Archaeologists have found and verified the remains of the Tower of Babel.²⁴⁹ A Professor by the name of Oppert was sent by the French Government to study the inscriptions discovered in the ruins of ancient Babylon. In one of the inscriptions that was recorded by King Nebuchadnezzar, in which he calls the Tower of Babel Barzippa meaning "tongue-tower", he describes the ruins of the Tower of Babel and the king’s intent to rebuild the tower originally built by Nimrod sixteen centuries earlier. He describes that the original tower had been reduced from its original height until only a huge base of the tower, 460 ft. by 690 ft., standing some two hundred and seventy-five feet high remained. Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt the city of Babylon with gold and silver. He also resurfaced the base of the Tower of Babel with Gold, silver, cedar, and fir on top of a hard surface of baked clay bricks. These bricks were engraved with the seal of Nebuchadnezzar and an inscription in Nebuchadnezzar’s words which, translated by Professor Oppert, stated the following:

". . . the most ancient monument of Babylon; I built and finished it. . . . The former king [Nimrod] built it, but he did not complete its head. Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. . . . Merodach, the great god, excited my mind to repair this building."^309/40-41

In the Nineteenth century an inscription was discovered on a marble tablet in a ruined fortress on the seashore of Hadramaut in present-day Democratic Yemen which confirmed the reign of Jospeh and the seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine (Genesis 41). It was written around the eighteenth century BC which was the time the Biblical account took place. The inscription was translated into Arabic by Professor Schultens and later translated into English by Rev. Charles Forster. A part of the inscription stated the following:

"We dwelt in this castle seven years of good life—how difficult for memory its description! Then came years barren and burnt up: when one evil year had passed away, then came another to succeed it. And we became as though we had never seen a glimpse of good."^309/42-43

Further evidence was found in Yemen in a rich woman’s tomb. It was discovered in 1850 after being exposed due to a flood. it was later shown to a Mr. Cruttenden by Ebn Hesham, an Arab from Yemen.

In the tomb was contained a woman’s corpse that was covered in jewels and a coffer filled with treasure. Also found was an engraved stone tablet confirming the seven years of famine in Egypt and Joseph’s supervision over the graineries of Egypt. The inscription said some of the following:

"In your name O God, the God of Hamyar, I Tajah, the daughter of Dzu Shefar, sent my steward to Joseph, and he delaying to return to me, I sent my hand maid with a measure of silver, to bring me back a measure of flour: and not being able to procure it, I sent her with a measure of gold: and not being able to procure it, I sent her with a measure of pearls: And not being able to procure it, I commanded them to be ground: and finding no profit in them, I am shut up here."^310/44-45

Josephus in Josephus Against Apion. I, 26, 27, 32 mentions two Egyptian priest-scholars: Manetho and Cheremon who in their histories of Egypt specifically named Joseph and Moses as leaders of the Jewish race. Josephus states that Manetho and Cheremon stated that the Jews rejected Egypt’s customs and gods. They noted that the Jews practiced animal sacrifices which they witnessed on the first Passover. These historians also confirmed that the Israelites migrated to "southern Syria" which was the Egyptian name for Palestine. They also mentioned that Israel’s exodus occured during the reign of Amenophis who was the son of Rameses and the father of Sethos who reigned toward the close of the 18th dynasty which places the Israelites exodus between 1500 and 1400 BC. This confirms the Old Testament’s chronology for the exodus occuring in 1460 BC.

The Greek historian Herodotus discussed the Exodus in his book Polymnia, section c. 89: "This people [the Israelites], by their own account, inhabited the coasts of the Red Sea, but migrated thence to the maritime parts of Syria, all which district, as far as Egypt, is denominated Palestine."^309/36 Strabo, a pagan historian and geographer born in 54 BC also confirmed the history of the Jews and their escape from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. He wrote,

"Among many things believed respecting the temple and inhabitants of Jerusalem, the report most credited is that the Egyptians were the ancestors of the present Jews. An Egyptian priest named Moses, who possessed a portion of the country called lower Egypt, being dissatisfied with the institutions there, left it and came to Judea with a large body of people who worshiped the Divinity"³¹¹

Discovered in the Wadi Mukatteb (the Valley of the Writing) in the Sinai Peninsula was a set of inscriptions which describe and confirm Moses’ leadership in leading the Israelites out of Egypt and the miraculous events that followed.^309/48 It is believed that these inscriptions were made by Jews who took part in the exodus or by people alive in the time of the exodus.

These inscriptions were first described by a historian by the name of Diodorus Siculus, who lived before the birth of Christ (10 BC), in his Library of History.³¹⁰ So ancient were the writings that no one in Christ’s day could translate them.

In 518 A.D. Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Byzantine Christian writer, also mentions the ancient inscriptions. Concerning them he stated that they appeared "at all halting places, all the stones in that region which were broken off from the mountains, written with carved Hebrew characters."^309/49 Cosmos came to the conclusion that they were made by the Israelites fleeing Egypt.

Other explorers which confirmed these inscriptions were Bishop Robert Clayton of Ireland (1753) and Rev. Charles Forster who published these findings in a book in 1862. He came to the conclusion that these inscriptions were a combination of both Hebrew and Egyptian alphabets describing Israel’s exodus out of Egypt.

One of the reasons it is believed that these inscriptions were made by Israelites at the time of the exodus, rather than a copy of the book of Exodus from the Torah, is because they appear to be an original account of the exodus. These inscriptions in rock give account of many of the miracles talked about in the Book of Exodus but have no familiarity with the description accounts given in the book of Exodus.

Rev. Forster found that five out of every six words used in the inscriptions are related to the Hamyarite (ancient Arabic) language which was the vernacular language of Egypt and Yemen. The writings are of two kinds: enchorial or common writing and hieroglyphic style of Egypt that was used by the priests and royalty. The significance of this and why it is believed that whoever wrote these inscriptions were probably Hebrew is, one, because they had to have lived in Egypt to have this kind of knowledge of these two alphabets and, two, because there is no historical records indicating that any Egyptians ever lived in the Sinai. The Bible however tells us that the Israelites lived in the Sinai for forty years.

Mentioned in the inscriptians are the following events of the exodus: the dividing of the red sea and the Israelites passing through safely while the Egyptian army was drowned; Yehovah’s (the name of the Hebrew God) miraculous provision of the quails to feed the israelites; The murmuring of the Jews against Moses; Yehovah’s miraculous provision of water out of a rock; His punishment of Israel for their gluttony and even the name Moses gave to the place where it occurred, Kibroth-hattaavah, which is mentioned in Numbers 11:34; and Exodus 32:6's account of the Israelites sitting down to eat, drink and play.

In 1761 a German explorer Barthold Niebuhr found an extensive ruined cemetery grave site of Jews which was discovered in the Sinai with inscriptions confirming they died as a result of Yehovah’s supernatural plague mentioned in Numbers 11:34-35.^312/113-114

Also mentioned in the Sinai Inscriptions were Miriam’s rebellion against Moses, Numbers 12:1-3, and the plague of the fiery serpents mentioned in Numbers 21.

Unfortunately the skeptics said they would not accept these Sinai Incriptions as being genuine unless someone discovered a bilingual inscription with the Sinai inscriptions on one side and another language on the other side for comparison, similar to the Rosetta Stone. Astoundingly a Sinai explorer by the name of Pierce Butler in 1860 discovered not a bilingual inscription, but a trilingual inscription in a cave on the Djebel Maghara mountain. This inscription contained three alphabets describing the same event, one of which was the same language used in the Sinai Inscriptions.^309/66-67

Three independent scholars have translated these Sinai inscriptions: Professor de Laval, Niebuhr and Rev. Forster. All three agree that these inscriptions were made by the ancient Israelites during the Exodus. Those who have criticized these conclusions have never done a translation of their own or given any historical or archaeological evidence to show otherwise.