The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

at the beginning of the 1 st Dynasty and was ruled by only one pharaoh at a time after that. Two pharaohs may have reigned concurrently for a lot of Egypt’s history, and more than two pharaohs during some periods, especially in times of disorder. It would be most likely that one of the ruling pharaohs would be the more powerful one, and would have authority over the lesser pharaoh. Neither pharaoh would be willing to admit in their inscriptions that the other pharaoh was ruling at the same time. The belief in one pharaoh ruling over all of Egypt is, however, the paradigm to which all secular information on ancient Egypt has to bow. Therefore, the argument among these scholars about dating the Ipuwer Papyrus to the end of the Old Kingdom versus the end of the Middle Kingdom presents a real discrepancy in time to them (about 400 years). For a statement about standard Egyptian chronology, and a typical secular listing of the kings of Egypt, see Shaw (2003, pp. 480–489). According to arguments by Habermehl (2013), at the time of the Exodus the two ruling pharaohs would have been Amenemhat IV, who reigned from 1786–1777 BC at the end of the 12 th Dynasty in Lower Egypt; and Pepi II, who reigned from 2278–2184 BC at the end of the 6 th Dynasty in Upper Egypt (these dates are from Shaw (2003, p. 483)). The reigns of these two pharaohs would have ended abruptly at about the same time because of the plagues. The plagues would have come on both Upper and Lower Egypt, as is shown in the Bible’s description of the plagues; for instance, Exodus 11:5–6 says that the last plague was to be on all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, and that there would be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt (italics are the author’s). As the pharaoh of the Exodus, Amenemhat IV in the north would have died by drowning in the Red Sea. But what of Pepi II in the south? There are some hints from Ipuwer: “… things are done that never were before/ The king has been robbed by beggars” (Lichtheim 1973, p. 155). This would have to refer to the king of Upper Egypt in the south, Pepi II. Ipuwer continues: “…the land is deprived of kingship/By a few people who ignore custom” (Lichtheim 1973, p. 156). The word “robbed” is one place where there are some differences among translators of this manuscript: for instance, Simpson (2003, p. 198) says, “the king has been overthrown by the rabble.” This meaning would be supported by Ipuwer’s statement that the land is deprived of kingship. It would appear that Pepi II did not die in the 10 th plague, but was deposed some time afterward, most certainly an unusual event for a pharaoh. This would perhaps not be surprising, considering the complete chaos in Egypt at this time, as described by Ipuwer. The last statement in Table I is significant because it shows how widespread the destruction in Egypt was; Ipuwer says “All is ruin!” The dates that many secular scholars (e.g., Shaw 2003, p. 483) currently give the end of the reigns of Pepi II (2184 BC) and Amenemhat IV (1777 BC) are markedly earlier than the Exodus date of about 1445 BC used by most biblical scholars (e.g., Ashton and Down 2006, p. 89). This means that there is a wide divergence between the biblical and secular timelines, with two Exodus dates (that are 400 years apart) on the secular timeline. See Fig. 2 for correlation of the biblical and standard timelines, showing the concurrent double dates for the Exodus at the end of the 6 th and 12 th Dynasties. We mention here that some biblical believers deny that the Ipuwer Papyrus describes the times of the Exodus, because they do not accept that the two timelines diverge in the second millennium BC; for them, the Exodus took place at 1445 BC on both the standard and biblical timelines. They therefore believe that the Ipuwer Papyrus predates the Exodus (e.g., Smith 2015). This presents a problem for them, because the Ipuwer manuscript seems to describe clearly a state of Egypt that was caused by the plagues of the Bible. 2. Did Egypt collapse because of low Nile floods? As we see from the Bible, it was the 10 plagues that caused the total collapse of Egypt. However, Hassan (2007), like many others, ascribes the collapse of the Old Kingdom of Egypt to a period of very low Nile flooding, even drying up of the Nile at one point. This would have caused eventual famine over a period of time because far less grain than usual could be grown; other problems would have followed. But Butzer, a scientist, cautions that “it is possible but unproven that Nile failures may have helped trigger collapse of the Old Kingdom” (2012, p. 3634). Ipuwer gives us a clue about this when he says, “Lo, Hapy (the Nile) inundates and none plow for him” (Lichtheim 1973, p. 151). Although the Nile had risen and deposited the usual sediments, everything was in such disorder that the farmers were not plowing as they normally would have done. We see that Ipuwer bemoans just about everything else going on in Egypt, but the one thing that he does not suggest is that the Nile had not risen as it should. This would indicate that a low Nile rising did not cause the famine that Ipuwer describes. However, a low Nile rising was recorded in the third year of the reign of the pharaoh Sobekneferu (Callender 2003, p. 159), who reigned immediately after the Exodus pharaoh, Amenemhat IV (Habermehl 2013). Because this low Nile rising was only three years after the Exodus, it could be easily mistaken by historians as causing the collapse of Egypt. 3. The plague of water turned to blood As we see above in Table 1, there are some specific details that come out of this manuscript that point to the Exodus plagues, rather than some other period of difficulty that might have taken place in Habermehl ◀ Ipuwer Papyrus and the Exodus ▶ 2018 ICC 4 Figure 2. In this diagram, the lower straight line is the biblical timeline; the Exodus is at 1450 BC. The upper line shows how the standard timeline diverges by different amounts from the biblical one at different times (Habermehl 2013; Habermehl 2018). On the upper line, the Exodus shows up at both 1800 BC and 2200 BC, with the 6 th and 12 th Dynasties of Egypt running concurrently and ending at the same time. This causes the unusual sudden drop in the standard timeline. The original Ipuwer Papyrus would therefore refer to events at both 1800 BC and 2200 BC on the standard timeline. These just happen to be the two approximate dates that opposing scholars claim for the events in the Ipuwer Papyrus.