Famine in Egypt

The Famine in Egypt (Began::Abib 2296 AM-Ended::Abib 2303 AM) was a severe shortage of food that lasted for seven-years. It was probably the result of a drought brought on by reduced flow of the Nile river.

The devastation that could have resulted was largely averted by Joseph (the son of Jacob) who foretold the coming of the event and was appointed the Pharaoh's viceroy. As viceroy, he prepared the country by storing up food during the years that preceded the famine.

The Egyptian famine was a pivotal event in the history of the Israelites and the subject of continuing controversy in secular archaeology and Egyptology.

Biblical narrative
In Years of plenty::Teveth 2289 AM, the reigning Pharaoh had two strange dreams every night. In one, seven fat cows were grazing on the banks of the Nile, and then seven starving cows came out of the Nile and ate the fat cows. Yet the starving cows were no more healthy than before. In the next, Pharaoh saw seven healthy ears of wheat growing from a single stalk. Then seven blasted ears ate the good ears, but remained as blasted as before.

None of Pharaoh's advisers could interpret this dream for him. Then his cupbearer, whom Pharaoh had released from prison two years before, remembered a fellow prisoner who had demonstrated a remarkable facility for interpreting dreams. Pharaoh sent for this prisoner, Joseph, at once.

Joseph disclaimed any ability to interpret dreams by himself, but answered that God gave him the interpretations. Pharaoh told him his dreams, and Joseph answered with a dire prediction. For the next seven years, Egypt would produce food in abundance. After that would come seven years of famine so severe that men would forget the years of abundance. In fact, Egypt might not survive.

Pharaoh asked urgently what he should do. Joseph suggested that Pharaoh have the fifth part of all the grain harvests stored for the next seven years, so that when the famine struck, Egypt would have food sufficient to sustain itself. He further suggested that Pharaoh name a single adviser to take charge of these efforts, and to set all policy regarding farming, the storage of grain, and the distribution of grain during the famine.

Pharaoh's other advisers could think of no person better qualified than Joseph for this post. So Pharaoh chose Joseph to be the ranking adviser, and in fact made him second-in-command in all the realm. An important note here is that Pharaoh introduced Joseph to the Egyptian people as a ruler, carrying him in Pharaoh's "second chariot". The Hyksos introduced the chariot and compound bow to Egypt. This reference clearly establishes that the Hyksos had already arrived in Egypt prior to Joseph's ascension. This necessarily places Joseph within the realm of the Hyksos, including a large portion of the sojourn of Israel in Egypt. Ahmose of the 18th Dynasty deposed the Hyksos. The Scripture says of this in (Exodus 1:8) that a "king who knew not Joseph" arrived and enslaved the Israelites.

During the next seven years, the farms of Egypt produced large quantities of grain. As he had promised, Joseph reserved twenty percent of all harvests in storehouses throughout Egypt.

Then the famine began, and the people of Egypt cried out to Pharaoh for relief. Pharaoh instructed them to speak to Joseph, and Joseph opened the granaries and began his distribution program. 

Famine Stele

 * Main Article: Famine stele

A stele (known as Hungry Rock) on the island of Sahal in the Nile River describes a seven-year famine in vivid detail.

The famine is described as follows: I was in mourning on my throne, Those of the palace were in grief, my heart was in great affliction. Because Hapy [the river god] had failed to come in time in a period of seven years. Grain was scant, Kernels were dried up, kernels were dried up, scarce was every kind of food. Every man robbed his twin, those who entered did not go. Children cried, youngsters fell, the hearts of the old were grieving; legs drawn up, they hugged the ground, their arms clasped about them. Courtiers were needy, temples were shut, shrines covered with dust, everyone was in distress.

The stele states the famine occurred during the reign of Neterkhet, an otherwise unknown king. In addition, Djoser, a third dynasty king who built the step pyramid of Saqqara centuries before the famine of the Old Testament is mentioned in the heading. However, it should be noted that during the Greek period, the island of Sahal was a place for budding scribes to practice their craft, and every piece of flat rock is said to have been used for cutting reliefs and writing hieroglyphic text. Such practice was often done by copying and rewriting texts from earlier periods, and in this case the scribe was writing more than 1000 years later, and therefore the accuracy of the inscription is called into question. The complete text of the Famine Stela is available here.

Tomb of Ameni
In the tomb of Ameni, a provincial governor in the 12th dynasty during the reign of Sesostris I, an inscription was found that is likely a reference to the Biblical famine. It also reads as though Ameni knew the famine was coming and tilled fields not normally in use.

No one was unhappy in my days, not even in the years of famine, for I had tilled all the fields of the Nome of Mah, up to its southern and northern frontiers, Thus I prolonged the life of its inhabitants and preserved the food which it produced.

Important to note however, is that famines were common in Egypt. One look at the Giza plateau and one wonders why Egypt settled in such an unforgiving and arid location. Attempting to intersect famines to the Scripture is a tenuous prospect.

Mount Laki eruption
In 1783, Mount Laki, a volcano in Iceland, erupted and caused 9,000 casualties. Scientists at Rutgers University suggested that this eruption caused a drought in northern Africa. This drought diminished the flow of the Nile, so that its annual inundations were insufficient to irrigate the land of Egypt. This event suggests that famines in the Near East could have happened more than once. The Bible, of course, records a similar famine that affected Canaan in Abraham's time. 

A new theory
On June 11, 2015, Dr. Terry A. Hurlbut of the Creation Science Hall of Fame, and Dr. Walter T. Brown of the Center for Scientific Creation, developed a new theory based on Brown's Hydroplate theory of the Biblical flood. According to the Hydroplate Theory, the Flood occurred when a subcrustal ocean on earth broke confinement and spewed out of its chamber in a hypersonic jet. Brown estimates that three to four percent of the earth's mass escaped into space to form the Mavericks of the Solar System: meteoroids, comets, asteroids, and Trans-Neptunian Objects. This would definitely include companion asteroids like 3753 Cruithne, which has orbited the sun at a period close to a standard earth year since shortly after the Biblical flood broke out.

The new theory states that earth had another, perhaps much larger, companion asteroid. This passed within the Roche limit of either the earth or the moon. (The Roche limit for any astronomical body is the distance within which virtual tidal forces threaten to disrupt a passing object.) The asteroid broke into fragments. Most of these fell to the moon and became the mass concentrations or "mascons" that make the lunar gravity field uneven. (They also provoked the volcanic activity that formed the lunar "maria" and might also have partially melted the moon's core.) But at least one fragment fell to earth. The impact threw up a cloud of dust that drifted over central Africa and disrupted the rain patterns over the sources of the Nile. The Mount Laki precedent shows any meteor strike sufficient to throw up as much dust as a volcanic eruption, could so disrupt the weather and the flow of the Nile. And as was the case with the Great Flood, the chief miracles of the Famine were the placement of Joseph in a position where the then-Pharaoh would notice him, and the Divine warning given to the Pharaoh (probably Djoser) that his kingdom would suffer a dire and long-lasting emergency.