The Kurash (Cyrus) Prism matches the first part of the book of Ezra fairly well. Link.
I dunno. Why did Marco Polo’s book never mention the Great Wall of China?
monavis:
Irrelevant. Even Biblical literalists do not think Rameses II was the Pharaoh of the Exodus.
Some do, actually. This is because Exodus says that the Jews were forced to build the city of Pi-Rameses which named after him, and built during his reign. I believe he was also the Pharaoh depicted in DeMille’s Ten Commandments movie, which is where a lot of people get the bulk of their information about the Exodus, so the popular identification of Rameses II as the Pharaoh of the Exodus is definitely out there.
The big hurdle to this identification, of course, is that he didn’t drown in the Red Sea, and tourists can go see his mummy.
Speaking of tourists - the mummy of his predecessor Ramesses I ended up gracing a tourist freakshow in Niagra Falls for a century.
“Gutians” = Judaeans?
Not really relevant other than it’s about biblical archaeology, but not really worth its own thread either so I’ll share here:
Archaeologists discover the remains of a burial shroud from the time of Jesus.
The remains wrapped inside were of a man who suffered from both leprosy and tuberculosis (though judging from the shroud he was from a well to do household).
IIRC, we really don’t know who that was.
But being mummified with both arms crossed is a pretty good indicator that a New Kingdom mummy was one of a pharaoh.
No: the Exodus story says that the pursuing army was drowned, but does not mention the fate of Pharoah.
That’s news to me, and thanks for bringing it to my attention. My question is: do we know whether that story has historical basis? That is, my initial point was that peoples didn’t make up humble origins; if we have a story of humble origins, it probably has some factual basis.
Disclaimer: I personally don’t believe in the literal truth of Exodus (though I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it had some kernel of truth in [much less mystical and much smaller scale] real events), but one thing I’ve seen literalists point to is the ‘disappearance’ from historical records of Ramses II’s older brother and for that matter of his older sons (he had at very least dozens, by some accounts he had more than 100) which they equate with the death of the first born when pointing to either Seti I (Ram’s father) or Ramses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus.
Of course there are any number of Egyptian princes who disappeared which is hardly surprising given how many there were and how primitive medicine was. Often we’re not even sure who a given pharaoh was in connection to his predecessor, successor, or co-regnant.
Exodus is not an origins story, it’s an escape from bondage story, and its a conquest story.
The escape from bondage motif would make sense if it was constructed during the Babylonian captivity, just as Babylon was used as a setting for Daniel during the Seleucid occupation.
Why would the writers of the Bible be thinking from the perspective of the Hebrew people as a whole? They were promoting a religion and a deity. From that perspective creating an origin myth where the Hebrews were miserable slaves until rescued by Yahweh makes a lot of sense.
It’s Dibble, not Dribble. And no, we don’t know that the story has historic origins because a) it’s not the *only *Mexica origin story, others don’t feature the oppresive rulers; and b) there’s a history of vassalage for the historic Aztec/Mexica after they came to the Valley of Mexico and before they built their own empire anyway, so this may just be backwards projection of recent conditions (Note: the same argument could be applied to the Jews’ origin myth - a re-telling and projection of the Exile/Egyptian rule/Alexandrine rule/Persian rule into the past - it’s not like there aren’t other instances of duplication of stories in the Bible); and c)Aztlan has never been definitely identified.
While the biblical text probably (almost certainly) had its final editing after the Babylonian Captivity, the J and E texts are probably (almost certainly) from much earlier, merged after the destruction of the northern kingdom (around 750 BCE.)
And, my apologies, MrDibble, I did know better. Call it scribal error? 
Yup - it’s a pharaoh, but they can’t be 100% sure which one. Allegedly, there is at least some evidence pointing to Ramasses l.
Enough at any rate to re-write Ozymandius a bit: "look on my works (step right up, two bits a gander!) ye mighty … " 
I knew that. I just feel I have to always visibly correct people so the mis-spelling doesn’t become the de facto standard, forcing me to officially change my name to MrDribble.
Diogenes:
Even if that was so (and it’s possible that Rameses was a name in use in Egypt before any actual Pharaoh ruled by it), that only means that Rameses was the ruler at some point during the period of Hebrew servitude, not that he was the ruler at the end of that centuries-long time.
Jews may have been believed to control Hollywood, but those who were high up in Hollywood were not of the literal religious persuasion.
The sources I’m familiar with amongst Orthodox Jewish Biblical literalists, at least, say that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was most likely Ay or Hemhoreb (who ruled before Rameses I, hence my earlier comment about Rameses).
Theycall me Mr Dibble!