The ancient Pharaoh mentioned during the Passover holiday’s annual retelling of the Jewish Exodus story was not actually an Egyptian, a leading Egyptian archaeologist has claimed.

“King Pharaoh who ruled Egypt during the epoch of our prophet Moses was not one of the kings who reigned in ancient Egypt, as we tend to believe. He belonged to the Beduin Jabarin dynasty, which is called ‘Hyksos,’” Mustafa Waziri, director-general of Luxor’s Antiquities, said in an interview with Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabih.

“This foreign dynasty ruled only in a part of Egypt. One of its last kings was a dictator named Pharaoh, to whom Moses was sent by Allah to demand that he allow the sons of Israel to leave Egypt,” said Waziri.

Waziri claimed that Jews have been promoting a “false thesis” on Pharaoh to “stick false accusations on ancient Egyptians.”

“Due to his oppressive rule, the Jews have succeeded in transforming his name to a formal title of all Egyptians kings, which enables them to damage us by saying that we have raped women and slaughtered children. However, the Pharaoh title was never used to describe Egyptians, but was always attached to boorish people,” Waziri said.

To back up his assertion, Waziri cited the fact that Islam’s Koran does not use the word “Pharaoh” to describe Egypt or Egyptians, but rather only in reference to a private individual.