With Passover approaching, I was curious as to whether the Ancient Egyptians wrote their own account about the Exodus of the Israelites. Everything I've ever learned is from the Torah and the story of Passover told at our Seder every year. Thanks for your answers.
There's really nothing concrete, and even biblical scholars tend to agree that nothing on the level of the exodus actually happened. There simply isn't any archaeological evidence, despite multiple attempts to find some.
There are a few stories that seem to roughly line up with the exodus, but the most prominent one is the one I'm familiar with, so I'll recount it here.
The Jewish Historian Josephus quotes some writings by Manetho, who was an Egyptian Historian in the 3rd century BCE, who wrote about a group known as the Hyksos. Both quotes by Manetho are incomplete fragments, but the first fragment seems to indicate the the Hyksos had origins in Asia, who invaded Egypt, defeated the indigenous rulers, and briefly ruled Egypt. They were then either driven out or left (I've seen both as translations), headed to Judea and founded Jerusalem. Josephus (not Manetho) associate the Hyksos with jews, which would make this an account of the 'exodus', even if the details are significantly different.
The second fragment is a bit more relevant, if seeming a lot more questionable. An Egyptian pharaoh was told he would be able to see the gods if he purged Egypt of the unclean. He gathered all the lepers and those inflicted by disease, and sent them to the city of Avaris, which had belonged to the Hyksos in the first fragment.
The lepers, led by a priest known as Osarsiph-Moses (original name Osarsiph), rebelled and called upon the Hyksos to join them. The Hyksos do so, bringing a grand army to Egypt and conquering it for a second time, joining with the 'impure' Egyptians. They're noted to be particularly horrible rulers, making the Egyptians butcher their sacred animals and performing sacrifices. Manetho clarifies that Moses was responsible for their way of life, and that he was a priest from Heliopolis. The Hyksos rule Egypt for thirteen years, but are eventually driven out of Egypt by Pharaoh Amenophis and his son Ramses.
It's such a small fragment, and only one source, so historians would be hard pressed to go either way on it. It's possible it was made up, it's possible it was added to or changed from later.
That's the account I am most familiar with, although I'm aware of a few other (much smaller, or much more hard to relate to the exodus) accounts, generally from later in history.
Sources:
You can read about the fragments in Josephus' Contra Apionem.
Ugh, I never see these things in good time.
The top comment isn't bad--I would quibble about one thing, and I'll offer a few good resources to check that will be helpful.
I would never cite Josephus as any kind of reliable source as far as any purported history lying behind the biblical text. Josephus is certainly very helpful for contextualizing later writings, but if we're going to go back as far as "1400 BCE" (those are scare quotes) we need to find other resources.
Top Commenter is right insofar as there is no archaeological or textual evidence outside of the Bible to support an historical exodus or wilderness wandering. Remember, too, that we necessarily need to take conversations about the Exodus together with conversations about the settlement history of Palestine in the early Iron Age, as the two are textually and narratively linked. That said, there is no evidence in support of what is recounted in the book of Joshua. There is no evidence of sweeping conquest of the land (we would expect to see burn layers dating to the early Iron I period at places like Jericho and Ai, but we simply don't have them).
I would highlight the following resources: Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed; Mazar's Archaeology of the Land of the Bible. (N.B., that Finkelstein espouses what is known as the "low chronology". He pushes everything down further than I'm comfortable with, but his popular book mentioned above is helpful and generally honest with the data.)
There is another subreddit that you might enjoy called /r/AcademicBiblical, which goes into stuff like this.
Recently there was a large academic seminar on this exact subject. Some very heavy hitters in the various fields around the topic presented at it, and all their videos are online in one place.
Exodus: Out of Egypt
Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Archaeology, Text and Memory
As an amateur, what I got from the conference is that they're still collecting arguments for and against the issue, though many have already made up their mind. There are historians, archaeologists, and document experts presenting, some of whom have spent their entire career around the same question, and the info they brought to the seminar shows how difficult answering it really is.
I've pursued the same question as a hobbyist for a couple years, and this collection is the most state-of-the-art knowledge on this subject in one place that I'm aware of. There are fors and againsts from nearly every conceivable angle.
Here is a really good answer about both neutral and positive evidence of the Israelites in Egypt. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/134u0i/what_evidence_is_there_of_ancient_egyptian/c71ax4o?context=5
This question is dealt with in the FAQ: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19p1vu/do_we_know_if_the_exodus_happened_the_way_its/
Jewish history archeologist Israel Finkelstein is one of the foremost authorities on ancient Hebrew/Israelite history, and has been piecing together the story of Exodus for many years.
I know that documentaries aren't always the ideal source, but I think that for this topic, the documentary I am attaching can give you a basic idea of where the current thinking is regarding Moses and the exodus.
The Bible Unearthed, episode 2.