Part One: Why many opt for a New Kingdom Exodus
by
Damien F. Mackey
The stand-out candidate for the Pharaoh of the Exodus is, of course,
Ramses II ‘the Great’, he being most favoured in the conventional scheme
which dates the commencement of his long reign to c. 1300 BC.
Who can forgot Yul Brynner as Rameses in the 1956 film,
The Ten Commandments?
Introduction
Arguably the most serious problem facing those, such as I, who would endeavour to locate the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt during the Old, or Middle, Kingdom – {this being just the one kingdom of Egypt, according to my reconstructions} – is the total lack of representation of horses and chariotry in the reliefs for this long period of Egyptian history.
There is also the naming, as Rameses, of one of the “store cities” built by the enslaved Israelites, a fact that is seized upon by those who would set the Oppression and Exodus in Egypt’s New Kingdom, during the long reign of pharaoh Ramses II ‘the Great’ (Exodus 1:11): “So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh”.
While, for those who would stubbornly insist that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch, this would necessitate that the Oppression of Israel had occurred during the reign of a pharaoh named “Rameses”, I would put it down simply to a later editorial amendment, after pharaoh Ramses had indeed built in the Goshen area once inhabited by the Israelites, but who were now long gone.
Another query that gets thrown up regarding pharaoh’s horses is that one of the Plagues of Egypt is supposed to have destroyed “all the livestock” (Exodus 9:6).
I have already answered this – based on the research of Edward D. Andrews – in my article:
Exodus Pharaoh could still gather sufficient horses after the Plagues
(2) Exodus Pharaoh could still gather sufficient horses after the Plagues
The argument here considers the common tendency to stretch the meaning of the Hebrew word, kol (כָּל), “all”, to mean every thing, or every person, without exception. A study of the word shows that it can sometimes have quite a restricted meaning.
Also, only the livestock “in the field”, besadeh (בַּשָּׂדֶה), was harmed (cf. Exodus 9:3).
So, presumably those under shelter, in stables, as pharaoh’s finest horses, at least, customarily were housed, would have been protected.
And so on.
That still leaves us, though, with our major problem of the lack of depiction of horses and chariotry, for, as we read after the Plagues had struck Egypt (Exodus 145:6-7): “So [Pharaoh] had his chariot made ready and took his army with him. He took six hundred of the best chariots, along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them”.
That is a lot of chariots!
My usual procedure (which I think has largely been successful) when confronted with a lack (or nothing at all) of visual representation for someone in antiquity who was undoubtedly great and famous – e.g., known to have raised monumental architecture – is to look for an alter ego, or even an alter kingdom, for that person.
On this, see e.g. my article:
More ‘camera-shy’ ancient potentates
(5) More 'camera-shy' ancient potentates
However, despite the fact that I have ostensibly here two entire kingdoms of Egypt with which to make comparisons, the Old and the Middle kingdoms – {which I have actually fused together} – I still cannot come up with any horses or chariot depictions.
So, why not just admit that that the Exodus of Israel must have occurred later, during Egypt’s New Kingdom?
New Kingdom candidates
Many commentators, including revisionists, have opted for a New Kingdom Exodus, though they do not all agree on which part of Egypt’s New Kingdom is to be preferred.
The stand-out candidate for the Pharaoh of the Exodus is, of course, Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty ruler, Ramses II ‘the Great’, he being most favoured in the conventional scheme which dates the commencement of his long reign to c. 1300 BC.
Who can forgot Yul Brynner as Ramses in the 1956 film, The Ten Commandments?
In support of this theory is the already-mentioned reference to Rameses in Exodus 1:11. And no one doubts that Ramses II had many horses and chariots.
But even had Ramses II begun to reign in c. 1300 BC, which he didn’t (read on), that date does not accord well with the estimated biblical date for the Exodus (c. 1450 BC).
No Exodus at the time of Ramses II
When I, in 1981, first embarked upon a search for the historical Moses, I turned hopefully to books like that of Sir Charles Marston, The Bible is True (1936), and Werner Keller’s The Bible as History (1981), to find evidence for Moses and the Exodus.
These proved to be a total disappointment.
It was only when I read Dr. Donovan Courville’s two volume set, The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications (1971), that I realised that biblical history cannot be identified in a conventional ancient Egyptian history setting, but that the latter must needs undergo a radical revision.
Ultimately, this would lead to my writing two post-graduate theses of revision, best explained in my article:
Damien F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses
(DOC) Damien F. Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses
Because there was no massive Exodus of foreign slaves during the reign of Ramses II – as had become quite apparent from reading the books of Sir Charles Marston and Werner Keller, who had tried to force fit the Bible to conventional Egyptian chronology – the authors were forced to reduce the biblical data.
E.g. the Exodus must have involved only a few families, it was argued.
Better, I would have thought, to look for a different ancient Egyptian setting.
Eighteenth Dynasty candidates
There are several popular choices here.
The beginning of the famous Eighteenth Dynasty saw war with the Hyksos foreigners, identified by some as the Israelites themselves. The Pharaoh at the time was Ahmose, founder of this dynasty (c. 1570-1546 BC, conventional dates for him vary greatly).
This era probably coincides with the Thera explosion, which, as some would argue, was the perfect backdrop for the Plagues of Egypt and the Exodus.
But, were the militaristic Hyksos, who invaded Egypt and conquered the fort of Avaris, likely to have been the hard oppressed Israelites?
The powerful Amenhotep II has, of late, become another popular candidate for the Pharaoh of the Exodus.
However, Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky (Ages in Chaos, I, 1952) had firmly re-dated this pharaoh’s grandson, Amenhotep III, a pharaoh of the El Amarna (EA) era there known as Nimmuria (Neb-maat-Re), to the mid-C9th BC.
Two of his EA contemporaries were the Amorite succession of Abdi-ashirta and Aziru,
most plausibly identified by Dr. Velikovsky as the biblical Syrian succession of, respectively, Ben-Hadad and Hazael (c. 850 BC).
This is a good six centuries after the Exodus!
I have taken things further by equating Amenhotep II and III as just the one pharaoh, and the predecessor, Thutmose III and IV, again, as just the one pharaoh.
A fortiori, this late date for the Eighteenth Dynasty completely rules out the next ruler, Akhnaton (Akhenaten) from having any possible connection with Moses - with whom some even equate Akhnaton due to the latter’s monotheism.
Akhnaton, I have identified as the Syrian Aziru, both of EA (Dr. Velikovsky’s Hazael) and of the Great Harris Papyrus (GHP), who (as Arsa, Irsu) invaded Egypt and messed with the Egyptian gods:
Akhnaton was Aziru
(DOC) Akhnaton was Aziru
Part Two:
The Middle Bronze I (MBI) nomads were the Israelites
“Case in point is Jericho.
During the Late Bronze Age there was no city
at Jericho for Joshua to destroy”.
Stuart Zachary Steinberg
I asked the question in Part One: “So, why not just admit that that the Exodus of Israel must have occurred later, during Egypt’s New Kingdom?”
That, after all, would completely solve the problem of the horses and the chariots.
And, it can also provide us with a pharaoh named Ramses (cf. Exodus 1:11).
Why the new Kingdom is totally inappropriate
While, superficially, a New Kingdom (Eighteenth or Nineteenth Dynasty) setting for the Exodus might appear to fit the bill, it would actually cause far more problems than it may seemingly manage to solve.
For it is not sufficient simply to grab a particular phase out of history and claim that it attaches nicely to a biblical event. The Bible records a long, developing history which necessitates that the whole thing be fitted to an historical and archaeological framework. If, for instance, one were to take Ramses as the Pharaoh of the Exodus, one would then need to be able to situate, into its proper place, Joseph and the Famine at an earlier phase of Egyptian history. And Abram (Abraham), before Joseph.
On this note, Dr. John Osgood has rightly, in a recent article (2024):
https://assets.answersresearchjournal.org/doc/v17/jericho_dating_joshuas_conquest_of_canaan_comments_osgood.pdf Answers Research Journal 17 (2024): 221–222,
“The Walls of Jericho: Dating Joshua’s Conquest of Canaan—Comments”,
expressed his ‘amazement’ when those involved in biblico-historical reconstructions exclude “a whole saga of history”:
….
Habermehl tells us that “we note that the Bible does not say that Hiel built a city, but only a wall.” Really, then what do the words “Hiel of Bethel built Jericho” mean? It had a foundation (not specifically of a wall) and it had gates (1 Kings 16:34). But the archaeologists have clearly and categorically found a large city during Middle Bronze on the site of Jericho and therefore before Hiel. That city needs an explanation, as it won’t go away.
This is where I am amazed at the blindness of both conventional and revisionist discussions, as if the pages of the book of Judges are stuck together and a whole saga of history is excluded. Namely, there was the attack on Jericho, the city of palm trees, by Eglon of Moab, and for 20 years that site was occupied by 10,000 of his troops (Judges 3:12–30, see also Deuteronomy 34:3; Judges 1:16; 2 Chronicles 28:15—the city of palm trees). ….
[End of quote]
Nor will it be sufficient to focus only upon Egypt – though that nation was, admittedly, the main power during the biblical era from Abram (Abraham) to Moses.
Mesopotamia, Syria, Canaan, and so on, must likewise be properly accounted for, both historically and archaeologically.
Key to a biblico-historical synthesis will obviously be the Conquest of Canaan and its centrepiece, the Fall of Jericho, which outstanding episode should be archaeologically verifiable.
Pharaoh Ramses II may indeed have had his wonderful horses and chariots, but, for those who hold him to have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus, these are now faced with a Late Bronze Age (LBA) archology for the Conquest, and for Jericho, that is hopelessly inadequate.
Much has been written about this. Stuart Zachary Steinberg briefly sums it up here:
Redating the Conquest of the Promised Land | by Stuart Zachary Steinberg | Medium
“For nearly 150 years the conquest by the Israelites has been dated to the Late Bronze Age. The reason for that has been primarily placing the Exodus in the Late Kingdom to have Raamses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus, to correspond with Exodus where it states that the children of Israel built the store cities of Pithom and Raamses. The problem is that there are nearly no correspondence[s] between the destruction of various cities and archaeology in the Late Bronze Age (LBA). Most [of] the cities mentioned do not exist or were destroyed much earlier. Case in point is Jericho. During the Late Bronze Age there was no city at Jericho for Joshua to destroy”.
This is the dire situation that confronts the conventional scholars and whoever else might look to situate the Exodus at the time of Egypt’s New Kingdom.
The high point of the Conquest of Canaan by Joshua was the destruction of Jericho, whose walls famously fell down. However: “During the Late Bronze Age there was no city at Jericho for Joshua to destroy”. Boom, boom.
Moreover, if Dr. Velikovsky was right in re-assigning El Amarna (EA) at the time of Egypt’s New Kingdom, Eighteenth Dynasty, from its conventional situation in c. C14th BC down to the c. C9th BC – as I believe he was – then the New Kingdom of Egypt now finds itself situated a good half millennium after the era of the Exodus and Conquest.
A fully revised history
The foundations for a firm correspondence between OT biblical history and archaeology must be Jericho and the Conquest, these being most susceptible to archaeological verification.
I think that there is nothing more certain in this regard than that – as argued by some very good revisionists – the Middle Bronze I (MBI) nomadic peoples were the Exodus Israelites, who invaded an Early Bronze III/IV Canaan, and who destroyed, and/or occupied many of its cities.
Any revision that does not rest upon this foundation is, I believe, doomed to failure.
That the MBI people were the Exodus Israelites (not Abraham’s family as according to a conventional view) is accepted by experienced Israeli archaeologists of the south, such as Egal Israel and his colleagues.
Dr. David Down, who passed away on Friday March 16, 2018, just three weeks short of his 100th birthday, told (2004) of his intriguing encounter with Israeli archaeologist, Egal Israel:
….
I first met Egal Israel in 1993 when I was involved in excavations at Ein Hatzeva, 18 miles south of the Dead Sea. It all started the previous year when I talked with Dr Rudolph Cohen, then head of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who holds the same view as I do on the identification of the Middle Bronze I people with the Israelites who invaded Palestine under Joshua about 1405 BC.
I told him that I would like to bring my Australian group to one of the sites under his control. He readily agreed and the following year we stayed at a moshav near the dig site and went to work.
Excavations in this area are particularly relevant to the re-identification of the archaeological strata in the Middle Bronze Period because this was the area from which the Israelites first invaded Palestine. Previously Dr Cohen was in charge of the excavations at Kadesh Barnea from where Moses had sent the twelve men to spy out the land they expected to occupy. Dr Cohen realised that two million [sic] people could be expected to leave plenty of evidence of their occupation of the area and when he found a proliferation of MBI pottery he concluded that it must have been left behind by the Israelite people who were camped there for at least forty days. Numbers 13:25 says, "And they returned from spying out the land after forty days."
Egal Israel was in charge of all the excavations at Ein Hatzeva and was digging with a team of labourers on the western side of the tel. Occasionally he would come to our site to see how we were getting on, and it was on one of these visits that I asked him about his views. I said, "Egal, Rudolph Cohen believes that the MBI people were the Israelites under Joshua who invaded Palestine, as described in the Bible. Do you agree with him?"
"Of course I do," he replied. "We all do down here."
While I was in Israel this year (2004) I phoned Egal and asked him if he still held the same views about the MBI people, and he assured me that he did, even more than before. I then made an appointment to visit him at his home which, fortuitously, was only 5 miles from where our group was excavating.
On the appointed night we made our way to his house in the moshav and met Egal and his wife, a gracious lady who spoke faultless English, and spent a profitable hour there. Strange to say, Egal works at Beer Sheba and commutes the 120 km to and fro each day. He is working on excavating wells there. The Bible says that Abraham dug a well at Beer Sheba and he feels that while he is working there he is living in the land of Abraham.
Egal has worked on many sites in the Negev (Southern Israel) and was a member of the team which excavated Kadesh Barnea during the period after the Six Day War which resulted in Israel occupying the Sinai Peninsula in which Kadesh Barnea is located. By virtue of his long archaeological experience he is a highly qualified archaeologist. He is a man who has convictions and forcibly expresses his views.
I asked him if he had come to hold these views because he was influenced by Rudolph Cohen, or was it the result of his own observations. He was emphatic that he regarded the Middle Bronze I people to be the Israelites because of the huge weight of archaeological evidence to support this view. There was the profusion of the MBI pottery, not only at Kadesh Barnea, but at other sites along the route of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt to their promised land.
There is also the evidence from Jericho, Gibeon, and other sites in Palestine showing that the MBI people were nomadic, a feature to be expected from a generation that had been born in and lived in tents all their lives. The archaeological evidence shows that they were tribal, with a different culture to the preceding Canaanite people. In the course of time they seem to have completely replaced the previous culture. This would be consistent with the Biblical record which says that the Israelites ultimately replaced the Canaanites. Egal stressed that it was a long and fluctuating process, but that is the picture the book of Judges presents.
I also asked Egal if his views were coloured by his religious beliefs. Did he adopt these views because this is what the Bible says? Must we interpret archaeological evidence accordingly? He was emphatic that his conclusions were based on archaeological evidence alone. He has confidence in the historical reliability of the Hebrew writings in certain areas, but he does not regard them as a divine revelation from God. They must be submitted to the archaeological evidence, which in the case of the Exodus and the MBI period, are consistent with each other.
….
For more on all of this, see e.g. my article:
MBI Israel and the fall of cities Jericho and Ai
(3) MBI Israel and the fall of cities Jericho and Ai
Complementing this already vast biblico-historical and archaeological correlation – which cannot even dimly be perceived in a New Kingdom Exodus context – is the overwhelming Old (Middle) Kingdom evidence for Joseph and the Famine, with the massive preparatory infrastructure built in advance in anticipation of the seven years of want, like nothing else known in history:
Imhotep Enigma, his pharaoh was not Djoser, and proof for Egypt’s Third Dynasty Famine
(3) Imhotep Enigma, his pharaoh was not Djoser, and proof for Egypt’s Third Dynasty Famine
all of this coupled with the Old (Middle) Kingdom Oppression of the Israelites, the age of Pyramid building, and abundant evidence for Moses as a high official in Egypt, and even Pharaoh for a short while, the Plagues, and departure from Egypt of the slaves:
Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty oppressed Israel
(3) Egypt's Twelfth Dynasty oppressed Israel
See also my relevant articles:
Ini, Weni, Iny, Moses
(3) Ini, Weni, Iny, Moses
Egypt’s so-called Sixth Dynasty as an example of kinglist repetitions
(3) Egypt’s so-called Sixth Dynasty as an example of kinglist repetitions
and:
Exodus Israelites departing from Egypt will be replaced by the Hyksos invaders
(3) Exodus Israelites departing from Egypt will be replaced by the Hyksos invaders
Part Three: Some early Egyptian evidence for horses
Even if we were to find no evidence for chariots and horses in Egypt’s Old (Middle) Kingdom, that deficiency – as serious as it, admittedly, would be – would by no means outweigh the abundance of evidence already given in Part One and Part Two for that era of Egyptian history’s being the setting for Joseph and the Famine; for Moses and the Plagues; and for the Exodus and Conquest; all of which phenomenal episodes have left no plausible footprint whatsoever in the much touted New Kingdom era.
However, as we are going to learn, horses were known at least in the vicinity of Egypt even as early as Predynastic times, well before Jacob, Joseph and Moses.
This would make it highly unlikely that horses, apparently not indigenous to Egypt, were introduced to that land only as late as the Hyksos era, c. 1650 BC (conventional dating), as according to the consensus of archaeologists.
Camels may even have been domesticated in Egypt as early as the Predynastic period.
One might imagine that the Ishmaelites, who took young Joseph to Egypt, belonged to a camel, or donkey, caravan (Genesis 37:28): “Then some Midianite traders passed by, so they pulled him up and lifted Joseph out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. Thus they brought Joseph into Egypt”.
Land Transport in Ancient Egypt: Carriages, Litters, Carts, Chariots | Middle East And North Africa — Facts and Details
“Donkey and, later, camel caravans seem to have been the preferred mode of transport for goods along roads and tracks, as Pharaonic texts such as Harkhuf’s autobiography [Old Kingdom’s Sixth Dynasty] and the Tale of the Eloquent Peasant suggest, and as archaeological evidence—for example, the donkey hoof-prints from the Toshka gneiss-quarry road … shows.
The period in which the camel was introduced into, and domesticated in, Egypt remains controversial. Most faunal, iconographic, and textual evidence points to a date sometime in the first millennium B.C., but some have argued for an introduction of the camel as early as the Predynastic Period. The question is complicated because faunal or iconographic evidence for the presence of camels does not necessarily prove camel domestication.”
Chariots at the time of Jacob and Joseph
The first mention of a “chariot” in the Bible occurs in Genesis 41:43: “[Pharaoh] had [Joseph] ride in a chariot as his second-in-command, and people shouted before him, ‘Make way!’ Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt”.
Chariot here, Hebrew mirkebet (מִרְכֶּ֤בֶת), could possibly, perhaps, be construed as meaning a palanquin, or sedan chair, in which high officials were carried.
And the same comment might likewise apply in the case of Genesis 46:29: “Joseph prepared his chariot and went up to Goshen to meet his father Israel; as soon as he appeared before him, he fell on his neck and wept on his neck a long time”.
Far more plausibly, though, it referred to a cart pulled by animals (donkeys, horses?), since merkabah means: “Literally, "thing to ride in, cart," interpreted to mean “chariot”.” Merkabah — Glossary of Spiritual and Religious Secrets
For I think that one might be pushing things too far to claim the involvement of a whole lot of palanquins in the account of the return to Canaan of the deceased Jacob’s body in Genesis 50:9: “There also went up with him both chariots and horsemen; and it was a very great company”.
It is somewhat hard, even comical, to imagine many of such “a very great company” being borne all the way from Egypt to Canaan on palanquins.
The body of Jacob himself, though, was most likely carried on an ornate sledge, as was apparently the custom for the deceased:
Exploring Egyptian Sledges: Engineering Marvels of Antiquity - Ancient Civs
“Egyptian sledges were diverse in type, reflecting the various needs of ancient Egyptian society. The most notable types included those designed for transporting heavy stones for construction, lighter sledges used for everyday goods, and ceremonial sledges for transporting the deceased during burials”.
Of the “very great company” that accompanied Jacob’s body to Canaan, most would likely have travelled on foot, but various other modes of transport would have been available (loc. cit.):
“Heidi Köpp-Junk of Universität Trier wrote: “As means of overland travel, mount animals, sedan chairs, or chariots are known—and of course walking. For donkey riding, indirect evidence exists from the Old Kingdom in the form of representations of oval pillow-shaped saddles depicted in the tombs of Kahief, Neferiretenef, and Methethi. …. Similarly, representations of donkey riding are known from the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. …”.
Steve Vinson of Indiana University wrote: “Egypt’s most important, most visible, and best-documented means of transportation was its watercraft. However, pack animals, porters, wheeled vehicles, sledges, and even carrying chairs were also used to move goods …”.
Those Horses
One reads at: BC Correspondence: Horses and Chariots in Egypt
Correspondence: Horses and Chariots in Egypt
November 28, 2005
Dear Dr. Aardsma
I find that your solution to, at least, the conquest of Jericho and Ai is brilliant. Could you perhaps explain away the problem which I perceive with the Horses?
These animals are clearly mentioned in the biblical text of the Exodus, yet could not have existed in the 6th dynasty Egypt, as they were only introduced there by the Hyksos - approximately a thousand years later, together with military chariots.
Thank you
David
Dear David,
I don't know who told you that horses "were only introduced there [to Egypt] by the Hyksos"---the claim appears to be widespread---but whoever it was seems to me to have misled you in at least two ways. The first way is in regard to logic, and the second is in regard to data.
Let me deal with the logic first.
There is a general maxim which one must apply to archaeological evidence in all cases. This maxim is usually adhered to by competent archaeologists. The maxim is: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
This maxim becomes increasingly important as one moves back in the archaeological record, for at least two reasons: 1. chances of preservation of archaeological remains diminish as the elapsed time increases between creation of any object and the present, and 2. human populations diminish as one moves back in time, resulting in creation of fewer archaeological remains to begin with.
The period of interest to us here---the Old Kingdom of Egypt, including the 6th dynasty---is sufficiently remote (in excess of four thousand years ago) that this maxim must certainly not be ignored.
The claim that horses and chariots were only introduced into Egypt by the Hyksos falls into the "absence of evidence" category. This is easily seen by noticing that the claim would be proven false the moment any archaeological evidence was found showing the presence of horses in Egypt prior to the Hyksos. Said another way, to have a possibility of being true the claim requires that there be a complete absence of archaeological and historical evidence for horses in Egypt prior to the time of the Hyksos.
But even a complete absence of evidence for horses prior to the Hyksos is insufficient to guarantee the veracity of the claim. After all, for such a remote time, evidence may be lacking for reasons having nothing to do with whether or not horses were actually present in Egypt during the Old Kingdom. For example, one can imagine that it is possible that archaeologists are in possession of so little data relevant to the fauna of Egypt's Old Kingdom that the absence of evidence of horses at that time is more or less to be expected whether horses were present there or not. And this is hardly the only possibility.
No matter how many times one may hear the claim that horses were only introduced into Egypt by the Hyksos, one should not regard it as a proven fact, and then use this supposed fact to conclude that therefore horses could not have been present in Egypt's Old Kingdom. It is not a proven fact. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Now for the data.
I have done some very limited reading within the technical literature regarding horses in Egypt, and this reading suggests that the claim that horses were only introduced into Egypt by the Hyksos is on very shaky empirical ground at present.
Specifically, archaeological data from Nahal Tillah seem to show unequivocal presence of domesticated horses within the Egyptian sphere of activity even prior to the Old Kingdom. Nahal Tillah is situated in the northern Negev of Israel. It displays a strong Egyptian presence in its archaeological record, causing the archaeologists involved to suggest royal Egyptian trading and administration relations at this site. The excavators took care to gather all bone fragments, as is normal today, and analyzed them according to type: sheep, pig, donkey, etc. They wrote:
The most surprising feature of the assemblage is the large number of equid remains, some of which are from domestic horses (Equus caballus). ... There was a general supposition that domestic horses were not introduced into the Levant and Egypt until the second millennium, but Davis (1976) found horse remains at Arad from the third millennium and small domestic horses seem to have been present in the fourth millennium in the Chalcolithic period in the northern Negev (Grigson 1993).
[Thomas E. Levy, David Alon, Yorke Rowan, Edwin C. M. van den Brink, Caroline Grigson, Augustin Holl, Patricia Smith, Paul Goldberg, Alan J. Witten, Eric Kansa, John Moreno, Yuval Yekutieli, Naomi Porat, Jonathan Golden, Leslie Dawson, and Morag Kersel, "Egyptian-Canaanite Interaction at Nahal Tillah, Israel (ca. 4500-3000 B. C. E.): An Interim Report on the 1994-1995 Excavations," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 307 (August 1997): 1--51.]
Thus the archaeological data which are presently available---indeed, some of which have been available since 1976---seem to seriously undermine the claim that Egypt was without horses until the Hyksos dynasties. The work at Nahal Tillah seems to show that horses were available just next door, in the northern Negev, very early on in the history of post-Flood Egypt, and Egyptians were clearly present where these horses were present. Are we to believe that these Egyptians failed to find domestic horses, with all their unique advantages for agriculture and transportation, of no interest, and chose to leave them all next door for century after century?
Might it be possible, perhaps, that the horse and military chariot were RE-introduced to Egypt by the Hyksos? After all, the time between the end of the Old Kingdom and the Hyksos is many centuries, as you have observed, and many things can happen in such a long time. Is it even possible, perhaps, that the military disaster Egypt suffered at the Exodus---the loss of the Pharaoh and all his horses and chariots in the sea---left a strong negative impression upon the Egyptians in regard to the value of the horse and chariot in military operations, causing them to abandon their further use and development for some centuries?
Be that as it may, I hope that you will agree that any claim for the non-existence of horses in Egypt during the Old Kingdom appears precarious at present.
[End of quote]
Chariots in the Old (Middle) Kingdom of Egypt may not have been anywhere near as sophisticated as those that will emerge later, close to the New Kingdom era.
More like carts, perhaps, they would have been drawn by pack animals (donkeys, horses).
Whether or not the Exodus Pharaoh had suddenly come into possession of a new form of chariot, either invented in Egypt, or sold to him externally, that hypothetical new chariot force would not have had time to register on the Egyptian reliefs before it was completely destroyed in the Sea of Reeds.
