The Empty Tomb at Avaris

In the eastern Nile Delta — the region the Bible calls Goshen — Manfred Bietak's team excavated a Syrian-style palace at Tell el-Dab'a with twelve columns and twelve principal tombs set in its garden. One of those tombs is a non-royal pyramid tomb: an honour normally reserved for Egyptian royalty, granted here to a foreigner.

Its burial chamber sits empty. Inside the funeral chapel was a smashed colossal statue with pale yellow skin, red hair, a throw-stick of office — and paint fragments of a multicoloured, striped coat. Read the finds again with Genesis 41:45 and Exodus 13:19 in view — a Semite raised to Egyptian office, whose bones were carried out at the Exodus — and the pattern is hard to unsee.

Genesis 41:45 · Exodus 13:19