The Movement for Reform Judaism

If we go by the biblical account, then it was Hebrew. Still, you could argue that just as Hollywood films relate foreign events in English for the benefit of English speakers (eg the epic film Dr Zhivago featuring hardly a word of Russian!), so the Bible was aimed at the Israelites and narrated events in a way that would be intelligible for Hebrew speakers.

However, what actually happened at the original confrontation between the two men may well not have been in Hebrew. Logically, it would make sense for Moses to communicate with Pharoah in Egyptian, as not only would  Pharoah understand that better
than any other language, but Moses, brought up in Pharoah’s court since babyhood, would be fluent in it too.

You could counter-argue that Moses might have deliberately chosen to speak in Hebrew so as to highlight the fact that he was no longer the same Moses as of old but a changed character, and was now to be treated not as a runaway Egyptian prince, but as a visiting Hebrew leader. Even so, it would have been unlikely that Pharoah would have replied in Hebrew, as appears to occur in the Book of Exodus.

Still, it might have been the case that Pharoah spoke in Egyptian but his words were then translated into Hebrew by an interpreter (or even by Moses himself) for the benefit of Aaron who accompanied him in the negotiations. The latter had, or course, also been in Egypt – but he may not necessarily have had knowledge of the Egyptian dialect spoken at court. So, to answer you question directly :we cannot know for sure how the two leaders conversed, and several options are possible.

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