Excerpted from "The Bible Unearthed," The Free Press, 2001.
In the 13th century, Egypt was at the peak of its authority-the dominant power in the world. The Egyptian grip over Canaan was firm: Egyptian strongholds were built in various places in the country, and Egyptian officials administered the affairs of the region. In the el-Amarna letters, which are dated a century before, we are told that a unit of 50 Egyptian soldiers was big enough to pacify unrest in Canaan.
Throughout the period of the New Kingdom, large Egyptian armies marched through Canaan to the north, as far as the Euphrates in Syria. Therefore, the main overland road that went from the delta along the coast of northern Sinai to Gaza and then into the heart of Canaan was of utmost importance to the pharaonic regime.
The most potentially vulnerable stretch of road--which crossed the arid and dangerous desert of northern Sinai between the delta and Gaza--was the most protected. A sophisticated system of Egyptian forts, granaries and wells was established at a day's march distance along the entire length of the road, which was called the Ways of Horus.
These road stations enabled the imperial army to cross the Sinai peninsula conveniently and efficiently when necessary. The annals of the great Egyptian conqueror Thumose III tell us that he marched with his troops from the eastern delta to Gaza, a distance about 250 kilometers, in ten days. A relief from the day of Ramesses II's father, Pharaoh Seti I (from around 1300 B.C.), shows the forts and water reservoirs in the form of an early map that traces the route from the eastern delta to the southwestern border of Canaan.
The remains of these forts were uncovered in the course of archeological investigations in northern Sinai by Eliezer Oren of Ben Gurion University, in the 1970s. Oren discovered that each of these road stations, closely corresponding to the sites designated on the ancient Egyptian relief, comprised three elements: a strong fort made of bricks in the typical Egyptian military architecture, storage installations for food provisions, and a water reservoir.
Putting aside the possibility of divinely inspired miracles, one can hardly accept the idea of a flight of a large group of slaves fro Egypt through the heavily guarded border fortifications into the desert and then into Canaan in the time of such a formidable Egyptian presence. Any group escaping Egypt against the will of the pharoah would have easily been tracked down not only by an Egyptian army chasing it from the delta, but also by the Egyptian soldiers in the forts in northern Sinai and in Canaan.
