A lot of the non-Biblical elements of the movie The Ten Commandments were taken from Josephus, such as the talk near the beginning of Moses leading a military campaign against Ethiopia. I assumed the movie identified its pharaohs with such confidence because of something Josephus wrote, though he wasn’t around until the Jewish revolt against Rome around 70 AD, and can’t be considered an infallible historical source.

I highly doubt Ramses II was around for the events during Exodus; he’s too well documented compared to earlier pharaohs. Before his time, the Egyptians tended to write inscriptions on stone by carving raised letters, which would then get erased whenever a later pharaoh wanted a surface to use for writing about his own accomplishments. Ramses II changed the practice by having his inscriptions carved in relief, which was both easier to do and harder to erase. I’m pretty sure the events of Exodus occurred before his time.

As for Wikipedia, it’s like the Apocrypha: mostly true, but some discernment is needed to detect the interpolations by the hands of men. If an article’s sources check out, there shouldn’t be a problem with it.

However, that verse may reflect an updating in the narrative to name the city according to its later name (i.e., it was called something else when they built it, but later Ramesses finished it and named it after himself).

Great post Geoff. Like JA Benson I too assumed Ramses was the bad guy. Maybe because he was named in the Ten Commandments movie? I really have no idea where I got that information.

Part of it has to do with competent archeologists rolling their eyes at Wyatt’s claims, and the rest has to do with Egyptian political restrictions on recovering artifacts.

There is not a shred of evidence that the items photographed are chariot wheels from Pharaoh’s drowned army. They could be lots of things, including wheels from wagons that were being transported and fell overboard, or other debris from sunken ships.

I don’t know how long wood lasts in salt water, but it seems unlikely to me that a wooden chariot wheel would still be recognizable after 3,500 years at the bottom of the Red Sea.

Here is more from Ron Wyatt:

http://www.wyattmuseum.com/mount-sinai-02.htm

http://www.weareisrael.org/biblical_archaeology_set.htm

There are many, many sources discrediting Wyatt. He is apparently considered by some Seventh Day Adventists to be a prophet. Serious archeologists think he is a joke, and many Christians are seriously concerned about his tactics. See here for more:

http://www.tentmaker.org/WAR/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Wyatt

This article details “creationist folk science,” and mentions Wyatt and Carl Baugh as prime examples of this field:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/3/part1.html

One other thing: World Net Daily is not a reliable news source by any stretch of the imagination.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33168%20

For those not familiar, there was a lengthy email floating around for the last few years claiming that Ron Wyatt had potentially found where the Jews crossed a body of water – at the Gulf of Aqaba. As the article cited above indicates, he took pictures of chariot wheels discovered at the sea floor, and found other inscriptions and identifiying markers near the area.

Both Snopes and Truth or Fiction are undecided on the veracity of his findings, and I haven’t heard anyone refute it. Anyone heard anything about it?