Still annoyed thinking about this tweet.

We all know Exodus isn’t remotely historically accurate, up to being just a total myth without reference to any historical event at all, but like even if you took the Biblical narrative at face value it doesn’t work!!

The enslavement of the Hebrews and the Exodus according to the Torah timeline takes place like 1500 years before Cleopatra, under the New Kingdom long before Hellenistic rule in Egypt. A completely different regime???

And Alexandria was a huge hub of Jewish immigrants with a friendly political relationship to the Ptolemaic dynasty and a lot of autonomy. It was a very important part of the Jewish world and like most Jews in the Hellenic world were copacetic with Greek rulers

So Cleopatra rules over an Egypt distinct politically from the New Kingdom era of the mythical Exodus, which had a large free and thriving (voluntary) Jewish diaspora. Makes no sense to call her a colonizer of Jews. Of Egyptians, sure.

And even the biblical exodus narrative is one of a voluntary Jewish immigration to Egypt under Jacob/Joseph, later betrayed by an unnamed pharaoh centuries on. So, idk, is that colonial? Is it a coup? Is it court intrigue? Civil war? Idk how to interpret it in modern terminology

It doesn’t involve the normal understanding of colonialism involving a foreign imperial rule over colonized land, often with settlers. The story of Exodus doesn’t really match up to the notion of colonization, I don’t think?

Finally, putting an actress in a movie is not decolonization lol.

Because the actual history is interesting in its own right though—exodus, if it is a very far-removed allegory for a real history, is probably one of two things.

1) The expulsion of the Hyksos rulers from Egypt, which did happen around the time of Exodus’ Biblical chronology

The Hyksos were a Semitic people—though well before the appearance of Israel, and possibly a coalition of various Semitic groups—who either invaded Lower Egypt and conquered it in the Second Intermediate period, or revolted during said period as an already-present population

Personally I think the latter is more probably. Semitic peoples had been trading with and moving in and out of Egypt for centuries, even millennia by the collapse of the Middle Kingdom, and a lot of Canaanite peoples probably lived there by 17th century BCE

The Second Intermediate Period was a time of civil war and multiple competing dynasties of which the Hyksos rulers were just one, which also I think supports the idea of existing Canaanite/Semitic populations seizing power in lower Egypt

What makes it a possible good historical memory—albeit radically transformed—as a basis for Exodus is the chronology is pretty close actually to the religious chronology.

Canaanite populations rose a lot around 1800 BCE, corresponding not too far off from Jacob moving to Egypt

Canaanite populations in Egypt. That is, West Semitic immigrants to Egypt

And then biblical Exodus gets placed somewhere from like 1400-1300 BCE which isn’t too long after the expulsion of the Hyksos dynasty and the establishment of the New Kingdom

So, you could sort of see how this memory of West Semitic migration into Egypt, followed by ascent to brief rulership during a period of civil war, and then removal of the Semitic rulers by Egyptians, maybe involving some migrating back to the Levant, could evolve into Exodus

The other obvious option is the New Kingdom conquering and ruling over much of the Levant at various times. This territory encompassed a lot of the West Semitic lands and there’s even a record in the 13th century BCE of a battle with a nomadic group called “Israelites” possibly.

So it could simply be a historical memory of Canaanite peoples, including pre-monarchy or even nomadic Israelite tribes fighting with Egyptian armies for control

Anyway, the Bronze Age is interesting. Egyptian rule over the Levant is contested frequently with other major powers at the time like Hittites and Mitanni, who were not Semitic peoples, as well as local Canaanite subjects and Mesopotamian peoples

And then the Bronze Age Collapse happens and all this shit falls apart. Hittites vanish, Egypt shrinks back to its core territory, the Mitanni collapse, and a bunch of Canaanite/West Semitic cities and peoples get mysteriously wiped out. We still don’t know how, really

Then the Dark Ages, and after that, in the early Iron Age, you finally get attestations of political entities called Israel and Judah

Though the early chronology is still rough and it’s doubtful there was a unified kingdom that split into the two factions

Anyway, whether using biblical or real history, hard to argue Egypt could be termed colonizers of the Israelites in any meaningful sense. Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans...ok. Lotsa people passed control of the Levant back and forth—basically since forever

Definitely an area of global confluence and importance basically since Eurasia got settled agricultural societies, with so much fascinating history.

If you want to know more about the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean and its collapse, I recommend this book!