The Exodus. Day 5, Who Was Pharaoh's Daughter?

Today we're going to talk about who Pharaoh's daughter may have been because this gives us some clues about who the king of Egypt was when Moses was born and who the king of Egypt might have been during the exodus.

Contrary to what the movie "The Ten Commandments" tells us, the king on the throne when Moses is born is not the same king who refuses to let the Hebrew people go. The first king has died by the time Moses returns to lead his people out of Egypt. Also, it's almost a certainty that neither of these kings was the one known as Rameses II (Rameses The Great) as portrayed in movies and on TV. The reason the name of Rameses is used by Hollywood is because a section of Goshen known as "the district of Rameses" is mentioned in both Genesis and Exodus. But these mentions of that district are made four hundred years apart, so all this tells us is that there was a section of Goshen named after one of the eleven pharaohs in Egypt's history who went by the name of Rameses.

We find an important clue in the Bible about the dating of the exodus from Egypt. In 1 Kings 6:1 we are told, "In the four hundredth and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord." It is believed Solomon's reign lasted from about 970 BC to 931 BC. If he began building the temple in his fourth year as king, then that means he began construction around 964 BC, and if the exodus took place 480 years prior to his fourth year as king, that places the exodus in about 1444 BC. We can't be absolutely certain about the year Solomon was crowned king so scholars who subscribe to the theory that the exodus took place in the 1400s BC allow a little leeway by dating it anywhere from 1444-1446 BC. I do want to point out that some theologians and historians try to place the exodus much later to coincide with the reign of Rameses The Great, but there may be some evidence that the Israelites were already in the promised land by then. Other experts want to place the exodus earlier than the 1400s BC to the time prior to the era of the Hyksos pharaohs. I feel there's a problem with that too, since there's a likelihood that Joseph was governor under a Hyksos pharaoh. But the biggest problem with dating the exodus anywhere other than the 1400s BC is that the Bible doesn't support any other date. If the Bible says the exodus took place 480 years before the fourth year of Solomon's reign, then the exodus took place 480 years before the fourth year of Solomon's reign. I do not believe there are any errors in the Bible whatsoever. Because God is perfect, He tells no lies and makes no mistakes. He's perfectly capable of making sure the Bible says exactly what He intends it to say.

So who reigned in Egypt during the 1400s BC? It would be the kings of a dynasty known as the Tutmoses dynasty, not that they were all named Tutmoses although several of them were. Ahmoses I was the king who expelled the Hyksos from Egypt, ending the reign of the people who were most likely in charge of the land while Joseph was governor. Ahmoses was the father of Amenhotep I who was the father of Tutmoses I. And Tutmoses I was the father of the woman I think could very well be the adoptive mother of Moses. As I mentioned yesterday, her name was Hatshepsut. She often used the title "Pharoah's Daughter" as evidenced by some surviving archaeological objects in Egypt. It was not all that common for a female child of the king to refer to herself that way in official documents. Male children would use the title "Pharaoh's Son" but females weren't usually considered important enough to need official titles except those that related to their roles as priestesses at pagan temples. Hatshepsut's use of the title "Pharaoh's Daughter" could be why Moses refers to her like that in the Bible instead of identifying her in any other way.

Hatshepsut's father Tutmoses I had several other children by his queen but none survived to adulthood except Hatshepsut. This left him with no son by his chief wife. But he had a secondary wife and fathered a son with her, and that son's name was Tutmoses II. Inbreeding was quite common in Egypt, so Hatshepsut's father thought nothing of marrying her to her half brother Tutmoses II to help secure his son's claim to the throne. It was typical for only the firstborn son of the chief wife to inherit the crown and Tutmoses I likely worried that, after his death, some of his close male relatives would challenge the right of Tutmoses II to be king. By marrying the daughter of his queen to the son of his secondary wife, Tutmoses I was doing everything he could to convince his people that his son was the rightful king of Egypt. He was keeping the crown in the family, so to speak.

For a long time Hatshepsut and Tutmoses II were unable to have children together who were not stillborn or who did not perish soon after birth. I think their incestuous marriage contributed heavily to their failure to produce healthy children. There are valid genetic reasons why marrying very close relatives is a terrible idea. The couple did eventually have a daughter together who survived to adulthood but they had no son to inherit the throne. We can see why Hatshepsut might have gone down to the Nile to dip herself in the "sacred" waters and call upon her fertility gods to bless her with a son. We can also see why, when she spots the baby Moses while she's calling upon her gods, she takes his appearance as the answer to her prayers. Finding the baby in a basket in the Nile would have been considered by her as a gift of the gods. As soon as she took him into her arms she never intended to let him go.

Adopting Moses as her own would have made him the heir-apparent to the throne. To lend more strength to his claim on the throne, she very well may have called him Tutmoses III. If that's the case, then perhaps he simply deleted the prefix "Tut" from his name when he later rejected the gods of Egypt. "Tut" was a reference to the pagan Egyptian god "Thoth" and Moses did not serve false gods; he served the one true God. But while growing up Moses would have been raised like a royal prince, with the best education money could buy, as we are told in Acts 7:22: "Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action." Moses was the perfect man for the job of leading the Israelites out of Egypt since he thoroughly understood the government, the religion, and the customs of Egypt. He knew exactly how to request an audience with the king (the king who will hear his request to let the people go) and exactly how to behave in the king's court. If he had not once been the crown prince of Egypt, I do not believe he ever would have gained access to the king whom he will implore, "Let my people go!"

Hatshepsut raised Moses to someday be Pharaoh of Egypt. But her husband had other plans. He married a secondary wife and fathered a son whom he named Tutmoses III. Whether or not Moses ever bore that name we can't say for certain, but when Tutmoses II named his son by a secondary wife after himself, he was making it clear that this was the heir to his throne. Tutmoses II was never a very healthy man and he died in his prime when his son was far too young to be crowned king. Hatshepsut took on the role of co-regent with her stepson, with the intent of becoming king herself and never allowing her stepson to wear the crown. Indeed she did reign over Egypt for a number of years, quite powerfully and successfully, until Tutmoses III became of an age to overthrow her. Nothing is really known about how Hatshepsut was deposed as king (she called herself "Pharaoh" and "king", not "queen") or about how and when she died. This is because her stepson had her name and the records of her reign scratched out from the vast majority of monuments and papyrus scrolls and stone tablets in Egypt. I think Moses left Egypt before the death of Hatshepsut's husband and that he was not in Egypt during any of her reign, but Tutmoses III is a good candidate for the man seated on the throne when Moses returns to beg for the release of his people. It would explain why the king allows Moses to come into his presence so many times. Legally they were brothers if Moses' adoptive mother and the king's stepmother was the same woman. 

Tutmoses III led seventeen very successful military campaigns during his first seventeen years as king, but the historical records of Egypt say that in his eighteenth year he was "unable" to go to war. The records don't say why he couldn't put together an army that year, but perhaps it's because so many of his soldiers drowned in the Red Sea when they chased and attempted to overtake Moses and the Hebrew people in the exodus. Perhaps it's because the plagues we'll read about in Exodus devastated Egypt and its infrastructure so terribly that Tutmoses III had to spend his eighteenth year as king trying to bring some semblance of order back to his nation.

Another tantalizing clue that Tutmoses III was possibly the pharaoh of the exodus us that his firstborn son, Amenemhat, died unexpectedly at a young age. This was his only son by his queen and therefore the heir to his throne. Upon the death of Tutmoses III, his second son whom he fathered with a minor wife became king. His name was Amenhotep II. Nothing that has been found in the Egyptian historical records tells us what happened to Amenemhat, and I realize that it wasn't uncommon for babies and young children to die unexpectedly in those times, but suppose Amenemhat was the child who died in the final plague of Egypt? This was known as the "plague of the firstborn" in which every firstborn male of every family in Egypt perished, including the firstborn son of the king. None of the plagues of Egypt ever would have fallen on that nation if the king had been willing to let the Hebrew people go, but he repeatedly refused and the Lord sent plagues, each one worse than the one that preceded it, until at last it took the death of the king's son for him to allow---no order---Moses and the Hebrews to depart Egypt immediately. Of course we know he changed his mind and in a rage sent his soldiers after them, but this shows us how far God had to go in dealing with this wicked, stubborn, blasphemous man.

We can't say beyond a shadow of a doubt which Egyptian dynasty oppressed the Hebrews or which king didn't want to let them go. We can't be one hundred percent certain which Egyptian princess adopted Moses. But it's fun to speculate and also to learn about ancient history at the same time. Moses absolutely knew the names of every king of Egypt all the way back to the founding of the nation. He was taught the history of Egypt during his days spent under the best professors in the land. But he never names them in the Bible and I think his choice not to name them is deliberate. Moses wants to focus all our attention on the God who overthrew the political and occult powers of Egypt and brought His people Israel out of that country in a mighty, miraculous way. Moses never wanted to give anyone credit for anything except his God, so he doesn't grant any of the kings of Egypt the privilege and honor of having their names written in God's holy word. Interesting as it is to ponder the question of who these kings were, it's far more interesting to study about who God is and the things He has done and the things He has promised to do in the future. So tomorrow we'll move on from here to find Moses developing a relationship with this God and with the people God intends to rescue.