David down, the well-known Australian archaeologist, in his journal Diggings, reports on a lecture given by Dr Rosalie David (Director of Antiquities at the Manchester Museum) at Macquarie University, Sydney. on 9 August 1990. Dr David is the noted author of the book The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt, and in it she describes how the British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie excavated the Egyptian city of Kahun one hundred years ago, and refers to the many artefacts he found there, which are on display in the Manchester Museum. Other treasures discovered at Kahun can be seen in the Cairo Museum.
The book by Dr David is captivating in its portrayal of Petrie’s work at Kahun, and she presents his conclusions with keen perception and clarity of expression. Petrie’s overall achievements in the field of archaeology have been widely acclaimed as monumental, and he was well known for his assiduous attention to detail. Diggings is the source of the information presented in this article.
Kahun was originally known as Hotep Kahun, a city associated with the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt. It was adjacent to the Nile Valley and not far from present-day Lahun, about 100 kilometres southwest of Cairo. Kahun is thought to have been roughly one kilometre east of the pyramid of Seostris II and near to the ancient city of Gurob. It was a truly remarkable feat for Sir Flinders Petrie to excavate 2,000 rooms at Kahun, but unfortunately further work had to be curtailed due to a lack of funds, which left about two-thirds of the houses untouched by the spade.
The archaeological findings at these cities have been a cause of surprise, even bewilderment, to archaeologists worldwide, because much of the population could be identified as having been Semitic, with a life style perceptibly different from that of the Egyptians—a situation that changed later during their enslavement. They were called Amu (foreigners) by their Egyptian overlords, and, judged by the sandals they wore, they were taller than the indigenous Egyptians.
Due to the fact that most Biblical chronologies place the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty before the coming of the Israelites into Egypt, neither Sir Flinders Petrie nor Dr Rosalie David related the occupants of Kahun to the Bible, but the Semitic inhabitants of Kahun could be perceived as being the Israelite slaves, forced by Seostris III and Amenemhet III to build the pyramids. In this revised context Seostris III is identifiable as the new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph” (Ex. 1:8), who used the Israelites as slave labour, and Amenemhet III in all probability the king at the time when Moses was born, whose daughter Sebeknefrure rescued the baby Moses from the basket floating on the Nile and took him into the royal household.
The houses at Kahun were found to have been neatly constructed with mud-plastered walls that had been painted. A distinctive type of pottery was discovered, and much of it seemed to be in the Cretan style. Analysis of the pottery by the neutron activation method revealed that the clay used in the pottery was not native to Egypt. The occupants of the houses used decorated tableware, and it is interesting to learn that Petrie even chanced upon a baby’s feeding bottle made of pottery.
In the Manchester Museum David Down saw displayed “a cylindrical pottery tube which was captioned as a beehive”, and he felt a little skeptical as to just how an object of that nature would attract bees. In her lecture Dr David explained that traces of wax and pollen were found in the tube, and described how a chemist had produced a replica of the tube and, upon setting it in an outdoor area, discovered that bees made use of it as a hive. Down makes the striking observation that only four items related to bee-keeping have ever been found by archaeologists and no inscriptions or tomb paintings depicting bees have come to light”.
Diggings makes the point that Kahun must have had a vermin problem, for many rat holes were found, and Sir Flinders Petrie even unearthed “an ingenious rat trap for snaring the rodents”. Before Petrie’s excavations at Kahun it was not known for certain how the Egyptians were able to produce fire, and there was nothing on wall reliefs, in paintings or in papyrus documents to show how they did it; but Petrie found wooden slabs with charred holes in them, and fire sticks which were twirled with a device like a bow”. Diggings also acquaints us with the fact that the oldest type of sling used for hurling stones was found at Kahun.
Quite a number of inscribed specimens were discovered at Kahun, including work on an alphabet, and also more than 1,000 fragments of papyri, the bulk of which originated from the reign of Amenemhet III. These papyri dealt with subjects as diverse as legal texts, mathematics and medical matters, and it may be of interest to know that the earliest known document on gynecology was found at Kahun.
Papyri of a legal nature revealed that monogamous marriages were the order of the day for men. It seems that some of the work overseers at Kahun had been selected from among the slaves, and this accords with the Biblical account, where we find them described as “officers of the children of Israel” (Ex. 5:14), who were beaten and rebuked by their Egyptian taskmasters because the slaves were unable to produce the same number of bricks when they had to gather straw for themselves as when the straw was provided for them.
Diggings reveals that Petrie dug up the floors of a number of houses and found boxes that had been buried containing skeletons of babies, in many instances three in a box. David Down points out that this type of burial was totally different from the method employed by the Egyptians, and is of the opinion that these baby burials resulted from the killing of the male Israelite babies at the behest of Pharaoh, whose cruel decree is recorded in Exodus 1:22.
Dr Rosalie David is persuaded that the story of Kahun came to a sudden end in the middle of the Thirteenth Dynasty, pointing out that the last scarab found there was that of Khasekemre-Neferhotep I. whom David Down identifies as the pharaoh of the Exodus. Down quotes Dr David as stating that the inhabitants of Kahun left suddenly and did not return.
Down comes to the conclusion that the hasty exit of the Israelite slaves from Kahun was made possible by the cumulative effect of the ten plagues visited upon the Egyptians by the God of Israel, which so filled the Egyptians with fear and foreboding that they finally allowed the Israelites to leave the land of Egypt. This would have provided the opportunity for those at Kahun to join the greater number stationed in Goshen in preparation for the great Divine deliverance through the Red Sea.
A Perspective on how Archaeology can help us understand the Bible