Yidden in Mitzrayim: In the Footsteps of Our Avos

The land of Mitzrayim as our forefathers knew it. Eretz Goshen in the eastern Nile Delta, the arei miskenos we built, and the palaces of Paroh that Moshe Rabbeinu grew up in and warned of the Makkos. Preserved in stone, papyrus, and paint on ancient tomb walls. These are the places where it happened.

Tell el-Dab'a (Ancient Avaris)

c. years 1961–2211 📍 Nile Delta, Mitzrayim. Being dug up since the 5720s

Tell el-Dab'a is the site of the ancient city of Avaris, in the northeastern Nile Delta, the area the Torah calls "Eretz Goshen" and "the region of Rameses" (Bereishis 47:11). Diggers have been working on this site for decades.

What they found there was a clearly foreign, Semitic population, with houses built in the style of Eretz Canaan, Levantine-type weapons and pottery. The animal bones at the site had no pig in them at all, which the diggers noted means some form of dietary restriction consistent with kashrus was being kept. They also found large food-storage silos.

The site also has a palatial complex with twelve kevarim, one much grander than the rest, but with no human remains inside. Some have connected this to the Torah's account that the atzmos of Yosef HaTzaddik were carried out of Mitzrayim by the Bnei Yisroel at the time of Yetzias Mitzrayim (Shemos 13:19).

This is Goshen. A Semitic population living in the eastern Nile Delta, keeping their separate identity and their dietary minhagim, in the very land the Torah describes as the home of the Bnei Yisroel in Mitzrayim.

The Brooklyn Papyrus (Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446)

c. years 1952–2018 📍 Brooklyn Museum, New York. Originally from Thebes, Mitzrayim

A seven-foot-long papyrus written in hieratic script, one of the most important government documents from Middle Kingdom Mitzrayim. It records a Mitzri noblewoman named Senebtisi trying to establish legal ownership of 95 household servants.

Of those 95 servants, at least 45 have names that are clearly Semitic, including names with the elements "El" and "Ba'al" that point to West Semitic (Canaanite) origins. One name on the list, Šp-ra, closely matches "Shifra," one of the meyaldos ha'ivriyos in Shemos 1:15.

The scholar who published the papyrus in 5715 couldn't get over the sheer number of Semitic servants: "If a comparable number of similar servants was to be found in every large Egyptian household one wonders by what means such quantities of Asiatic serving people found their way into Egypt at this time." He had no known war campaign to explain how they got there.

In a Mitzri government document: the names our Avos carried. Semitic names written by Mitzri scribes, recording a world in which our people were present in enormous numbers.

The Ipuwer Papyrus (Leiden Papyrus I 344)

Copy from c. years 2550–2650; original possibly much earlier 📍 Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, Netherlands

Known as the "Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage," this papyrus describes a time of total upheaval in Mitzrayim with strong parallels to the Makkos in Sefer Shemos.

Ipuwer writes: "The river is blood, yet men drink of it. Men shrink from human beings and thirst after water." Compare to Shemos 7:20–21 on Makkas Dam. The papyrus also talks about the crops being wiped out ("Grain has perished on every side") and the whole social order flipping upside down, with former slaves getting wealthy: "Gold and lapis lazuli, silver and malachite, carnelian and bronze are fastened on the necks of female slaves." That last part fits with the Torah's description of the Bnei Yisroel receiving gold and silver keilim from the Mitzrim before they left.

Rivers of blood, destroyed crops, the whole social order turned on its head, reading it alongside the Haggadah is something else.

Semitic Workers in Mitzri Tomb Paintings

c. years 1861–2311 📍 Various tomb sites, Mitzrayim

A number of Mitzri tomb paintings show Semitic ("Asiatic") people in Mitzrayim. The famous wall painting from the Tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hasan (c. year 1861) shows a group of Semites arriving in Mitzrayim with their families and goods, wearing distinctive multicolored garments and beards, labeled in the inscription as "Asiatics."

Later tomb paintings from the 18th Dynasty, including the Tomb of Rekhmire (c. year 2311), show Semitic laborers making leveinim. The scene matches the description in Sefer Shemos of the avodas perech of the Bnei Yisroel. The paintings even show a Mitzri nogeiss with a rod, just like the nogeiss Moshe Rabbeinu saw striking a Yid.

Mitzri government documents from the same tekufah, such as Papyrus Leningrad 1116A, confirm that Semitic immigrants were put to forced labor on building projects after the Hyksos were kicked out. This lines up with the Torah's description of the shift from the Pharaoh "asher yada es Yosef" to one "asher lo yada es Yosef."