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The Bible and Egyptology seem to be studied as two separate disciplines, probably because the former forms the basis of Christianity and has not been dealt with in the same unrestricted way that other ancient areas of study are open too, there is too much at stake and too many people to offend. Well, thankfully in these more scientifically enlightened times, where religion plays a lesser part in many peoples lives, the barriers are beginning to come down around the hallowed ground of Biblical archaeology, and thus this book, which probably would not have got published fifty years ago, is allowed to see the light of day.

The Sabbah`s research starts with a very broad question. If a major part of the Old Testament is set in Egypt, why is there no trace of the likes of Abraham, Joseph and Moses as described in the books of Exodus and Genesis. If these stories happened as laid out by the bible authors, why are there no recorded tales and eyewitness accounts amongst the Egyptian sources, a people who were very good at recording the most basic of day to day routine. The bottom line of their argument is why is there no sign of a Hebrew presence in Ancient Egypt?

Sigmund Freud himself very interested in Biblical texts and Egyptology, speculated many years earlier that Moses was not a hebrew but an Egyptian, and the Sabbahs book follows this same tack. Without giving too much of their argument away, they put forward the idea that if these major Biblical characters were in fact Egyptians, then you should be able to find their parallel story in Egyptian records. To support this theory they draw on a period of religious upheaval, the one time that there was a major Exodus, of Egyptians, not Hebrews, from the Nile lands. That period was the end of the reign of the Heretical Pharaoh Akhenaten. This Pharaoh had tried to introduce a new Monotheistic religion into a country traditionally governed by many hundreds of gods, the land was bankrupted as a result and the king and his followers sent packing and order was finally restored. The Monotheist were sent to the out reaches of Egyptian control where they could be no more trouble to the stability of Egypt, those fringes being the eastern colonies and dependencies in what is today termed the Holy Land, the land that later produced the Hebrew Bible. The exodus was led by two generals Rameses and Horemheb, both destined to become Pharaohs at a later date.

So this parallel story runs thus, a large group of people are sent out of Egypt

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