true for private houses, royal palaces, and administrative buildings associated with temples. It is therefore very likely that mudbricks manufactured by the Israelites in Egypt were meant for building temple storage facilities or workshops, which is indeed the case with the scene from the tomb of Rakhmire, where an inscription specifies that the workers are “making bricks to build anew the workshops at Karnak.”

For the full analysis of the biblical passages about the Israelite brick makers in Egypt and about the kinds of mudbrick buildings they constructed, read “Brick by Brick,” published in the Spring 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

THE CHRISTIAN NECROPOLIS OF BAGAWAT, in the Kharga Oasis, features some 260 funerary chapels built of mudbricks. Constructed between the fourth and seventh centuries C.E., they are domed, with arcades, columns, and niches decorating their exterior walls. A few chapels boast splendid interior wall paintings. The necropolis is a standing example of the lasting tradition of ancient Egyptian mortuary architecture in unbaked bricks. Photo: Kabaeh49; CC-BY-2.0.

JOSEPH’S GRANARIES. As a side story to the Israelites’ involvement with the Egyptian pyramids, we should correct another false claim. As this mosaic in a cupola of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice demonstrates, medieval Europeans believed that the biblical patriarch Joseph stored up grain (Genesis 41) in the pyramids. Dating to about 1275, this scene includes Joseph standing in front of five pyramid-shaped granaries and giving orders to the workmen collecting the sheaves. Photo: Public domain.

Subscribers: Read the full article “Brick by Brick,” by David A. Falk in the Spring 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Did Pharaoh Sheshonq Attack Jerusalem?

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Epilepsy, Tutankhamun and Monotheism

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This post first appeared in Bible History Daily in May 2020.

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Sculpture of Moses, from the 16th-century Fontana dell’Acqua Felice, in Rome. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

In the Spring 2023 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Lee M. Jefferson provided an excellent survey of how the horns of Moses (see Exodus 34:29–30, 35) were reinterpreted over the centuries. Whereas earlier readers, including Jerome, who translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, understood the phrase “the skin of his face was horned” in a positive light, perhaps even exhibiting the presence of God, with the passage of time, many later readers, especially Christians of the later Middle Ages, began to view the horns negatively, often with dire consequences for the Jews who lived within Christendom.

I would like to travel further back in time, to the original setting of Exodus 34. In that context, “horned” should be understood as having actual horns. This curious description relates to one of the main objectives of the Book of Exodus: to present Moses as Pharaoh’s equal.ⁱ

First, contrary to everything that the Bible professes—in which no person can achieve divine status—in this instance, Moses is elevated to the level of deity:

“And it will be, he [Aaron] will be to you as a mouth, and you will be to him as a god.”

(Exodus 4:16)

“Look, I have set you as a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother will be your prophet.”

(Exodus 7:1)

In my experience, most readers of the Bible have not paused sufficiently to ponder these extraordinary statements. In both verses, Moses is called an elohim (“god”) in the former instance vis-à-vis his brother Aaron and in the latter instance vis-à-vis Pharaoh.

In these two passages, Moses, the prophet par excellence, is elevated to the level of deity, while Aaron, the first high priest, is elevated to the level of prophet. The exigencies of the moment, namely the impending summit with Pharaoh (Exodus 7:10‒12), require that Moses meet with his opposite as equal. And since the pharaoh in Egypt was considered divine, God promotes Moses to the level of deity, for this singular occasion. Indeed, these passages are remarkable, for they indicate the extent to which the biblical author was willing to reflect the Egyptian background of the story. Thus, literary flavor overrides biblical theology.

(Sidebar: Those knowledgeable in military history will wish to compare the process known as “brevet promotion,” often used during the exigencies of war, to allow officers of a certain rank to command even more soldiers, now with their higher status. Famous examples include both George Custer and Joshua Chamberlain during the Civil War.)

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Both infants are hidden by their mothers (Isis and Jochebed)ⁱⁱ in papyrus baskets amongst the reeds of the Nile Delta to protect them from the machinations of those who seek the death of the baby (Seth and Pharaoh, respectively). In both stories, an emphasis is placed on the mother of the baby nursing the child. This is stated explicitly in the case of Moses’s mother in Exodus 2:7‒9, while from ancient Egypt there are numerous statuettes of Isis suckling baby Horus.

Bronze statue of the Egyptian goddess Isis with the god Horus seated on her lap. Walters Art Museum, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Most important for our present purpose is the following: Horus is the god of kingship, and Pharaoh was considered the living embodiment of Horus. So whatever story was told about Horus essentially applied to whichever Pharaoh sat upon the throne. Hence, the goal of the birth story of Moses, akin to that of Horus, is to portray the future leader of the Israelites as the equal to Pharaoh.

Most significantly, in crafting the narrative of Exodus 2, the Israelite author has subverted and undermined the core belief of ancient Egypt. As indicated, Moses has become the equivalent of Pharaoh, and Pharaoh, the guarantor of order in Egyptian society, has been transformed into Seth, the deity of chaos and disorder.

Third, in Exodus 4:4 God commands Moses, atop Mt. Horeb, to hold the staff-turned-snake by the tail, an action to be compared with the many portrayals of the young Horus holding snakes (and other animals) by the tail. Once again, so Horus, so Moses, as the latter becomes the equal to the former (and by extension to Pharaoh).

All of the above serves as the foreground for our analysis of qaran ‘or panaw (“the skin of his face was horned”) in Exodus 34:29–30. To be sure, many modern Bible translations render the verb qaran not as “was horned,” but rather as “shone” (RSV, NRSV) or “was radiant” (NIV, NJPSV). The noun qeren, from which the verb is derived, means both “horn” and “ray,” as in the rays of the sun. But the former meaning clearly predominates in the Bible, with only one possible instance of “ray” attested (Habakkuk 3:4). When we look at the verbal forms qaran, etc., we note that in the only other instance of this verb in the Bible, namely, maqren in Psalms 69:32, the meaning is clearly “be horned” (i.e., “have horns”). In fact, not until the middle of the first millennium CE (that is, perhaps 1,500 years after Exodus 34 was written) do we find the Hebrew verb qaran manifesting the meaning of “shine, be radiant.”

Support for understanding Exodus 34:29–30 as “the skin of his face was horned” derives from ancient Egyptian artwork. Two wall reliefs at the Luxor Temple depict two different pharaohs with ram’s horns on the skin of their cheeks—or more accurately, given the Egyptian penchant for profiles, a single ram’s horn on the one visible cheek. Both Amenhotep III (r. 1386–1348 BCE) and Ramesses II (r. 1290–1224 BCE) are portrayed in such fashion, with the ram’s horns no doubt representative of the power of the god Amun, who was associated with the ram in Egyptian iconography.ⁱⁱⁱ

Amenhotep III (r. 1386–1348 BCE), shown with a ram’s horn on his cheek, from a wall relief at Luxor Temple in Karnak. Photo by Lanny Bell, courtesy of the author, as published in ‘Moses as Equal to Pharaoh,’ in Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion (2006).

Once again, the Bible wishes to portray Moses as Pharaoh’s equal. Just as the facial skin of Egyptian kings was horned, so was the facial skin of the leader of the people of Israel. So Pharaoh, so Moses. At every turn, the biblical narrative directs the reader to understand Moses as the equal to his Egyptian counterpart—from the birth story in Exodus 2 to the horns in Exodus 34.

We end this essay where we began: Jerome’s translation of the Bible into Latin, known as the Vulgate. It is hard to imagine that Jerome (c. 345–420 CE) was cognizant of the Egyptian parallels, given the demise of ancient Egyptian civilization during his lifetime. Most likely, the great scholar simply was guided by his fine sense of the Hebrew language. Thus, he rendered qaran ‘or panaw (“the skin of his face was horned”) from Exodus 34:29 quite literally—and to my mind accurately—as cornuta esset facies sua (“his face was horned”), notwithstanding the slight change of “the skin of his face” to the simpler “his face.”

Western Christians throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, including both Michelangelo (1475–1564) and his papal benefactor Julius II (r. 1503–1513), read the Bible in Latin, with the expression cornuta esset facies sua well known to them. And thus, it was only natural for the great sculptor to portray Moses with horns, as an indication of the ancient prophet’s honor and prestige, as the focal point of the tomb of Julius II in the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains). Michelangelo was not the first to do so, and he also was not the last.

I end with a personal note: By sheer coincidence, during the spring of 2023, I actually was in Rome, visiting, among other places, both the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli and the Fontana dell’Acqua Felice to stand before the two famous “Moses” statues, the former by Michelangelo, the latter by Fontana. Imagine my pleasant surprise to return home, to open my copy of the Spring 2023 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, and to find the excellent article by Lee M. Jefferson, with the superb photo of the famous Michelangelo sculpture!

—

Gary Rendsburg is the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair in Jewish History at Rutgers University. He has extensively published on the Hebrew language and literature and on Hebrew manuscript studies.

Footnotes

[i] Gary A. Rendsburg, “Moses as Equal to Pharaoh,” in G.M. Beckman and T.J. Lewis, eds., Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2006), pp. 201‒219.

[ii] The mother of Moses is not named in Exodus 2, though we learn her name from Exodus 6:20.

[iii] See Lanny Bell, “Luxor Temple and the Cult of the Royal Ka,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 44 (1985), pp. 251‒294.

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The Rosetta Stone © Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0, Via Wikimedia Commons

Just over two hundred years ago, on September 14, 1822, Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832) cracked the code of the Egyptian hieroglyphic script and the language behind it. After two years of copying and studying various inscriptions, the French schoolteacher uttered the famous, “Je tiens l’affaire” (I’ve got it!), before fainting from exhaustion and excitement. The first word he could read was the royal name Ramesses. He was then able to make rapid progress, but his Egyptian Grammar appeared only posthumously. Essential to uncovering the ancient Egyptian civilization, the ability to read Egyptian language ushered a new scholarly discipline—Egyptology.

What gave Champollion the edge over his unsuccessful predecessors was the recent discovery, in 1799, of the Rosetta Stone, which contains the same text in Egyptian and Greek.

The Rosetta Stone refers to a fragmented Egyptian stela discovered near the Mediterranean port city of Rasheed (also known as Rosetta), in the western Nile Delta. Inscribed in three different languages, the famed artifact contributed significantly to the decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the language of the pharaohs. Originally set up in a temple dedicated to King Ptolemy V (r. 204–180 B.C.E.), the stela is now on display in the British Museum in London.

The chance discovery of the stela took place in July 1799, during the French occupation of Egypt. Napoleon’s army was clearing debris around the 15th-century fort known locally as Borg Rasheed, to prepare defensive positions against arriving British forces, when they found a massive block of stone with one side that was polished and completely covered with about a hundred lines of engraved writing.

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The exciting find was shipped to the Institut d’Égypte in Cairo, a scientific institution established by Napoleon to carry out research, study, and publication of Egypt’s natural and cultural riches. After their defeat, the French forfeited the stela to the victorious British. The prized find was then loaded on a ship for England in February 1802. It spent a year in the Society of Antiquaries of London, from where it was transferred to the British Museum, where it remains to the present day.

The stone, which is made of grandiorite—a hard, dark gray, volcanic rock—weighs a whopping 1,675 pounds and measures 3.7 feet tall, 2.5 feet wide, and nearly a foot thick. The stela was discovered incomplete, however, and the bottom right corner and almost one third of the top are lost, together with the relevant parts of the inscription. A modern English inscription is painted in white on either side: “Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801” on the left and “Presented by King George III” on the right side.

The preserved portion of the inscribed text gives a priestly decree commemorating the first anniversary of the coronation of Ptolemy V, in the spring of 196 B.C.E. It opens with a long list of titles and epithets of the Greek-Egyptian king, who is celebrated for his religious piety and love for Egypt. In the second section, the Egyptian priests enumerate all the benefits the king has conferred upon Egypt. The last part proclaims how the king should be honored in the temples throughout the land. The inscription closes with the command that the decree is to be engraved on stelae and publicly exhibited in temples across Egypt.

Presented in three languages (Middle Egyptian, Demotic, and Greek) in three successive bands, the text was intended to proclaim the monarch’s achievements in the sacred hieroglyphic script as well as the two administrative tongues of the empire. However, none is preserved completely, as only 14 incomplete lines of the calculated 29 original lines of hieroglyphs are extant, and many lines of the other two versions are chipped off at the right margin. The original form of the decree was Demotic, from which it was loosely translated into Greek and hieroglyphic Egyptian.

The Rosetta Stone proved to be the decisive key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. The ability to read ancient Egyptian texts unlocked a wealth of textual and historical sources related to the Bible, including the famed Merneptah Stele, which furnished the earliest mention of a people called Israel, and numerous other accounts that linked Egyptian and biblical history.

Among the many recent books on the subject are the Egyptologist John Ray’s The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt (2007) and two popular books: Jed Z. Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz’s The Riddle of the Rosetta (2020) and The Writing of the Gods (2021), by Edward Dolnick. The Digital Rosetta Stone Project offers digital tools to engage with the artifact.

Read more in Bible History Daily:

Egypt Unveils 100 Sarcophagi

Egyptian Papyrus Reveals Israelite Psalms

Ancient Egyptian Beer Brewery

Read more in the BAS Library:

Egyptian Papyrus Sheds New Light on Jewish History

Coptic: Egypt’s Christian Language

Exodus Evidence: An Egyptologist Looks at Biblical History

This article was first published in Bible History Daily on September 14, 2022.

The post The Rosetta Stone: Key to Egyptian Hieroglyphs appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.