I’m agnostic, but I’m researching ancient Egypt and ancient Nubia and the influences they had on the development of the Abrahamic faiths, as well as the corroborating Greco-Roman accounts that tangentially affirm their origin story. I.e. Many Greco-Roman historians identified them as derivative of Egypt. For reference, within Abrahamic religious texts, “Israel” refers to the descendants of Jacob.
I want to begin by contextualizing how Egyptians and Nubians were perceived during classical antiquity:
Herodotus, The Histories Book II - 104 (440 BCE)
“For it is plain to see that Colchians are Egyptians; and this that I say I myself noted before I heard it from others. When I began to think on this matter, I inquired of both peoples; and the Colchians remembered the Egyptians better than the Egyptians remembered the Colchians; the Egyptians said that they held the Colchians to be part of Sesostris' army. I myself guessed it to be so, partly because they are dark-skinned and woolly-haired; though that indeed goes for nothing, seeing that other peoples, too, are such; but my better proof was that the Colchians and Egyptians and Ethiopians are the only nations that have from the first practised circumcision. The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine acknowledge of themselves that they learnt the custom from the Egyptians, and the Syrians of the valleys of the Thermodon and the Parthenius, as well as their neighbours the Macrones, say that they learnt it lately from the Colchians. These are the only nations that circumcise, and it is seen that they do even as the Egyptians. But as to the Egyptians and Ethiopians themselves, I cannot say which nation learnt it from the other; for it is manifestly a very ancient custom. That the others learnt it from intercourse with Egypt I hold to be clearly proved by this — that Phoenicians who hold intercourse with Hellas cease to imitate the Egyptians in this matter and do not circumcise their children.”
Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 40.3.1–3 (300 BCE) - One of many examples
"When in ancient times a pestilence arose in Egypt, the common people ascribed their troubles to the workings of a divine agency; for indeed with many strangers of all sorts dwelling in their midst and practising different rites of religion and sacrifice, their own traditional observances in honour of the gods had fallen into disuse.
Hence the natives of the land surmised that unless they removed the foreigners, their troubles would never be resolved. At once, therefore, the aliens were driven from the country... the greater number were driven into what is now called Judaea, which is not far distant from Egypt and was at that time utterly uninhabited. The colony was headed by a man called Moses, who was outstanding both for his wisdom and for his courage."
Shifting to religious texts:
Genesis 46:3 - “And he said, I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation”
Exodus 1:1-7 - “Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already. And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.”
Deuteronomy 10:22 - “Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the Lord thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.”
Deuteronomy 26:5 - “And thou shalt speak and say before the Lord thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous.”
And finally, The Soleb inscription, the earliest known reference to Yahweh, discovered in Nubia, dated to the 14th Century BCE:
"On the west bank of the Nile in northern Sudan stand the ruins of an ancient Egyptian town called Soleb. Europeans first learned of it when a Swiss traveler named John Lewis Burckhardt explored the region of Nubia in 1813. However, Soleb was not excavated until a century and a half later (from 1957 to 1963), by an archaeologist named Michela Schiff Giorgini. Giorgini’s excavation primarily focused on a temple complex dating to the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep iii, who reigned sometime in the late 15th to early 14th centuries b.c.e."