Project Is Another Miracle

Some archaeologists think Harold Van Asche is off the mark. Even a bit eccentric.

But the Egyptian government seems inclined to take the 57-year-old Shoshone County planner seriously. This month, its Antiquities Department officially adopted his unusual project.

A Jehovah’s Witness and committed Bible student in his off-hours, Van Asche wants to discover where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. The route of the Exodus remains one of archaeology’s oldest mysteries. Van Asche contends that’s because no one has looked for clues in the most obvious place: the Bible.

“Scientists are saying they didn’t cross the Red Sea because that would require a miracle,” he explains. “Instead, they’ve looked at areas between the north end of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.”

Van Asche started his own search in the Scriptures. When he made his first trip to Egypt in 1989 he already knew the general area he wanted to scout. He quickly found what he is convinced is the location of the crossing on the west side of the Red Sea at the base of the Ataqah Mountains.

The three cities that the Bible says are near the crossing site have been obliterated by time. But a friend and member of Van Asche’s Red Sea Research Group found one of them, Baal Zephon, on an old Dutch map. Its location supports their theory as well.

In 1990, when Van Asche visited Egypt for the second time, he and Brigham Young University’s Kent Brown received numerous metal readings on the submerged land bridge that extends from the Ataqah Mountains across the Red Sea.

Van Asche believes the readings may indicate the presence of swords, spears, armor, and the remnants of chariots. If the Red Sea parted for the Israelites, then rushed back to drown Pharaoh’s troops, the sea should contain a remarkable body of artifacts, he contends.

He decided to investigate the land bridge further, sending a diver to take underwater readings along the side of a channel that’s been cut through the bridge to allow ships access to the Suez Canal.

But first he sought the blessing of the Egyptian government, so that the Red Sea Research Group’s findings would be taken seriously. Approaching Ali Hasson, then director of the Antiquities Department, he was turned down because he lacked scholarly credentials and university backing.

He spent the next six years trying to get an institution interested in his project.

“No one wanted to stick their neck out so far as to take the Bible literally,” he says wryly.

But he kept visiting Egypt, always stopping by the Antiquities Department to update them on his activities. Finally, in fall of 1995, he received a letter from the department stating its interest in his project. But in a hearing last May he was told again that he had to have institutional backing.

Still, Van Asche didn’t give up. Scheduling a meeting with the current Director of Antiquities, M.A. Nur el Din, he offered to give the project to the department.

“And you would continue working as project director?” Nur el Din inquired.

“Why not?” he replied.

An agreement was quickly reached, and on June 9, Van Asche learned that approval for the project had been granted. He hopes to have a diver searching the Red Sea by October.

The challenges aren’t over. Van Asche isn’t rich. Neither, he says, is the Antiquities Department. That means fund-raising probably will be his first order of business. But he’s confident he can do what’s necessary. He’s come this far.

“What’s the chance of a guy off the street, a guy like me, getting something like this approved?” he asks, shaking his head. “It’s just pretty amazing when you think of it.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Bekka Rauve is a freelance writer who lives in the Silver Valley. Panhandle Pieces appears every Saturday. The column is shared among several North Idaho writers.