The Exodus Quest

THIRTEEN
I

Fatima allowed a few moments of silence to pass before responding to Stafford, perhaps so that he might see for himself just how ugly and excessive his vehemence had been. Then she said quietly: 'Refute it? Refute what, exactly?'

Stafford looked confused. 'My thesis.'

'But you promised me evidence,' replied Fatima, her voice so low that Gaille had to strain to hear her. 'How can I refute this thesis of yours until I've heard your evidence?'

Stafford looked blankly at her. 'How do you mean? I've just given you my evidence.'

'Really?' frowned Fatima. 'You call that evidence. All I've heard so far is speculation. Well-informed speculation, I admit. But speculation nonetheless.'

'How can you say that?'

'My dear Mister Stafford, let me explain something. I do not personally believe in the Bible or its God. But perhaps you do. Perhaps you believe that He created the world in seven days, and that those animals Noah took aboard his ark were the only ones to survive the flood, and that we speak different languages because God took offence at mankind's effort to reach the heavens by building the Tower of Babel? Is that what you believe?'

'I've already said I don't take the Bible literally.'

'Ah. Yet you still believe that we should consider it as somehow special, as having validity even when it is contradicted by the historical and archaeological record?'

'I'm not saying that.'

'I'm glad to hear it. For let me tell you what I think of the Bible. I think it is the folk-history of a particular Canaanite people. No more, no less. And I think its historical validity should be assessed as scrupulously as any other folk-history, not accorded special treatment just because many people still consider it sacred. You'd agree with that, wouldn't you? As a fellow historian, I mean?'

'Yes.'

'Good. Now if you want to test folk-history for validity, do you know what you must first do? You must discard it completely from your mind, then interrogate the independent record until you've established the truth as far as possible, and only then refer back to your folk-history to see how well it fits. Any other approach is special pleading. And do you know something?'

'What?'

'Do it that way and the Bible falls apart, particularly the early books. There's no evidence whatsoever to suggest its stories are true. There's no evidence that the Jews existed as a distinct people in the time of Akhenaten, or that they lived in Egypt in any great numbers, or that they left in some mass exodus.'

A flush in Stafford's cheeks, a cocktail of alcohol and defiance. 'So where did those stories come from, then?'

'Who can say? Many were clearly borrowed from other, older cultures. There are recognizable traces of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, for example. Others seem to be variations on the same story, presumably because the writers of the Bible wanted to drum home their moral message. Man makes covenant with God. Man breaks covenant. God punishes man. Again and again this same motif. Adam and Eve evicted from Eden. Cain exiled for murdering Abel. Lot's wife turned to salt. Abraham fleeing Egypt. Babel. Noah. Isaac. Jacob. The list goes on and on. Because it isn't history. It's propaganda. Specifically, it's religious propaganda, put together after the Jews had been defeated by the Babylonians to convince them that they'd brought their destruction and exile upon themselves by failing in their obligations to their God.'

She broke off a moment, sipped water to moisten her mouth and throat, forced a smile to release some tension. 'Do you know something?' she said. 'Whenever historians have been able to test folklore against known history, they've discovered what one might expect: that it proves reasonably accurate for events within living memory, but the further back one goes, the less reliable it becomes, until it bears almost no relation to the truth. With one exception. Founding myths typically have a seed of truth in them.

'So let's apply this to the Jewish people. Their founding myth is clearly the Exodus. The Bible is built around it. So I'm quite prepared to accept some sort of flight from Egypt. The trouble is, the only evidence of such an exodus during the second millennium BC is that of the Hyksos. But the Hyksos were a full two centuries before Amarna. So how is it that this mass flight of yours left no imprint? We're not talking about a few hundred people, remember. Not even thousands. According to the Bible, we're talking about over half the population of Egypt. Even allowing for massive exaggeration, don't you think that someone would have noticed? Do you know, Mister Stafford, there's a stele recording the flight of two slaves from Egypt to Canaan? Two! Yet you'd have us believe that tens of thousands of valuable artisans suddenly upped and left, and no one said a word. And don't you think someone would have found some trace of their forty years in Sinai? Any trace. Archaeologists have found settlements from pre-dynastic times, from dynastic times, from the Graeco-Roman and Islamic eras. But from the Exodus? Nothing. Not a coin, not a potsherd, not a grave, not a campfire. And it's not for lack of looking, believe me.'

'Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence,' observed Stafford.

'Yes, it is,' countered Fatima. 'That's exactly what it is. Not proof of absence, I grant you. But evidence, certainly. If the Hebrews had spent significant time there, they'd have left traces. No traces means no Hebrews. To argue otherwise is simply perverse. And where we do find evidence, it flatly contradicts the biblical account. You mentioned Jericho, the city felled by Joshua's trumpets. If your thesis is correct, it should show evidence of destruction circa 1300 BC. But the archaeological data is conclusive. Jericho wasn't even occupied at that time. It was destroyed in the sixteenth century BC and left virtually abandoned through to the tenth.'

'Yes, but-'

'The early Bible is make-believe, Mister Stafford. It wasn't even written until after the Babylonian exile, circa five hundred BC; over eight hundred years after the death of Akhenaten.'

'From records that go back much further.'

'According to whom? Do you have any of these records? Or are you just assuming their existence? And if they did exist, how would you explain all the anachronisms? Camels in Egypt a thousand years before they were actually introduced. Cities like Ramses and Sais that weren't founded for hundreds of years after Akhenaten. A landscape of kingdoms that didn't exist in the thirteenth century BC, yet which maps almost exactly onto the seventh and sixth.'

'What about the parallels between the religions?' asked Stafford weakly. 'You can't deny those.'

Fatima shook her head dismissively. 'Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt was the great regional power. Its armies occupied Canaan for hundreds of years. Even after their occupation ended, they remained Canaan's key trading partner. Their practices and rituals were admired and emulated just as French and British practices are still visible in former colonies. As for their monotheism, have you considered the possibility that it might just be a coincidence? Monotheism isn't complex. It's "my god's bigger than your god" taken to its logical extreme. Long before Akhenaten proclaimed the Aten the Sole God, Egyptians had done the same for Atum.'

'Yes, but-'

'And let's compare the gods themselves. The Aten enjoys an exclusive relationship with Akhenaten. The God of Moses makes His covenant with every single Jew. The Aten is notional and pacific, an aesthete's God. The God of Moses is vengeful, jealous and violent. Or take their creation myths. Actually, you can't. The Aten has no creation myth; Genesis has two. The God of Moses dwelt in the enclosed Holy of Holies; the Aten was worshipped in wide-open spaces. Read how Moses received the Ten Commandments: it couldn't be clearer that his God is a volcano God. But there are no volcanoes in Egypt or in Sinai.' She shook her head angrily. 'Let me tell you something. You claim that I have my head in the sand because I assert there's no connection between Akhenaten and Moses. But you're wrong. All I assert is that there's no evidence for such a connection. I'm an archaeologist, Mister Stafford. Bring me evidence and I'll gladly endorse your views. Until then…' And she gave a dismissive little wave of her hand.

Stafford's jaw clenched tight as walnuts in his cheeks. 'Then it seems we'll just have to agree to disagree,' he said.

'Yes,' agreed Fatima. 'It does.'