Exodus Narrative and New Kingdom Egypt

Exodus begins with an Egyptian regime compelling Hebrew labour and ordering the deaths of male infants. Moses survives through the actions of women, is raised within the royal household, flees to Midian and later returns after receiving a divine commission.

Miriam, Moses’s sister, and Zipporah, his Midianite wife, connect the court, enslaved community, desert exile and migration. Their roles show that the liberation narrative depends on women’s courage and religious action as well as on Moses’s confrontation with Pharaoh.

The date, route and historical setting of the Exodus remain disputed, and no single pharaoh can be identified with certainty. This context supplies a cautious New Kingdom framework for biblical fiction without claiming archaeological proof of the narrative’s particulars.