3,200-Year-Old Picture of Israelites Found in Egypt

Winter of 1976–1977. I was in Luxor, in Upper Egypt, site of the ancient city of Thebes. As a member of the University of Chicago’s Epigraphic Survey, I was there studying the magnificent reliefs and recording the hieroglyphic inscriptions that almost cover the site.

In my spare time, I would work collecting whatever data I could find that might elucidate the late XIXth Dynasty (1293–1185 B.C.E.^a), on which I was then writing my doctoral dissertation. It was in this connection that I found myself regularly studying a set of battle reliefs accompanied by extensive hieroglyphic inscriptions located in the famous Karnak temple.