Original subtitles

In the east of Egypt's Nile Delta,

investigators unearth treasures hidden for more than 3,000 years.

Here, slowly, slowly.

Uncover it so we can find out in which year this was all made.

They're uncovering the remains of a mega city

that some believe matches a city in the Bible's Book of Exodus.

We have to secure it first,

then we can take it out.

It might be a high official, maybe even palatial building.

Abandoned in ancient times, its true location was lost for millennia.

I think we are really lucky here to have this preserved.

These newly discovered wall paintings

bring the forgotten city to life, and could help decode the origins

of the Bible's epic story of Exodus.

We have probably excavated half a percent.

There's still a lot to be explored.

The stories in the Bible are famous across the world.

They tell of great battles between good and evil,

earth-shaking catastrophes, and iconic heroes.

Now, new archeological discoveries

buried in the Middle East for thousands of years

are shedding light on the real events that may have given rise to these legends.

In the story of Exodus,

the prophet Moses leads his people, the Israelites, out of captivity in Egypt.

They flee across the sea chased by the pharaoh's army

and into the safety of the promised land.

It's a story of triumph over hardship and adversity

that people all over the world can relate to.

This season, international teams

of archeologists dig through centuries of earth

and piece together millennia-old mysteries.

Could discoveries in Egypt help unearth the truth

about the world of the Exodus?

In the south of Egypt,

on the banks of the River Nile, is Luxor...

the capital of Egypt during its golden age...

the New Kingdom.

Here, archaeologist Jay Silverstein is on a mission

to ground truth the biblical legends.

He wants to explore if there's any archeological evidence

for an event like the Exodus in Egyptian history.

When you're able to correlate

the material evidence,

the facts, the artifacts that you find

to the events described in these ancient texts,

to me, that's very satisfying.

The Old Testament's story of Exodus

begins nearly 4,000 years ago.

It tells how a people called the Israelites

travel to Egypt and live here for over 400 years.

One pharaoh feels threatened by their growing numbers,

and forces them into slavery.

He orders them to build the great cities of Pithom and Ramesses,

which will serve as store sites.

If the Israelites don't work hard enough,

the pharaoh has them beaten.

Recent archeological evidence has cast serious doubt

on the idea that Egyptian pharaohs enslaved people to build their pyramids.

But did later ancient Egyptians ever use foreigners as enslaved labor?

Jay travels across the Nile to search for clues.

Built into the sandstone rock cliffs,

the Valley of The Nobles was once a burial site

for the elite in Egyptian society.

Jay investigates the tomb

of a powerful official called Rekhmire,

the second in command to one of Egypt's great pharaohs.

He was the CEO of the Egyptian corporation.

These walls capture that whole range of activities.

His tomb records one of his greatest achievements,

the construction of a temple to the god Amun.

So here, we have an inscription that says,

"The captives that His Majesty the Pharaoh has brought back

to work in the construction of the temple of Amun."

And so, quite literally, saying that these are prisoners

who have been brought back in servitude.

The enslaved figures represent people

from neighboring countries.

And you can see that there are

different types of representations here,

whereas the Egyptians have the long kilt,

looking at their haircuts, and their stance,

and the fact that they're in positions of authority,

as opposed to the laborers, who have shorter garments,

different types.

Their skin colors vary a little bit.

Archeologists think some of the figures

in this painting depict captives from as far as Syria and Canaan.

Canaan appears throughout the biblical texts

as a location to the east of Egypt,

the original home of the people that became the Israelites,

and the land where they hope to return.

Canaan represents one of these spots

that has its own really important geography,

'cause it's a crossroads between Asia and Egypt.

And so, we see a lot of geopolitical activity

happening in this area, a lot of migrations

of people moving back and forth.

These paintings are evidence that foreigners, possibly from Canaan,

could have been enslaved by the Egyptians.

Was a group called the Israelites among them?

And if so, where and when did they live?

A clue to another part of the story could lie 350 miles north

in Egypt's Nile Delta, at Pi-Ramesses.

In one of the most groundbreaking missions

in recent years, a team of German archeologists,

led by Henning Franzmeier, investigates this mysterious ancient site.

Abandoned in ancient times,

Pi-Ramesses' true location was lost for millennia...

until archeologists confirmed its location in the 1960s.

Amongst the big and important

ancient Egyptian sites, Pi-Ramesses is probably the least explored.

Pi-Ramesses was once the capital of ancient Egypt.

Some believe it is the location of one of the cities

named in the Exodus legend.

So, what archeological evidence is there for these biblical cities?

Today, Henning is on a mission to unearth the real city

buried beneath the soil here.

Directing a mission like the Pi-Ramesses mission

is actually fulfilling a kind of childhood dream.

Wherever we work here, we might find something completely new.

So, you were speaking about

- this area right? - Yes.

That we have to have a look there.

Henning scours the site for any evidence

of ancient structures beneath the ground.

I think, at least here, one can see them, one can actually see it

- all the way down. - Yeah.

And then, also here.

The team's excavation

reveals faint outlines of foot-long mudbricks.

They are really hardly visible.

This is why we are working with very experienced workmen.

They can spot these mudbricks better than I could ever do.

The earliest Egyptian pyramids, constructed more than 1,000 years

before the believed date of Exodus, were built of stone.

The walls of Pi-Ramesses are made of mudbrick.

Though quicker and easier to build with,

this construction method causes problems

for archeologists trying to understand the past.

The humid, waterlogged conditions of the Nile Delta

have destroyed much of the mudbrick evidence here.

This kind of line between the bricks

that we have here, I think is really relevant.

The team pieces together the pattern of bricks

to reveal a series of walls nearly 7 feet wide.

This clearly shows that we are not talking

about some normal habitation.

The team carefully measures the dimensions

and uses the latest technology,

like results from magnetic scans,

a technique that was applied across the site.

The damp conditions have led to the widespread disintegration

of buildings and organic artifacts.

So, gleaning every possible clue

from what does remain is vital.

Bringing all their information together

reveals the outline of a remarkable structure.

The archeologists believe they've unearthed

a long-lost royal palace

that covers more than 240,000 square feet.

A wide road flanked with statues leads to this grand building.

Hundreds of similar scans reveal the palace

is part of a large city...

once considered the greatest in Egypt.

Spanning over six square miles

and flanked by waterways from the River Nile,

it includes storerooms, bustling marketplaces,

and sacred temples.

This magnificent royal city was one of the largest in Egypt,

home to over 300,000 people.

We know now, thanks to the magnetic measurements,

the site was huge.

But we have probably excavated half a percent.

So, there's still a lot to be explored.

The mudbrick walls discovered here

are clear evidence of a vast and important city,

and there's a potential connection to the two in the Exodus story.

We can quite clearly tell that there's a lot of storerooms.

We have these longitudinal rooms, and lot of them in a row,

and this is typically storeroom architecture in ancient Egypt.

The resemblance between this metropolis

and the city of Ramesses in the Bible are intriguing.

Could this be one of the two store cities

the Israelites were forced to build in the Story of Exodus?

As the team at Pi-Ramesses

continue excavations around the palace walls,

it's not long before they find evidence of more than just the city layout.

This soil has a very distinct color here

and it's totally different from the normal clay that we have.

Just a few inches down,

the team hits the jackpot.

They unearth belongings of the people that lived here.

Henning and the team peel away the plaster

of the ancient palace floor in Pi-Ramesses.

It's not been disturbed for more than 3,000 years.

The organic matter and objects

could help to reveal exactly who lived here.

Were there Israelites from Canaan enslaved within these city walls?

It's garbage. It's ancient garbage,

so exactly what we archeologists like.

And already, just having taken away these few centimeters,

we have quite a lot of pottery, and I guess by the end of the day,

from this small area,

we'll have three or four full baskets of pottery.

This layer contains the rubbish

discarded by the ancient inhabitants of Pi-Ramesses.

It gives archeologists a unique insight into the lives of these people.

In the pit, Henning finds an object that doesn't appear to be Egyptian.

This is a sherd of a so-called Canaanite jar.

Canaanite jars were the standard container of the late Bronze Age.

They were made all over the Eastern Mediterranean.

The name Canaanite means "from Canaan,"

the land where the Bible says the Israelites came from.

Pi-Ramesses was the gateway to Egypt

for neighboring civilizations who visited for trade.

They would have brought in resin, or wine, or oil,

and would have taken goods such as glass, for instance, out of Egypt.

These Canaanite jars may have arrived

at Pi-Ramesses as cargo.

On its own, the sherd doesn't prove

that people from Canaan lived in the city.

Henning heads to the team's dig house

to sift through more evidence from the site.

Thousands of fragments of pottery line the shelves.

They include beautiful vases originating in Greece and Cyprus.

Henning analyzes an intriguing piece from the stores...

a sculpted figurine.

It's a head made of clay,

and it represents most likely a non-Egyptian God.

This figurine has a cap and large ears,

mirroring images of a god called Baal.

Baal was a Canaanite deity.

This is strong evidence that people from Canaan

were trading and living in Pi-Ramesses.

Not only Egyptians lived in Pi-Ramesses

but also foreigners coming from all around the Mediterranean, maybe.

This object along with others found previously,

hints at a bustling city with a population made up of many different cultures.

I think in this period, there's no other Egyptian city

where you have so much of this foreign pottery.

If people from Canaan were treated badly

and enslaved in Egypt,

what might have tempted them to come to the country?

In Manchester, bioarcheologist Iwona Kozieradzka-Ogunmakin

is an expert on the movement and health of ancient people.

She investigates a relief from a temple complex in Egypt,

carved more than 1,000 years

before the construction of Pi-Ramesses.

It shows what appear to be Bedouin tribespeople

from the desert regions, not Egyptians.

It's a very unique scene

showing individuals with incredibly emaciated bodies.

I think particularly striking is this gesture here,

someone who's resting and is just really exhausted.

We can very clearly see those grooves

which were made to accentuate the bone structure

of those people's faces.

This is not something that we would normally see

in reliefs or paintings in ancient Egypt.

Why would a pharaoh

want to immortalize these people on his temple?

It is believed that

it was maybe commissioned

by the pharaoh to sort of demonstrate his generosity,

maybe in welcoming those people,

into the Nile Valley, and potentially supporting them.

It's evidence that foreign people

sought sanctuary in Egypt in the 24th century BCE.

It is not surprising that people would be seeking refuge along the Nile.

It was, and still is, the most important river

running across the country.

Water means life, quite simply.

Land irrigated by the Nile provided an abundance of food.

Archeologists have discovered vast brick silos across Egypt.

Some carried up to more than 3,500 cubic feet of grain.

In the Bible, Joseph comes to Egypt

and becomes an advisor to a great Egyptian pharaoh.

He encourages his family to move here because Egypt has stores of food.

Reliefs like this suggest the idea of people

escaping from Canaan to Egypt draws on real events.

Periods of famine and suffering did happen.

Canaanites may have taken refuge in Egypt and been enslaved.

The Bible tells of a champion who appears to save the Israelites.

Exodus describes how a pharaoh grows so afraid of them,

that he orders all male Israelite babies to be killed at birth.

One desperate mother floats her infant son down the Nile in a basket.

The pharaoh's daughter finds him and names him Moses.

After growing up as her son, he ends up killing an Egyptian

who was beating an Israelite.

The pharaoh orders Moses killed for his crime...

forcing him to flee Egypt and live in exile.

So, what evidence is there at the ancient city of Pi-Ramesses

for the living conditions of ordinary people?

At the Pi-Ramesses site in the Nile Delta,

Henning and the team continue to excavate the rubbish pit

to look for clues that help to understand what it was like to live here.

Unlike many places in Egypt where the sand preserves evidence,

here, water from the surrounding fields destroys archaeology.

Very little is left, and organic remains such as bone are rare.

The team tirelessly hunts for microscopic remains

that could provide clues.

Everything has rotten away, basically, so we need really these things,

these small fragments to also really reconstruct history.

Pieces of animal bones

can reveal the diets of the population.

But analysis of even fragmentary human remains

could reveal markers of disease and malnutrition.

The finds could shed light

on one of the most famous chapters of the Exodus legend.

When Moses returns to free his people,

the pharaoh refuses to release the Israelites...

prompting God to punish the ancient Egyptians

with a series of deadly plagues.

At first, the waters of the Nile turn to blood,

killing all fish and making it impossible to drink

in all of Egypt for a whole week.

When the pharaoh refuses to back down, swarms of locusts block out the sun,

devouring all the plants

and every last bit of food the Egyptians have.

When a pestilence kills all the Egyptians' livestock,

sparing the animals of the Israelites, the pharaoh will still not let them go.

It's only when God kills every firstborn son in Egypt,

including the pharaoh's own child,

that the king agrees to set the Israelites free.

Historians think these stories

might not refer to a series of specific events,

but rather what the world of the New Kingdom was like.

So, what other archeological evidence is there

of the threats that the ancient Egyptians faced?

In Manchester, Iwona and museum curator

Campbell Price search the stores for clues.

These two, I think these are exactly

the kind of thing you would find at Pi-Ramesses.

These miniature limestone blocks

were carried by ancient Egyptians to call upon the gods in prayer.

This is the name of the god...

- Mm-hmm. - ...at the top, the signs.

And then, "who hears."

- Mm-hmm. - And then, "prayers."

So, "the god who hears prayers," literally.

You pick it up if you've got a problem.

A hotline to the god.

A hotline, like a smartphone.

These objects offered forms of protection

and could be kept close by.

The Egyptians also wore glazed ceramic amulets

around their necks.

It's a fantastic illustration of a human desire to be safe.

This is the goddess Sekhmet.

Her name means "she who is powerful."

And the idea was that Sekhmet was a protector of human beings

against famine, plague, and pestilence.

You would gain the protection of the goddess for yourself

and for your family.

There's no archeological evidence

of the fantastical 10 plagues from the Exodus story.

Campbell thinks they reflect the experience of people

living in Egypt and across the ancient world.

So, when you hear stories like the 10 plagues,

these are ways of discussing big issues in the ancient world.

Not knowing what tomorrow will bring made the Egyptians

want to be prepared, to have insurance policies.

Evidence of disease has been found

throughout ancient Egyptian history.

The story of the 10 plagues may be a remnant of folk memories

from periods of disease and unrest.

Back at the Pi-Ramesses excavation...

the team continues to excavate.

Although the Exodus story names the City of Ramesses,

biblical chronology suggests events took place

before any of the 11 pharaohs named Ramesses came to power.

What's more, the biblical account doesn't actually name the pharaoh

who ruled at the time of Moses.

Archeologists here hope their research

will give greater certainty about who built

the palatial residence they've uncovered.

Conservator Alexandra Winkels finds something extraordinary in the palace.

I think we are really lucky here to have this preserved.

She's discovered that these fragments

of wall plaster are painted.

Maybe we should make it wet from the back

- a little bit, right? - Yes, yes.

It may provide clues to when this huge ancient metropolis was built,

and by whom.

In the southeastern corner of the Pi-Ramesses palace,

Alexandra carefully brushes away soil from the rare plaster wall painting.

How is it going with the plaster?

Yeah.

It's still stuck to the exposed wall

of the more than 3,000-year-old palace.

What might this wall painting reveal about the founder of this city?

Okay, I will call Ahmed.

Ahmed, can you come here?

Here, slowly, slowly.

Uncover it so we can find out in which year this was all made.

The painted wall has cracked into hundreds of tiny fragments.

They are scattered in the disintegrated remains of a mudbrick wall.

Alexandra hopes to use her expert knowledge

of plaster conservation techniques

to reveal an intact section of the fragile painted wall.

Now then, we take away first this part here,

that just this remains, then you can remove...

- Yeah. - ...the remains

- ...of the wall plaster. - You'll also apply

the Japanese paper on this area

to keep the fragments in place,

because if we don't, everything will crumble.

Alexandra uses a special paper covered in adhesive

to strengthen the fragments and keep them in position...

...whilst the rest of the team applies fabric

soaked in plaster behind the relief

to make it strong enough for them to remove.

We have to secure it first,

and then we have to remove the surrounding clay

and then we can... we can take it out and work on the fragments in more detail.

Alexandra and her team of conservators

take the plaster pieces to the dig house

to clean them for closer inspection.

The traces of magnificent colors are hard to see

and could have been easily missed in the dust

of the excavation site.

Alexandra and her team carefully wash away the earth,

a job for only the most expert conservators.

They are the first people to set eyes

on these painted decorations in more than 3,000 years.

The fragments we are working on right now, they are the... the top plaster layer.

This type of plaster is a rare find.

It's made from lime.

You have the mudbrick masonry,

then a clay plaster layer,

and the top layer was decorated with a very thin lime plaster.

And this lime plaster is, for... for Egypt, a very special material,

because it hasn't been used in so many places.

Artists painted these decorations

on top of the freshly applied lime plaster while it was still wet.

It's a technique perfected in ancient Greece

which enhances the paint pigments.

The use of lime plaster

is another sign that it might be

a high official, and maybe even palatial building.

Few people other than a pharaoh

could afford to employ such skilled foreign workers

to decorate the magnificent palace.

The dig house contains clues to who this ruler might be.

Henning analyzes small pieces of carved stone fragments.

This little tiny object is one of the most important objects

that we have found in the past years.

This small plaque is in the form of a cartouche.

It is carved with a royal name.

Items like these were buried in the foundations during construction

to preserve the name of the king that had them built.

This is a pretty small fragment of stone

but we can see here traces of the so-called cartouche.

And we have here a couple of hieroglyphic signs

that give us the name "Massassu."

And this, in this period, can only be Ramesses II.

This Ramesses II carving is strong evidence that he is the pharaoh

that built this palace and the city of Pi-Ramesses.

Some believe that because of the name of this city,

Ramesses II is one of the pharaohs in the Bible's Exodus story.

Ramesses' skills as a general and self-publicist

cemented his reputation as a great warrior-king

among the Egyptian people.

He erected more monuments than any other Egyptian pharaoh.

He even passed off other temples as his own

by putting his name on them.

He left such a legacy

that even today, he's remembered as one of the greatest pharaohs of Egypt.

Could the fame of his name

explain why he became attached to this legend,

even though he lived long after the Bible suggests Exodus took place?

In the south of Egypt, across the Nile from Luxor,

Jay heads to the mortuary temple of Ramesses son, Pharaoh Merneptah.

Inside is the replica of a 10-feet-tall relief,

or stele.

Jay thinks it could be key to helping piece together

the historical setting of the Exodus story.

If there were a smoking gun

for the biblical tale of the Exodus, this would be it.

This is our historical reference,

the written record of the pharaoh referring to the people of Israel.

This is the earliest written reference

to the Kingdom of Israel ever found.

The inscription says that the seed of the Israelites

is no more, that it's been laid to waste.

Jay suspects the stele

could describe Merneptah's defeat of their homeland.

Some think that this inscription

confirms that Ramesses was the pharaoh of Exodus...

the persecutor of the Israelites,

who are first recorded as living in Canaan during the rule of his son.

But Jay believes this conclusion is far from certain.

We have to be careful when we read

something like this about implying too much of it

as the exact correlation to the biblical text.

There was this interaction going on between the Israelites and the Egyptians,

and that conflict may have lasted for hundreds of years.

One possibility is that the biblical story

of Exodus is not an account of a single event.

It's a collective memory of historic figures and places.

Ramesses the Great is the sort of famous figure

that the scribes may have had in mind when first writing down the biblical tale.

His image as this great pharaoh

sort of epitomizes the type of opponent

that you expect Moses to be facing off with

when we talk about the great pharaoh.

If the legend of Ramesses the Great

did influence the Exodus story,

what other light could his city shed on the biblical tale?

Back in the north, Henning travels from Pi-Ramesses

to the secure storerooms at Tanis.

They contain many of the larger and valuable finds

from Pi-Ramesses.

He searches for clues to Ramesses' reign.

This is our storeroom.

This is the storeroom where all the most important

and best finds of the mission from the past

more than 40 years are being held.

Hidden among the large stele

and limestone blocks are smaller unique artifacts

that Henning wants to study.

These objects are very difficult to identify what they are.

In fact, they are the only remaining pieces of chariots,

chariots that were also produced in the same workshops

as the arrowheads or the shields.

Chariots played a key role

in Egyptian warfare during Ramesses' reign.

The Egyptians bound leather straps around these limestone yokes

to attach each horse to the chariot.

One soldier commanded the horse

while another was armed with a bow and arrow.

The team also found strange stones at Pi-Ramesses

with a hole pierced through their upper half.

Henning believes they were used to tether horses.

Archeologists found several of these stones

in one specific area in Pi-Ramesses...

...evidence that there was once a huge stable complex in this city.

Spanning over 180,000 square feet

with space for nearly 500 horses...

it is the biggest ancient Egyptian stable ever found.

And the chariot pieces are evidence

this may well be the headquarters of the royal chariot fleet.

Pi-Ramesses was not just the residence of the king.

It was one of the most important military bases

for the Egyptian empire.

Chariots were very lightweight

and very, very fast and efficient.

Ramesses II commanded a lethal chariot army

that helped him to conquer many of the surrounding nations.

Even as far north as Canaan.

A pharaoh leading his chariots into battle was a recognizable scene in ancient Egypt,

one that also appears at a critical moment in the Exodus story.

After the plagues, the pharaoh allows the Israelites to leave,

then changes his mind and orders his chariot army after them.

With the Red Sea blocking the Israelites' path...

God orders Moses to raise his staff.

Miraculously, the Red Sea parts...

so Moses and his people flee to freedom.

As the sea crashes back down, it sweeps away the pursuing Egyptian army.

This scene is one of the most famous and fantastical

in the biblical story of Exodus.

In the south, Jay Silverstein journeys across the Nile to Luxor...

and the monumental Temple of Karnak.

He wants to investigate this dramatic scene

from the Exodus story.

From a religious perspective,

what the story does, is it demonstrates how strong God can be.

God can directly intervene

with the laws of nature, the laws of physics.

Could there be historical truth

in elements of this legendary event?

We see chariots occurring

in the pursuit of the Israelites.

That resonates as something very historically accurate.

So, what did happen?

Jay thinks one of these walls within Luxor's Karnak Temple

could provide clues to the legendary location

of the Bible's parting of the waters tale.

Here we are, looking at the... the reliefs of Seti the First,

the predecessor to Ramesses the Great.

As we get over here, we get to something

that's kind of key when we think about the exodus.

What you see is a sea or a river surrounded by reeds.

Although today many associate the Israelite escape with the Red Sea,

the actual Hebrew account uses the words Yam Suph...

which literally translates to Sea of Reeds.

The translation became the Red Sea, and that became fixed in our mind

as we know the geography,

and that's obviously the largest body of water

that we can think of between Egypt in the Sinai and Canaan.

If we go back to that Hebrew text,

and think of the Sea of Reeds,

that changes our perception of what's going on.

Jay thinks it's possible that the Israelites

crossed a waterlogged area to escape a pursuing Egyptian army.

There are shallow lakes

throughout the northern part of the Nile Delta.

I would take my people to a shallow, swampy area

where I know chariots are useless, because they're gonna get bogged down.

The reliefs and statues in the heart of the Temple of Karnak

document the history of the Egyptian Kingdom.

It was built over a period of 1,500 years with 30 successive pharaohs adding to it.

Geopolitics in the ancient world were fluid.

Even in a period of 100 years,

you might see the boundaries of Egypt dramatically change

from one extreme to another extreme.

The pharaohs and battles remembered within these walls

may have influenced the writers of the biblical story.

Tradition says that Moses himself recorded the events of Exodus

after receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai and escaping Egypt.

But many historians believe Exodus was written down

hundreds of years later in the 9th Century BCE.

At this time, Egypt was still

a potentially dangerous neighbor for the Israelites.

There's a lot of evidence

for the Exodus, as long as you're not trying

to make it some sort of literal story that's word-for-word what's in the Bible.

I think it's pretty difficult

to put an absolute date on the Exodus.

It's really covering a period of a couple hundred years

where events are related

to the development of the Israelites as a people,

and it has a lot to do with the relationship to Egypt.

We're really getting this composite story.

Jay thinks the story could be a compilation

of historic events, which reflect centuries

of the Israelites' experiences.

It also delivers a moral lesson of redemption

for those who trust in God's plan.

At Pi-Ramesses, Henning and his team reach the end of the dig season.

We are doing a few last drawings,

a few last photographs here on the site.

We got a lot of nice finds.

So many archeological contexts on top of each other

that can tell us so much more about what happened here.

This is a very nice example from the Ramesside Period.

We're very lucky that it's still preserved,

and even the colors are preserved comparatively well.

We hope to return next year

to dig deeper into this area,

and to answer more questions.

Slowly, the city of Pi-Ramesses is beginning to reveal its secrets.

You see basically nothing today on the surface.

But the memory of it

was preserved through the monotheistic religions,

as there is this place called Ramesses in the Bible.

Founded by one of Egypt's most powerful pharaohs,

this immense metropolis could have influenced

one of the Bible's greatest stories.

The Exodus legend is not only the origin story

of a new nation, it highlights the experiences

of a people living in the mighty shadow of their neighbors...

the conditions in which they lived, and the power of the Egyptian rulers.

The story of Exodus is a valuable reflection

of the world in which it was written.

The Exodus story, I think resonates with all sorts of people

who have had to face oppression at various times in their history.

So, it's about overcoming overwhelming odds.

It's about God favoring you,

God giving you a chance to succeed.