Moses a Judge in Egypt

by

 Damien F. Mackey

“But he said, ‘Who made you a prince or a judge over us? Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Then Moses was afraid and said, ‘Surely the matter has become known’.”

  

Introduction

The ‘Egyptian Moses’, Sinuhe, was a high official during the reign of the Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh, Sesostris I, from whom he fled into ‘Adim’ (Edom: Sir Flinders Petrie).

Professor Immanuel Anati has recognized this Egyptian story, the famous Tale of Sinuhe, as having “a common matrix” [Mountain of God, p. 158] with the Exodus account of Moses’ flight from pharaoh to the land of Midian. This is absolutely crucial for a true revision of ancient history – which should then fit the biblical history – because it pinpoints a famous biblical incident to a very specific era of Egyptian history: namely, the end (perhaps by assassination) of the reign of pharaoh Amenemes I, founder of the Twelfth dynasty, and the early reign of Sesostris I.

Now, given our alignment of the so-called Egyptian Middle Kingdom’s Twelfth Dynasty with the Egyptian Old Kingdom’s Sixth Dynasty (following Dr. Donovan Courville), then the semi-legendary Sinuhe may find his more solidly historical identification in the important Sixth Dynasty official, Weni, or Uni. See e.g. my:

Moses - May be Staring Revisionists Right in the Face

https://www.academia.edu/11915103/Moses_-_May_be_Staring_Revisionists_Right_in_the_Face

Like Weni, Sinuhe was highly honoured by pharaoh with the gift of a sarcophagus. We read about it, for instance, in C. Dotson’s extremely useful article at: https://journals.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/StudiaAntiqua/article/viewFile/12054/11980

A Portrait of ancient Egyptian Common

Life : The Cycle of Order and Chaos

in The Tale of Sinuhe

“…. The king gives Sinuhe a sarcophagus of gold and lapis lazuli as a housewarming gift. The gift of a coffin by the king was considered a great honor and a sign of respect. In the Autobiography of Weni from the Old Kingdom, Weni records that the king had given him a white sarcophagus and “never before had the like been done in this Upper Egypt.” …”.

Now here is a brief portrait of Weni in conventional terms (we would assign him a different date, though) http://en.starovekyegypt.net/pharaohs-old-kingdom/weni.php

Comparing Weni – (and Sinuhe)
– with Mentuhotep (12^th Dynasty)

About Sinuhe, we learn (http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/sinuhe.htm): “I was a henchman who followed his lord, a servant of the Royal harim attending on the hereditary princess, the highly-praised Royal Consort of Sesostris in the pyramid-town of Khnem-esut, the Royal Daughter of Amenemmes in the Pyramid-town of Ka-nofru, even Nofru, the revered”.

We shall soon learn something also of the greatness of Mentuhotep.

Weni has, for his part – like Imhotep (Joseph) – been described as a “genius” This little excerpt on the “Autobiography of Weni” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiography_of_Weni) already tells us a lot about the man:

Weni rose through the ranks of the military to become commander in chief of the army. He was considered by both his contemporaries and many Egyptologists to have been a brilliant tactician and possibly even a genius. His victories earned him the privilege of being shown leading the troops into battle, a right usually reserved for pharaohs. Weni is the first person, other than a pharaoh, known to have been portrayed in this manner. Many of his battles were in the Levant and the Sinai. He is said to have pursued a group of Bedouins all the way to Mount Carmel. He battled a Bedouin people known as the sand-dwellers at least five times.

[End of quote]

Weni’s famous “Autobiography” has been described as, amongst other superlatives (https://books.google.com.au/books?id=sgoVryxihuMC&pg=PA352&lpg=PA352&dq=the): “… the best-known biographical text of the Old Kingdom and has been widely discussed, as it is important for literary and historical reasons; it is also the longest such document”.

This marvellous piece of ancient literature, conventionally dated to c. 2330 BC – and even allowing for the revised re-dating of it to a bit more than half a millennium later – completely gives the lie to the old JEDP theory, that writing was not invented until about 1000 BC.

Here I take some of the relevant inscriptions of the renowned Vizier, Mentuhotep (http://www.forgottenbooks.com/readbook_text/Ancient_Records_of_Egypt_v1_1000075076/297), and juxtapose them with comparable parts of the “Autobiography” of Weni (http://drelhosary.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/weni-elder-and-his-mor) (all emphasis added):

INSCRIPTIONS OF MENTUHOTEP ….

531. Hereditary prince, vizier and chief judge

The exterior face of the north wall incorporates a large niche, and during excavations here a damaged false door inscribed for Weni the Elder was discovered in situ. Not only does this false door provide a nickname for Weni (“Nefer Nekhet Mery-Ra”–Egyptian nicknames were often longer than birth names!), but it also documents his final career promotion, a fact not recorded in his autobiography: Chief Judge and Vizier.

attached to Nekhen,
judge attached to Nekhen,
prophet of
prophet of

Mat (goddess of Truth), giver of laws, advancer of offices, confirming … the boundary records, separating a land-owner from his neighbor, pilot of the people, satisfying the whole land, a man of truth before the Two Lands … accustomed … to justice like Thoth, his like in satisfying the Two Lands, hereditary prince in judging the Two Lands …. supreme head in judgment, putting matters in order, wearer of the royal seal, chief treasurer, Mentuhotep.

Hereditary prince, count
the count
… chief of all works of the king, making the offerings of the gods to flourish, setting this land … according to the command of the god.
the whole was carried out by my hand, according to the mandate which … my lord had commanded me.
…. sending forth two brothers satisfied
pleasant to his brothers
with the utterances of his mouth, upon whose tongue is the writing of Thoth,
I alone was the one who put (it) in writing ….
more accurate than the weight, likeness of the balances, fellow of the king in counselling … giving attention to hear words, like a god in his hour, excellent in heart, skilled in his fingers, exercising an office like him who holds it, favorite of the king
I was excellent to the heart of his majesty, for I was pleasant to the heart of his majesty
before the Two Lands, his beloved among the companions,
for his majesty loved me.
his majesty appointed me sole companion and superior custodian of the domain of the Pharaoh.
powerful among the officials, having an advanced seat to approach the throne of the king, a man of confidences to whom the heart opens.
his majesty praised me for the watchfulness and vigilance, which I showed in the place of audience, above his every official, above [his every] noble, above his every servant.

532. Hereditary prince over the … the (royal) castle (wsh’t) … finding the speech of the palace, knowing that which is in every body (heart), putting a man into his real place, finding matters in which there is irregularity, giving the lie to him that speaks it, and the truth to him that brings it, giving attention, without an equal, good at listening, profitable in speaking, an official loosening the (difficult) knot, whom the king (lit., god) exalts above millions, as an excellent man, whose name he knew, true likeness of love, free from doing deceit, whose steps the court heeds,

when preparing court, when preparing the king’s journey (or) when making stations, I did throughout so that his majesty praised me for it above everything.
overthrowing him that rebels against the king, hearing the house of the council of thirty, who puts his terror … among the barbarians (fp^s’tyw), when he has silenced the Sand-dwellers, pacifying the rebels because of their deeds, whose actions prevail in the two regions, lord of the Black Land and the Red Land, giving commands to the South, counting the number of the Northland,
His majesty sent me to despatch [this army] five times, in order to traverse the land of the Sand-dwellers at each of their rebellions, with these troops, I did so that [his] majesty praised me [on account of it].
When it was said there were revolters, because of a matter among these barbarians in the land of Gazelle-nose, I crossed over in troop-ships with these troops, and I voyaged to the back of the height of the ridge on the north of the Sand-dwellers. When the army had been [brought] in the highway, I came and smote them all and every revolter among them was slain.

His majesty sent me at the head of his army while the counts, while the wearers of the royal seal, while the sole companions of the palace, while the nomarchs and commanders of strongholds belonging to the South and Northland ….
in whose brilliance all men move, pilot of the people, giver of food, advancing offices, lord of designs, great in love, associate of the king in the great castle (wsfi’t), hereditary prince, count, chief treasurer, Mentuhotep, he says:

533. …’I am a companion beloved of his lord, doing that which pleases his god daily, prince, count, sem priest, master of every wardrobe of Horus, prophet of Anubis of … the hry ydb, Mentuhotep, prince in the seats of … Splendor … at whose voice they (are permitted to) speak in the king’s-house, in charge of the silencing of the courtiers, unique one of the king, without his like, who sends up the truth ….

One to whom the great come in obeisance at the double gate of the king’s-house; attached to Nekhen, prophet of Mat, pillar … ‘before the Red Land, overseer of the western highlands,
First of the Westerners ….
leader of the magnates of South and North … advocate of the people … merinuter priest, prophet of Horus, master of secret things of the house of sacred writings ….
Never before had one like me heard the secret of the royal harem.
[Sinuhe, too, was] servant of the Royal harim attending on the hereditary princess ….
governor of the (royal) castle,
governor of the South
prophet of Harkefti, great lord of the royal wardrobe, who approaches the limbs of the king,

chamber-attendant
…. overseer of the double granary, overseer of the double silver-house, overseer of the double gold-house, master of the king’s writings of the (royal) presence, wearer of the royal seal, sole companion, master of secret things of the ‘divine words’ (hieroglyphics) ….

534. Here follows a mortuary prayer, after which the concluding lines (22, 23) refer specifically to his building commissions at Abydos ….

I conducted the work in the temple, built of stone of Ayan I conducted the work on the sacred barque {nlm * /), I fashioned its colors, offering tables
His majesty sent me to Hatnub to bring a huge offering-table ….
of lapis lazuli, of bronze, of electrum, and silver; copper was plentiful without end, bronze without limit, collars of real malachite, ornaments (mn-nfr’t) of every kind of costly stone. of the choicest of everything, which are given to a god at his processions, by virtue of my office of master of secret things.

[End of quotes]

I recall (but do not currently have it with me) that professor A. S. Yahuda had, in his Language of the Pentateuch in Its Relation to Egyptian, Vol. 1 (1933), when discussing the Exodus 5:5 encounter between Pharaoh and Moses and Aaron: “Then Pharaoh said, ‘Look, the people of the land are now numerous, and you are stopping them from working’”, referred to the rank of Moses and Aaron (differentiating them from the common people) as something akin to new men.

Anyway, that is precisely how Weni is classified in this next piece (http://drelhosary.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/weni-elder-and-his-mortuary.html):

Everyone who has studied ancient Egyptian history is familiar with the autobiography of Weni the Elder, an enterprising individual who lived during the 6th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (ca. 2407-2260 BCE). His inscription, excavated in 1860 from his tomb in the low desert at Abydos in southern Egypt, enthusiastically describes his long service under three kings, culminating in his appointment as “True Governor of Upper Egypt.” Scholars have hailed it as “the most important historical document from the Old Kingdom” and have used it to illustrate the rise of a class of “new men” in Egyptian politics and society–persons whose upward mobility rested in their abilities, not in noble birth.

Early in the season, we excavated a number of inscribed relief fragments from this area, including two pieces that, when joined together, furnished the name “Weni the Elder” and a fragment providing the title “True Governor of Upper Egypt,” the highest title recorded in Weni’s autobiography. Further evidence emerged supporting this association. The exterior face of the north wall incorporates a large niche, and during excavations here a damaged false door inscribed for Weni the Elder was discovered in situ. Not only does this false door provide a nickname for Weni (“Nefer Nekhet Mery-Ra”–Egyptian nicknames were often longer than birth names!), but it also documents his final career promotion, a fact not recorded in his autobiography: Chief Judge and Vizier.

[End of quote]

Weni, who served under the Sixth Dynasty pharaoh, Pepi

 

was, just like Mentuhotep, who served under the Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh, Sesostris I:

Chief Judge and Vizier.

Was this also the historical Moses, whose Judgeship, whose rulership, some of the Hebrews chose to reject (Exodus 2:14): ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’

What became of the Neanderthals?

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

Evolutionists and Creationists can come up with widely disparate theories

as to why the Neanderthals, who “appeared to have everything going for them”, suddenly, startlingly, disappeared from the world scene.

 

 

 

Anne Habermehl, who lists some of these many theories, considers that Dr. Jack Cuozzo’s “explanation of the Neanderthal demise [is] a good one”:

Those Enigmatic Neanderthals. What Are They Saying?

Are We Listening?

 

https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/neanderthal/those-enigmatic-neanderthals/

 

Why Did the Neanderthals Disappear?

 

The biggest puzzle, that neither the majority of creationists nor the evolutionists have been able to solve, is why the Neanderthals disappeared. The robust Neanderthals appeared to have everything going for them, all agree, and there is no visible reason why they should not have survived (Trinkaus 1978). Nonetheless, disappear they did, rather suddenly, before the end of the post-Flood Ice Age or, as evolutionists call it, the end of the last ice age9 (Van Andel and Davies 2004).

 

Everyone agrees that modern humans showed up on the world scene at approximately the same time that the Neanderthals disappeared; whether or not this timing was a coincidence is debated. Some evolutionists allow thousands of years for the two groups to overlap—how many thousand is a matter of intense discussion—because they have a lot of time at their disposal, and a few thousand years here or there are a mere trifle (see, for example, Lewin 1999, pp. 157, 165–166). Creationists obviously have far less historical time available to account for the Neanderthal disappearance and subsequent appearance of modern man; therefore they have to explain how this mysterious event could have happened so quickly. But the problem for both sides is the same: why did it happen?

 

The proposed explanations forwarded by evolutionists on the Neanderthal demise have been both varied and creative, and only a sampling of the rather large literature on this subject can be touched on here. The Neanderthals’ supposed inability to cope with climate change has been especially popular (Jimenez-Espejo et al. 2007); although the Neanderthals had been able to live through the Ice Age successfully, they apparently could not cope with the ending of this cold period. Also much discussed are losing out to modern humans in various kinds of competition (Banks et al. 2008; Hoffecker 2002; Shea 2001), intermarrying with moderns (Zilhão 2006), or possibly both (Miller 2001). But there are others. Carnieri (2006) suggests that anatomically modern humans in Europe ate a lot of seafood; this more healthful diet helped them outlive the largely carnivorous Neanderthals. Sorensen (n.d.) suggests that Homo sapiens, migrating out of Africa, brought infectious disease that killed off the Neanderthals. Kuhn and Stiner (2006) argue that because Neanderthals did not divide their labor between the sexes the way modern humans did, this gave the latter a survival advantage. A mathematician, using what he calls a “simple mathematical homogeneous model of competition,” has determined that extinction of the Neanderthals was unavoidable (Flores 1998). Economists have gotten into the act with a theory that the Neanderthals came out second best because modern humans were better at trade (Horan, Bulte, and Shogren 2005). A rather grisly version surfaced in reports that, finally, there was good evidence that the Neanderthals actually did practice cannibalism, as had been suspected (Sanders 1999); presumably we were to believe that, like the gingham dog and the calico cat (Field 1894), the Neanderthals simply ate each other up. Then a different angle on the alleged cannibalism was proposed: eating each other, especially the brains, might have caused spreading of a mad-cow-related disease that could have played a large part in wiping the Neanderthals out (Underdown 2008). More recently, news articles (for example, McKie 2009) trumpeted to the world that it was actually cannibalistic modern humans who ate the Neanderthals up; this was based on an interview with scientist Fernando Rozzi, head of a research team that had just published a paper (Rozzi et al. 2009) that cast doubt on what their leader was telling the press(!). According to a group of geneticists, the small population size of Neanderthals may have made them more vulnerable to extinction, whatever the causes (Briggs et al. 2009).

 

This is not an exhaustive list of the many possibilities that have been proposed. As one insightful science newswriter says, “Figuring out why Neanderthals died out and what they were like when alive have kept plenty of scientists busy” (ANI 2009). Mark Twain would have been quite impressed by how little hard evidence supports some of these papers. He wrote, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact” (Twain 1883). One might think he was talking about evolutionists’ papers on the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

 

Meanwhile, creationists’ explanations of the Neanderthal demise have seemed rather tame and tentative by comparison, nor has there been a noticeable rush to embrace many of the various theories offered by evolutionists. Even Lubenow, who is very definite about many other ideas in his book, glosses lightly over the matter of why creationists think the Neanderthals disappeared from view; indeed, he speculates that Neanderthals could have survived into fairly recent times (Lubenow 2004, p. 82). The creationist stance is exemplified by a recent online piece about an apparent Neanderthal stabbing (Human stabbed a Neanderthal, evidence suggests, 2009), that ended with the words,

 

The more interesting debate is whether Neanderthals went entirely extinct . . . or whether their genes survive in many modern Europeans, as some studies have suggested.

 

On the one side, Oard (2006a, p. 129) states that the Neanderthals “very likely” intermarried with Cro-Magnon man, who seemed to follow the Neanderthals into Europe some time later; and Sarfati (2004, p. 317) concludes that “. . . modern humans and Neandertals likely amalgamated in Europe.” But, on the other side, Wise (2008) claims that DNA evidence shows that we do not carry Neanderthal genes today; therefore Neanderthals went extinct without intermarrying with modern humans. He speculates that this extinction event could have occurred because of challenges of survival in the post-Flood earth, or from various kinds of human violence.

 

The creationist debate as to whether or not the Neanderthals mixed their genes with those of modern humans through marriage is mirrored by evolutionists (who prefer to talk about “interbreeding” or “admixing” or “cohabiting”). Their positions are entrenched on both sides of this fence. “It is becoming increasingly clear that the Neanderthals and their modern human successors did not mix and that the Neanderthals are an extinct side branch of humanity” (Klein 2003); see also Currat and Excoffier (2004) and Tattersall (2007). But on the opposite side of the question are Wolpoff et al. (2004), who specifically refute Klein (2003); and Trinkhaus (2007), who believes that paleoanthropology shows definitively that the Neanderthals and moderns interbred, and the case is closed. Not so, says Paabo (Morgan 2009), whose belief in DNA and genome mapping (Green et al. 2008) bring him down on the side of almost total lack of interbreeding between Neanderthals and later humans. There would appear to be practically no middle ground between the two camps.

 

Predictably, progressive (old-earth) creationist Hugh Ross much prefers the DNA “proof” that Neanderthals and modern humans did not interbreed10; this is an extremely important matter to Ross, because if it can be shown that they did intermix, this would be “fatal to the current Progressive Creationist model,” according to Line (2007).

 

Obviously creationists and evolutionists are grappling with the same questions. Lubenow’s remark that the disappearance of the Neanderthals is like the disappearance of the Cheshire cat (Carroll 1865), whose grin remains to taunt evolutionists (Lubenow 2004, p. 81), applies equally to creationists. Clearly, the matter of what caused the disappearance of the Neanderthals has not been clear at all.

 

A major problem with most of the proffered hypotheses on the Neanderthal extinction is the widening geographical distribution of Neanderthal sites that have been located in the past few years, a subject that will be discussed later in this paper. Many authors address extinction of the Neanderthals in Europe, for example, and then rather ignore the ones in more far-flung places. Did other Neanderthals in other places become extinct for the same reasons? The whole subject becomes more complicated as the very large distances involved make it increasingly difficult to assume that everything can be explained by merely saying that the Neanderthals were nomadic.

 

However, the problem of the demise of the Neanderthals goes away entirely if we accept that Cuozzo is correct in his conclusions that the Neanderthals were the post-Flood long-lived people who spread out from Babel in all directions. Their “disappearance” would have occurred when they no longer lived long enough to develop the distinctive Neanderthal characteristics.11 The modern humans who supposedly “replaced” the Neanderthals would be the descendants of the latter, who did not live as long as their ancestors. This not only makes the matter of the Neanderthal disappearance very simple and straightforward, it also explains why it happens that modern humans arose at around the same time as the Neanderthals disappeared; furthermore, this would be true in all parts of the world. Proponents of Occam’s razor (Occam’s razor 2009), often stated as “The simplest explanation is usually the best,” would recognize the Cuozzo explanation of the Neanderthal demise as a good one.

 

According to Cuozzo, we would expect that, with people’s decreasing lifespans as time went on, the Neanderthal characteristics would gradually lessen from generation to generation, and then disappear entirely. In fact, this is what we see in various archaeological discoveries, although these are usually interpreted as humans that are the result of intermarriage between the Neanderthal and modern peoples (except for the DNA proponents, who do not agree, and who propose other ideas). For example, excavations in Israel are claimed to show “continuous biological evolution from Neanderthal to anatomically modern Homo sapiens” (Jelinek 1982). Also, at the Neanderthal site in Romania, the human remains display a “mosaic of modern human and archaic and/or Neandertal features” according to the paper published on the find (Soficaru, Dobos, and Trinkaus 2006). Creationists have hailed this as exciting news and further evidence that the Neanderthals were fully human beings (Anderson 2006; Jaroncyk 2007).

 

It follows logically that Cuozzo’s work knocks out the underpinnings of the Ross old-earth belief system, since the Ross view of Neanderthals as animals without spirits is nullified.