Manfred Bietak is the current Professor of Egyptology at the University of Vienna, Austria and Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo, Egypt (Professor der Ägyptologie an der Universität Wien und Leiter des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Kairo).
Bietak is best known as the director of the Austrian excavations at the Delta site of Tell el-Daba'a, site of the Hyksos period and Nineteenth Dynasty capital of Egypt, Piramesse.
He also serves as Editor for the Egyptological journal Ägypten und Levante / Egypt and the Levant.
Bietak does not tie his finds in with biblical history because he does not adopt a reduced chronology that would synchronise the two records, though he does come up with a reduced chronology that has worried the traditionalists.
Bietak did not identify these settlers with the Israelites because even his lowered chronology was not low enough for that, but it does sound as though some of the Israelites were still on the land while others had moved into the city.
Bietak claims this early Canaanite settlement was during the time of Amenemhet I. If this conclusion is correct then the initial Israelite occupation would have to be moved back to a slightly earlier time slot.
But, when ManfredBietak, director of the Institute of Egyptology at Vienna University, stumbled across a description of the hut in 60-year-old reports from the U.S. dig, he saw a possible connection to the building style of the early Israelites.
Bietak's article appeared under the unflinching headline: "Israelites Found in Egypt." Some archeologists have criticized the Biblical Archaeology Review for championing the authenticity of the James Ossuary, a burial box purported to have contained the remains of Jesus's brother, but recently declared a fake by the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Bietak says his research on the four-room house, finally, "may represent extra-Biblical evidence" of Israelites living in Egypt around the reputed time of the Exodus.
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