The Exodus in the Qur’an, the Bible, and History (Part 8): The Pharaoh’s Claim to Divinity

One of the major narrative differences between the Qur’anic account of the Exodus and the Biblical one is the Qur’an’s emphasis on the Pharaoh’s claim to divinity.  The Qur’an narrates:

Then he gathered (his people) and proclaimed, “I am your Lord, Most High.”  So Allah seized with the exemplary punishment of the hereafter and the former. (79:23-25) 

 Pharaoh said, “O my chief!  I do not know of any god for you other than me” (28:39)[1]

Today it is common knowledge that the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt claimed divine status, so the statements of Pharaoh that the Qur’an reports here come as no surprise.  However, this element of the narrative is unique to the Qur’an’s account of the Exodus.  The Pharaoh’s claim to divinity does not play an important role in the biblical text, and in fact, lacks any explicit mention of it at all.  This is also the case with the retellings of the Exodus story in the Jewish pseudepigrapha (extrabiblical writings between 300 BCE and 300 CE), such as the Book of Jubilees, and likewise (as far as I am aware) with rabbinic accounts.  The Pharaoh’s claim to divinity is distinctive to the Qur’an’s account; it lacks any biblical, Jewish, or Christian precedents.  Yet, it is also historically accurate:

By the early New Kingdom, deification of the living king had become an established practice, and the living king could himself be worshipped and supplicated for aid as a god.[2]

Two steles, 410 and 1079 of the Hildesheim Museum, each describe Ramesses II as “Ramesses-meryamun, the God,” and the Papyrus Anastasi II praises Ramesses as “god,” “herald,” “vizier,” and “mayor.”  The Great Temple at Abu Simbel (see the picture in the part 7) was built by Ramesses II to honor himself.  The entrance of the temple is flanked by four colossal statues of Ramesses II, which dwarf the statue of the god Re-Horakhty located above it.[3]   The building also contains a relief that depicts Ramesses II making a sacrifice to his divine self:

Relief in the Great Temple at Abu Simbel of Ramesses II making an offering to his divine self.

Courtesy of Islamic-Awareness.org.

It must be kept in mind that Egypt had not been ruled by a pharaoh for more than six centuries before the Qur’an was revealed.  The last independent rulers of Egypt were Cleopatra and her son Caesarion, who reigned until 30 BCE, after which Egypt was taken over by Rome.  While the title of “pharaoh” continued to be appropriated by a number of Roman emperors, the title appears to have died off well before the Christianization of the Roman Empire, and certainly none of the Christian emperors had claimed divinity.

The Qur’an’s reference to the Pharaoh’s claim to divinity is another historically accurate piece of information that is distinctive to its narrative of the Exodus, and is not mentioned in the earlier known biblical or extrabiblical versions of the story.

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[1] This is āya is not a denial of the polytheism of Egyptians during the time of Pharaoh, but simply expresses Pharaoh's arrogance.  7:127 affirms that Pharaoh and his chiefs recognized a multiplicity of gods: “The chiefs among the people of Pharaoh said, ‘Will you leave Moses and his people to cause corruption in the land and abandon you and your gods?’”

[2] D. P. Silverman, “Divinities And Deities In Ancient Egypt.” Religion In Ancient Egypt: Gods Myths, And Personal Practice. Ed. B.E. Shafer: London, Routledge, 1991. 64.  Qtd. in “The Identification Of Pharaoh During The Time Of Moses.” Islamic-Awareness.org, 4 Jan. 2012.

[3] See “The Identification Of Pharaoh During The Time Of Moses.”  Islamic-Awareness.org, 4 Jan. 2012.

The Exodus in the Qur’an, the Bible, and History (Part 7): “Pharaoh of the Awtād”

In the previous article, we saw that the distinct evidences from both the Bible and the Qur’an point firmly to an identification of the Pharaoh of the Exodus with Ramesses II. 

One element that is distinctive to the Qur’an’s narrative of Pharaoh is that it describes him several times as “Pharaoh of the Awtād":

The people of Noah and ʿĀd, and Pharaoh of the awtād rejected [the messengers] before them. And Thamūd, and the people of Lot…” (38:12-13)

Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with ʿĀd; the city of Iram of the lofty pillars, the like of which had never been created in the lands; Thamūd who cut the rocks in the valley; and Pharaoh of the awtād…? (89:6-10)

Muslim commentators differed over the meaning of awtād (singular watad) in this epithet, since the word is capable of a variety of meanings.  The most common interpretation is “stakes,” on which Pharaoh crucified people.  However Fatoohi and Al-Dargazelli argue that awtād is used in the Qur’an not to mean “stakes” or “pegs,” but tall structures.[1]  This is the interpretation of “Pharaoh of the Awtād” that al-Qurṭubī relates from Ibn ‘Abbās and ad-Daḥḥāk, in his commentary of 38:12:

Ibn ‘Abbās said, “It means the owner of sturdy construction.”  ad-Daḥḥāk said, “He owned many buildings.  Buildings are called awtād.”  

This makes the most sense in light of 89:6-10, quoted above, because the other nations mentioned are also identified with the construction of lofty, firm buildings.

There is no more appropriate description for Rameses II.  Of all the pharaohs of Egypt, he is the one most famous for his ambitious building projects.  Peter A. Clayton writes:

His genuine building achievements are on a Herculean scale. He added to the great temples at Karnak and Luxor, completed his father Seti’s mortuary temple at Gourna (Thebes) and also his Abydos temple, and built his own temple nearby at Abydos. On the west bank at Thebes he constructed a giant mortuary temple, the Ramesseum. Inscriptions in the sandstone quarries at Gebel el-Silsila record at least 3000 workmen employed there cutting stone for the Ramesseum alone. Other major mortuary temples rose in Nubia at Beit el-Wali, Gerf Hussein, Wadi es-Sebua, Derr and even as far south as Napata.[2]

Similarly, Kitchen states:

certainly in his building-works for the gods the entire length of Egypt and Nubia, Ramesses II surpassed not only the Eighteenth Dynasty but every other period in Egyptian history. In that realm, he certainly fulfilled the dynasty’s aims to satiety.[3]

E.P. Uphill states,

Per Ramesses was probably the vastest and most costly royal residence ever erected by the hand of man. As can now be seen its known palace and official centre covered an area of at least four square miles, and its temples were in scale with this, a colossal assemblage forming perhaps the largest collection of chapels built in the pre-classical world by a single ruler at one time.[4]  

The unique feature about Per Ramesses is that it is the only city of imperial size in the ancient near east, rivalling Heliopolis, Memphis and Thebes in splendour, known to have been entirely planned, built and fully completed under one King.[5]

However, most of what Ramesses II built failed to last.  The city of Pi-Ramesses was abandoned in c. 1130 BCE, after which it was dismantled.  The building materials were used to build the city of Tanis, which now lies in ruins, just as the Qur'an says:

We destroyed what Pharaoh and his people used to build and what they used to erect. (7:137)

Fatoohi and Al-Dargazelli also add the following observation:

The fact that the expression ‘Pharaoh of the awtād’ occurs [in sūra 89] where Thamud’s practice of building houses in mountains is mentioned may suggest that this title also implicitly refers to the two temples at Abu Simbel in Nubia which were cut in the living rock of the mountainside. The first of these, the ‘Great Temple,’ is a huge building with two pairs of colossal seated figures of Ramesses II, each 18 meter high, flanking its entrance. These temples are considered to be Ramesses II's greatest building achievement.[6]

The Great Temple of Abu Simbel.  For more on the temples of Abu Simbel, see “The Identification Of Pharaoh During The Time Of Moses.”  Islamic-Awareness.org, 4 Jan. 2012.

Against this historical background, one can truly appreciate the following āya:

Pharaoh was most surely lofty in the land and most surely he was of the extravagant (musrifīn). (10:83)

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[1] See Fatoohi and Al-Dargazelli, 107-111.

[2] Clayton, P. A. (1994). Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign ‑By‑Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson: Slovenia.  Cited in Fatoohi and Al-Dargazelli, 110.  Emphasis added.

[3] Kitchen, K. A. (1982). Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II King of Egypt, Aris & Phillips ltd: Warminster.  Cited in Fatoohi and Al-Dargazelli, 110.  Emphasis added.

[4] E. P. Uphill, “Pithom And Raamses: Their Location And Significance,” Journal Of Near Eastern Studies, 1968, Volume 27, Number 4, p. 299.  Qtd. in “The Identification Of Pharaoh During The Time Of Moses.”  Islamic-Awareness.org, 4 Jan. 2012.  Accessed 12 Feb. 2015.

[5] E. P. Uphill, The Temples Of Per Ramesses, 1984, Aris & Phillips, Warminster: England, p. 228.  Qtd. in “The Identification of Pharaoh.”

[6] Fatoohi and Al-Dargazelli, 110.

The Exodus in the Qur’an, the Bible, and History (Part 6): The Identity of the Pharaoh

The Bible provides several details that historians can use to identify the pharaoh of the Exodus.  Interestingly, as we will see, the Qur’an also gives separate indications that lead to the same conclusion.

First of all it is important to establish the general time period of the Exodus.  It is almost universally agreed that the Exodus, if it happened, had to have occurred during the New Kingdom period.  Here I will mention three of the main reasons for this:

1. The enslavement of Semitic people and their exploitation as forced laborers in construction projects was an innovation of the New Kingdom period (c. 1540-1170 BCE).  During this period, Egypt’s sovereignty extended to Syria and Canaan (Palestine), and massive numbers of Semitic prisoners were brought into Egypt as slaves.  While foreign slaves had been used in Egypt before the New Kingdom period, they served domestic roles in large households or cultic roles in temples.  Only during the New Kingdom period were they used as forced laborers in building bricks and constructing buildings and cities.[1]

2. The biblical account states that the Israelites were used in the building of the store-city Ramses (Exod. 1:11).  Historians and archaeologists identify this with the city of Pi-Ramesses, where the Pharaoh Seti I (r. 1295/1290-1279 BCE) built his summer palace, and which his son Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BCE) expanded it into a great city and made his capital.  Along with the biblical Pithom (Exod. 1:11), identified as Per-Atum, the city was located in the eastern Nile Delta, which must therefore be the region in which the Israelites were located.  Pi-Ramesses continued to thrive as the royal capital only until the reign of Ramesses VI (r. 1143-1136 BCE), when it was abandoned.[2]  Based on this evidence, the Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt must have taken place in the thirteenth or twelfth centuries BCE.  Richard Hess is even more precise.  He writes,

Again, only in the thirteenth century B.C. was it known for the pharaoh of Egypt to have his capital in the eastern Delta region, the only region in Egypt that would allow for Moses and Aaron to visit pharaoh and return on the same day to the oppressed Israelites working on the cities of Pithom and Ramesses.[3]

Therefore, the story of Moses fits remarkably well with this historical context, and in no other.  Moreover, as Kitchen and Hoffmeier point out, because the city was abandoned in the 1130s BCE, it could not have been known to the author(s) of the Book of Exodus if they were recording a made-up story many centuries later.  They could only have received it as an authentic detail preserved in the memory of an actual historical Exodus from Egypt.

3. The first explicit mention of Israel in the archaeological record is in a stone slab (called a stele) erected by Merneptah (r. 1213-1203 BCE), the son and successor of Ramesses II.  In it, Merneptah boasts of his military forays in Canaan and among the vanquished peoples he mentions Israel.  Merneptah’s Stele dates to c. 1208 BCE, and indicates that the Israelites were already located in or near the region of Canaan by this time.  The name Israel is written with a hieroglyphic determinative signifying a “people” rather than a territory or city-state, unlike the other nations.  This indicates that Israel was still only a tribal entity, and had not yet matured into a city-state.[4]

For these reasons, most historians accept Ramesses II as the pharaoh during the time of the Exodus.  This is also the view of Kitchen and Hoffmeier.

Although the Qur’anic story modifies the biblical one in several relevant details, it only supports—rather than contradicts—this identification:

First, while the biblical account distinguishes between the pharaoh during Moses’ youth (who in this case would be Seti I) and another after his escape to Midian (Ramesses II), the Qur’an does not make this distinction.  Instead, it identifies the pharaoh during Moses’ childhood and after his call to prophethood as the same pharaoh.  As Fatoohi and Al-Dargazelli point out, this requires that the pharaoh of the Qur’anic exodus autonomously ruled Egypt for at least around forty years.[5]  The only pharaoh in Egyptian history who had such a lengthy reign as an absolute monarch was Ramesses II, who ruled for about sixty-six years.[6]  Therefore, the Qur’an provides a separate indication for identifying the Pharaoh of the Exodus as Ramesses II.  This argument may not be conclusive, since the Qur'an often adapts details of its stories to make them more accessible to contemporary audiences.  Nonetheless, it points in the same direction as the rest of the evidence.

Second, the Qur’an refers to Pharaoh several times with the unique title of “Pharaoh of the Awtād.”  This will be the subject of the next article.  In the subsequent articles, we will also see how other details the Qur’an gives are consistent with the identification of Ramesses II.

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[1] Kitchen, 247.

[2] Hoffmeier, 117; Kitchen, 256.

[3] Hess, Richard S. “Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed” (Review).  Denver Journal 4 (2001): Denver Seminary, Mar. 2001. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.

[4] Kitchen, 451.

[5] This figure is an estimate based on Qur’anic indications about “The time that Pharaoh ruled before Moses’ birth…Moses’ age when he left Egypt to Midian…The time that he stayed in Midian [and]…The length of his second sojourn in Egypt after returning from Midian” (Fatoohi and Al-Dargazelli, 101).  The pharaoh Tuthmosis III ruled nominally for forty-six years, but assumed the throne as a mere child and only became an absolute ruler after the death of Hatshepsut in 1483 BCE, more than two decades later.  Similarly Amenhotep III ruled nominally for thirty-seven years, but was also only a child when he assumed the throne and ruled autonomously for a shorter period of time.  See Fatoohi and Al-Dargazelli, 101-106. 

[6] Fatoohi and Al-Dargazelli, 105.

The Exodus in the Qur'an, the Bible, and History (Part 5): The Adoption of Moses

From here onwards, we will be looking at historical gems in the Qur’an’s telling of the Exodus story.

In the Qur’an and the Bible, the story of Moses begins with his mother hiding him as a baby, in order to protect him from the Pharaoh’s systematic infanticide of the Hebrew newborn males.  When Moses’ mother fears she can no longer keep him, she places him in a chest in the Nile river.  The Qur’an indicates that she did this according to divine inspiration (28:7).  A female member of the royal family—Pharaoh’s daughter in the Bible, his wife in the Qur’an—takes pity on the baby Moses.  The Qur’an reports that she felt special affection for him:

And the wife of Pharaoh said, “A comfort for the eye for me and for you!  Do not kill him.  Perhaps he may benefit us, or we can adopt him as a son/child (walad)” (28:9)

There are two things about this āya that are interesting from a historical perspective.  First, it is widely agreed that the name Moses is of Egyptian origin, meaning “son” or “child.”  This word frequently appeared in theophoric Egyptian names during the New Kingdom period (c. 1540-1170 BCE), such as Thutmose (“son of Thoth”), Ptahmose (“son of Ptah”), and Ramesses (“son of Ra”), but also occurred as a name by itself.  The word walad used in this āya is a precise translation of the Egyptian word “Moses.”[1]  This contrasts with the folk etymology of the name Moses in the Hebrew Bible, which says Pharaoh’s daughter named him Moses “ ‘because’, she said, ‘I drew him out of the water’” (Exod. 2:10).  The Hebrew word Moses (Mōsheh) is not in the passive (“drawn out”) but the active (“draws out”).

Secondly, the wife of Pharaoh in fact suggested two possibilities to him: “perhaps he may benefit us, or we can adopt him as a child.”  By suggesting “perhaps he may benefit us,” she  also seems to have had in mind making Moses an attendant of the royal court.  Only in this way could he both serve them and be a coolness of the eye for them.  The upbringing of a foreign boy in the service of the Egyptian court might seem improbable, but it is actually a well-attested phenomenon during the New Kingdom period.  Kitchen writes,

Exod. 2:10 notes the full adoption of the boy [Moses] by his princess patron; that implies his becoming a member of the ruling body of courtiers, officials, and attendants that served the pharaoh as his government leaders under the viziers, treasury chiefs, etc.  Such a youth would need to be fully fluent in Egyptian (not just his own West Semitic tongue); so he would be subjected to the Egyptian educational system, learning the hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts.  This is typical enough during the New Kingdom, especially in the Nineteenth (Ramesside) Dynasty of the thirteenth century.  One may cite a papyrus from the Fayum Harim (under Sethos II, grandson of Ramesses II), in which a leading lady writes to the king: “Useful is my Lord’s action in sending me people to be taught and trained to perform this important task…For those here are grown-up children, people like those my Lord sent, able to act, able to receive by training.  They are foreigners like those brought to us under Ramesses II your good [fore]father, and they would say, ‘We were quite a number in the households of the notables,’ and could be trained to do all they were told to do.”

     In the Fayum, these youths may have been set to weaving rather than school; but the attitude expressed applies across the board—and its outcome is the considerable number of foreigners (especially Semites and Hurrians) who served at court and beyond.  These included the personal cupbearers of Pharaoh (who became his right-hand men, in conducting royal enterprises like temple building, stone quarrying, gem mining, etc.), directors, and scribes of the royal seal bearer, court herald, high steward of the chief royal memorial temples, generals, and so on.  A Moses would be simply one among many.[2]

Therefore, the adoption and upbringing of even a Hebrew boy as a member of the royal Egyptian court fits in remarkably well with the evidence from New Kingdom Egyptian records.

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[1] Kitchen objects that the Hebrew Mōshe does not derive from ancient Egyptian because the sibilant s in Egyptian toponyms (as Msi) does not change into to sh when they enter Hebrew (as Mōshe).  However other scholars have noted that personal names exhibit greater fluidity once they enter the new language, and Griffiths records examples in which the Egyptian sibilant s changed into Hebrew sh.  In any case, even Kitchen does grants that the naming of Moses involved some wordplay with the Egyptian Msi.  See Hoffmeier, 140-142.

[2] Kitchen, 297.