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The fact that Egyptian records do seem to refer to people and events similar to those found in the Old Testament has led a number of scholars, over the past fifty years, to suggest that a faulty chronology has caused a “mismatch” in the histories of the two peoples. Scholars such as Immanuel Velikovsky, Peter James and David Rohl have all subscribed to this solution and have each produced alternative chronologies which, they argue, better fit the picture. And yet, intriguing though the arguments presented by these writers may be, none of the solutions they have offered has answered all the questions, and their proposals have generally been rejected by the academic community.

Can the problem ever be resolved?

I believe that it can; but in order to do so we must abandon all preconceptions about chronology, and take a broad view of the problem. When we do that, two points of great importance stand out:

(a) Almost everything in Genesis, from the time of Abraham, and everything in Exodus, relates to Egypt.

(b) The above two books are concerned with major events. Nothing in either Genesis or Exodus relates simply to the affairs of an “obscure band of Semitic shepherds”. So, for example, the story of Joseph, which takes up a third of Genesis, emphasizes again and again that the patriarch was regarded by the Egyptians themselves as the greatest and most renowned seer who ever lived. If there is any truth in the story, Joseph must occupy a central position in Egyptian history. Similarly, the Exodus, which followed just four generations later, is described as a catastrophic event, an event which saw the forces of nature unleashed, a darkness envelop the earth, and a pharaoh drowned in the sea. If there is any truth in the story, the Exodus must have had a major impact on Egyptian civilization.

Bearing the above in mind, the task of identifying Joseph and the Exodus in Egyptian tradition becomes, I suggest, much easier. But before proceeding, I wish to emphasize one more point: Everything, absolutely everything, about the Patriarch epoch, the epoch of Abraham, Joseph and Moses, places it firmly in the earliest period of Egyptian history. I have examined this question is some depth in my Genesis of Israel and Egypt, and space does not permit a detailed look at the evidence here. Suffice to say that the Patriarch narratives are full of references to cultural and religious practices which point firmly to the Early Dynastic Age. Among the most notable of these are: (a) Human sacrifice (mentioned in the Abraham story and the birth legend of Moses); (b) Religious use of ziggurats and pyramids (Jacob’s “stairway to heaven”, at the top of which was the “house of God”.); (c) Mention of cosmic catastrophes (In Abraham, Joseph and Moses narratives); (d) References to Cosmic Pillar or Tower, and its destruction (In Abraham narrative).

It is in fact with Abraham that Hebrew history first connects with Egypt – and the connection was established, it appears, right at the beginning of the histories of the two peoples. This, again, is a question I have examined in depth in Genesis of Israel and Egypt, and the amount of relevant material makes it impossible to do the topic justice in a few sentences. Briefly, however, we note the striking phallic associations of both Abraham and Menes, the first pharaoh. The name Abraham actually means “father of many”, and the Patriarch initiates the custom of circumcision, whilst the Egyptian Menes (or Mena or Min) clearly takes his name from the phallic god Min, who was also associated with circumcision and was perhaps the most important deity in Egypt at the beginning of the First Dynasty. Similarly, Jewish legend recalls that Abraham entered Egypt during the reign of the first pharaoh, and emphasizes that, when he arrived, the Egyptians were virtual barbarians, and to the Patriarch went the credit of teaching them the rudiments of civilization. (See Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews). This is dramatically confirmed by the evidence of archaeology, which has revealed a culture-bearing migration from Mesopotamia to Egypt just before the beginning of the First Dynasty. Much has been written about this Asiatic settlement in the Land of the Nile, and ever since the time of the great Flinders Petrie it has been accepted that pharaohnic Egyptian civilisation was established by immigrant culture-bearers from Mesopotamia. Yet these immigrants are never connected with the Abraham tribe because the latter are conventionally supposed to have come to Egypt a thousand years later.

If Abraham then was a contemporary of Menes, the first pharaoh, this too would suggest that the Patriarch epoch belongs squarely in the Early Dynastic Age, and veritable library of evidence proves this to be correct. Such being the case, it simplifies the search for the next major figure associated with Egypt: the Patriarch Joseph.

About two centuries after Menes, Egyptian history tells us of a wise man named  Imhotep, the greatest and most celebrated of all Egyptian seers, who solved the crisis of a seven-year famine by interpreting pharaoh Djoser’s dream. In precisely the same way, biblical history tells us that, about two centuries after Abraham, a young Hebrew seer named Joseph became vizier to the pharaoh after solving the crisis of a seven-year famine by interpreting the king’s dream.

Removing a thousand years from Egyptian chronology there seems to have the effect of making a remarkable match between the histories of the two neighbouring peoples. And the matches continue through subsequent centuries.

About three or four generations after Imhotep, the Third Dynasty came to an end in somewhat mysterious circumstances, and the new line of rulers which replaced it embarked upon the most astonishing and spectacular building programme the world has ever seen. This was the Pyramid Age, the epoch of the mighty monuments of Giza, the wonder of the ages which, even today, defy the ingenuity of scientists and engineers in their attempts to explain how they were raised. These structures were not built as tombs, as both ancient tradition (in Herodotus and Diodorus) and archaeology, make perfectly clear. What then was their purpose?

The capstone at the top of the Great Pyramid was originally covered in gold leaf, so that, as Ra-Atum the sun rose in the morning, his first rays would strike the burnished surface and send beams of light throughout the land, like a mighty lighthouse. That the pyramids were connected in some way or other with the cult of the sun-god is evident also from the content of the Pyramid Texts, which were inscribed on the inner chambers of the smaller pyramids of Dynasties 5 and 6. These tell of a mysterious battle between the gods, of the forces of light and darkness; of a temporary victory of darkness, followed by a triumphant rebirth of the light of Ra-Atum. There is mention too of the death of the “first-born”.

Could these texts refer to the cosmic events of the Exodus? Biblical history tells us that about three or four generations after Joseph, Egypt was struck by a terrible catastrophe, one of the most terrifying features of this episode was the darkness which, for a time, enveloped the earth. Could it be that the pyramids of Giza were built in celebration – an offering to the gods in thanksgiving for the rebirth and reappearance of the sun, Ra-Atum, after the days of darkness? If such is the case, then Sneferu, the founder of the Fourth Dynasty, must have been a contemporary of Moses. And sure enough, a legend from his time tells of a magician who parted the waters of a sacred lake; whilst a seer of his age, the prophet Neferty, spoke of a future catastrophe, during which the world would again be plunged in darkness and humanity decimated.

Sneferu was fondly remembered by later generations of Egyptians, who saw him as a paragon of virtue: a doughty warrior who saved the country from invasion by the tribes of the desert, and a wise lawgiver who established peace and justice in the land. This sounds very much like how the Israelites remembered Moses, and to seal the synchronism we find that Sneferu’s father-in-law Huni, last pharaoh of Dynasty 3, was also known as Ka-nefer-ra – a name which identifies him with Khenepheres, whom Artapanus of Alexandria identified as the pharaoh of the Oppression.

To say that the synchronisms between Egypt and Israel during the first three dynasties are precise is therefore almost an understatement: they form, almost, two matching pieces of a jigsaw. It would be difficult to imagine a more precise correlation. It is true, of course, that the characters and events we meet in the Egypt record are not viewed in the same light as in the biblical. But this is entirely to be expected. The Egyptians were concerned with their narrative, their story; the Hebrews were concerned with theirs. That Imhotep was viewed by the Egyptians as an Egyptian hero is natural. That they saw the Exodus catastrophe as a terrible war among the gods and not an intervention of the Hebrew god on the latter’s behalf is also to be expected. How could they have viewed it any other way? The departure, in the midst of a general calamity, of a band of slaves, would have been among the least of their concerns. Yet the truth of the biblical account is confirmed by the Egyptians in the most dramatic way possible. The Book of Exodus insisted that the Ten Plagues marked a pivotal event in Egyptian history. And the Egyptians confirmed the truth of this by building, in its aftermath, the greatest monuments the world has ever seen!

If all this is correct, then we are involved in a dramatic shortening of ancient chronology. Other writers, such as those named above (Velikovsky, James, Rohl, etc), were on the right track; but they failed to take things far enough: not even they dreamed that Egyptian history could be wrong by a thousand years. Yet when the thousand years that separate Menes from Abraham, Imhotep from Joseph, and the Pessimistic Texts from Moses are removed, the histories of the two neighbouring peoples fit together in a most dramatic way.

Consider the following, which conventional wisdom requires us to believe:

How the histories of Egypt and Israel became distorted in this way is a topic I have examined in detail in my Ages in Alignment series, recently published in New York. The confusion arose for very understandable reasons, and, once there, could not be uprooted from the textbooks.

If all of this is correct, it has implications no less far reaching for the histories of all the Mediterranean and European peoples. Ultimately, all of them get their chronologies from Egypt. If the Pyramid Age of Egypt needs to be brought forward by a thousand years and placed after the Exodus, then so too does the Megalith Age of Western Europe. This means, among other things, that great monuments such as Stonehenge, which British tradition linked to Merlin and the Arthurian legend, may well indeed have been constructed by early Druid priests, and that the monument is most probably the origin of the “Round Table” story. This in turn would imply that Arthur was not a medieval king, but an early Celtic deity; Artos, the Bear: a Hercules-figure originally clad in a bearskin and carrying a magical bow and a club of oak.

Emmet Sweeney’s books, Empire of Thebes (2006); The Pyramid Age (2007); The Genesis of Israel and Egypt (2008); and Ramessides, Medes and Persians (2008), all published by Algora, New York, are available on order from any good bookstore, or from the publishers or via Amazon online