A PLOS ONE paper places Ahmose’s reign over Egypt decades after the famous Thera volcanic eruption in the Aegean Sea, with vast implications for the region’s history
Nebpehtire Ahmose ruled Egypt, showing that his accession likely occurred in the latter half of the 16th century BCE.
This breakthrough also opens new possibilities for exploring a long-suspected link between the biblical Exodus and a major volcanic eruption in the Aegean Sea, which many scholars have long associated with Ahmose’s reign, according to Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, lead author of the study.
Published last month in PLOS ONE, the research has important implications for understanding the history of Egypt, the land of Israel, and the broader Eastern Mediterranean region.
The eruption of the Thera (Santorini) volcano has captivated archaeologists for generations because of its potential connection to myths and historical events, including the Greek story of Atlantis and the biblical account of the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt.
Situated roughly 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Crete, the volcano likely caused days of darkness, massive tsunamis, and perhaps even a dramatic pillar of fire visible in Egypt. Evidence of pumice from this eruption has been discovered in both present-day Israel and Egypt, linking the event to regional historical and geological phenomena.
Previous assessments claimed that the eruption occurred around 1500 BCE.
The Crossing of the Red Sea by Nicolas Poussin,1634.
Ahmose was the founder of the 18th Dynasty and of the New Kingdom, a period of renewed prosperity in ancient Egypt following several difficult centuries.
An important archaeological artifact from the time of Ahmose, the “Tempest Stela,” describes disastrous climate phenomena. In the past, many scholars suggested the inscription refers to the Thera eruption.
However, Bruins and his co-author Johannes van der Plicht from the University of Groningen used the same radiocarbon analysis method on samples associated with Ahmose and on seeds and branches charred by the eruption.
By comparing the results, the scholars determined that the pharaoh clearly ruled over Egypt several decades after the eruption.
“In the last decade, geologists have found ash from the Thera eruption in many places in the eastern Mediterranean,” Bruins told The Times of Israel over the phone. “Eruptions can be very useful as anchors in time, because they happened over the course of a couple of days, and then they are over. Ash from this eruption is a kind of stratigraphic marker.”
Scientific methods, such as radiocarbon analysis, provide independent dating to compare with the more traditional methods used by scholars, including historical sources, pottery typology, and archaeological artifacts. These traditional methods often fail to provide exact dating.
“In many parts of the Mediterranean, including ancient Israel, the local stratigraphies are floating in time and [scholars] try to connect them to Egyptian history for the simple reason that Egyptian history is more well established in time,” Bruins explained.
Yet, even Egyptian chronology, based on when different dynasties and pharaohs ruled over the kingdom, leaves many questions open, even after radiocarbon dating has become more prevalent, offering new tools to support what historians had traditionally dated based on written sources.
The Second Intermediate Period, one of the most obscure periods in Egypt’s ancient history, roughly spanned from 1700 to 1550 BCE. Its beginning, duration, and end are debated among scholars.
During this period, Egypt was divided into the Upper and Lower Kingdoms. Ahmose was the sovereign who reunited the country, defeated the Hyksos Dynasty that ruled over the Lower Kingdom, marking the beginning of the New Kingdom, and started his own dynasty.
“There has been a question about when the 18th Dynasty really began, also in relation to the Thera eruption, and so I was looking for material from the Second Intermediate Period [to date],” Bruins said.
“It was quite difficult to find, because these periods are less well known in historical terms, as its pharaohs do not always have records of them, nor do museums have many remains that could be dated with radiocarbon,” he added.
The scholar began pursuing this research avenue in 2013, approaching several museums and requesting their artifacts. Many did not respond positively, mainly because the study required extracting samples from the items for analysis. However, the British Museum and the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology (University College, London) ultimately agreed to provide some artifacts from their collections.
“The most important object has been a mud brick excavated around 1900 by British archeologists in the temple of Ahmose in Abydos, in southern Egypt,” Bruins said. “The brick is stamped with the throne name of the king Nebpehtire. Ahmose was a quite common name in Egypt at the time, and other pharaohs were carrying it, but thanks to his throne name, this marked the first time that we could put our hands on an object that can be confidently related to this particular pharaoh.”
A mudbrick from the Temple of Pharaoh Ahmose at Abydos on display at the British Museum. The artifact has been radiocarbon dated in a study published in PLOS ONE in September 2025, supporting a low chronology for the beginning of the 18th Dynasty, in the first half of the 16th century BCE.
The researchers managed to extract a straw piece added to the brick to strengthen it, as was done at the time.
“Scholarly opinions about Ahmose’s accession year ranged from 1580 BCE to 1524 BCE,” Bruins explained. “Our radiocarbon dating of the Ahmose mudbrick supports the two youngest Egyptological dating assessments for when the mudbricks for his temple were made, around 1517 or 1502 BCE, or what we archaeologists refer to as the ‘low chronology.'”
Since the temple depicts scenes of Ahmose’s battles against the Hyksos, the brick must date to a period in his kingdom after the war, possibly around the 22nd year of his reign.
Bruins was also able to study six shabtis, or human figurines roughly carved from wood representing mummies buried with the deceased, which he received from the Petrie Museum.
“One shabti carries the name of a person that is also mentioned on an important tomb in Southern Egypt as the mayor of Thebes, and his rule covered part of the time of Pharaoh Ahmose and of his son Amenhotep I,” Bruins said. “The radiocarbon date of this shabti is virtually the same as that of the mud brick. They confirmed each other.”
An Egyptian shabti figurine from ancient Thebes. The artifact has been radiocarbon dated in a study published in PLOS ONE in September 2025, supporting a low chronology for the beginning of the 18th Dynasty in the first half of the 16th century BCE.
At the same time, the researchers’ analysis of the Thera eruption yielded a time range of 60-90 years earlier.
According to the Bruins, therefore, the Tempest Stela must refer to a different meteorological event.
A new chronology for the land of Israel?
The PLOS ONE paper does not address the implications of the new datings for the history and chronology of the land of Israel, which have generally been based on the Egyptian chronology.
However, Bruins told The Times of Israel that they are significant and he is already working on a study on the subject.
The transition between the Middle Bronze Age and the Late Bronze Age in Israel has traditionally been linked to the beginning of the 18th Dynasty in Egypt.
“At the time, many powerful city-states in the Middle Bronze Age were somehow destroyed or replaced or didn’t continue [to exist] afterward, and usually this transition was linked with the beginning of the New Kingdom and its pharaohs,” Bruins said.
3,500-year-old Canaanite clay piece found on Tel Gama (the Canaanite city of Yarza) in March 2020. (Emil Eljam/Israel Antiquities Authority)
According to the researcher, the incursions into Canaan have been generally attributed to Pharaoh Thutmose III, the fifth king of the 18th Dynasty.
“We have historical accounts about this pharaoh that he really penetrated into the Levant, in ancient Israel, and also more to the north,” he said.
According to Bruins, if Thutmose was not the one responsible for the destruction of the Canaanite city-states, it is important to investigate who else was.
“If these cities, or some of these cities, were destroyed before the beginning of the 18th Dynasty, then there’s a question about which Egyptians did this? Because we have no records from the Second Intermediate Period that Egyptian pharaohs made large military excursions into the Levant,” he said.
Looking for the Exodus in the right century
According to Bruins, there are questions to be explored around a potential correlation between the Thera eruption, the destruction of Canaanite cities, and the Exodus.
Many academics believe that the biblical narrative does not reflect historical events. At the same time, they tend to suggest that the mass escape of the Israelites from Egypt is supposed to have happened at some point in the early 13th century BCE.
A silver boat donated by Pharaoh Ahmose I to Queen Ahhotep II for her burial is seen at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Bruins, however, disagrees.
“I don’t think that is the right interpretation because we do not have any evidence that the 13th century fits with the archeological record they have been looking for,” he said.
“There are so many Exodus views by different scholars that have no link to the biblical record anymore,” he added. “If you lose any connection with the biblical record, then it becomes a kind of abstract thinking.”
According to Bruins, the strategy for exploring whether and when the Exodus occurred should entail seeking evidence of destruction associated with the Israelites’ conquest of the land under Moses’s successor, Joshua.
Asked in which century he would look, he went back to the Thera eruption.
“If we take the [biblical] text, one of the features of the Exodus is the darkness in Egypt,” he noted, referring to one of the plagues that God sent against the Egyptians according to the Bible.
“From a scientific perspective, what can cause three days of darkness?” he added. “Some suggest a sandstorm, but after living 35 years in the Negev Desert, I can vouch that no sandstorm causes something like that. Others say a solar eclipse, but that is a matter of minutes, not days.”
The rocky promontory of Skaros on the Greek island of Santorini seen on June 15, 2022.
Bruins said that records from the eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia in 1815 state that the event caused three days of darkness at a distance of 500 to 600 kilometers (roughly 310 to 370 miles).
“If darkness in Egypt was really for three days, then the only mechanism we can think of from from the geological or natural science [perspective] is a volcanic eruption, and the only volcanic eruption that was very powerful and could have caused such an effect is the Santorini eruption, that was one of the largest worldwide in the last 10,000 years,” he said.
Bruins believes the destruction of the Canaanite cities in the Levant may have occurred in the following years, but he also stressed that this cannot be stated until there is scientific evidence. The scholar is therefore working to collect and date samples from the relevant destruction layers of these cities to understand when they actually ceased to exist.
“If we are talking about a theory, anybody can make up all kinds of ideas,” he said. “It has to be proven by hard facts, by dating, and this is something that I’m working on publishing.”
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