Did Moses start the exodus from Memphis?

Answer 1

The Bible says that the Israelites numbered 600,000 fighting men. Including priests, women, children, the elderly and the sick and infirm, this would have been equivalent to at least two and a half million people. Memphis was never large enough for this number of slaves - in fact scholars say the entire population of Egypt was only around three and a half, including any slaves. So, if we consider the story of the Exodus as historically true, the people must have been dispersed all over Egypt, in every city, town, village and farm. The Exodus must have started in a well-coordinated fashion simultaneously from every point in Egypt, so as not to alert the Egyptians that something was afoot. If we try to make sense of the Exodus story, Moses himself was most likely to have been in the capital, Memphis, and would have started from there.

The alternative view, held by over 90 per cent of scholars according to the respected Israeli archeologist Israel Finkelstein, is that the biblical Exodus never really happened. If there was no Exodus, the question is unanswerable other than as a literary critique.

Answer 2

Possibly, though most of the Israelites were in Goshen, which was a four-day journey (150 km) to the east-northeast. See also:

Location of Goshen

Evidence of the Exodus