The Famine Stela: Seven Dry Years on a Nile Rock

In the story on the stela, an upright inscribed stone slab, a priest named Imhotep falls asleep in a Nile temple. In a dream, a god promises the river will flow again.

Scripture: There will arise after them seven years of famine, and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt. The famine will consume the land,

In Genesis 41, Pharaoh's dream means seven years of plenty, then seven of famine. A stone in Egypt also tells of seven hard years.

Thirty-two columns of text sit beneath three gods, Khnum, Satis and Anuket, facing King Djoser. Some sections are damaged, and a few passages are unreadable.

The story is set in Djoser's eighteenth year. For seven years the Nile has not flooded the farmlands, and desperate people are breaking the land's laws.

Imhotep, a senior priest called the high lector priest, checks the temple archives at Hermopolis, then travels to Elephantine. There Khnum appears in his dream and promises the Nile will flow again.

Here is the catch. Djoser reigned about 2686 to 2648 BC, but language and layout point to the Ptolemaic period, over two thousand years later. Ptolemy V is a tentative suggestion.

Egyptologists such as Miriam Lichtheim and Werner Vycichl suggest local priests of Khnum created the text. Paul Barguet first translated it in 1953.

Who found it? A photo caption on one archaeology page labels the stela on Sehel Island as found by W. M. Flinders Petrie. No year of discovery is given, so that is a credit, not a date.

One archaeology site notes that seven-year famines were known in Egypt, and the Gilgamesh epic and an Egyptian tale of King Neferkasokar mention one too.

Djoser's name was still remembered some 2,500 years on, and scholars conclude from this stela that Djoser and Netjerikhet, meaning "divine body", were one king.

How the stela relates to Genesis is a matter of interpretation, and the evidence is indirect. Follow Bible Evidence for more finds beneath the Bible. May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you today.