Rameses : Wrath of God or Man challenges the historical accuracy of the biblical account of the plagues that led up to the Exodus. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, the program focuses on the work of Kent Weeks, an American archaeologist who in 1995 rediscovered KV5, the largest of the “lost tombs” in the Valley of the Kings (near Thebes). In one of the tomb’s many chambers, he found a broken inscription with the words “Amun-her.” A few days later, he found a skull in the chamber. Weeks observed that the shape of the skull matched those he had seen on other pharaohs. He concluded that the skull belonged to Amun-her-khepeshef, the firstborn son of Rameses II (also called Rameses the Great). He had the skull examined by Dr. Caroline Wilkinson, a scientist at Manchester University specializing in craniometrics. Wilkinson concluded that the skull was similar enough to the face of Rameses II (already discovered in mummified form and kept at the Cairo Museum) to support the identification of the skull as that of his firstborn son.
Many biblical scholars identify Rameses II as the “Pharaoh of the Exodus.” If this identification is correct, and if the skull that Weeks found was that of the firstborn son of Rameses II, then the skull belongs to someone whom the book of Exodus says was struck down by the tenth plague (Ex. 11:5; 12:12, 29). However, in a kind of ultimate “Cold Case,” Weeks and the Discovery Channel documentary suggest that the son of Rameses II was killed by human hands—possibly in battle. The skull has a fracture on the left side consistent with the victim having sustained a blow to the head. The conclusion: the firstborn son of the Pharaoh did not die in a plague, as Exodus states, but was killed by another human being. The documentary serves up the speculation that Moses was really an Egyptian prince who led a revolt inspired by the “monotheism” of an earlier Pharaoh named Akhenaton. Instead of a miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, the Israelites entered into a marshy “Sea of Reeds” near the Nile Delta, where they ambushed the Egyptian chariots and killed the Egyptian soldiers—including Amun-her-khepeshef, who as the firstborn son of Rameses II would have been the commander-in-chief of the army. The documentary even imagines Moses himself killing the firstborn son of Rameses in this Battle at the Sea of Reeds!