The date and exact circumstances of the Exodus will surely remain a mystery forever, as crucial evidence was lost (or deliberately destroyed) long ago. There is no explicit mention of an exodus in Egyptian records. (It was a sore subject for them, so they left it out of the official story.) For a different set of reasons, Hebrew records do not identify the pharaoh from which they fled. (Being known as "those slaves in exile" didn't serve their purposes, so they failed to preserve the information necessary to link them to "that exodus.") This leaves the topic open to speculation. Nevertheless, it was one of the pivotal events in history, and curiosity concerning how such a momentous event could have occurred is hard to resist.

If we apply some common sense, we might at least constrain our speculation to what is believable. And whatever the circumstances of the Exodus, they were extraordinary, so we will be looking for a rare combination of factors. It would have taken an incredibly powerful force to drive a large group of people out of the most fertile land in the area, and to take their chances in the desert. It would also have taken an unusual set of circumstances for this to be allowed to happen.

Early in the reign of Horemheb, 1319-1292 BC, there were a set of conditions that could have led to such an extraordinary event. But to understand why, we have to look at what happened in the previous period that would set the stage. That would be the reign of Akhenaten, 1351-1334 BC.

Akhenaten is perhaps best known for his attempt to convert Egypt to monotheism. In a related set of maneuvers, Akhenaten disenfranchised the priests of the myriad cults that were popular in his time, and consolidated all of their political power under himself. Whether Akhenaten did this out of religious fervor or because of megalomania is an open issue, but during the 17 years that he reigned, and the 15 years after his reign but before Horemheb took power, Egypt was officially monotheistic, and the worship of the Sun-god Aten was the only legal religion. Akhenaten also instituted a number of social reforms, including designating every 7^th day as a day of rest (for everyone, including slaves).

While many would have embraced the new religion, others would have been skeptical of it, and the disenfranchised nobility would have been downright upset by the whole thing. So there was no guarantee that Akhenaten's reforms would persist.

And then it's possible that an unrelated set of factors turned the tides against Akhenaten. There is archaeological evidence of, and literary references to, the outbreak of a pandemic (perhaps bubonic plague) in Akhenaten's time or shortly thereafter. This spread throughout the Middle East, and could have been as devastating as the Black Death in Europe in the 1300s. To the superstitious ancient mind, this would have been proof that the gods were angry at Akhenaten.

For whatever reason, Horemheb decided to return Egypt to the old ways, reinstating polytheism, and revoking all of the political and economic reforms that Akhenaten had instituted and that his immediate successors (Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay) had upheld.

This, in turn, could have incited a backlash from the Sun worshippers, and especially from the slaves who enjoyed the reforms that had benefited them (at the expense of the Egyptian nobility). So here we have the makings of a revolution.

So what was Horemheb to do? He looked one way and he saw a power base of nobility and polytheists, clamoring that the gods were destroying the evil empire of Akhenaten. He looked the other way and he saw the other half of his power base, infuriated at the desecration of monuments to the Sun god, and wanting their weekly rest day back. And oh by the way, there was also talk of an exodus, to get away from the pandemic.

So Moses appears to plead the case of the slaves who are ready to revolt, and he suggests that he be allowed to lead them out of Egypt.

It's interesting to note that Moses, a shepherd who fled Egypt to escape prosecution for killing an Egyptian, all of a sudden re-appears as a figure influential enough to negotiate a mass emigration. If we are to constrain ourselves to what makes sense, Moses was not a poor shepherd from the Sinai Peninsula, but rather, an important Egyptian of some sort.

One theory is that Moses was actually Ramose, vizier to Amenhotep III and to Akhenaten. The most liberal and creative of the re-tellings of the Exodus goes something like the following.

Ramose (meaning "son of Ra") was the vizier of Amenhotep III, and the tutor of Akhenaten, later to become his vizier as well. In tutoring Akhenaten, Ramose instilled a vision of a new order, involving centralized political power, humanitarian reforms to improve the quality of life for the slaves, and a new, monotheistic religion. When Akhenaten became pharaoh, these visions became realities.

When Akhenaten died, Ramose was out of a job, as there is no record of Akhenaten's immediate successors keeping viziers. But when Horemheb became pharaoh, and decided to take Egypt back to the old ways, and a slave revolt became imminent, Ramose came out of retirement to negotiate on behalf of the slaves. Horemheb was determined to appease the angry gods by denouncing the exclusive worship of the Sun, but agreed with Ramose that a slave revolt was coming fast.

It was Ramose who suggested the solution. Announce to the people that anybody wanting to continue the exclusive worship of Aten must follow Ramose out of Egypt and into the desert in search of some other place to live. Those who stay will have to go back to the old ways, or face the severest of punishments for refusing.

The strategy was brilliant. Horemheb must have thought Ramose to be a senile old man who just wanted to be in charge of something. But Horemheb saw an opportunity to defuse the powder keg that his country had become. Many people will argue endlessly about religious issues, but far fewer will leave their homes because of them. When offered the opportunity to follow a senile old man out into the desert to maintain their beliefs, most would begrudgingly forsake their religion, and stop arguing. The few that would be willing to face near certain death in the desert were the people that Horemheb didn't want around anyway, as these would be the people who would be willing to die in a revolution. So Horemheb granted Ramose the permission to organize a mass emigration.

So at last, Ramose was the undisputed ruler of something, which he could never have been in Egypt. The only problem was that he had people but no land, except the barren desert of the Sinai Peninsula. As the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army under Akhenaten, he was well acquainted with all of the powers that be in the Middle East, and he set out to negotiate a place to settle. None of the rulers near Egypt wanted to get on the wrong side of the pharaoh by taking in his runaway slaves. But on the fringes of the Egyptian domination, in northern Palestine, Ramose was able to strike a deal with a tribal chief named Abraham who wanted the manpower to aid in his defense against the marauding Hittites from Asia Minor. The only problem there was that Abraham figured that if he let Ramose into his territory, Ramose would wind up on top before long, and Abraham would be the exile. So Abraham stipulated that the people could settle in his territory, but Ramose could not. Not wanting his people to go on without him, Ramose insisted they linger in the desert. When Ramose finally passed, the people entered Abraham's territory, completing the Exodus.

To disassociate themselves from "those runaway slaves," the Hebrews then adopted Abraham's lineage as their own, and he becomes a Biblical figure.

The Bible tells us that there were 10 Plagues:

1. Water to Blood
2. Frogs
3. Gnats or Lice
4. Flies
5. Livestock Diseased
6. Boils
7. Thunder and Hail
8. Locusts
9. Darkness
10. Death of the Firstborn

Archaeology and ancient literature bear witness to the outbreak of a contagious disease that appears to have started in Egypt at the end or shortly after the reign of Akhenaten, and then spread throughout the Middle East. If the Exodus occurred at the beginning of Horemheb's reign, it's possible that there is a relationship between the Biblical Plagues and the pandemic of historical record, but there are several different ways of telling the story.

Some have suggested that the Plagues were not the work of God, but rather, the work of the slaves, who were attempting to demonstrate their solidarity. For example, the 1^st Plague may have been a matter of the slaves conspiring to dump as much animal blood as possible into the Nile in one night, so that when the pharaoh awoke, he would think that the river had turned entirely to blood, as Moses had warned. The 8^th Plague could have been a similar stunt, in which the slaves captured as many locusts as possible, and then released them within their masters' houses while they slept.

Some who abide by this telling also believe that some of the Plagues might not have been intentional, but rather, unfortunate side-effects. For example, dumping a large volume of animal blood into the Nile might have driven the frogs from the river in search of other sources of water (2^nd Plague). Not finding any, since the wells and troughs were also tainted (deliberately by the slaves?), the frogs died. The absence of frogs would have resulted in the land being over-run by gnats, lice, and flies, whose population is the responsibility of the frogs to control (3^rd & 4^th Plagues). The insects would have turned to the livestock as their only source of moisture. Feeding on dead or dying livestock would have greatly increased the chances of spreading diseases among the animals (5^th Plague). Some insects feed on animals as well as humans, such as fleas that can carry bubonic plague (6^th Plague). This could have been the pandemic that spread throughout the Middle East, and that appears in many records of the period. Hence it may have been the slaves who unintentionally initiated an environmental process that led ultimately to the disease that decimated the population. (Oops.) The Torah then lays out the detail of their final days in Egypt, but with their guiltless humility crediting the hand of God with causing the Plagues, instead of their own environmental vandalism.

But there is another story that is also plausible. Recent forensic archaeology has identified the possibility that "advances" in the handling of livestock during Akhenaten's time, involving the keeping of pigs and ducks in closer proximity, created biological conditions conducive to the germination of the bacteria that cause bubonic plaque. So the "environmental vandalism" theory might not be correct.

Either way, the story told by Tacitus and others was simply that the Exodus was a flight from a pandemic, and makes no mention of a slave revolt of any kind. If this was the case, the Hebrews were simply those Egyptians who decided to get out, leaving the infected behind. If this occurred before Horemheb abolished monotheism, then they were simply Egyptians who happened to be monotheists because that was the trend at the time. They then escaped the reforms of Horemheb, and continued on as monotheists. Their beliefs evolved into Judaism, which formed the foundation for Christianity and Islam, all based on the Sun worship of Ramose and Akhenaten.

There may have also been a slave revolt at some other time, and it's possible that the two stories were merged, as the Hebrews would have preferred to think that they came into being in a dramatic uprising against a heathen polytheist, rather than in a flight from a contagious disease. And, of course, it's also possible that the Exodus was primarily a flight from the plague, but there was a bit of disagreement on the topic at the time, introducing the element of political conflict. As seen through inspired eyes, where all inexplicable events are acts of God, a dispute over emigration visas in face of a pandemic becomes a fight for freedom from a pagan ruler who God is punishing.

The tid-bits of archaeological and literary support for these stories make a fascinating study. It is unfortunate that the circumstances were so much in favor of the early Hebrews erasing all clearly identifying information, that even what little evidence exists should perhaps be considered suspect. Names and dates were changed in the historical record for political reasons, and this was true of both the Hebrews and the Egyptians. Akhenaten was entirely erased from the Egyptian record, and was not known to exist until modern times, when archaeological evidence from Amarna proved that there was another pharaoh not in the official list. And the name "Ramose" would certainly have been changed, as the Hebrews sought to disassociate themselves from the old Egyptian order. The most conservative change would simply be to remove the "Ra," which they certainly would have done, since Ra was the name of a pagan god in the Aten faith. That left "Mose." With a Greek ending added later, it becomes "Moses."

Regardless, all of the other possible stories of the Exodus are missing a key ingredient: a plausible set of circumstances in which such an extraordinary event could occur. The stories told here have that element.

Yet there is a point that simply must be made, regarding "common sense." We have all heard second-hand stories that made perfect sense, only later to hear a first-hand account of the same event that made sense too, but was totally different. Common sense, from a distance, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the truth. If ancient times were anything like the present, the powers that be made decisions for their own reasons, and then they figured out what the people would believe. This resulted in The Truth At That Time. Each successive generation selectively discarded what it didn't like about the past, and altered what it kept. This resulted in The Truth After Some Time Has Passed. As the story spread into different cultures, they did the same thing, though differently in each case. As time passed, new cultures, with different spheres of influence, re-interpreted conflicting versions within the context of their own biases, resulting in The Broad and Time-Honored Consensus. By the time the story was first written down, all of this had happened several times. Thousands of years later, historians review the archaeological and literary evidence, apply modern common sense, and announce that they have found the truth?

In art, and in speculative history, you don't dig with a shovel for the truth. Get your facts from the dirt, but if you want truth, you have to dig into your soul. No matter how it is told, the story of the Exodus is the story of a people driven by a vision of a Better Way, and who were willing to risk all they had for it.