The Other Exodus
Forgotten History of the
Danite Exodus from Egypt!
In the days of the Pharaohs,
we read of an adventurous hero named Danaos and his followers who
dwelled in Egypt. Then came an event, or series of events now corrupted
by the mists of time, which caused them to be exiled by the Egyptians.
Recorded history then tells us that they boarded ships in Egypt and
sailed away to establish new homes in Greece.
The beginning of Greek history is often dated to this “exile” of
Danaos and his followers, called Danaoi or Danaan, from Egypt. This
event has been dated by historians to about 1450 to 1493 B.C. However,
it is significant that the Hebrew exodus from Egypt is dated to the very
same time-period: 1447 to 1491 B.C. Are these two events related? Could
indeed the Danaan “exile” from Egypt have been a part of the Hebrew
“exodus”? An analysis of ancient records indicates that this was
indeed the case.
The
Hebrew Exodus
The exodus — that wondrous event
by which “the Lord did bring the children of Israel out of the land of
Egypt” (Ex. 12:51) — has
been called Israel’s Independence Day and the turning point in world
history. The starting point of their journey was the city of Rameses,
located about six miles from the present Egyptian capitol of Cairo. As
God’s people set forth on their trek out of Egypt to the Promised
Land, Pharaoh pursued with 600 chariots (Ex. 14:7), a mighty host
that must have stretched a half-mile long at three abreast, plus an
unknown large number of foot soldiers. Into an opening of the Red Sea
they rushed! God temporarily held back the flood, creating a dry pathway
long enough to allow His covenant people to escape, but Pharaoh and his
army perished as the sea returned. This miraculous event is memorialized
in the Song of Moses (Ex. 15:1-18), and sung in victory by the
redeemed Overcomers in the Millennial scene of Revelation 15. It is
therefore a type or shadow of the New Covenant victory of Christians
over unbelief, sin and evil, and contains lessons for us all to benefit
from today.
First century, B.C.,
Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, gave collaborating evidence from the
Egyptian point-of-view for the truth of the Bible’s exodus account. Of
the Hebrews, he said, “Their forefathers had been banished out of
the whole of Egypt... in order to purify the land.” (The
History Of Antiquity, p.458) There was some truth to this assertion,
after Egypt had endured the horrible swarms of insects and pestilential
diseases of the ten plagues!
Early Greek geographer and historian, Strabo (born 63 B.C.), also
lent support to the Biblical account, saying, “Moses told them and
taught that the Egyptians were not right in representing the divinity as
a wild or domesticated animal, nor the Libyans, nor were the Hellenes
wise in giving gods the form of men. For only the One was God which
surrounds us all... By such doctrines Moses convinced not a few men of
reason, and led them to the place where Jerusalem now is.”
(ibid., p. 459) These “doctrines” of Moses are known as the Ten
Commandments. You can read them yourself in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.
A
Second Exodus
Some historians say that the Egyptians left no contemporary surviving
accounts of the presence of Hebrews and the exodus. The Universal
Jewish Encyclopedia (iv:7) reports, however, that as early as
the 15th century, “Egyptian texts… mention… a
foreign people called “Apuriu” residing in Egypt and performing the
service of slaves.” The encyclopedia further states that these
people are identified by many scholars as the Habiru or Hebrews. Ancient
records also report that a Semitic people called Danaan were
expelled from Egypt, and sailed to Greece to establish the early Greek
civilization. Could the fabled Danaan be a reference to the Biblical
Hebrew tribe of Dan? William Ridgeway’s Early Age of Greece (p.220)
dated the Danaan exodus from Egypt as 1450 B.C. This is virtually
identical to the date of the Hebrew exodus, which is dated to 1447 B.C.
by Dr. Stephen E. Jones and 1453 B.C. in Dr. Adam Rutherford’s Bible
Chronology (p.120). Other historians use slightly differing dates: The
History of Etruria (p.95) by Mrs. Hamilton Gray dates the Danaan
exile at 1493 B.C., which compares to a Hebrew exodus of 1491 B.C.
according to Bishop Usher’s dating. (McClintock & Strong’s
Encyclopedia III:396) Two unrelated Egyptian exoduses did not occur
at the same time! Historic evidence indicates that the Danaan were the
seafaring Biblical tribe of Dan and
were therefore part of the Hebrew Exodus. The Bible tells us that the
tribe of Dan were seafarers who “stayed in their ships.” (Judges
5:17) The Bible also gives much other evidence of Hebrew seafaring
in ancient times, as related in our companion study Ancient Hebrew
Sea Migrations.
It should be mentioned that some Christian
expositors date the exodus two centuries later, around 1225-1275 B.C.,
trying to fit a full 400-year captivity entirely within Egypt through a
misunderstanding of the Scripture record. (See Secrets Of Time,
by Dr. Stephen E. Jones for details on this issue.) Many scholars agree
that this date is too late, and conflicts with the time of the Judges.
In addition, Egyptian monuments during the 14th century refer
to a region of western Galilee as “Aseru,” which was settled by the
Hebrew tribe of Asher after the settlement of Canaan. (Jewish
Encyclopedia 2:180) Therefore, Israel had to have already settled
Canaan by that time. The Jewish Encyclopedia also points out that
“I Kings 6:1 fixes the interval between the exodus and the building of
the Temple at over 480 years. Rehoboam —
41 years after the building of the Temple (I Kings 14:25) —
is contemporaneous with Shishak, the first king of the twenty-second
dynasty (c.950 B.C.) This would give about 1470 B.C. for the Exodus. The
finding by Flinders Petrie (1896) of an inscription by Merneptah I, in
which for the first time Isir’l occurs in an Egyptian text, as
well as the contents of the El-Amarna tablets, has corroborated the
virtual correctness of the date given above.” (5:296) This
date of 1470 B.C. is exactly in the middle of the narrow date range
given by other scholars for both the Hebrew exodus and the Danaan exile
from Egypt.
The
Semitic Danaan, the Tribe of Dan
The Semitic identity of the ancient Danaan
sailors has been commented on by historians. G.F. Schomann stated, “Even
among the ancients some considered that the [Danaan] settlers who
arrived [in Greece] from Egypt were
at any rate not of Egyptian descent, but adventurers of Semitic
race, who, having been expelled from Egypt, had some of them turned
towards Greece.” (Antiquities Of Greece, p.12)
These Danaan were not only Semitic; they were Hebrews, according to
ancient Egyptian records. Professor
Max Duncker, in The History Of Antiquity (I:456-466), gave
fascinating details of a two-fold land/sea exodus as told in an ancient
Egyptian account: “The narrative of Hecataeus of Abdera, who was in
Egypt in the time of Ptolemy I, and wrote an Egyptian history, gives us
the most unprejudiced account, composed from the widest point of view,
and connects the emigration of
the Hebrews, whom he does not consider Egyptians, with
the supposed emigration from Egypt to Greece. [Hecataeus
says,] “Once, when a pestilence had broken out in Egypt, the cause
of the visitation was generally ascribed to the anger of the gods.
[Editor’s Note: The Ten Plagues are called a “pestilence” in
Exodus 9:14-15, and were indeed caused by God!] As many strangers
dwelt in Egypt, and observed different customs in religion and
sacrifice, it came to pass that the hereditary worship of the gods was
being given up in Egypt. The Egyptians, therefore, were of opinion that
they would obtain no alleviation of the evil unless they removed the
people of foreign extraction. [Note: This “removal” is the
Egyptian appellation for the exodus of Scripture.] When they were
driven out, the noblest and bravest part of them, as some say, under
noble and renowned leaders, Danaus and Cadmus, came to Hellas [Greece];
but the great bulk of them migrated into the land, not far removed from
Egypt, which is now called Judea. These emigrants were led by Moses, who
was the most distinguished among them for wisdom and bravery.”
Hecataeus of Abdera was a Greek historian living in fourth century B.C.
Egypt under Ptolemy I, a general of Alexander the Great. In the extract
above, this ancient historian clearly connected both the Hebrews and the
Danaan as part of the same exodus. Therefore, the Danaan were in fact
the Biblical tribe of Dan — a seafaring tribe and part of the Hebrew
exodus.
Another marvelous account, although also spoken with a decidedly
Egyptian bias, is that of Lysimachus of Alexandria (355-281 B.C.),
whose history was preserved by Flavius Josephus in Contra Apionem:
“At the time of king Bocchoris [possibly the Greek name for the
Pharaoh of the exodus], unclean and leprous men had come into the
temples to beg for food. Hence there was a blight on the land; and
Bocchoris received a response from Ammon [an Egyptian god], that
the temples must be purified. The lepers, as if the sun were angry at
their existence, were to be plunged into the sea, and the unclean were
to be driven out of the land. Hence the lepers were... thrown into the
sea; but the unclean were driven out helpless into the desert. These met
together in council; in the night they lit fires and lights, and
called, fasting, upon the gods to save them. Then a certain Moses
advised them to go through the desert till they came to inhabited
regions... they established a city Hierosyla [Jerusalem] in
Judea...” (ibid., p. 463)
This ancient historic document provides evidence that the exodus
involved two distinct groups with different destinations. Some of the
Hebrews expelled from Egypt in the exodus were “thrown into the sea”
and sailed north across the Mediterranean to found the earliest
civilization in Greece, while Moses led the rest of Israel eastward
“helpless into the desert” of the Wilderness.
The
Exile From Egypt
What happened to cause Danaus and his followers to be expelled from
Egypt? The reason handed down from the mists of time has obvious
corruption to it. The Egyptian accounts refer to two brothers, Danaus
and Aegyptus. Danaus was said to have 50 sons, who each married one of
the 50 daughters of Aegyptus. According to the legend, each of the
daughters then slew their husbands on their wedding night. (Encyclopedia
Britannica, 11th ed., 7:793) Aegyptus was also said to
have “driven out” Danaus from Egypt. Danaus therefore designates
some people who had dwelled in Egypt, and Aegyptus seems to indicate a
personification of the land of Egypt itself. This strange and contorted
legend, if rooted on an actual historic event, seems to indicate that
some form of mass slaughter had occurred. It is far more likely that we
have here evidence of the tenth plague on Egypt, the slaughter of the
firstborn. This event was indeed the decisive event that caused Pharaoh
to order the Hebrews to leave the land of Egypt. (Ex.12:29-33)
The waterway systems of ancient Egypt played an important part, since
the Danaan went into exile on sea-going ships. The modern Suez Canal,
linking the Red Sea northward to the Mediterranean, had not yet been
built. Instead, a series of canals and waterways linked the Nile River
eastward to the Red Sea. Encyclopedia Britannica, in an article on the
Suez Canal, states: “And so it is that the earliest canals of which
history has mention were constructed to
link the Nile valley to the Red sea and not to pierce the narrow
neck of land which separated the latter from the Mediterranean… As
early as 2000 B.C., a canal
linked the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, via the Wadi Tumilat, with the
Bitter Lakes, whence another channel was dug to the Red sea.”
Historian Alexander Wheelock Thayer, in The
Hebrews In Egypt And Their Exodus, presents evidence that on the
night the exodus began, Moses had a Hebrew force seize the boats on the
Nile as well as those on the canal leading to the Red Sea. Thayer says, “This
may reasonably have been, to seize all the shipping and boats on the
canal and Jam Suph about Pithom, to hasten… the business of
crossing” the Red Sea. Thayer assumes that Moses would have been
unaware that God would open a footpath through the Red Sea, and
originally planned to cross by boat. It also assumes that Moses planned
to patiently ferry, presumably in many hundreds of trips, all of the
hundreds of thousands of people, animals, and belongings of Israel
across the Red Sea while fleeing Egyptian pursuit! This would have been
impractical, since “the total number of Israelites [were] probably
about two millions. This number is accepted by the best critics.” (Biblical
Encyclopedia by Gray and Adams I:191)
For whatever reason, a Red Sea crossing by boat
was never attempted, for the Bible does not record the presence of any
boats as the Israelites approached the Sea. Therefore, if Egyptian boats
were seized for the exodus, a different plan was in place. The boats
were apparently used instead by the Danite sailors as vehicles to escape
from Egypt. The exodus was most probably two-pronged. It was an escape
by both land and sea from the land of Pharaoh!
Danite
Migrations To Europe
Whether it was their
original intention or not, the Danaan sailed their ships north to the
secluded bay of Argos in the Greek Peloponnesus. The Encyclopedia
Judaica (5:1257) quotes a leading Israeli
archaeologist, Y. Yadin, who states, “...there is a close
relationship between the tribe of Dan and the tribe of Danaoi whose
members were clearly seafarers.” This encyclopedia also tells us, “the
name Dan should be regarded as a short form of Dan(ann)iel or the
like.” (5:1255) Again the connection with the Greek Danaan
is unmistakable. Dr. Robert Latham, one of the most respected 19th
century authorities, firmly stated that the Danaan of Greece were the
Israelite Tribe of Dan. In his Ethnology of Europe, Latham
commented, “Neither do I think that the eponymus [i.e.,
founder] of the Argive [Greek] Danai was other than
that of the Israelite tribe of Dan; only we are so used to confine
ourselves to the soil of Palestine in our consideration of the history
of the Israelites, that we... ignore the share they may have taken in
the ordinary history of the world.” (p. 137)
Archaeologist
Dr. Cyrus Gordon states that they later sailed from Greece to other
European coastlands, including Ireland and Denmark. In his book Before
Columbus, Gordon relates, “A group of Sea
People bore the name of ‘Dan.’ The Bible tells how a segment of the
seafaring (Judges 5:17) Danites [were part of] the tribal system of
ancient Israel... The Danites were widespread. Cyprus was called Ia-Dnan
‘The Island of Dan(an).’ The same people were called Danuna, and
under this name they appear as rulers of the Plain of Adana in Cilicia.
Greek tradition has their eponymous ancestor, Danaos (Dan), migrating
from the Nile delta to Greece...”
(p.108)
Note that the Israelites did in fact emigrate from Egypt. Cyrus Gordon
added, “Virgil also designated the Greeks
as “Danai.” Bold scholars see the influence of the Danites in Irish
folk lore... and in the name of Danmark (‘Denmark’): the land of
Dan...” (p.
111)
There is indeed
strong evidence that the Danaan of Ireland, Cornwall and Scotland, the
Danaan of Greece and Italy, as well as the Danes of Denmark, were
Israelites of the tribe of Dan. W. Ewart Gladstone in Juventus Mundi
states that the Tuatha de Danaan of Ireland came from the Danaan of
Greece. The similarity of name would itself seem conclusive; but is
there other evidence that these two groups of Danaan were related? Dr.
H.R. Hall, in The Civilization of Greece In The Bronze Age,
stated concerning the Greeks of the age of Homer, “Athenian
funerary lekythoi [painted vases] give us coppery-red or brown
hair side by side with dark-brown or black, and generally fair
complexions, resembling a certain Irish Celtic type.” (p.288)
Keating’s History of Ireland says, “The Dannans
were a people of great learning, they had overmuch gold and silver…
they left Greece after a battle with the Assyrians, and for fear of
falling into the hands of the Assyrians came to Norway and Denmark (Dannemark)
and thence passed over to Ireland.” (p.40)
The Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters explains, “The
colony called Tuatha-de-Dannan conquered the Firbolgs and became Masters
of Ireland… were highly skilled in architecture and other arts from
their long residence in Greece and intercourse with the Phoenicians.”
(p.121) They have left their
names in many places; we find Dannonia, Caledonia, and Donaghadee in the
Lough of Belfast. We can see by now
it is no coincidence that the early Greeks resembled the Irish Celts,
because the Tuatha de Danaan of early Ireland descended from Greek
“Danaan” colonists who sailed westward in search of new lands.
These Danaan colonists did indeed settle in Denmark, which name means,
‘Dan’s Mark’ or ‘Dan’s Land.’ In ancient times, Denmark was
settled by a tribe called the “Dani,” according to early Roman
historian, Procopius (fifth century, A.D.), who recorded
that the Dani were a group of tribes inhabiting the Danish peninsula. (VI.xv.1-6)
That these were part of the Hebrew tribe of Dan may be seen in the fact
mentioned previously that Biblical Dan was called, “Dani-el or
Dananniel,” a variation of ‘Dani’ or ‘Danaan.’
Our
Exodus From Unbelief To Christ
It is remarkable that the Apostle Paul mentions the exodus and Red Sea
crossing in his epistle of First Corinthians chapter 10. He says, “Moreover,
brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our
fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were
all baptized unto Moses
in the cloud and in the sea… Now all these things happened unto them
for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the
ends of the world are come.” (1 Cor. 10:1, 2, 11) The
ancient history of the exodus from Egypt is an example for our
admonition, or instruction, today. The Apostle Paul says that it was a
symbol of baptism, that sacred ordinance symbolizing entrance and
initiation into the Christian life. This has, first, a Spiritual
connotation including all those of every race throughout the world who
accept the gospel of Christ to receive the promise of eternal life. But
in a secondary, historical sense, many of the descendants of the people
of the exodus later accepted the gospel in Europe and became known as
Christendom, or Christ’s Kingdom on earth. It was largely through
their witness in subsequent centuries that the knowledge of salvation
has gone forth into the whole earth. (Isa. 49:6) Through the
continuing efforts of that Servant People, as well as others who also
Spiritually come to Him in faith, may that prophesied time come when “the
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover
the sea.” (Isa. 11:9)
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