A few years ago the New York Times published a story that the official chronicles of the Kingdom of Egypt had been recovered intact, at least for the period of several hundred years calculated to be the window of historical time during which the Biblical Exodus from Egypt, if it had really occurred, would have had to take place. Since there was no mention in any of the chronicles of Hebrew slaves, Moses, the Exodus itself, the Seven Plagues of Egypt or the drowning of an Egyptian army in the Red Sea or Sea of Reeds, the finders of the chronicles concluded that the entire Exodus story was totally made-up bullshit.
Now we have a new discovery of earlier-than-ever Hebrew script. Does this mean the whole Exodus story will have to be back-dated? Does this mean that we will have to wait for the discovery of a whole new set of chronicles covering an earlier period of Pharaonic rule so that we can find out all over again that the whole story was totally made-up bullshit?
Personally, I think this is something like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle roughly adapted to ancient history. Not that the very observation of the thing is likely in this case to alter the thing being observed, but at least that in reality we'll never know the exact nature of what it is that we are looking at. It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enema. Uhh, lemme try that again . . .
