Tribes of Exodus: Cousins of Kurgan People? Prof. Anati, an authority on prehistoric art, Dr. Rudolph Cohen, the leading archæologist in southern Israel, have separately arrived at the conclusion that the Hebrews of Exodus were the Middle Bronze I (MBI) people, a semi-nomadic group of tribes who advanced from the Sinai to Canaan via Transjordan, fitting the events of Exodus perfectly, in c.2300 B.C. The Exodus is customarily dated to c.1450/1200 B.C., but throughout this period the Sinai could not support a population and the Canaanite cities captured in Exodus had been abandoned for centuries, due to severe drought. However, archæology shows that in c.2300 B.C. these cities (incl. Jericho) were destroyed by the MBI group. This coincides with the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, which the Ipuwer Papyrus describes as a time when the Nile turned blood, the land was ravaged by blight, plague, and darkness, wombs went barren, and foreigners had seized the nations wealth: a perfect parallel with the plagues of Moses. Dr. Paul Lapp, the main authority on the MBI people, was convinced that they were related to Kurgan Indo-Europeans, based on their shaft graves, copperwork, apsidal halls, pottery, anthropological type, and Remedello daggers, which closely resemble those found in Kurgan settlements around the Alps and Balkans at this time. The linguist Saul Levin, after an exhaustive study, suggested that Hebrew was an incipiently Indo-European language that has been heavily Semitised, but underwent contact with proto-Greek and proto-Sanskrit. Prof. Anati notes that the Bible mentions the Israelites setting up stone pillars, circles, and tumuli (Exodus xxvi.4; Joshua iv.20, vii.26, viii.29): this megalithism was an MBI custom but disappeared after 2000 B.C. in Canaan. It was also practised by the Kurgan folk, who invaded the eastern Mediterranean (acc. to Prof. Gimbutas) in c.3000 B.C. and 2300 B.C. The first invasion might fit chronologically with Abrahams southward migration into Canaan: his defeat of the five kings reminds us that he was a pastoralist warrior chieftain, all Kurgan features; moreover Esaus selling of his birthright echoes a custom of the Hurrians, another group in Syropalestine with an Indo-European aristocracy.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 09:02:54 +0000
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