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When and where did Moses live in Egypt?


Posted 28 Sep 2017

Exodus 02 - Moses flees to Midian - Scene 01 - Leaving home (Yellow sky) 980x706px col
Exodus 02 – Moses flees to Midian – Scene 01 – Leaving home (Yellow sky)

Follow this link to see this Bible Cartoon on the BC Gallery page, with download & purchase options:
Bible Cartoon: Exodus 02 – Moses flees to Midian – Scene 01 – Leaving home (Yellow sky)

Exodus 02 - Moses flees to Midian - Scene 01 - Leaving home (Blue sky) 980x706px col
Exodus 02 – Moses flees to Midian – Scene 01 – Leaving homee (Blue sky)

Follow this link to see this Bible Cartoon on the BC Gallery page, with download & purchase options:
Bible Cartoon: Exodus 02 – Moses flees to Midian – Scene 01 – Leaving home (Blue sky)

Elements in Exodus 02 - Moses flees to Midian - Scene 01 - Leaving home
Elements in the scene: Exodus 02 – Moses flees to Midian – Scene 01 – Leaving home

I thought I would draw a scene or two depicting Moses hurriedly leaving Egypt, since Exodus 2:15 informs us that Pharaoh tried to kill Moses before he could leave the country. Above are two versions of the same scene, with Yellow & Blue skies. The third scene simply points out some of the features of the picture.

By clicking on the links below the scenes you can see them on the gallery page.

I started to read articles to answer 2 questions:

01) WHEN did Moses live in, and leave Egypt?
02) WHERE was Moses living at the time of his departure?

To find out when Moses lived in Egypt, I did a quick Google search for “what Egyptian dynasty did Moses live in?” That lead me to this article:

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2009/02/27/Moses-and-Hatshepsut.aspx#Article
by Col. (Ret.) David G. Hansen PhD

It is fascinating reading about scholars’ attempts to uncover the facts regarding this era. Apparently there are 2 schools of though about when Moses lived in Egypt. Some say it was the first half of the 13th Century BC. Others propose the
15th Centruy BC; the author of the article above favours the latter.

In this article there is a sub-section entitled “Queen Hatshepsut of Dynasty 18. Was she Pharaoh’s daughter? D. Hansen.” According to mr. Hansen, Hatshepsut of Dynasty 18 may very well have been “Pharaoh’s daughter”, mentioned in Exodus 2:5.

Then it was a quick look to find the dates for Dynasty 18, which was c. 1353 BC – c. 1332 BC. So if you believe the evidence supports the Dynasty 18 date, then we have our date of WHEN Moses lived in Egypt.


To answer the second question (WHERE was Moses living at the time of his departure from Egypt?) I started to research where the capital city of Dynasty 18 was, which lead me to read to the following article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_capitals_of_Egypt

That article informed me that Akhetaten was the capital city of Dynasty 18.

It was a simple matter then to use Google Earth to find Akhetaten, which is called Tell el Amarna in Egypt today. I found a variety of photo images from the surrounding area that helped me to design this scene of Moses leaving his home city in Egypt.



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