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Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology
The Nile turned to blood. Pestilence. Blighted livestock. Destroyed crops. Darkness. Frustrated magicians. Widespread death and destruction—including the loss en masse of children of both the wealthy and poor. The emancipation of a slave population—oppressors becoming the oppressed, poor becoming rich, gods rendered impotent, and goods once used to worship them now devoted to another.
Sounds like the book of Exodus, right? Actually, this is the testimony of a fascinating ancient Egyptian document known as the Ipuwer Papyrus. With so many stark parallels, many believe the Ipuwer account represents eyewitness testimony of the biblical Exodus. Others disagree. The main issue of contention revolves around the date and genre of the Ipuwer Papyrus.
In this article, we will examine the Ipuwer Papyrus, including its remarkable textual parallels with the biblical account, and address these points of contention. Does this extraordinary ancient document synchronize with the biblical text, or does it represent something else entirely?
The Admonitions of Ipuwer
The Ipuwer Papyrus—also referred to as The Admonitions of Ipuwer and officially named Papyrus Leiden i 344 recto—is a lengthy ancient Egyptian document inked in hieratic script (cursive, as opposed to hieroglyphic). The document is nearly 4 meters (13 feet) long. This 17-column, 236-line text first came to light in the early 1800s, when it was acquired by Giovanni Anastasi, consul general of the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway in Egypt. Anastasi sold the document to the Dutch government in 1828, and it has since become housed in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden.
Despite its unknown provenance, there is no debate as to the artifact’s authenticity—not least because it emerged before a full understanding of the hieratic script was known. Neither is there significant debate about the date it was written. Most scholars date it to Egypt’s 19th Dynasty, sometime within the 13th century b.c.e. This is due to the Ramesside-style orthography, as well as evidence that the text most likely came from a 19th Dynasty Saqqara tomb known to have housed a significant number of papyri.
What has been highly debated is the original composition of the text. It is evident that the Ipuwer Papyrus represents a scribal copy of a document written centuries prior. When was the original written? This is a hotly debated question.
The text’s author is “Ipuwer,” a sage who addresses the pharaoh (or perhaps the sun-god Ra/Amun-Re) about the woeful state of the land of Egypt. A series of unfortunate events had befallen Egypt, turning the kingdom upside down. In James B. Pritchard’s classic work Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Egyptologist John A. Wilson wrote the following about this artifact: “It seems clear … that Egypt had suffered a breakdown of government, accompanied by social and economic chaos. … A certain Ipuwer, about whom nothing is known apart from the surviving text, appeared at the palace and reported to the pharaoh the anarchy in the land. Although our manuscript was written in the 19th [Dynasty] … the original belonged to an earlier time,” with “language and orthography [that] are ‘Middle Egyptian’”—dating somewhere around the early to middle part of the second millennium b.c.e.
In the latter part of this article, we will tackle some of the questions about the dating of the original composition and whether it is possible to harmonize it with the time frame of the biblical Exodus. But first, just how similar is the Ipuwer text to the biblical account?
The following excerpts from the Ipuwer Papyrus are a compilation of Wilson’s translation (published in Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Texts) as well as that of scholar Andre Dollinger (who includes a number of additional, damaged sections that are omitted in Wilson’s text) and an additional section from that of Egyptologist Sir Alan H. Gardiner. Note too: Ipuwer’s text is poetically divided into stanzas, most of which begin with a declaration of surprise or emphasis (per Wilson, Why, really …; Dollinger, Indeed …; Gardiner, Forsooth …).
Egypt Plagued
The biblical account of the plagues famously begins with the turning of the Nile to blood. Near the start of Ipuwer’s text is one of his most famous stanzas:
- Ipuwer: “Why, really, the River [Nile] is blood. If one drinks of it, one rejects it … and thirsts for water. … [B]lood is everywhere.”
- Bible: “I will smite … the waters which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood. … [A]nd the Egyptians shall loathe to drink water from the river. … [A]nd there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt …” (Exodus 7:17-19). “And turned their rivers into blood, So that they could not drink their streams” (Psalm 78:44).
Several biblical plagues, especially the fifth, affected cattle. The Ipuwer text mentions calamity relating to cattle, with the possible implication of such a shortage in the land that the Egyptians began to appropriate “cattle of the destitute” (slaves?) as well as find substitute sacrifices.
- Ipuwer: “Behold, the king’s men thrash around among the cattle of the destitute. … [G]eese … are presented to the gods instead of oxen.”
- Bible: “Behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle … there shall be a very grievous murrain. And the Lord shall make a division between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt; and there shall nothing die of all that belongeth to the children of Israel” (Exodus 9:3-4).
Pestilence (the sixth plague) likewise features in both the biblical account and the papyrus.
- Ipuwer: “[P]estilence is throughout the land …. There are no remedies for it; noblewomen suffer like maidservants …. Remember to immerse … him who is in pain when he is sick in his body.”
- Bible: “[I have] smitten thee and thy people with pestilence …. [B]oils were upon the magicians, and upon all the Egyptians” (Exodus 9:15, 11). “He spared not their soul from death, But gave their life over to the pestilence” (Psalm 78:50).
The seventh biblical plague was a devastating storm of epic proportions. The Ipuwer Papyrus not only refers to a storm, it records it falling on some in Egypt, not others.
- Ipuwer: “Behold, he who had no shade is now the possessor of shade, while the erstwhile possessors of shade are now in the full blast of the storm.”
- Bible: “[A]nd the Lord sent thunder and hail … such as had not been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. … Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail” (Exodus 9:23-24, 26).
In conjunction with this biblical storm, “fire” from heaven is described.
- Ipuwer: “Why, really, doors, columns and floor planks are burned up …. [T]he fire has mounted up on high.”
- Bible: “[A]nd fire ran down unto the earth …. So there was hail, and fire flashing up amidst the hail, very grievous …” (Exodus 9:23-24). “He gave them … flaming fire in their land” (Psalm 105:32).
The disparate level of suffering and separation across Egypt may also be alluded to elsewhere in the papyrus. Ipuwer highlights particular destruction and ruin falling specifically upon Upper Egypt, the southern region inhabited by “native” Egyptians (as opposed to Lower Egypt, made up in large part by the Delta region of Goshen). This separation is highlighted in the biblical text.
- Ipuwer: “Indeed, the ship of the southerners has broken up; towns are destroyed and Upper Egypt has become an empty waste.”
- Bible: “And I will set apart in that day the land of Goshen, in which My people dwell …. I will put a division between My people and thy people …” (Exodus 8:18-19; verses 22-23 in other translations).
Significant emphasis is made in the biblical account on the destruction of Egypt’s agriculture, especially by the seventh plague (the storm) and by the eighth (locust swarms). Ipuwer likewise records agricultural devastation.
- Ipuwer: “Why, really, the desert is spread throughout the land. … Lacking are grain [and] irtyw-fruit …. Indeed, that has perished which yesterday was seen, and the land is left over to its weakness like the cutting of flax. … [N]either fruit nor herbage can be found …. Indeed, everywhere barley has perished.”
- Bible: “[T]he hail smote every herb of the field, and broke every tree of the field. … And the flax and the barley were smitten …. [A]nd [locusts] did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left; and there remained not any green thing, either tree or herb of the field, through all the land of Egypt” (Exodus 9:25, 31; 10:15).
Ipuwer possibly even alludes to the loss of light (ninth plague) in Egypt.
- Ipuwer: “The land is not light [or, without light].”
- Bible: “[A]nd there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt …” (Exodus 10:22).
Small wonder the assessment of the land as “destroyed.”
- Ipuwer: “[I]t is the destruction of the land.”
- Bible: “And Pharaoh’s servants said unto him: ‘… let the men go, that they may serve the Lord their God, knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?’” (Exodus 10:7).
Amid all the devastation, both texts document magic and magicians as making a faltering appearance.
- Ipuwer: “Why, really, magic is exposed. Go-spells and enfold-spells are made ineffectual” (Wilson translation; Dollinger reads, “spells are frustrated”).
- Bible: “And the magicians did so with their secret arts … but they could not …. Then the magicians said unto Pharaoh: ‘This is the finger of God …’” (Exodus 8:14-15; verses 18-19 in other translations).
Not all scholars agree that the Ipuwer Papyrus is a historic document. For an opposing view see the article: The Admonitions of Ipuwer