Pharaoh Amenhotep II reigned over Egypt beginning in about 1450 BC during the powerful 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom. According to a match of chronological information from Egyptian king lists and the Bible, Amenhotep II was probably also the pharaoh of the Exodus, which occurred in approximately 1446 BC.
Earlier in the 18th Dynasty the Egyptians had a powerful military, especially during the reign of Thutmose III, who conducted 17 known military campaigns. After the ascension of Amenhotep II there is a steep decline. Amenhotep II was not only weak, he now had a damaged reputation. How do you regain prestige after being outmaneuvered by two leaders of a slave nation? How do you recover from losing half a million people that your country has enslaved for more than 200 years? How do you regain dignity when, not only did your slaves leave, they took your jewelry with them? A public relations nightmare for a weak pharaoh.
In fact, Amenhotep II had only two confirmed military campaigns during his entire reign. But you wouldn’t know that from the inscriptions, monuments to himself he commissioned! On these he claimed such feats as: • being able to shoot arrows through a copper target a palm thick, • rowing a ship by himself faster and farther than 200 Egyptian sailors, • singlehandedly killing 7 prince warriors of Kadesh, and • conducting the largest slave raid in Egyptian history. This is the feat he ordered memorialized on the Elephantine Stele.
This monumental stone inscription with its accompanying artwork proclaims the campaign of Amenhotep II to Canaan, in which he claims to have brought back approximately 101,128 captives to be used as slaves. As a reality check, the largest total number of captives brought back in confirmed reports of similar military slave raids of the time was 5,903. Therefore, most scholars consider the claims of Amenhotep II to be a massive exaggeration, probably a propaganda ploy to recover his reputation after losing the Israelite slaves in such an ignominious fashion.
