Exodus for Humanists
Statues at the boundary of the archaeological dig at Tell el Amarna, Egypt. Image credit: Einsamer Schütze, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons In 2015, thousands of graves of children and teens from biblical-era Egypt were found at the archaeological site of Tell el-Amarna, once the capital city of the monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten. The skeletons showed signs of heavy labor, and had been wrapped only in rough matting before being dumped into the ground. Their families were unknown. A Times of Israel reporter, Amanda Borschel-Dan, asked Amarna Project director Barry Kemp whether these skeletons could be the remains of Israelite slaves under Pharaoh. His answer was a quick no. “I am afraid that I do not accept the Old Testament narrative as a historical record, and therefore that there is any connection between Amarna and ‘Hebrew slaves,'” he replied promptly in an email. From its very beginnings , archaeology has literally dug into the foundations of a