Raameses II Could Not Have Been the Pharoah of the Exodus

 Raameses II could not have been the Pharoah of the Exodus. He ruled from 1279 to 1213 BCE. This Pharoah is often named as the one from which Moses led Israel out of Egypt because the two cities he built are named in Exodus 1. The problem is that he's in the wrong time frame completely.
The seventeenth and eighteenth dynasties of Ancient Egypt are the only period in which the events of the Exodus can realistically be placed. The history of the arrival and rule of the "heqau khasut" or "Hyksos" ("foreign rulers" or "shepherd kings" West Asiatic peoples originating in Canaan and the Levant) to Egypt begins in roughly 1900 BCE, just about the right historical time period for the story of Joseph and his brothers to take place if we're assuming Abram left the Sumerian city of Ur in its sunset between 2100-2000 BCE.
      Eventually, Egypt broke into at least two distinct kingdoms, a more "pure" ethnically Egyptian Upper (southern) Kingdom ruled from Thebes, and Lower (northern) Kingdom ruled by the Hyksos from Avaris. Between roughly 1560 to 1510 BCE, the Upper Kingdom waged war against the Lower Kingdom ruled by the Hyksos and ultimately defeated it, driving the Hyksos out of power in Avaris and uniting the two kingdoms. The Pharoah who accomplished this was Ahmose I, the son of Seqenenre and brother of Kamose. 
     This parallels the biblical account of a Pharoah arising that didn't know Joseph which is what started the Hebrew enslavement period. It stands to reason that those West Semitic peoples associated with the Hyksos and possibly benefiting from their rule who could not have left would have been deposed and made slaves. After the conquest, Ahmose undertook major building projects in several cities, especially Thebes. It's not unreasonable that the backbone of those building projects were Hebrew (Hyksos) slaves. 
     Ahmose reigned for 25 years and was succeeded by Amenhotep I. Amenhotep I reigned for 21 years and was succeeded by Thutmose I. Thutmose I reigned for 10-12 years and was succeeded by Thutmose II. Thutmose II reigned for about 13-14 years and was succeeded by his sister/wife Hatshepsut who became Queen Regnant after he died and his son (her stepson), Thutmose III, was only two. Hatshepsut, the daughter of Thutmose I, reigned for 22 years before she died in 1459 BCE and Thutmose III became the sole ruler. He reigned a total of 54 years, 22 of which were coregent with Hatshepsut. Towards the end of his reign, his son and co-regent Amenhotep II tried to erase Hatshepsut from all inscriptions, iconography, and official records even though her reign was prosperous. So, from the time Ahmose I conquered the Hyksos to the time Hatshepsut's iconography was defaced was approximately 111 years give or take. There is one theory which suggests that Hatshepsut was the Pharoah's daughter who pulled Moses (Moshe/Mose) out of the river, and this is one of the reasons why they tried to erase her. It is also potentially one reason why, after Moses committed a murder and ran no one went hunting for him. His adopted mother was on the throne. Within that 111 years, it's possible for Hatshepsut to have found Moses and for him to grow up, flee, and then return at eighty years old to face Amenhotep II on the throne in the last years of his father's coregency.
     This is also the time period in which the Island of Santorini, Thera, volcanically exploded with a VEI 7. The effects were felt as far south as Egypt while the entire Minoan civilization next to it was completely destroyed. This was no small eruption and would have produced a year without summer. The next higher place on the VEI scale, 8, is described as nearly world ending. As Simcha Jacobi described, the cataclysmic effects of this eruption could have produced the same conditions in Egypt described by the Ten Plagues in the book of Exodus.
     The Amarna Letters from the 1300s BCE are a series of letters from Canaanite vassel lords to the Pharoah in Egypt begging for him to send help against the "Habiru" who were attacking their settlements. This demonstrates that by the time these letters were written, between 100-200 years after Amenhotep II, the "Habiru" were already in Canaan and at war against the Canaanite inhabitants in the land.
     Finally, this is also the only period (1600-1500 BCE) which matches the time frames involved up to the rise of David circa 1000 BCE. It was four hundred years between Joshua and David according to the Scriptures. Raameses II is simply too recent.
     Why are his cities then mentioned in Exodus 1? Chances are it's the same reason why Exodus was written in later, post-Davidic Hebrew. It was written down from an oral history that remembered these events but did not remember the names of the Pharoahs in question. (Really, the Biblical histories are fastidious about remembering the names of rulers nearly everywhere else; why wouldn't Moses have recorded the names of the Pharoahs in question if he actually wrote it since he knew them?) The  human author, not knowing who that Pharoah was or the exact chronology, was using cities, and possibly a Pharoah, that were known to make his point.