A new scientific study has firmly placed Pharaoh Nebpehtire Ahmose—the ruler long linked to the expulsion of the Hyksos and the rise of the New Kingdom—in the second half of the 16th century BCE. The findings, reported by Times of Israel, rely on radiocarbon analysis applied to artifacts connected directly to Ahmose, including a mudbrick stamped with his throne name. For scholars who have tried to connect the biblical Exodus to known historical events, this shift in Egyptian chronology immediately raises far-reaching questions. It also reopens an old debate about the role of the massive Thera-Santorini eruption, which pummeled the Aegean region with ash, darkness, and tsunamis.
Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins of Ben-Gurion University, lead author of the PLOS ONE study, said the new dating places Ahmose several decades after the Thera eruption, not during it. That gap challenges assumptions held for decades and forces a reevaluation of Egypt’s relationship with the land of Israel during the transition from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age.
This scientific shake-up raises a question at the heart of both archaeology and faith: what happens when the timeline of Egypt shifts, while the Bible’s account of the Exodus remains anchored, unwavering, in its own account of plagues, miracles, and Israel’s emergence as a nation?
The Bible describes the plague of darkness as total and overwhelming, lasting three full days: “Lo ra’u ish et-achiv v’lo kamu ish mitachtav shloshet yamim—No man could see his fellow, and no one rose from his place for three days” (Exodus 10:23). The Sages emphasized that this darkness was not a natural phenomenon. Yet Bruins noted that extreme volcanic eruptions, including the 1815 Tambora blast, produced identical reports of three days of darkness at distances comparable to those from Egypt to Santorini. His point was not theological; he argued that if researchers want to place the Exodus in history, they must look for events that match its description rather than forcing the account into the 13th century BCE.
The study’s foundation rests on a rare archaeological windfall. Museums usually refuse to allow sampling of organic materials embedded in irreplaceable artifacts. Bruins explained that most institutions declined his requests, but the British Museum and the Petrie Museum eventually opened their collections. The key object was a mudbrick unearthed more than a century ago in Ahmose’s temple at Abydos. A piece of straw inside the brick provided enough material for radiocarbon dating, anchoring the king’s reign to the low chronology of roughly 1517–1502 BCE.
Six shabtis—wooden funerary figurines—supported the same timeframe. One bore the name of the mayor of Thebes, mentioned in inscriptions connected to Ahmose and his son Amenhotep I. These parallel dates strengthened the conclusion that Ahmose ruled decades after the Thera eruption, meaning the famed Tempest Stela must describe a different catastrophe.
This shift also affects the history of the land of Israel, where archaeologists have long used Egyptian chronology to anchor their own layers of destruction and rebuilding. The collapse of powerful Middle Bronze Age city-states has traditionally been pegged to early 18th Dynasty campaigns, especially those of Thutmose III. Bruins argued that if these cities fell earlier, before the rise of the New Kingdom, then the destroyers would remain unidentified. He emphasized that Egyptian sources from the Second Intermediate Period do not claim large-scale military activity in the Levant.
Bruins challenged the popular academic trend of placing the Exodus in the 13th century BCE. He said that approach abandons any meaningful link to the biblical record and results in a timeline built on speculation rather than evidence. His method is straightforward: identify destruction layers in the land of Israel that match the biblical account of the Israelite conquest under Joshua, and date them scientifically.
He pointed again to Santorini as a potential marker. If the eruption produced three days of darkness in Egypt and triggered regional upheaval, the years following the disaster may hold the evidence researchers have been missing. Bruins stressed that this remains a hypothesis until backed by radiocarbon-dated destruction layers. He is already collecting samples from Canaanite cities to determine exactly when they were destroyed.
This new dating of Ahmose does not prove the Exodus, nor does it claim to. What it does is reopen a door that many academics closed too quickly. A king long assumed to overlap with the Thera eruption now sits decades later, leaving a wide chronological space into which the biblical narrative may more naturally fit. The land of Israel’s own history, long forced into the mold of Egyptian assumptions, may emerge with a clearer and more independent timeline.
Science is not confirming the Exodus, but it is clearing away old scholarly certainties that never deserved their authority. When radiocarbon analysis forces historians to redraw Egypt’s most important timeline, the study of Israel’s origins and the Bible’s historical footprint will inevitably follow.
