Original subtitles

Opa, what is this?

[Narrator] In the north of modern-day Israel,

archaeologists uncover precious objects

buried in the rubble of a destroyed city.

[Archaeologist] It's a mother of pearl, within a mudbrick,

that's quite unique.

[Narrator] They unearth ancient idols.

[Archaeologist] It's a head of a figurine,

and it's painted in red.

[Narrator] And broken statues from another land...

Egypt.

[Archaeologist] It seems that someone

really smashed those statues

and then just threw the pieces in all directions.

[Narrator] Discoveries here could shed light on the truth

behind one of the most famous stories in the Bible...

Exodus, and the mysterious world

of the Ark of the Covenant.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

The stories in the Bible are famous across the world.

They tell of great battles between good and evil,

earth-shaking catastrophes...

and epic heroes.

One of the most famous stories in the Bible is the Exodus,

the Israelites' flight from captivity in Egypt.

This saga includes the creation of the 10 Commandments,

the construction of the Ark of the Covenant,

and the use of this holy object

to conquer what the Bible calls the Promised Land.

[Archaeologist] The biblical stories of the Exodus from Egypt

are great stories, but they do have a problem

when you confront them with archaeological record.

[Narrator] The tales are foundation stories

for Judaism and Christianity.

How far might real people and historical events

lie behind them?

Now, new archaeological discoveries

buried in the Middle East for thousands of years

could shed light on the world

that gave rise to these legends.

[Archaeologist] We have some fragments of mother of pearl

within a mudbrick.

[Narrator] International teams of experts

dig through centuries of earth to piece together

the age of the Exodus and the secrets of the Ark.

♪ ♪

At the northern tip of modern-day Israel

lies the ancient site of Tel Hazor.

Archaeologist Igor Kreimerman leads a team of 50

investigating an enormous ancient settlement here.

[Igor Kreimerman] It's a great excitement to be in the field.

It's fascinating to solve all the riddles

that come up as we excavate,

and we are always surprised by the finds and by the site.

[Narrator] Tel Hazor is one of the largest

archaeological sites in Israel.

According to the Old Testament,

it was the greatest city in a land called Canaan,

the region which the biblical authors

called the Promised Land, and believed

that their ancestors had fled to from Egypt.

[Igor] Victoria, what have you found here?

[Narrator] Igor wants to find out more

about the age of the Canaanite city

and if it can shed any light on the biblical tale.

So today he and his team are digging

inside one of its buildings.

[Igor] We have here some signs of a wall

and then we have a layer of plaster, right?

[Victoria] Yes. [Igor] Wow!

This is very impressive.

[Narrator] The preservation of this wall,

with its plasterwork still in situ, is a rare find.

[Igor] If we think about these walls,

they should be two meters high,

and if we have already plaster at the top,

probably it will continue all the way down.

[Victoria] Way down, yes.

[Narrator] The tall, plastered walls tell Igor

that this may have been a palace.

♪ ♪

As they dig deeper, more evidence emerges.

Opa, what is this?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Scratch here.

What is it, a mother-of-pearl? Possibly.

Yeah, it looks like.

There are also some pieces here.

Yeah.

[Igor] We have here some fragments of mother of pearl,

which are basically fragments of a type of seashell that we find.

It's quite interesting because in this complex,

we've found quite a few fragments of those seashells.

[Narrator] The crushed pieces of mother of pearl

offer little hint to what object they once belonged.

But the fact they're here at all, 30 miles from the coast,

implies this was a wealthy and sophisticated city.

[Igor] Naturally there are no shells in this area.

It suggests that were brought here from somewhere

probably to create some sort of jewelry or inlays and so on.

[Narrator] Discoveries here tell Igor that this palace

dates to a time known as the Late Bronze Age.

This was a period that began around 1600 BCE,

roughly 1,000 years after the construction

of Egypt's Great Pyramid.

[Igor] This is a Late Bronze Age structure,

it was constructed probably during the 14th century BCE.

This is one of the biggest and most impressive structures

that we have from the Late Bronze Age in the region.

[Narrator] The Late Bronze Age is a period

of particular interest

for experts investigating the Exodus story.

The Bible seems to put the arrival of the Israelites

in Canaan around 1405 BCE.

This would place it right in the middle

of the Late Bronze Age.

♪ ♪

The impressive Bronze Age settlement at Tel Hazor

resembles the one described in the Bible.

But the historical truth of the Exodus

and the Ark of the Covenant story

is one of the most controversial questions

in biblical archaeology.

So what more do archaeologists know

about the land of Canaan at this time?

♪ ♪

More than 120 miles away in central Israel

lies the ancient site of Tel Es-Safi.

Archaeologist Aren Maeir leads a small team investigating

another people who lived in Canaan, the Philistines.

[Aren Maeir] According to the biblical texts,

there are five major Philistine cities.

This was the site of Philistine Gath.

[Narrator] The Bible says the Philistines

were fierce warriors who lived in southern Canaan,

close to Egypt.

♪ ♪

It tells how the Israelites took a detour

into the Sinai Desert so they could avoid them.

[Aren] Christina, you want coffee?

[Christina] Yes.

[Narrator] Today, Aren and the team have a rare opportunity

to learn more about the Philistines

by excavating one of their tombs.

[Aren] What are these crazy archaeologists doing?

[Narrator] The team covers up to guard against ticks

as they prepare to head into the tomb inside a narrow cave.

♪ ♪

Ticks carry a virus known as cave fever,

and other dangers may be lurking in the dark.

[Aren] So you work this way, Christina, you work over here,

I'm gonna work over here.

Oh, yes, Aren, give me the snake area, thank you.

Okay.

[Narrator] Aren has been digging at Gath for almost 30 years.

There are very few intact Philistine burials,

so tombs like this one are particularly important.

♪ ♪

[Aren] We're digging in this specific location, in this cave,

because we're looking for Philistine burials,

because how people buried their dead

and what we sometimes call the deathscape,

is a very, very important part of understanding a culture.

[Narrator] The Philistines appear to have had

a different culture to that of their neighbors in Canaan.

Aren wants to understand why.

[Aren] Nowadays with modern bio-archaeological techniques

such as DNA and isotope and other methods,

we can learn a lot about their genetics, their origins,

their health, their diet, and all kinds of other aspects.

Oh, nice! [Christina] Yes.

[Aren] A big one. [Christina] Yeah.

[Narrator] Their first find is not human remains,

but a piece of pottery.

[Aren] It's a fragment of a juglet,

and hopefully it means that there's gonna be more soon.

You can excavate a tomb and be fortunate

and find very well preserved remains,

and it could also be that you won't find it.

And there's really no way of knowing

until you excavate the tomb.

Now that's the nature of archaeology.

[Narrator] Even small bits of pottery are important.

They can help archaeologists to date a tomb.

Most of the pottery here

comes from a period known as the Iron Age.

[Aren] What have you got there?

[Christina] Burnished pottery.

[Aren] Yeah, this seems to be some sort of a chalice,

and based on its decoration,

it seems very nicely dated to the Late Iron I, Early Iron IIA.

Yeah, now let's just find the rest of it, yeah.

[Christina] Okay, I'll keep working.

[Aren] Yeah. [chuckles]

[Narrator] Pottery like this confirms that the Philistines

did live in southern Canaan just as the Bible says.

But it reveals that the city of Gath was at its height

much later than the commonly

supposed biblical date of the Exodus.

[Aren] From what we have found so far, it indicates

that we have a rather limited amount of time

in which there was extensive activity in this tomb,

probably during the 11th and 10th century BCE.

[Narrator] The earliest mention of a people

believed to be the Philistines

dates to the 12th century BCE,

at least 200 years after the Bible implies

the Exodus took place.

It would mean the Israelites took a detour

to avoid a people who were not even here.

This is a hint that the archaeology may not align

with the biblical narrative.

So how did the Israelites and the Ark

end up in what the Bible calls the Promised Land?

[Narrator] According to the Bible's Book of Genesis,

the ancestors of the Israelites traveled to Egypt

to escape a famine in Canaan.

Here, they settled in the Nile Delta,

encouraged by Joseph, who had risen

to become the pharaoh's most trusted advisor.

Joseph prophesized that one day the Israelites

would return home,

the story that would eventually form the basis for Exodus.

What evidence is there for its setting in Egypt?

♪ ♪

Egyptologist Chris Naunton investigates

one possible historical lead,

an inscribed amulet known as a scarab.

[Chris Naunton] So, scarabs like this one are little objects

which take the shape of a dung beetle.

For the Egyptians, it was used

to represent the sun god.

They observed dung beetles

rolling balls of dung

across the desert and associated that with the idea

of this sun disc moving across the sky.

[Narrator] Scarabs carry inscriptions

on their underside,

often bearing the name of a pharaoh or royal figure.

[Chris] The important bit is in the central column.

But I can see the very top part of a shepherd's crook,

which is part of the Egyptian word heqa, which means ruler.

[Narrator] The end of the inscription is missing,

but similar scarabs have been found which are complete.

They allow Chris to work out

that part of the lost text

once said "foreign lands."

[Chris] So we've got "ruler of foreign lands,"

and that phrase in the Egyptian is Heqa-Khasut,

and that becomes the Greek word, Hyksos.

[Narrator] The Hyksos are among Egypt's most mysterious rulers.

Inscriptions like this scarab reveal they were pharaohs,

but their ancestors had migrated to Egypt from Canaan.

[Chris] It's very much an Egyptian object,

it's an Egyptian inscription, but clearly relating to somebody

who is foreign and yet has enough power

to take over at least the north of Egypt and probably beyond.

[Narrator] 3,700 years ago, the Hyksos settled

in Egypt's northern delta.

They brought powerful new ideas from the Near East,

horses and light chariots that changed Egyptian warfare.

♪ ♪

They held power for over 100 years

and ended up ruling northern Egypt

from their capital at Avaris.

Eventually the southern Egyptian kings

sought to reclaim Egypt,

besieging the Hyksos' stronghold

and driving them out.

The story of the Hyksos

intrigues biblical investigators,

because it bears remarkable similarities

with the events leading up to the Exodus.

[Chris] The idea of the Hyksos coming from Canaan

is very interesting from the point of view

of the Bible narrative,

because of course there are crucial parts of the Bible story

that involve the passage of people from Canaan into Egypt

and back out again.

[Narrator] To find out more, Chris takes a closer look

at the scarab.

It displays the name of a Hyksos king.

[Chris] It's followed by the signs which spell out the name

Khyan, who was one of the kings of the 15th Dynasty.

[Narrator] Egypt's 15th Dynasty was overthrown around 1530 BCE.

This is more than 100 years

before the biblical chronology of Exodus.

So could the Exodus be a cultural memory

of the expulsion of the Hyksos only retold slightly later?

♪ ♪

A clue may lie to the north at Tel Hazor.

As the dig team continues to reveal

the mammoth Bronze Age ruins of this Canaanite city,

Igor examines an intriguing find.

[Igor] We found right over here this fragment of a statue.

You can see that it is made of granite,

and you see all those sparks

of the inclusions of the granite.

[Narrator] Granite is not local to the region;

it suggests this statue was made elsewhere.

[Igor] We know that normally artifacts

that were produced from granite come from Egypt.

[Narrator] This is not the first statue piece

the team has found.

In the ruins of Canaanite Hazor,

archaeologists uncovered one of the oldest Egyptian artifacts

ever found outside of Egypt--

the feet of a lion carved from rock

inscribed with a cartouche of Pharaoh Menkaure,

the builder of the third pyramid at Giza.

This was once part of a sphinx,

a lion's body fused with a king's face,

the symbol of royal power and divine protection.

Why is this ancient Egyptian beast in Canaanite Hazor?

♪ ♪

Igor thinks the answer could lie

in the age and identity of the sphinx.

Menkaure, the pharaoh whose head once adorned it,

lived more than 1,000 years before the palace here.

[Igor] What's quite unique about Egyptian statues at Hazor

is that we find them in Late Bronze Age context.

But nonetheless, they were produced much earlier.

So that would suggest that perhaps those statues

were traded not for who they represented,

because those people were long deceased,

but probably for their aesthetic value.

[Narrator] These statues would have been worthless

to the Egyptians.

But their presence at Tel Hazor could be a clue

to the relationship between Canaan

and its powerful neighbor, Egypt.

[Igor] They're of much higher quality,

they're very impressive,

everyone would identify them as Egyptian.

So probably the king of Hazor would like to brag,

"Well, look at the statues in my palace,

how impressive they are."

[Narrator] Archaeologists are not sure what happened

to the Hyksos after their defeat.

But the evidence from Tel Hazor reveals

that during the succeeding 18th Dynasty,

the people of Canaan became part of the Egyptian empire.

[Igor] The Egyptians had a stronghold in Canaan

to supervise tax collection, and Canaan was basically

part of the Egyptian empire in this sense.

[Narrator] The story of the Hyksos

has many intriguing similarities

with that of Exodus,

but it differs in one critical respect.

At the time the Bible implies the Exodus took place,

Canaan was no safe refuge from the power of the pharaohs.

♪ ♪

Why would the Israelites flee from Egypt

to a region that was controlled by Egypt?

[Narrator] At Tel Es-Safi in central Israel,

the site of ancient Gath,

the team continues searching the cave tombs for clues

to how and when Philistine culture emerged in Canaan.

[Aren] Yeah, I think that's good.

[Christina] Is that good?

[Narrator] The Bible refers to the Philistines as invaders

coming from a land known as Caphtor,

which some suggest may be modern-day Crete

in the Aegean Sea.

The problem is that the Bible says little else about them,

and focuses on their later conflicts with the Israelites.

[Aren] The Bible tells us limited information

about the interaction

between the Israelites and the Philistines.

The big question of course is

what is the historicity of these descriptions?

[Narrator] Aren's team found what could be a clue

in another part of the site.

[Aren] And in Area D, we found a large temple

that was used over a period of about 200 years.

And in the innermost part of the temple

there was a very interesting stone altar.

[Narrator] The stone altar has horns,

the type that was used by various cultures in the region.

But the one at Gath has a key difference in its appearance.

[Aren] Most Levantine altars have four horns,

and what's unique about this altar as opposed to most altars

that are depicted and found archaeologically

that have four horns,

this one only has two in the front, one and two.

[Narrator] Altars with two horns are found more commonly

on Cyprus and the Greek island of Crete.

Aren thinks this unusual altar points to the Philistines

being a foreign people who migrated to Canaan.

[Aren] This one has two, because it also combines traditions

coming from the Aegean and from the Cypriot cult traditions.

[Narrator] The Philistines first appeared in Canaan

during the early 12th century BCE.

This was a time known as

the Late Bronze Age Collapse,

when many different civilizations

fell across the region.

Some archaeologists believe that the Philistines began life

as seaborne raiders from the Aegean

who settled in Canaan around this time,

before eventually integrating with the local population.

[Aren] The Philistine culture is a culture that is comprised

of many different groups that came to this region

at the transition between the Late Bronze and the Iron Age.

And they were people who came from the Aegean region,

from Cyprus, Anatolia,

side by side with people who came from Levant, Canaanites,

and this is what we call an entangled culture.

[Narrator] The arrival of the Philistines

at this troubled time,

much later than the Bible implies they were here,

raises an intriguing possibility.

Could the story of the Exodus also be a folk memory

of the Bronze Age Collapse?

♪ ♪

In the north at Tel Hazor,

Igor is exploring the Canaanite city's ultimate fate.

He wants to know how and when it came to an end.

[Igor] The destruction of Hazor is one of the most

puzzling questions that we have regarding this city.

[Narrator] Inside the palace, one wall looks very different

to the fine plaster he discovered earlier.

[Igor] Here we can see the mudbrick courses

and also the cement between the courses.

The mudbricks are burnt due to the fierce destruction

at the end of the Late Bronze Age.

[Narrator] The intense fire is not the only evidence

of destruction here.

Igor takes a closer look at the broken statue fragment.

The damage appears to be intentional.

On it, he can make out what look like chisel marks.

♪ ♪

[Igor] The fact that you have chisel marks

and someone really put energy into destroying those statues,

shows that it was deliberate.

Not only that we find only fragments,

most of these fragments

had not really been even attached one to the other,

so it seems that someone really smashed those statues,

chiseled them, and then just threw the pieces

in all directions.

[Narrator] Igor believes the destruction of Tel Hazor

was no accident;

someone deliberately destroyed this palace.

The question is who?

A clue could lie with the statues.

[Igor] The destruction of statues represent disrespect

for certain for most of the Egyptian culture.

In this case, all the Egyptian statues were obliterated

in an act of complete disrespect to the Egyptians.

[Narrator] In the mid 12th century BCE,

Egyptian power declined in Canaan

during the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

One possibility is that its people might have risen up

against their Egyptian overlords.

But mixed into the destruction debris,

Igor and the team also find another damaged statue.

[Igor] Oh, wow!

[Narrator] A tiny figurine of a calf god.

[Igor] This figurine is not Egyptian, per se,

it's also very typical to Canaanite culture.

So I think it's more related to Canaanite culture

rather than to Egyptian,

but it still was found in the same context.

[Narrator] Igor thinks whoever destroyed this city

was an outsider and had no respect for its gods.

[Igor] We know the destruction was ideologically driven,

because both Egyptian statues and Canaanite statues

were shattered into pieces during the destruction.

Therefore, it is clear that whoever destroyed Hazor

did not see himself neither as Egyptian nor Canaanite.

[Narrator] Some archaeologists believe

the recently arrived Philistines

or other seaborne raiders could be to blame.

But there is another possibility.

The biblical authors say Tel Hazor was one of the cities

destroyed by the Israelites.

Did an army of invading Israelites conquer Canaan?

[Narrator] At Tel Hazor in northern Israel,

Igor takes a closer look

at the damaged Canaanite figurine of a calf.

[Igor] You can see here the horns, and this is the face,

and it's all painted in red.

Here we see two of the legs,

it's of course broken on this side.

[Narrator] The figure of a calf as an object of worship

plays an important role

in the next part of the story of Exodus.

After escaping Egypt, Moses led the Israelites

through the desert to Mount Sinai.

He climbed the mountain and stayed for 40 days and nights

where God gave him two stone tablets,

carved with the 10 Commandments.

♪ ♪

While Moses was on Mount Sinai, the Israelites felt abandoned,

and used their gold to make an idol.

They formed a golden calf and began to worship it.

♪ ♪

The biblical story never identifies

the name of the idol.

But other chapters do mention a popular Canaanite deity

called Baal, who was often associated with a calf.

[Igor] The calf normally represented the storm god,

and that's the animal associated with the storm god,

and we know that the storm god was the main deity of the city.

[Narrator] The Old Testament calls Baal a false god

and a rival of the Hebrew god Yahweh.

Intriguingly, the rejection of false gods

is the very first Commandment.

♪ ♪

When Moses descended from Mount Sinai and saw the idol,

he smashed the tablets with the Commandments in anger

and destroyed the calf.

Moses climbed Mount Sinai once more,

carrying two new blank stone tablets,

and pleaded with God until he inscribed them again.

♪ ♪

So, might the Israelites have smashed

the Egyptian and Canaanite statues at Tel Hazor?

♪ ♪

At Oxford in the UK,

Lara Bampfield is an expert in ancient texts.

She's examining the links between the Israelites'

10 Commandments and another ancient set of laws,

the Law Code of Hammurabi.

It is written in the ancient script of Mesopotamia

called cuneiform.

[Lara Bampfield] This is the Law Code of Hammurabi,

and it is a tall, black stele made of hard stone.

And at the top we have an image followed by the cuneiform script

which is split between an epilogue and then lines of laws.

[Narrator] The laws are named after King Hammurabi,

a ruler of ancient Babylon.

They set out what his subjects should not do,

and the punishments if these rules are broken.

Some bear intriguing similarities

with the additional laws given by God to Moses in Exodus.

[Lara] The Law Code of Hammurabi sets out some laws

which are actually quite similar.

There are a couple of lines that are almost identical,

for example, an eye for an eye,

a tooth for a tooth, or a bone for a bone.

[Narrator] The dating of the Hammurabi stele

makes the similarities between these two codes puzzling.

[Lara] The Code of Hammurabi was written about 1700 BCE,

whereas the first record of the Israelites

was about 1200 BCE.

[Narrator] Lara's work explores ways in which common texts

and ideas can spread between cultures.

[Lara] Cuneiform was an international script,

which meant lots of different people would have used it.

This would have helped spread the knowledge about Babylon,

about King Hammurabi and about his laws.

It seems very likely that the Israelites would have copied

some of these ideas through exchange and trade

from the Mesopotamians.

[Narrator] Cuneiform tablets found at Tel Hazor

reveal that Canaanite laws might also have drawn upon

the Code of Hammurabi

or similar Mesopotamian traditions.

But what set them apart from the Israelites

was the rivalry between their gods.

So what evidence is there that a people called Israel

were even here at the time this city was destroyed?

The answer could lie with the next chapter of the saga...

...the conquest of Canaan and the Ark of the Covenant.

[Narrator] The Bible's Book of Exodus

portrays the Israelites as nomads,

who conquered the land of Canaan by force.

They used a sacred object of great power,

the Ark of the Covenant.

The Bible says the Ark was constructed

to hold the 10 Commandments.

It represented God's presence among the Israelites,

who carried it with them as they wandered in the wilderness

for 40 years.

♪ ♪

It's said the Ark parted the waters of the River Jordan,

allowing the Israelites to cross into Canaan.

And it helped to bring down the walls of Jericho,

the first Canaanite city to fall.

Discoveries reveal that this city, like Tel Hazor,

was destroyed in the Late Bronze Age.

So how does the biblical story match up with the archaeology?

In central Israel lies

the ancient settlement of Beit Shemesh.

Archaeologist Danny Herman investigates clues

that might reveal more about the story of the conquest.

[Danny Herman] The role of the Ark of the Covenant

in the conquest of the land is quite pivotal.

[Narrator] The early history of Beit Shemesh

is not well understood,

but its name hints at Canaanite origins.

[Danny] Beit Shemesh, whose name means "House of the Sun,"

that alone is quite interesting,

possibly preserving a vague memory

of Canaanite worship here of the sun.

[Narrator] The Bible says that Beit Shemesh was part

of the Canaanite territory assigned to the tribe of Judah

after the conquest.

Archaeology reveals that an Israelite settlement

had developed here by the 10th century BCE.

[Danny] It's quite clear, both from the Book of Joshua

and from archaeology, that the Canaanites who lived here

in this lower level were replaced

with an upper level of Israelites.

[Narrator] Beit Shemesh also features in a story

about the Ark of the Covenant being carried into battle.

♪ ♪

Hundreds of years after the Exodus,

the Israelites used the Ark once more,

this time against the Philistines

who defeat them and capture it.

The Philistines put the Ark in a temple

next to a statue of their god,

but the next day, the statue had fallen

and broken into pieces.

Wherever the Philistines take the Ark, disaster befalls them,

tumors strike the people,

and mice consume the land.

Struck with fear, they place the Ark on a cattle-drawn cart

and return it to the Israelites at Beit Shemesh.

Danny explores a discovery by a team of archaeologists

in one of Beit Shemesh's buildings.

[Danny] They uncovered this area.

Behind it a stone was found,

and not just any stone, not round...

but rectangular.

And it's in the same dimensions as the Ark of the Covenant.

[Narrator] The Bible describes the Ark in incredible detail,

it tells how the Ark was made from acacia wood,

two and a half cubits long by one and a half cubits high,

and covered in gold.

A cubit is an ancient measurement of length,

equivalent to a human forearm.

[Danny] This is a cubit and a half,

and the length is one, two, almost three cubits,

just a bit bigger than the size of the Ark, which makes sense,

you want it to be a bit bigger to hold it in a stable way.

[Narrator] The idea that the Ark might have rested here

is an intriguing if ultimately unprovable theory.

But the archaeology does show that the Israelites

were here in Canaan by the 10th century BCE

when this story was set.

The key question is whether they were here even earlier

when cities like Tel Hazor were destroyed.

A famous historical text could shed light

on the biblical narrative.

[Danny] The first time that the Israelites are mentioned

in a source outside the Bible is in this famous stele,

this stone monument of Merenptah.

[Narrator] In the early 1200s BCE,

the Egyptian pharaoh Merenptah,

waged a military campaign up into Canaan.

[Danny] He brags about conquering Canaanite cities,

and in between he tells us he also decimated a tribe,

not a city, but a nomadic tribe that is called the Israelites.

[Narrator] The Egyptian inscription dates

to around 1208 BCE,

and confirms that a people known as the Israelites

were in this landscape

at the time of the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

How long had they been here?

Could the answer reveal the real story of the Exodus?

[Narrator] At Tel Hazor, Igor hunts for evidence

that might reveal who destroyed this city.

[Igor] After the Late Bronze Age destruction,

first of all, we have an occupation gap

of about 100 years when the mound was abandoned.

[Narrator] According to the Bible,

the Israelites under the leader Joshua

defeated a Canaanite alliance led by the king of Tel Hazor,

whose city was burned to the ground.

Excavations reveal that this city

was a powerful center in Canaan,

that was destroyed by fire,

perhaps by someone who had no regard for its gods.

Egyptian records also confirm that a people called Israel

were in the region at this time.

The problem is that a critical part of the story is missing

from the Old Testament.

[Igor] When we look at the Egyptian control of Canaan,

we don't see any evidence, any memory, any remnant

of that picture in the Hebrew Bible.

It is as if it has never happened.

[Narrator] The complete absence of the Egyptians

in the conquest story is puzzling.

[Igor] One possibility is that it was intentionally omitted

from the history of early Israel.

But I will not see any reason for doing so,

because if the Israelites conquered the land

from the Egyptians and not the Canaanites, why not say that?

It would show that the Israelites are actually

much stronger than if they just conquered the land

from those local Canaanites.

[Narrator] Igor believes the answer may be that a people

who came to be known as the Israelites

did destroy cities like Tel Hazor,

but not when the Bible says they did,

and not in a single, swift campaign.

[Igor] It seems that Hazor was one of the sites

that was brought down

by the early proto-Israelites, if we wish.

But in contrast to the biblical narrative,

they probably did not come from Egypt,

they did not conquer the land from the east,

but they emerged from the Canaanite culture

and eventually brought it down.

They probably at some point disregarded Canaanite ideology,

left the urban system and eventually formed outside.

And once they had the chance, and once Hazor was in decline,

that was their chance to bring down

one of the largest Canaanite cities,

one of most powerful kingdoms of the Canaanites.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Many biblical scholars believe

the stories of the Exodus were written hundreds of years

after the events they describe.

Perhaps by the descendants of the people

who destroyed Tel Hazor.

They saw the ruins of the old city

and had only vague memories of what had happened.

[Igor] It goes without saying

that the people of Israel at Hazor

developed their own stories about this structure--

what was it, who built it and probably also who destroyed it.

And it is possible that from generation to generation

the story gets told again and again,

and eventually, that turned out to be the story that we hear

in the Book of Joshua about the conquest of massive Hazor.

[Narrator] The idea that the people of the Exodus

never left, but instead came from within Canaan,

is a controversial conclusion.

For many people of faith,

the stories of the Bible are the literal word of God.

Many believe that the key evidence for the Exodus

may still be out there.

[Danny] The fact that we can't find evidence of an event

that happened 3,000 years ago means it didn't happen?

No, archaeology has its limits.

One has to admit to the problem,

to the gap between the narratives

and the lack of archaeological evidence in some cases.

[Narrator] But now archaeology reveals a new perspective

on the story of Exodus,

of an ancient world that collapsed

at the end of the Late Bronze Age

and the rise of a new one.

The biblical story tells of a people who endured hardships,

pursued a journey from a belief in many gods

to a belief in one,

and built a new religious doctrine

symbolized by a holy relic,

the Ark of the Covenant.

The story of the Exodus is not just intended to be history;

it is a promise.

It explained to the Israelites who they were,

where they had come from,

and how, if they kept the faith,

their covenant with God would always bring them home.