Pharaohs in the Bible


The Bible makes reference to various pharaohs of Egypt. These include unnamed pharaohs in events described in the Torah, as well as several later named pharaohs, some of whom were historical or can be identified with historical pharaohs.

Unnamed pharaohs

In the Book of Genesis

states that Abram moved to Egypt to escape a period of famine in Canaan. Abram worries that the unnamed Pharaoh will kill him and take away his wife and half-sister Sarai, so Abram tells her to say only that she is his sister. They are eventually summoned to meet Pharaoh, but God sends plagues because he wishes to marry her and she is already married. Discovering that Sarai is also Abram's wife, he releases her and orders Abram to take his belongings and return to Canaan.
Genesis 37–50 narrates that Joseph, son of Jacob, was sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt, appointed by another, unnamed Pharaoh as vizier of Egypt, and later permitted to bring his father, his brothers, and their families from Canaan to live in the Land of Goshen in the eastern Nile Delta around what is now Faqous.
In the Book of Exodus, the Israelites, who are the descendants of Jacob's sons, are living in Goshen under a new Pharaoh, who oppresses them. He forces them to work long hours to build Pithom and Pi-Ramesses, making mortar and baking bricks. He also issues a decree to kill their newborn males to reduce their numbers due to concerns about their growing population. Shiphrah and Puah try to prevent this, to no avail.
Moses, a Levite, is saved from this decree by his mother, who instructs his sister Miriam to watch over him after he is placed in a reed basket in the Nile. He is discovered and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. Miriam asks the princess if she would like an Israelite woman to help nurse the child, and returns with Moses' mother, who is then able to raise her child under royal protection. Later, Moses is returned to Pharaoh's daughter and raised as part of the royal household. Rabbinic literature identifies the Pharaoh of the Exodus as one of the four men who pretended to be gods.

Hypotheses on identity

Numerous Pharaohs have been proposed as contemporary with the Exodus. The following list is comprehensive and ordered chronologically by when the pharaoh ruled rather than on the plausibility of the identification itself:
  • Khufu : Some connect Haman with Hemiunu, thereby placing the Exodus during the reign of Khufu. They extend the biblical chronology to place the Exodus within his reign, during which both Jericho and Ai experienced destruction.
  • Pepi I : Emmanuel Anati has argued that the Exodus should be placed between the 24th and the 21st century BC and that Pepi I should be identified as the pharaoh of the Exodus. This theory has not gained acceptance and has received strong criticism from Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein and American Egyptologist James K. Hoffmeier.
  • Merenre : Gerald Aardsma proposed that the Exodus occurred in 2450 BC by extending the 480 years mentioned in 1 Kings 6:1 to 1,480 years, arguing that the figure of 480 years was a scribal corruption. He used his own chronology, which places 6th dynasty in the 25th century BC, and identified the pharaoh of the Exodus as Merenre Nemtyemsaf II. He connects the destruction of Jericho, which occurred in the 24th century BC, and that of Ai, also dated to the 24th century BC, with Joshua's Conquest.
  • Dedumose II : Though Rohl's hypothesis that Exodus occurred during the Middle Kingdom follows the Samaritans' chronology, according to which the Israelites settled in Canaan in the 17th century BC, Rohl shortened the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt by almost 300 years with his New Chronology. As a result, the synchronisms with the biblical narrative results in the Second Intermediate Period would indicate Dedumose II was Pharaoh during the Exodus. Rohl's chronological revisions have been rejected by the vast majority of Egyptologists.
  • Ahmose I : Several Church Fathers identified Ahmose I, who reconquered lower Egypt from the Hyksos, rulers of Canaanite origin, as the pharaoh of the Exodus, based on Herodotus, Manetho, Josephus and other classical authors' identification of the Hyksos with the Hebrews.
  • Hatshepsut : Diodorus Siculus identified the Jews with the Hyksos and identified the pharaoh of the Exodus with Queen Hatshepsut. However, the biblical story of the Exodus repeatedly refers to pharaoh as a man.
  • Thutmose II : Alfred Edersheim proposes in Old Testament Bible History that Thutmose II is best qualified to be the pharaoh of Exodus because he had a brief, prosperous reign that suddenly collapsed without a legitimate heir. His widow Hatshepsut then became first regent, before becoming Pharaoh herself. Edersheim states that Thutmose II is the only pharaoh's mummy to display cysts, which he suggests as possible evidence of plagues that spread through the Egyptian and Hittite Empires at that time.
  • Thutmose III : His reign corresponds with the Masoretic Text of when the 1 Kings account claims the Exodus occurred. His oldest son, and presumptive heir, also died as a child for unknown reasons, in keeping with the Exodus account of the final plague.
  • Amenhotep II : Amenhotep II claimed to have brought tens of thousands of slaves from the Levant to Egypt. Associates for Biblical Research asserts that these slaves were taken to compensate for the loss of Jewish slaves as a result of the Exodus. Amenhotep II was not the firstborn son of his father, Thutmose III, consistent with the Exodus pharaoh surviving the death of the firstborn.
  • Thutmose IV : Wayne A. Mitchell and David F. Lappin argued in the book "Thutmose IV as the Exodus Pharaoh: Chronological and Astronomical Considerations" that Thutmose IV is the most likely candidate.
  • Akhenaten : In his book Moses and Monotheism, Sigmund Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest of Akhenaten who was forced to leave Egypt, along with his followers, following the pharaoh's death. Eusebius identified the pharaoh of the Exodus with a king called "Acencheres", who may be identified with Akenhaten.
  • Ramesses I : Ahmed Osman identified Ramesses I as the pharaoh of the Exodus in his controversial argument about the identity of the Egyptian official Yuya.
  • Ramesses II : Ramesses II, or Ramesses the Great, is the most common figure for the Exodus pharaoh as Rameses is mentioned in the Bible as a place name. Although the Beisan steles of Ramesses II mentions two conquered peoples who came to "make obeisance to him" in his city of Pi-Ramesses, the text mentions neither the building of the city nor, as some have written, the Israelites or Hapiru. However, many confessional scholars today do not subscribe to a late date for the Exodus and therefore hold that he lived far too late to be the Exodus pharaoh. Despite this, most scholars consider that the story of the Exodus is set in the 13th century BCE, and that the pharaoh referred to in the narrative is Ramesses II. This is mainly because there is a significant lack of evidence for an Israelite presence in Canaan before that century, because several place names in the Torah correspond to that period, and because the mention of certain materials, such as iron—though not in the Exodus narrative itself but elsewhere in the Torah and in the Judges Period—align more accurately with that historical context.
  • Merneptah : Isaac Asimov in Guide to the Bible makes a case for Merneptah to be the pharaoh of the Exodus. Recently, Semiticist Richard C. Steiner defended Merneptah as the exodus pharaoh, noting that the events of Numbers 44 coincide with the reference to Israel in the Merneptah Stele.
  • Setnakhte : Igor P. Lipovsky and Israel Knohl make a case for Setnakhte to be the pharaoh of the Exodus.
  • Ramesses III : Gary A. Rendsburg, Baruch Halpern and Manfred Bietak make a case for Ramesses III as the pharaoh of the Exodus.
  • Bakenranef : Tacitus writes in his Histories that Bakenranef had expelled the Jews from Egypt because they suffered from a horrible disease and because he was instructed to do so by an oracle of the god Amun. Lysimachus of Alexandria, quoted by Josephus in Against Apion, also identifies the pharaoh of the Exodus with Bakenranef.
  • Ramses : Manetho and Chaeremon of Alexandria, both quoted by Josephus in Against Apion, state that the Jews were expelled from Egypt by a pharaoh named "Ramses", son of another pharaoh named "Amenophis". It is unclear which pharaoh this could be, since no pharaoh named Ramses had a predecessor named Amenophis.
  • Some Arabian historians such as Tabari have cited the legendary Al-Walid ibn Mus'ab as being the pharoh during Moses' adulthood.

    In the Books of Kings

In, it is narrated that to seal an alliance, the pharaoh of Egypt gave a daughter in marriage to Solomon. The same ruler later captured the city of Gezer and gave it to Solomon as well. No name is given for the pharaoh, and some hypotheses have been proposed:
  • Horemheb : David Rohl's 1995 A Test of Time identified Horemheb as the Pharaoh who destroyed Gezer and later gave it to Solomon, together with one of his daughters as a wife. When Horemheb took Gezer he was not yet the ruler, but was a military commander serving under Tutankhamun. However, he became Pharaoh not long after, and Tutankhamun died too young to have left any marriageable daughters. In any case, Rohl's claim has been rejected by the vast majority of Egyptologists.
  • Siamun : is the most commonly proposed candidate for this role.
  • Psusennes II : the Catholic Encyclopedia sees him as the best candidate. Edward Lipiński also supports this idea.
  • Shoshenq I : Edward Lipiński dated the destruction of Gezer to the late 10th century rather than earlier, and suggested that its conqueror was Shoshenq I of the 22nd Dynasty.