In popular culture, Rameses II (ruled 1279 – 1213 BC) is almost always portrayed as the pharaoh of the Exodus. He is most famously portrayed as such in the 1956 epic film The Ten Commandments, but he has also appeared in this role more recently in the 1998 DreamWorks animated musical drama film The Prince of Egypt, in the 2013 History Channel miniseries The Bible, and in the 2014 epic film Exodus: Gods and Kings.

It may come as a surprise to many people, then, that the Book of Exodus never actually gives the name of the pharaoh who supposedly tried to keep the Israelites from leaving. Instead, throughout the book, the pharaoh is merely referred to by the Hebrew word פַּרְעֹה (par‘ōh), which is the source of our English word pharaoh.

How did we all come to think of Rameses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus? And, more importantly, who was the real pharaoh of the Exodus? Let’s delve back into the mists of antiquity and find out the truth.

Rameses II and the Exodus

The idea that the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus was Rameses II arose from the fact that, in the Book of Genesis 47:11 and the Book of Exodus 12:37, the Israelites are described as living in the “district of Rameses” in Egypt and, in the Book of Exodus 1:11, the Israelites are described as building the city of “Rameses” for the pharaoh.

Until the nineteenth century, Europeans had very little knowledge of ancient Egyptian history. Most of what was known came from the Bible and various writings in Greek, especially The Histories, written by the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BC); surviving portions of the Egyptika, written by the Egyptian priest Manethon, who lived in around the early third century BC; and The Historical Library, written by the Greek historian Diodoros Sikeliotes (lived c. 90 – c. 30 BC).

As Europeans learned more about Egyptian history in the nineteenth century, many Christian scholars began to interpret the reference to the Israelites building the city of “Rameses” to mean that the Israelites worked on the construction of the city of Pi-Rameses, which was built as the new capital of Egypt under Rameses II. They therefore came to the conclusion that the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus must be none other than Rameses II.

The idea that Rameses II was the pharaoh of the Exodus was popularized in the early twentieth century through books such as the 1944 novella The Tables of the Law by Thomas Mann and, of course, the 1956 film The Ten Commandments, which was produced, directed, and narrated by Cecil B. DeMille. It was Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film that really canonized Rameses II as the supposed pharaoh of the Exodus.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a colossal statue of Rameses II from Luxor

A few slight problems…

The problem with the identification of Rameses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus is that the Book of Exodus 1:11—the same verse that claims the Israelites built the city of “Rameses”—also claims that the Israelites built the city of Pithom. The word Pithom, though, only appears in the written record as the name of a city from the late seventh century BC onwards.

Furthermore, we know from archaeological evidence that the ancient city of Pithom was located at the site of tell el-Maskhuta in northeastern Egypt and the city was founded by Pharaoh Necho II at some point between c. 609 and c. 606 BC. The site was not inhabited during the time of Rameses II in the thirteenth century BC.

In other words, the cities of Pi-Rameses and Pithom were built roughly six hundred years apart. There is no way that the Israelites could have built both of them for the same pharaoh. Also, the construction of Pithom in the late seventh century BC puts it later than the archaeologically-confirmed destruction of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians and only about a decade earlier than the archaeologically-confirmed Siege of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon in around 597 BC.

There is also the additional problem that Egyptologists and archaeologists have literally searched for evidence of the Exodus for centuries and they have found absolutely no evidence whatsoever. Likewise, there are no records or inscriptions of any kind whatsoever from any time close to the time when the Exodus is supposed to have taken place that even hint at a historical Exodus.

There is no archaeological evidence for there having ever been any large number of Israelites in Egypt, no archaeological evidence for the plagues of Egypt, no archaeological evidence for the Israelites’ departure from Egypt, their wanderings in the desert, or their arrival in Canaan. And, believe me, this isn’t because Egyptologists haven’t been looking; the entire field of Egyptology was partly born out of a desire by Christian scholars from western Europe to prove that the Exodus really happened.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the site of Qantir, where the ancient city of Pi-Rameses was once located

A total lack of archaeological evidence

Now, there are some things that we just can’t reasonably expect to find archaeological evidence for. For instance, it would be absurd to demand contemporary archaeological evidence for the existence of Jesus, since he was just a single man who wasn’t particularly wealthy or important during his lifetime. He’s not the sort of person we’d expect to leave any identifiable trace in the archaeological record.

The Exodus, though, is one of those things that you definitely would expect to find archaeological evidence for. Indeed, you would expect to find mountains of evidence for it; it supposedly involved an entire nation living in slavery in Egypt for generations, ten massive plagues that supposedly utterly devastated the land of Egypt, and an entire nation leaving Egypt, wandering in the desert for generations, and eventually leading a bloody invasion of Canaan.

If any of this really happened, we would expect to find archaeological evidence for it all over the place, but we don’t. Christian apologists have tried to argue that maybe the Egyptians covered up all the evidence for the Exodus because they found the crisis embarrassing, but this is totally far-fetched.

The events described in the Book of Exodus are depicted on an absolutely epic scale and, although our records of thirteenth-century BC Egypt are not as good as we would like them to be, it is inconceivable that something on the scale of the Exodus could have happened and not left any evidence at all behind.

Even if the entire Egyptian population been fully dedicated to the task of hiding all the evidence, there’s no way they could have done it; someone would have written about it or alluded to it, there would be massive graveyards for all the people who died from the plagues, there would be evidence of the devastation. We just don’t have any of that.

ABOVE: The Seventh Plague, painted in 1823 by the English Romantic painter John Martin

When the Book of Exodus was really written

Furthermore, the Book of Exodus is full of anachronisms—like the mention of the Israelites building the city of Pithom—that strongly suggest it was written long after the events it describes are supposed to have happened. Biblical scholars are pretty sure based on internal clues that the vast majority of the book was probably written during the time when the Judahites were living in captivity in Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem.

The first deportation of Judahites to Babylon took place in around 597 BC. The Babylonian captivity ended in 539 BC, when King Cyrus II of the Achaemenid Empire conquered the city of Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. All internal evidence indicates that at least a large portion of the Book of Exodus was written during the time between those years.

Once we examine the Book of Exodus as a work of fiction written by Judahites living in captivity in Babylon—a people whose homeland had been taken from them, whose city had been utterly demolished, whose Temple had been destroyed, and whose God seemed to have abandoned them—it starts to make sense why the story is told the way it is.

To a people who knew nothing but enslavement and misery and who felt that they had lost everything, the story of the Exodus was supposed to be a tale of hope. The message of the book is, essentially: “Don’t despair; our ancestors were living in captivity once before and our God saved them then. He’s certain to save us too.”

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the so-called “Jerusalem Chronicle,” a Babylonian clay tablet describing the sack of Jerusalem in 597 BC by the forces of King Nebuchadnezzar II

The real reason why the villain of the Book of Exodus is an Egyptian pharaoh

In this context, it also starts a make a lot of sense why the pharaoh in the story is not given a specific name; although the author of the Book of Exodus probably knew the names of a few Egyptian pharaohs from remote antiquity, he chose not to give the pharaoh a name because the pharaoh is supposed to be, in some sense, a generic figure standing in for all tyrants who might seek to oppress the Jewish people.

Why is the tyrant in the story specifically an Egyptian pharaoh? Well, it could be that the Judahites already had a story about living in slavery in Egypt before the Babylonian captivity that the author of the Book of Exodus simply decided to expand into a full-length epic tale. It is also, however, probably at least partially because, in the sixth century BC, when the Jews were living in captivity in Babylon, aside from the Babylonians, the Egyptians were seen as the Judahites’ greatest enemies.

It is possible that, when the Book of Exodus was first being composed, there were still some people alive who could personally remember when the great Judahite king Josiah was killed in combat against the forces of Pharaoh Necho II in the Battle of Megiddo in around 609 BC. Those who couldn’t remember it because they hadn’t been born yet when the battle took place had probably heard about the battle from their parents or grandparents. That event surely would have solidified the idea in many Judahites’ minds that the Egyptians were their enemy.

Rameses II is not the pharaoh of the Exodus because the pharaoh of the Exodus is a fictional character who is not given a name—probably on purpose. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the original audience of the Book of Exodus would have been thinking of Rameses II when they heard the story. (As I discuss in this article from August 2019, though, Rameses II is definitely Ozymandias, the Egyptian pharaoh mentioned in that famous poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Fans of Rameses II can take that as a consolation prize, I suppose.)

Necho II is not the real pharaoh of the Exodus either because, as I said before, the Exodus didn’t really happen. Nonetheless, when the original audience of the Book of Exodus heard about the evil, oppressive pharaoh, many of them undoubtedly would have been thinking of Necho II.

ABOVE: The Death of King Josiah, painted by the Italian painter Francesco Conti (lived 1681 – 1760)