(mysterious music) - In the last scenes
of a very famous movie, the lost Ark of the Covenant,
the box that once held the 10 Commandments,
is crated and abandoned in the basement of a warehouse. What if Hollywood's depiction
accurately reflects reality? This would mean that hiding somewhere, there's tangible proof of
the story The Bible calls the Exodus, the deliverance
of the Israelites from Egypt led by the prophet Moses. Well, right here in this building there's a 3500 year old gold image, carved perhaps by an eyewitness
to the biblical Exodus of the lost Ark of the Covenant, and the people in there don't realize it. (mysterious music) Exodus. For thousands of years, the biblical epic has captured the human imagination. But did it really happen? - When it comes to the
Exodus, we have no evidence that it happened and a good
deal of evidence that it didn't. They made it up. - [Reporter] Painstaking excavation under 150 feet of sand and rock, they discovered the ancient tomb of... - Something must have happened. I can't explain what happened, but it shaped ancient Israel's identity, and therefore I can't
dismiss it as a fairy tale. - [Reporter] In the famed
Valley of the Kings, where 60 Egyptian pharaohs were buried amidst a splendor the
world has never equaled, archeologists... - What can you dig up which
is going to prove the Exodus? What would you have to find
in order to prove the Exodus? - The Exodus story is at the very heart of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. For thousands of years,
believers have treated it as historical fact. But in the past few decades,
scholars have called the story a fairy tale. I'm James Cameron, and I know a filmmaker who for nearly a decade
has been on a mission to answer a 3000 year old question. Is the Exodus fact or fiction? His name is Simcha Jacobovici, and he's a two-time Emmy winner
in investigative journalism. He claims that scholars have missed the archeological evidence
that's hiding in plain sight. More than that, he seems to
have come up with the goods by putting together the
long-forgotten pieces of the ultimate archeological mystery. (gentle music) - How did we do it? By tracking down experts
from a variety of disciplines who rarely, if ever, talk to each other. None of them fully subscribes
to our take on the story, but many possess critical
pieces of the puzzle, and what emerges will challenge
even the most skeptical. But before we show you the evidence, let's start the story at the beginning. (steady percussive music) The biblical tale begins when
the Hebrew patriarch Jacob escapes drought in the land
of Canaan, modern Israel, and moves to the land of plenty, the land of the pyramids, ancient Egypt. (steady percussive music) There, Jacob's clan,
the future Israelites, flourish in their new environment. In fact, Jacob's son
Joseph became as powerful as the rulers of Egypt, the pharaohs. And yet after Joseph dies,
his people are enslaved by the ruling Egyptians. More than a century later,
the Egyptians became afraid of revolution, and
instituted a policy of drowning all the Israelite male infants. It was at this point Jacob's
great, great grandson was born. To avoid death, the infant
was hidden in the bull rushes, where he was found by Pharaoh's daughter. The princess adopted
him and named him Moses. When Moses grew up, he sided
with his oppressed brethren and fled into the desert. 60 years later, he returned to
utter the unforgettable cry, "Let my people go." 10 times Pharaoh said no to Moses, and 10 times God struck Egypt
with catastrophic plagues, ultimately killing all
Egyptian firstborn males. Finally, Pharaoh let the Israelites go, but then changed his mind and pursued Moses and his followers
to the edge of the sea. It looked like the
Israelites were trapped. But then the impossible happened. The sea parted and the
Israelites crossed to safety. Moses now led his
followers to Mount Sinai, where they received the 10 Commandments, the sacred laws they would take with them to the promised land. Most scholars believe the story is a myth. So even when the evidence
is staring them in the face, they ignore it. The most dramatic example
of this took place in 1947, when archeologist Henri
Chevriet found pieces of a broken stone monument, or stele, dating to a pharaoh named Ahmose, around 1500 before the common era, or BCE. Incredibly, the Ahmose Stele is covered in hieroglyphic inscriptions that mirror the biblical tale. Today, it lies abandoned in the basement of the Cairo Museum, and all our attempts to get access to it were unsuccessful. So using Chevriet's published description, we reconstructed the stele and got one of the world's leading
Egyptologists to comment on it. - We have this very interesting stele, which is dated to the reign of Ahmose. It records a tremendous
catastrophe that happened to Egypt. We're not quite clear what it was, but it involved rain and
thunder and lightning and such a storm that rarely
happens in Northeast Africa. I mean, that's a dry area. It sounds peculiar to me
that the biblical tradition preserves the memory of plagues, you know, which involve climatic cataclysms, and here we have from the
very time this curious stele. - [Simcha] This curious stele
may in fact hold the key to the Exodus enigma. Let's take a closer look. The Bible says that at
the time of the Exodus, there was a great storm. Ahmose Stele also talks of a great storm. The Bible says darkness
descended on Egypt. The stele says that Egypt
was enveloped in darkness. The stele then says
something very peculiar. Though the Egyptians worshiped
many gods, on this stele, it is written that the
storm and the darkness happened when God, in the
singular, manifested his power. The Bible describes Pharaoh,
but never names him. Because of this stele,
we now know his name. Ahmose. And now that we know who
he is, maybe it's time that we met him. (pensive music) This is the Cairo Museum. Home to some of the most
famous mummies ever unearthed. We came here in search a Pharaoh Ahmose, the man who we believe is
the pharaoh of the Exodus. You wanna flash that thing? Normally it's here. At first, we couldn't locate him, but we did locate his
father, Seqenenre Tao II. If we are right, this
is one of the pharaohs who oppressed the Israelites. According to most scholars, his skull had been crushed by enemy axes. Perhaps those enemies were Israelites, smashing his mummy as
they left on the Exodus. We continued on our search for Ahmose. It was hard to locate
him, because he had been sort of misfiled. But we did locate one of his two wives under some debris in one
of the museum's workshops. Hi, is it possible to
reveal the wife of Ahmose? (people chattering) According to our calculations, this somewhat discarded glass coffin contains the mummy of
a woman whose husband contended with Moses and hardened
his heart to God himself. At last we located Pharaoh Ahmose. Here is the man who confronted Moses. Can it be that Ahmose's father remembered the Israelite prince he grew up with, and when he gave his
son his Egyptian name, Ahmose, the moon is
born, he chose the name because of a play on words. In Hebrew Ahmose means
the brother of Moses. In history, Pharaoh Ahmose is most famous for expelling a foreign nation
from Egypt around 1500 BCE. At the time, Egypt was ruled by a people that the ancients called Hyksos. Until recently, little was
known about the Hyksos. Then, in the 1960s, their
ancient capital, Avaris, was discovered north of Cairo. (tense music) No one has ever been
allowed to film at Avaris. To get there, we needed the cooperation of the Egyptian authorities. They're concerned that in
the volatile Middle East, the discovery of biblical artifacts will somehow strengthen modern
Israel's claims in the area. As a result, the Exodus is a
touchy subject in Egypt today. So we didn't mention Moses and we stressed that we were interested in Pharaoh Ahmose and the Hyksos he drove out of Egypt. After months of negotiations,
we were finally given permits to shoot at Avaris. (horn honking) This is Avaris, a walled
city dominated by palaces. 3500 years ago, it was surrounded
by branches of the Nile. Avaris was discovered by
Professor Manfred Bietak of the University of Vienna. Although only a few
acres are exposed today, in ancient times, Avaris seems
to have dominated the area. - Avaris itself was much bigger. It was 250 hectares. So it extended from here to
the east about two kilometers and from here to the south
perhaps even one kilometer. In the Hyksos period, this was one of the major residence
of Egyptian pharaohs. - [Simcha] Egyptian history
clearly states that the Hyksos who ruled mighty Avaris were
Semites like the Israelites, and that they left on a mass Exodus, known as the Hyksos Expulsion. - We have in the Bible the story of the Semites leaving Egypt
and going eastward from Egypt. At the same time,
independent of the Bible, we have a story of the Hyksos
being expelled from Egypt. I think definitely the two
stories of are related. They're describing the same
event from different viewpoints. - If the Hyksos Expulsion
and the biblical Exodus are really one and the same event, then perhaps we can find
the long sought after proof for the biblical Exodus
during the Hyksos period. But most scholars say that
the Hyksos and the Israelites cannot be equated because
the Hyksos left Egypt hundreds of years before Moses was born. These scholars also say that
the chronology of ancient Egypt cannot be tampered with. - You can play with Egyptian dates, you can move them up maybe
10 years and down 10 years, but you can't move them up and
down 50 or a hundred years, that's not possible. And yet many people try to do that. They try to adjust chronology to fit their predetermined notion
of biblical history. You can't do it. - But maybe we have to. What if scholars are placing the Exodus in the wrong time period? Imagine the confusion if in the future, scholars date World War II to the 1990s. You'll never find any evidence
that it actually happened. Currently, most scholars
date the Exodus to 1270 BCE, during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II. But some scholars are now
breaking with that consensus. - The Bible gives information
that would put the Exodus about 480 years before the
early years of Solomon, in the middle of the 15th century BC. - Professor Bison's
calculations moved the Exodus from its present date to 1470 BCE, less than 100 years from
the traditional date for the Hyksos Expulsion. These are too close to
write off as a coincidence, so we have a new date for the Exodus, approximately 1500 BCE. - The Hyksos and the Hyksos Expulsion is what we're talking about when we are talking about the Exodus. - All right, our new date
for the Exodus is 1500 BC. And we know from the Bible
that the Israelites arrived in Egypt some 200 years
before their Exodus. In the original Hebrew, the
Bible calls the Israelites God's people, or Amo Israel. If we're right about our dates, there should be hard
archeological evidence for the arrival of these
Amo around 1700 BCE. (mysterious music) 400 kilometers south of Avaris
is the tomb at Beni Hassan. It dates to 1700 BCE. Because no one has looked
for evidence of the Exodus in this period, the tomb
has never been linked to the biblical story. And yet there is a perfectly
preserved wall painting here that records an ancient
migration into Egypt from the area of modern Israel. (suspenseful music) As in the Bible, the scene
involves bearded Semites, riding donkeys and bringing their families and flocks into Egypt. Like the biblical
Israelites, they are wearing multicolor tunics. The hieroglyphic inscription on this wall calls these people the Amo, God's people. Looking in the right place,
during the right time, we are the first to recognize
a veritable snapshot of the migration of the
biblical Israelites to Egypt. The Bible records that at
the time of their arrival, one Israelite rose to the
highest levels of Egyptian power. His name was Joseph, son
of Yakov, Jacob in English, and he became so powerful
that he wore on his finger the seal of royal authority. Discovering Joseph's seal
at Avaris would prove that the Israelites arrived here exactly when our timeline predicts. That would be like finding a needle in a 3700 year old archeological haystack. (suspenseful music) Incredibly, the tiny seal was found, precisely at the archeological
layer we anticipated. In fact, Professor Manfred
Bietak found no less the nine seals worn by
Joseph's court officials. Inscribed right on them
is the Hebrew name Yakov, Joseph's father. - It's very strange
that we found nine seals with the name Yakov here. It's a biblical name, by the way. The original was probably
mounted on the ring, worn on the finger, and
this gives us a new puzzle. - [Simcha] Is it really a puzzle? Not if one uses our chronology. This is the only time that a Hebrew name appears on an Egyptian royal seal. It directly connects
Avaris with the Bible. Professor Bietak steers
clear of biblical chronology. He's under the constant
watch of the Egyptian antiquities authority,
who have made Avaris off limits to the public. Supposedly for conservation reasons, Professor Bietak has been
forced to cover up his dig every single year. The area's then plowed,
seeded, and cultivated by local farmers. No one would suspect that
underneath these fields lies an archeological treasure trove that proves the biblical Exodus. (suspenseful music) Now that we found hard
evidence for the arrival of the Israelites in Egypt
and their rise to power, we went searching for archeological proof of their downfall and the
slavery that led to the Exodus. In search of the
evidence, we had to travel to a place called Serabit El Khadim, 400 kilometers south of the Nile Delta into the Sinai Desert. (speaking foreign language) For thousands of years,
Egyptians mined turquoise in this area. Often they used slave labor. The ancient turquoise mines are off the beaten tourist track. The only ones who know
their way in this area are the Betoans, who still
live at the foot of the mines. I heard once that
Betoans, they can do like the prophet Moosa, that
they know which rocks have water in them, they break it. Is that true?
- Ah. - We got here, paid our
respects to the local sheik, and recruited one of his
sons to show us the way. - Okay, let's go. (tense music) - [Simcha] We learned of
this place from old papers published in obscure journals. We came here to find proof of the slaves that Moses led to freedom. But even if we found evidence
for the presence of slaves, how could we be sure that
they were Israelites? The Bible provides us with two clues. First, the followers of Moses did not use hieroglyphic writing like the Egyptians. Rather, the biblical tradition states that they used an early
form of alphabetic writing. Also, the Israelites did
not worship Egyptian gods, but a single god that the Bible calls L. To support our new biblical timeline, we needed to find alphabetic inscriptions carved by slaves some 3500 years ago. In our wildest dreams,
they would also mention the biblical god, L. And sure enough, there are
slave inscriptions here, and one of them records a
3500 hundred year old cry. "L, save me." This is the writing of a slave, a slave who worked in this mine. You can still see the chisel marks which were part of the forced labor that the author of this
inscription was involved in. And he wrote his cry to God saying, "help me, don't forget
me," here, where he worked and he slept and he probably died. And it's represents an incredible
moment in human history. Not only is it the first inscription that records the name of God, L, but it also records the oldest
or maybe the second oldest alphabetic inscription. It's the basis on which
Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, English, Arabic, all
is based on this writing. Pretty incredible that
after all these years, we would be here to record this man's cry. (tense music) The Ahmose Stele, Beni
Hassan tomb paintings, Joseph's royal seal, and the Israelites' slavery inscriptions all
point to approximately 1500 BC as the date for Moses and the Exodus. If our date is correct,
then there's something else that we have to factor in. Around 1500 BCE, people
living along the Mediterranean experienced one of the most
cataclysmic events in history, the eruption of the Santorini
volcano in modern Greece. This eruption may be another crucial clue for decoding the biblical Exodus. This is the island of Santorini, 700 kilometers from the Egyptian coast across the Mediterranean. It is literally the mouth of a volcano. Some 3500 years ago,
Santorini was destroyed by one of the worst volcanic
eruptions in human history. When it erupted, the volcano
essentially brought to an end the Manoan civilization
that once flourished here. It sent an ash cloud that
measured some 40 kilometers straight up and 200 kilometers across. The sound of the eruption
circled the Earth some 10 to 12 times. - To put this in perspective,
an eruption like Santorini would be hundreds to
thousands of times stronger, more explosive, than the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. The energy of that
eruption was so immense, you would have had these huge
explosions that were happening and you hear crack crack crack. For hundreds of kilometers, people around were listening to it. We were getting earthquakes,
probably magnitude three, four, maybe even five or higher,
that were happening extremely rapidly. And it would have been, I'm
sure to the people living there, as if the world was coming to an end. (tense music) - So perhaps the cataclysmic
events described the Bible such as plagues, darkness,
and the parting of a sea are somehow connected to
the Santorini eruption. But like all things related to the Exodus, dating the Santorini eruption to 1500 BCE can be controversial. - People have been arguing
about the dates of Santorini. Vulcanologists and geologists
would date the eruption in the 1600s BC,
archeologists tend to date it in the 1500s BC. - Digging at Avaris,
Professor Bietak has no doubt that he can pinpoint
the Santorini eruption to the exact time period
where we placed the Exodus. - Here, pumice from the Santorini eruption appears for the first time. So from archeological point of view, it looks very much as
if the eruption happened early in the 18th dynasty,
let us say around 1500 BC. - Yokobovich's chronology machine has now synchronized. The Pharaoh named Ahmose,
the Hyksos Expulsion, the Exodus, and the Santorini eruption. It appears that the Exodus
code has finally been cracked. If Yakobovich is right, we can now explain the science underlying the biblical story. (thunder crashing) We can even explain what caused the greatest miracle of them all. The parting of the Red Sea. We can then trace the biblical map and discover the real Mount Sinai, where the Exodus story came to a climax when Moses received the 10 Commandments and placed them in the now
lost Ark of the Covenant. - Let's begin with the plagues, the biblical catastrophes
that struck Egypt because Pharaoh wouldn't
let the Israelite slaves go. Until now, no one has come
up with a comprehensive scientific explanation for all 10 plagues. The answer began to take shape for us after we returned to the Ahmose Stele and discovered an amazing synchronicity with the biblical text. The Bible says that the god of Israel passed judgment on the gods of Egypt. And the stele confirms that the statues of the gods of Egypt were
toppled to the ground. Earthquakes are known to accompany volcanic eruptions like Santorini. It seems that the stele and the Bible are describing the
results of an earthquake, or more precisely, what
scientists now call an earthquake storm. - Earthquake storms are
sequences of large earthquakes that sweep across large areas. And the best examples are
the eastern Mediterranean, where we have long historical
and archeological records. - [Simcha] As it turns
out, the biblical story takes place in an earthquake zone. The Nile Delta, where the Bible says the Exodus took place, is
crisscrossed by fault lines. To the east, the Great Drift Fault separating the Asian and African plates runs through the sea of
Galilee, the Dead Sea, and the Red Sea, all the way to Africa. In addition, there is a fault line that runs along the modern Suez Canal, and another fault line that
runs along the Nile Delta under ancient Avaris. Meanwhile, some 700
kilometers to the west, the rift between the African
plate and the European plate runs practically under Santorini. But what do earthquakes have to do with the biblical plagues? Well, let's begin with the first plague. Earthquakes can't
possibly explain how Moses turned the Nile's waters
into blood, can they? In fact, they can. They trigger gas leaks, and
we don't have to go back 3500 years to prove the point. In 1984 at Lake Manoon,
and in 1986 at Lake Nyos, both in Cameroon, the
sweet, clear lake waters suddenly turned blood red. The mystery was solved
when Professor George Kling explained the phenomenon in terms of an underground gas leak. - What was happening was
that the bottom waters contained very high concentrations
of iron, dissolved iron. And when that was mixed up to the surface when the gas was released,
it contacted oxygen and it formed an iron
hydroxide, essentially rust, the same thing that happens on cars, and that rust was what caused
the reddish-brownish color at the surface of the lake. When it comes to the biblical plagues along the Nile Delta
there, there are elements that are present that could
suggest a buildup of gas. So we could have a situation
where gas beneath the earth is trapped in pockets, and
earthquakes along the fault line then release that gas. And depending on the kind of water that that gas goes through, it
could even turn that water red. - If the Nile turned blood
red as a result of a gas leak, then the chain of events
described in the Bible would've been set into motion. The first thing that happens
in such circumstances is that the water
becomes devoid of oxygen, and all living things in it die. The fish then begin to float
in the polluted waters, rotting in the sun. The only things that do not die are frogs. Unlike fish, they can hop
out, and as it turns out, biblical plague number
two is a frog infestation. (mysterious music) The lack of clean water
then leads to lice, flies, and bacterial
epidemics among humans and domestic animals, Not surprisingly, biblical
plague number three is lice. Plague number four is flies. Plague number five is an epidemic. Plague six is boils and blisters. Man and beast. Can an earthquake-induced gas leak explain this kind of outbreak? Let's go back to the 1986
disaster at Lake Nyos, Cameroon. At the time, people living along the lake developed strange boils and burns. It turns out that carbon
dioxide mixed with air put people into a kind of
coma, reducing circulation to the skin, causing the kind of boils described in the Bible
as plague number six. Despite the first six plagues, the Bible records that
Pharaoh still refused to let the Israelite slaves go. So Egypt was now struck by
plague number seven, hail. And it was a very unusual hail, involving ice and fire mixed together. To this day, rabbis teach
that the biblical description is no metaphor. - Seventh plague was the plague of hail, but the Bible describes hail
in a very unique manner. The hail was together with ash, with fire, the idea being that the fire and the ice commingled together,
they coexisted together. The Bible then describes God as making a miracle within a miracle,
taking opposites in nature and having them coexist together. - [Simcha] Incredibly,
there is an Egyptian papyrus that tells the exact same story. It's called the Ipuwer Papyrus, and it's dated by many
scholars to the Hyksos period. The Ipuwer Papyrus specifically states that Egypt was struck by a strange hail made up of ice and fire mingled together. Another piece of the puzzle
has fallen into place. It now seems clear that the
biblical and Egyptian texts are describing what scientists
call accretionary appealing, volcanic hail, that could only have come from the earthquake-induced
Santorini volcano. - When the ash cloud goes
up to to great distances in the stratosphere,
essentially what happens is you have moisture in the atmosphere. You also have a lot of water
vapor in the cloud itself, so the small fragments of ash and crystals actually form a nucleus,
something very similar to a hailstone. - In other words, Egypt
experienced fire and ice raining from above, just
as the Bible describes. It seems that earthquakes
and the resulting volcanic and gas eruptions neatly explain the first seven biblical plagues. They also explain plague
number eight, locusts. Locusts migrate in swarms
that can be between 40 and 80 million adult locusts
in each square kilometer. Cold weather produces a drop
in their body temperature and makes them land en masse. The volcanic hail and
the weather disruptions caused by the Santorini
eruption would've forced great clouds of locusts, which are common in this part of the world,
to suddenly land in Egypt. As the hail storm cleared
and the temperature rose, so did the locusts, exactly as the biblical account describes. Gripped by earthquake storms
and their consequences, Egyptians were now going to experience the last phase of the Santorini eruption, or what the Bible calls
plague number nine, darkness. This is the way it probably worked. During the months before the eruption, seismic activity in the
whole Eastern Mediterranean was causing the African plate to grind under the European plate. Seawater was then turned to steam that bubbled up through the magma. This in turn caused the pressure to build and erupt through weak
points in the surface, triggering several small eruptions, leading to a major blowout. When the final eruption
came, it created an ash cloud almost 40 kilometers from top to bottom and 200 kilometers across. When the ash cloud reached Nile Delta, it engulfed the Egyptians
in what the Bible calls a palpable darkness. - In a matter of a few minutes, they're plunged into a black world, ashes falling around them, they can't see, they can't breathe very well. The sun has disappeared,
you have black overhead, and they have no idea
what's going to happen next. - The discovery of
Santorini pumice at Avaris seems to prove the arrival
of the ash cloud in Egypt, and explains the biblical description of a prolonged darkness. Some might argue that
since pumice can float, it could have been
brought to Egypt by waves and washed ashore by tides. So we caught up with
Professor Gene Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian Institute. He's made the definitive discovery. He found Santorini ash in the Nile Delta. It could only have
arrived in the ash cloud that plunged Egypt into
the biblical darkness. - We had to look through
10 to 20,000 grains to find one ash grain, so we
found a total of 40 ash grains. Not all ash looks the same. Ash has a fingerprint aspect. The ash particles that
we find in the Northern and Northeastern Nile
Delta are individual grains that came in from Santorini. - There's very little room for
doubt that the Exodus account and the descriptions that
we have in Egypt of this, the volcanic dust coming into Egypt and geological description,
where we can actually see, feel, touch, and date the
volcanic dust in the Nile, that they are describing the
same tremendous volcanic event. - The final plague took place at midnight, after Moses ordered the
Israelites to sit down to what became known as
the first Passover meal. While the Israelites were
involved in the Passover ritual, the Egyptians slept. And then it happened. Every firstborn male Egyptian died. Every house was affected. No one has ever been
able to offer a plausible scientific explanation for
the death of the firstborn. Until now. According to our scenario, at this point in the sequence of events that began some six months earlier, the gas leak that set the chain of plagues in motion would've finally erupted. Carbon dioxide would have
seeped to the surface, and being heavier than
air, would've killed animals and sleeping
people before it dissipated harmlessly into the atmosphere. In case you think all this
is conjecture, consider this. It happened in exactly the same way in 1986 at Lake Nyos, Cameroon. On the fateful night of August 21st, the villagers at Neo went to sleep. They couldn't have known
that the carbon dioxide gas which had turned the lake blood red was now reaching a critical point. As the people of Lake Nyos
slept, the top of the lake was keeping the carbon down
like a cap on a pop bottle. But then, the earth rumbled,
and a landslide took place, sending rock into the water,
disturbing the surface pressure and releasing the gas. The gas then rose to the surface, and like some alien monster,
emerged from the water. Droplets, forming on it,
turning the invisible gas into a visible fog. The fog then rolled across
the water and across the land, suffocating everything in its path. And as suddenly as it
appeared, it disappeared, dissolving harmlessly into the atmosphere. The next day, those who had
been sleeping on higher ground woke up to find some 1800 people dead, hundreds of cattle and
small animals also dead. All around there was deathly silence. - I was sitting, just
sitting among the dead people inside the house, some
of them were outside. Animals everywhere, lying, cows, dogs, everything, all the family. We were 56, but 53 died. - After the death of the firstborn, Pharaoh finally relented,
letting Moses take his people out of Egypt. According to the Bible,
what made Pharaoh give up was the selectivity of the death. The fact that it was only
male firstborn who died. It was this selectivity
that demonstrated to him that God himself was involved. How can we account for this? Well, Egyptian firstborn males
had a privileged position. They were the heirs to the throne, to property, title, and more. They slept on Egyptian
beds, low to the ground, while their brothers and
sisters slept on rooftops, sheds, and in wagons. The Israelites sitting up
at their first Passover meal did not feel a thing,
while the low traveling gas suffocated the privileged Egyptian males sleeping in their beds. This conclusion is
backed by the archeology. At Avaris, Professor Manfred Bietak has found mass graves dating to before and during our date for the Exodus. The earlier graves are classic examples of ancient epidemics that
killed men, women, and children. But at the time of the Exodus, the mass grave he found
has only males in it. - Here you see bones of burials
from the early 18th dynasty. They are all male victims. By the size of the graves and the number of the individuals in the graves, we think people died in rapid succession. And the individuals were
just thrown into the pit, some of them lying on their stomach, some lying on their side. Some of the pits were
just 20 centimeters deep and just some dust put on top of them. - The Bible says that
Pharaoh's son also died during the plague of the firstborn. Since we claim that a Ahmose
is the pharaoh of the Exodus, we should be able to prove
that Ahmose's son died young. (suspenseful music) Searching in the Cairo Museum. He's right over there on the shelf there. We found Ahmose's son. The prince had died young. He was only 12. For the first time ever, we
can put a face and a name to a victim of the biblical plagues. - Seems that the Bible,
geology, and archeology are all telling the same story. But skeptics who would like
to regard the Exodus as myth might resist the idea
that it actually happened, because this would imply
that God does indeed exist. Believers, on the other hand, may feel that a scientific explanation
of the biblical story takes God out of the equation. - But in the book of Exodus,
God does not suspend nature, he manipulates it. In other words, according to the Bible, we should be able to understand the science behind the miracles. And the greatest miracle of them all was the parting of the sea. After the death of the
Egyptian firstborn males, Pharaoh let the Israelites go. He then changed his mind and pursued them, finding them trapped
on the shores of a sea. The Hebrew text caused this sea Yam Suf, and it was here where
the miracle occurred. The sea parted, the
Israelites crossed the safety, and then the waters came back, swallowing the entire Egyptian army, overturning chariots, drowning
all the horses and soldiers. (tense music) For years, explorers have
searched for evidence of the miracle of the parting of the sea. They've mounted underwater
archeological quests, looking for ancient chariots, swords, and any evidence of
drowned Egyptian armies. There is a theory that
a huge subsurface shelf in the Red Sea could
have been been exposed for a short time during a powerful storm, providing a land bridge for
the Israelites to cross. But the search has
always been unsuccessful. Who would've thought
that instead of diving, we should have been driving? That's because Yam Suf,
Hebrew for the place where Moses parted the waters, has for years been
mistranslated as Red Sea, when in fact the correct
translation is Reed Sea, and reeds grow in sweet
water, not saltwater, in lakes, not oceans. We should have been looking for a lake. But which lake is the Bible referring to when it describes the
parting of the Reed Sea? It goes like this. Oh, and like that, almost
like a figure eight. - Yes. - Using our dates for the Exodus, we tracked down an ancient artifact that records the precise
location of Yam Suf. It also provides us with the
first archeological evidence for the parting of the sea. We found a hieroglyphic inscription on a granite monument that
tells the entire story of the Exodus from
Pharaoh's point of view, The Bible calls Moses a king. On this stone, Moses is called
the Prince of the Desert. The Bible calls the
Israelites God's people, the granite calls them the evil ones. And then the granite
corroborates the miracle of the parting of the sea. The symbol can be read by anyone, three waves and two
knives, the parted sea. - The three water signs,
one on top of the other, is typically used to
apply to different types of bodies of water. Can apply to the Nile,
can apply to a marsh, can apply to the sea. But what is not so common
is when you have that word in combination with these two knives. The fact that you have these
two knives associated with it would suggest that this is
water that is cut water, that is divided. This might be an allusion
to the waters at the Red Sea or the Reed Sea were divided
in Exodus chapter 14. - Oh, I see it. To examine the text better, we got a pressing of the hieroglyphic, and as it turns out, the Egyptian text doesn't just mention
the parting of the sea. This is the best one,
you see the two knives. It also mentions a specific location next to where the sea parted. The place is called Pi Haroti, and today archeologists
know exactly where it was, enabling us to locate Yam Suf, the place where the Bible states the sea parted, the Israelites crossed to safety, and human history was changed forever. - Was an ancient lake that
survived until the 1850s, when the Suez Canal was
put in, this ancient lake finally died. Professor Manfred Bietak,
after conducting thorough study of this area, proposed that this lake was known to the Egyptians as Patufi, the marshland, the marshy sea, and the word tuf, Egyptian word for reeds, is the same word as suf in Hebrew. So that Yam Suf, he suggested, was a name derived from this body of water. Now it's called the El Balah Lake. - Under the ever-watchful eye
of the Egyptian authorities, we travel to Lake El Balah, the exact spot where one of the greatest
biblical miracles is supposed to have taken place. The salt beds and reeds
testify to the fact that at one time, the salty
waters of the Mediterranean and the sweet waters of Lake
El Balah intermingled here. Behind me is what's left of Lake Balah. You can see the salt marshes,
you can see the reeds. This whole entire area
was one big lake or sea, but because of the Suez Canal, today, you can literally walk or
drive through the sea of reeds. - One of the problems
most people have today is they pull out a map
and they try to find out where were these places that
the Bible's talking about? But you can't use a modern day map. You have to use a map
that's 3000 years older. And we are working on this
by taking satellite images where we can actually see the depressions from ancient lakes. And so we can actually begin to understand what the Northeastern
Delta of Egypt was like 3500 years ago. - Identifying the precise
location of Yam Suf means that we can finally explain the miracle of the parting of the sea. This satellite light
photo clearly demonstrates that Lake El Balah is close
to the edge of the Nile Delta, where silt accumulates and
collapses from time to time. As Pharaoh chased the Israelites to the shores of Lake El Balah, the extreme seismic activity
that caused the 10 plagues and the Santorini eruption
would've now caused the delta to start sliding
into the Eastern Mediterranean, and as millions of tons
of soil moved forward, the edge of the African plate, which had now been
released from its burden, must have risen between one
and one and a half meters. In other words, the sea parted. Water would have cascaded from
higher ground to lower ground and drained from pools and sinkholes, creating dry land for
the Israelites to cross. At this point, further seismic activity or another collapse of the delta would've sent a major tsunami
crashing against the coast. - We get some glimpse of
these tidal waves in Turkey, where they carved their
channeled scab lands, 30 miles inland, and in order
to do that at the shore, they would've had to be
more than half as high, these waves, as the Empire State Building. And that's exactly the
description that we do have in the Bible. - [Simcha] If the tsunami went
a mere 12 kilometers inland, it would have reached Lake El Balah and engulfed the Egyptian army. By this point, according to the Bible, the Israelites had advanced
beyond the reach of the waves. As it turns out, some of the
people that followed Moses across the parted sea,
and later to Mount Sinai, did not follow him to the promised land. They boarded ships and sailed in an unknown exodus to Greece. Why hasn't anyone noticed? Because no one thought to look in Greece for evidence of an event
that happened in Egypt. In fact, until recently,
there was very little archeological evidence of contact between the Manoan civilization of ancient Greece and Egypt at the time of Moses. All that changed with
two great discoveries. The first was in 1972,
when digging under the ash at Santorini, archeologists
made a startling discovery linking this area of the
world with the Exodus. They found unusual
Minoan-style wall paintings. Incredibly, among them there is a map depicting an ancient journey
from Egypt to Greece. - The whole scene may be considered as the earliest, the
oldest map in the world. - [Simcha] The map is breathtaking. The colors as vibrant
today as 3500 years ago. It depicts an epic journey
from Egypt to Santorini. The voyage is complete with
a terrible storm at sea. Working even further back, we
see that the ancient sailors sailed past Egyptian fauna and
palm trees in the Nile Delta. The map then follows the river inland, and it ends up in a magical city on a kind of river-bound island. This mysterious a city is surrounded by high walls with multi-storied houses, elegant ladies peering from the rooftops, and a rich harbor. At the time, there was
only one port in Egypt that fits the city in the
map, the fabled Avaris. Until late in the 20th century, there was no archeological
proof of contact between Avaris and the Minoans of Santorini. Then, in 1992, perfectly
preserved Minoan paintings were discovered at Avaris,
proving that in biblical times, this city was populated
not only by Israelites, but also by people from ancient Greece. - Most people do not
realize that there was not only contact between the
Minoan world and the Egyptians, it was very intense
contact, contact and trade, contact and ideas. We have the Egyptians
referring to the Minoans as the only other civilization
that they consider civilized. It was not a military presence in Egypt. It was actually a trade presence. - So we now know that
there was intimate contact between Greece and Egypt
at the time of the Exodus. As a result, it's perfectly
reasonable to assume that some of the followers of Moses came from the area of the ancient Greece, and it's quite possible
that some of these people returned to Greece after the Exodus. The Bible says that Moses in his followers left Egypt with great quantities of swords and Egyptian gold. 3500 years after the
fact, is there any chance of finding Israelite swords
and Egypt's golden treasures in Greece? This is Mycenae, 50
kilometers from the coast on the Greek mainland. In 1876, the famous archeologist
Heinrich Schliemann, the excavator of Troy, made
a world-shaking discovery at Mycenae. Here he found 3500 year old tombs. The tombs are incredible, with long shafts leading to vaulted ceilings. They were built in the
shadow of a mountain that has the shape of a pyramid. Surprisingly, they
contained a treasure trove of swords and Egyptian gold. Schliemann believed that the gold belonged to Homer's Agamemnon, who
led the war against Troy for the sake of the beautiful Helen. But scholars soon
discovered that the people who were buried in the tombs lived about 300 years before Agamemnon. They lived around 1500 BCE. Is it possible that here lie
some of the followers of Moses? The answer is on the tombstones that we now know were placed
on top of the death chambers. (tense music) The meaning of the
images on the gravestones has never been deciphered, until now. (tense music) If you ask scholars, what is it? They say, well, it looks like a hunt, but there's no animal, or
it looks like a battle, but there's no two people fighting. Let's look at it and let's see, what in fact do the grave stele Mycenae actually testify to if we
just look at it very simply, without any prejudice and
without any preconceptions? I almost want a whisper
with some kind of secret, because nobody realizes that they have a 3500 year old movie, if you will, three frames of the parting of the sea. And they don't know it. They don't know it, but
look at it, just look at it. It's so clear. Frame number one, you see waves on top and waves on the bottom,
you actually literally see the parting of sea. And this guy is on a
chariot chasing Moses, who's holding a staff. That's frame number
one, and right over here you have frame number two in the movie. The water is gathering into whirlpools. Look what's happened over here. Everybody thinks the man
with the staff is the loser, but he's actually turned around. He's turned around, he's facing his enemy. He's occupying higher ground, and this guy is occupying lower ground. And look, there's walls of water coming. And in the third frame,
which is in another museum, even more hidden, you see
this guy's been overturned, the water is engulfing them,
the horses are upended, and the story is complete. But what do the experts say? - In this very example, the options can be mainly to either he's a
warrior in a battle scene, and he's the enemy,
he's chasing the enemy, and the enemy is trying to
escape holding his sword. And the second option may
be the chariot race scene. - So this guy is, this is
kind of an ancient Olympics. This guy is an official, and
this guy is racing around. - He is bearing a sword as well. And he's holding a sword. - This doesn't look like much of a sword, looks more like a staff to me. - Yes. In this case, it's an abstract depiction. It's not an naturalistic depiction. So we cannot say much. - To understand what's going on here, all you have to do is
actually take this 3D image, which has been flattened
out, and just pull it out, just pull it out. And what you get is the biblical story. (mysterious music) When the three stele are put together, what we see exactly as
depicted in the Book of Exodus is an Egyptian charioteer chasing Moses across the parted sea. Then, Moses turns and faces his pursuer, walls of water rise and
come down on the Egyptians. Finally, rider, chariot,
and horses are drowned. Here we have literally carved in stone a visual account of the biblical tale dating back to the very time
of Moses and the Exodus. (ominous music) The earthquake activity that
led to the crossing of the sea would've now led to oil and gas fires in this oil and gas rich area. What Moses and his
followers would have seen, just like the Bible says,
is a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night, beckoning them into the desert. So if we've interpreted
the evidence correctly, and we are right about the
location of the parted sea, we can now make sense of
distances provided in the Bible. Maybe we can even locate
the legendary Mount Sinai, where according to scripture,
God revealed himself to Moses. Many would argue that
identifying Mount Sinai would be tantamount to corroborating
the biblical tale. For thousands of years,
adventurers have attempted to find the elusive mountain,
and they've always ended up in the wrong place. The most popular Mount
Sinai is at the site of a third century Christian monastery. (bell ringing) It is a high mountain in
the south of the peninsula, and this is where the tourists flock. There is only one problem with this site. It doesn't fit a single biblical criteria. It's well off the main trans-Sinai routes. It's nowhere near the land of Israel, where the Israelites were headed. There is not a single plateau
that could have accommodated hundreds of thousands of Israelites. And since the land is made up of granite, there's hardly any
shrubbery to sustain flocks or water to sustain people. So where is the mountain of God? As they followed Moses into the desert, there were only four main routes the Israelites could have taken. The northern, the southern,
and two central routes. The Bible explicitly states that it wasn't the northern route. Geography rules out the southern, leaving only the central routes, which combined to form a single road leading to the promised land. - It's the only road that is possible, because to the south of the road, there are treacherous mountains, and to the north, there is
arid desert, sand dunes. And this road is an ancient road, there are water systems all along it. That was the road on
which Moses would have fled for his life from
Egypt, and is the road that he would've taken back,
finally leading the Israelites out to the revelation on Mount Sinai. - The Bible provides us
with three coordinates for Mount Sinai. First, according to
the biblical itinerary, Mount Sinai is a 14 day journey
from a place called Elim. Elim is now easily identified with a place just south of Lake El
Balah, called to this day the Springs of Moses. If a mass people can walk no
more than 15 kilometers a day, we can now draw an arc from Elim that takes us 210
kilometers into the desert. This gives us our first coordinate Exodus 3:1-2 states that
God first appeared to Moses in a burning bush on Mount Sinai. At the time, Moses was
tending his Medianite father-in-law's flocks. Mount Sinai, therefore, has to be within flock grazing distance
of Medianite territory. The problem is that the
Medianites lived in Saudi Arabia, not the Sinai peninsula,
except for one place, a place called Timna. Here, archeologists found the remnants of Medianite flocks, and
even Medianite wall drawings. If Moses was tending
Medianite flocks in the Sinai, this is the only place he could have kept. And, based on local
flock raising practices, Mount Sinai should be no more
than 45 kilometers from Timna. This gives us our second coordinate. The final biblical coordinate
in the search for Mount Sinai appears in Deuteronomy 1:2. It states that the mountain
of God is an 11 day journey from a place called Kadesh Barnea. Today, almost all archeologists identify the biblical Kadesh Barnea with
the oasis of Tel El Kudirad in north central Sinai. Using 15 kilometers a day as our measure, we can now draw our last
arc into the desert, 165 kilometers from Kadesh Barnea, leaving us with a very tiny area that conforms to all the
biblical coordinates. Nonetheless, even in this small area, there are many mountains. But there is a clue
that may help us zero in on the precise peak. The book of Exodus calls Mount Sinai a holy mountain, and holy
mountains in the desert are marked by ancient
open air rock sanctuaries. What are those? - [Man] They look like little excavation. - That's amazing. In this area, there is only one mountain surrounded by sanctuaries. Today, that mountain is
called Gibel Hashem El Terif. Very distinct, that second peak, eh? Right there. Although this entire area is in the middle of a military zone, we got to it. This mountain perfectly
fits all the criteria for Mount Sinai. It is surrounded by a huge plateau that could have accommodated
hundreds of thousands of Israelites. It is easily accessible. It literally sits on the
main trans-Sinai highway, which follows the topography
of the ancient route. - The mountain is not very high. It's only about 200
meter above the plateau, but it is very conspicuous. You can see it from distance. And the unique point is
that it is surrounded by actually the largest concentration of open air sanctuaries that
we know today in the desert. - [Simcha] If we are
right, some 3500 years ago, Moses climbed this mountain and received the 10 Commandments on its summit. But this is as far as
we're permitted to go. Our professional camera crew
sticks out like a sore thumb in a military zone. The Egyptian army forbids us to proceed. We cannot climb the mountain
to confirm our theory that this is Sinai. (tense music) But we came back without a crew, and armed with the only a small camera, we had to climb to the
top in search of evidence that this was the mountain where Moses received the commandments from God. But what would we need to find
to prove that this is Sinai? The Bible states that Mount Sinai has several unique characteristics. If this is the mountain, it
should have a large cleft in it, a natural podium where Moses stood and called out to his people. Like all holy mountains,
it would have grave sites of holy men on its summit,
and there should be evidence of a fresh water spring
on top of the mountain, an extremely rare characteristic that according to the Bible, sets Sinai apart from other mountains in this desert. When we reach the top, we find
everything as it should be. The cleft, looking out to
a natural amphitheater. From here, Moses's voice
would've carried for miles. And here are the grave sites. - Each one is a circle of
about six meterin diameter, and they're built in
the shape of a platform. Each one, you can see the burial cell, and the burial cell,
nicely built and roofed. - [Simcha] And rarest of all... - Look at this. You see the white stuff? - [Simcha] It appears
there was an ancient spring at the top of the mountain. - This is a turpentine. Which means an accumulation of calcium under wet conditions that
indicate an ancient spring. Finding it on a mountain
top is quite unusual. The remains of a real ancient spring. Yeah. This is quite unique here. - [Simcha] All the evidence
points to this mountain as Mount Sinai, where
according to the Bible, the words now etched in
the human imagination were first heard. "I am God, your God who
brought you out of Egypt from the place of slavery. Thou shalt not have any
other God before me. Thou shalt not represent such gods by any carved statue or picture. Do not take the name of
God, your Lord, in vain. Remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy. Honor your mother and father. Do not commit murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not testify as a false
witness against your neighbor. Do not be envious of
your neighbor's house, and do not covet your neighbor's wife. According to the Bible, Moses
wrote the 10 Commandments on stone tablets and placed
them in a golden box, the Arc of the Covenant. He then built a portable temple
at the base of the mountain, a tabernacle is a place to
worship the god of Israel and is a home for the holy ark. The following model of the holy tabernacle has been created to the
exact specifications provided in the Book of Exodus. At the time of the Exodus,
as you neared the entrance, you would've come to a
screen seven meters high. According to ancient Jewish sources, the screen was decorated by
winged lions or griffins, figures usually associated
with ancient Greece. Only priests were allowed
inside the courtyard. And here there was a four
and a half meter high altar for sacrificial animals. In a daily ritual, priests
carried animals up the ramp, then the blood of the sacrifices anointed the horns of the altar. In the back of the courtyard
was the tabernacle, the house of God. Only Moses, his brother Aaron,
and Aaron's sons entered it. Here, beyond another tapestry
embroidered with griffins were golden ritual objects. And in the back was the holy of holies. In it, there was only one object. The ultimate object,
the Ark of the Covenant. (thunder crashing) No one knows exactly what
the Ark of the Covenant looked like. The Bible claims that it
was designed by God himself to house the 10 Commandments. Based on descriptions
in the Book of Exodus, people have attempted to reconstruct it, complete with gold caring posts and a golden cover crowned by birds. Whichever way it looked, what is clear is that it was an exquisite work of gold. The Bible says that a tribe called Dan helped to craft the golden ark. Is it a coincidence that
Homer calls the people buried at Mycenae Dannel? Perhaps among the golden objects found by Schlieman at Mycenae
there is an image of the ark made by the same Danites
that crafted the box that once held the 10 Commandments. Incredibly, among all the golden objects, there is a piece of priestly jewelry that goes unnoticed and unheralded. So far, experts have assumed
that this is a depiction of a single object, but we believe that it's a 3500 year old image of three legendary objects viewed head on. Here we can clearly see the holy altar, the ramp of the tabernacle,
and the Ark of the Covenant. At last, we know what the Ark
of the Covenant looked like. More than that, we now know
how the holy objects appeared when seen from the holy
of holies looking out. Until now, the only person who
would've seen these objects from this perspective is Moses. - In the beginning of this journey, we asked the question,
is the biblical Exodus fact or fiction? I think a compelling case has been made that the Exodus is a historic fact. Here we were shown for the first time ancient hieroglyphics and stone carvings depicting the parting of the sea. We saw the biblical plagues deciphered, and the archeological and geological proof that they actually occurred. We even trekked to the real Mount Sinai. And then Yakobovich
revealed what is arguably the discovery of the millennium, a gold image of the Ark of the Covenant. - But I think we must end
our journey as we started, with a question. Did all of this happen as a result of massive geological events triggered by nothing more than nature? Or were the earthquakes, the volcanoes, and the tsunamis caused
by divine intervention when God decided to free
a nation from slavery and forge a new covenant with humanity? (dramatic music)
