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and his hosts followed them
    In insolence and spite.
    At length, when overwhelmed
    With the flood, he said:
    â€˜I believe that there is no god
    Except Him Whom the Children
    Of Israel believe in: …’
    (It was said to him) …
    â€˜This day shall We save thee 9
    In thy body, that thou
    Mayest be a Sign to those
    Who come after thee!
    But verily, many among mankind
    Are heedless of Our Signs!’(Sura X:90–92) 10
    Ramses I is known to have ruled for less than two years. The biblical account of this part of the Exodus story cannot therefore agree more precisely than it does with what we know of the history of Ancient Egypt at this time. If Ramses I was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Horemheb was the Pharaoh of the Oppression. But how long had the Israelites been in Egypt when these events took place?

5
    SOJOURN – AND THE MOTHER OF MOSES
    C ONTRADICTORY accounts in the Old Testament make it difficult to arrive at the precise date when the Patriarch Joseph and the Israelites arrived in Egypt. As we saw earlier, we are offered a choice of three periods for the Sojourn – 430 years, 400 years and four generations. In Stranger in the Valley of the Kings I argued that the figure of 430 years was wrongly arrived at by the biblical editor in the following way: firstly, he added up the four generations named in the Old Testament account of the Descent into Egypt as if each new generation were born on the very day that his father died, having lived for more than a century:

    Then he deducted the years (fifty-seven) that Levi lived before the Descent – according to the Talmud he lived eighty years after the Descent and died at the age of 137 – plus the forty years Moses is said to have lived after the Exodus. This left him with his total of 430 years. This method of computation is obviously unsound, and I have since been pleased to find that many biblical scholars agree with my view that the figure of 430 years for the Sojourn is not to be taken literally – a variety of explanations are put forward – while it is, surprisingly, the majority of Egyptologists who appear to look upon it as a sacred figure not to be challenged.
    One eminent biblical scholar who has commented on the length of the sojourn is the late Umberto Cassuto, formerly Professor of Biblical Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who wrote: ‘… the numbers given in the Torah are mostly round or symbolic figures, and their purpose is to teach us something by their harmonious character … these numbers are based on the sexagesimal system, which occupied in the ancient East a place similar to that of the decimal system in our days.
    â€˜The chronological unit in this system was a period of sixty years, which the Babylonians called a Å¡Å«Å¡ . One Å¡Å«Å¡ consisted of sixty years and two Å¡Å«Å¡ of a hundred and twenty years – a phrase that is used by Jews to this day. In order to convey that a given thing continued for a very long time, or comprised a large number of units, a round figure signifying a big amount according to the sexagesimal system was employed, for example, 600, 6000, 600,000 or 300, 3000 or 300,000 or 120, 360, 1200, 3600 and so forth. I further demonstrated there that, if it was desired to indicate a still larger amount, these figures were supplemented by seven or a multiple of seven. The number 127, for instance (Genesis, 23:1), was based on this system.’ 1 Elsewhere Professor Cassuto makes the point that the figure forty, found frequently in the Bible, is similarly used as a kind of shorthand for a period of time and is not to be taken literally.
    He then goes on to try to harmonize the two Israelite traditions – that the Sojourn lasted 430 years (six times sixty, plus seventy) and four generations. He cites as his four generations Levi, Kohath, Amram and Aaron, who is said to have been the brother of Moses, and adds together the years they are given in