Pharah Ahmose Movie Essay

The Pharaoh Ahmose

In the movie, Jacobovici associates the Exodus event with the expulsion of the Hyksos. By associating these two events, he believes that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was Ahmose. However there are more than 100 years that separate the Pharaoh of the Exodus and Ahmose, so the theory is invalid. He is not the first to make this error as there was an Egyptian priest in the 3rd century B.C. that also made this connection. Another problem with this theory is that Ahmose drove the Hyksos out of their capital Avaris by force of arms, whereas the Israelites left peacefully when Pharaoh ordered them out to avoid further conflict and problems for Egypt.

Jacob’s ring

In the movie, Jacobovici claims that he found a ring with Jacob’s royal seal on it at Tell el-Daba, the site of the ancient Hyksos capital Avaris. This place is also where the Israelites settled and where they departed from. An Austrian team excavating the site found nine scarabs, or beetle-shaped amulets, bearing the name of a Hyksos called Jacob. He states that the scarabs are connected to the high official Joseph. If this is the case then it brings up the problem that Jacob’s name was on it. Back then, Jacob was a common name so the scarab probably belonged to a Hyksos leader or businessman.

Inscriptions in both Egyptian hieroglyphs and early Semitic alphabetic script have been found there. The Semitic inscriptions were supposedly written by Asiatic slaves who worked in the mines. In the movie Jacobvici states that the Israelites are related to the inscriptions. It is an open question on whether these two are related. Both the Asiatic and Israelites are divided as to whether they should be dated to the Middle Kingdom or New