by
Damien F. Mackey
“… the Amen-em-hat [I] who was the FOUNDER OF THE TWELFTH DYNASTY … makes NO PRETENSION TO ROYAL ORIGIN, and the probability would seem to be that he attained the throne NOT THROUGH ANY CLAIM OF RIGHT,
but by his own personal merits”.
History of Ancient Egypt
Eduard Meyer, the father of the “Sothic” theory mangling, was one (amongst many) who would deny the very existence of Moses and his work. We read this information in the Preface to Martin Buber’s book, Moses (1946): “In the year 1906 Eduard Meyer, a well-known historian, expressed the view that Moses was not a historical personality. He further remarked”:
After all, with the exception of those who accept tradition bag and baggage as historical truth, not one of those who treat [Moses] as a historical reality has hitherto been able to fill him with any kind of content whatever, to depict him as a concrete historical figure, or to produce anything which he could have created or which could be his historical work.
One could reply to this that, thanks to Berlin School Meyer’s own confusing rearrangement of Egyptian chronology, an artificial ‘Berlin Wall’ has been raised preventing scholars from making the crossing between the text book Egyptology and a genuine biblical history and archaeology.
Admittedly Moses - not a native Egyptian, but a Hebrew fully educated in Egyptian wisdom (Acts 7:22): “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action” - has been most difficult for historians to identify in the Egyptian records. Impossible for conventional historians (thanks to the likes of Eduard Meyer), who will always be searching in the wrong historico-archaeological period, but also difficult for revisionists. For more on this, see e.g. my series:
If any revisionist historian had placed himself in a good position, chronologically, to identify in the Egyptian records the patriarch Joseph, then it was Dr. Donovan Courville, who had, in The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, I and II (1971), proposed that Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms were contemporaneous. That radical move on his part might have enabled Courville to bring the likeliest candidate for Joseph, the Vizier Imhotep of the Third Dynasty, into close proximity with the Twelfth Dynasty – the dynasty that revisionists most favour for the era of Moses.
According to John D. Keyser (http://www.hope-of-israel.org/dynastyo.html):
Some say the Israelites labored in Egypt during the 6th Dynasty; while others claim the dynasty of the oppression was the 19th. Still others proclaim the 18th to be the one -- or the period of the Hyksos rulers of Egypt!” Keyser then concludes: “By turning to the Bible and examining the works of early historians, the dynasty of the oppression becomes very apparent to those who are seeking the TRUTH with an open mind!
Keyser’s theory here is sound. However, it turns out to be much more difficult to realise in practice.
Concerning “the period of the Hyksos rulers of Egypt”, mentioned here by Keyser, there is at least one very good reason why some have fastened onto it. It is because chariots - seemingly lacking to early Egypt - are thought to have become abundant at the time of the Hyksos conquest (c. 1780 BC, conventional dating).
The Pharaoh of the Exodus, we are told, pursued the fleeing Israelites with 600 war chariots (Exodus 14:7): “[Pharaoh] took six hundred of the best chariots, along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them”.
That incident would have occurred in 1533 BC according to P. Mauro’s estimate (The Wonders of Bible Chronology) - a date estimate that will ultimately need significant lowering in light of a revised Persian-Greek history.
Yet, about two centuries earlier than that, we find Joseph riding in “a chariot” (Genesis 41:43): “[Pharaoh] had [Joseph] ride in a chariot as his second-in-command, and people shouted before him, ‘Make way!’ Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt”.
A plausible explanation for Joseph’s “chariot” can be found at:
The enigma of chariots in the 3rd dynasty of Egypt is easily explained
…. The Bible records that Joseph was given a chariot to travel through Egypt.
If Joseph and Imhotep were the same person, this would mean that chariots existed in Egypt as early as the third dynasty.
In the third dynasty, only high officials like the pharaoh and his chancellor / sage / vizier were afforded a chariot to travel in.
Chariots in the 3rd dynasty were not horse drawn, they were carried by a procession of servants.
The Hebrew word ‘merkabah’ in the Bible can be translated as ‘chariot’ or ‘riding seat’. It does not distinguish between a vehicle that is horse drawn or a vehicle that is carried.
In Joseph’s time, this word is better translated as ‘Riding Seat’ as there were no horse drawn Chariots with wheels in the third dynasty. ….
It is what we might call a palanquin.
King Solomon used one (Song of Solomon 3:9): “King Solomon made himself a palanquin [or sedan chair] of the wood of Lebanon”.
I presume that when, later, Genesis 50:9, referring to the funeral procession of Jacob, father of Joseph, tells that: “Chariots and horsemen also went up with him. It was a very large company”, we may need still to separate the “chariots” from the “horsemen”. Though Anne Habermehl has offered a different view of all of this (“REVISING THE EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY: JOSEPH AS IMHOTEP, AND AMENEMHAT IV AS PHARAOH OF THE EXODUS”:
Secular history books are unanimous in claiming that horses were introduced into Egypt only during the time of the Hyksos rule in the 15th Dynasty, after the Exodus (Bourriau, 2003, p. 202). However, the Bible says that the pharaoh gave Joseph his second-best chariot for travel throughout Egypt (Gen. 41:43), and we would expect that it was pulled by horses, although it does not say so. Certainly, 26 years later, when Joseph buried his father in Canaan, there were chariots and horsemen in the crowd that accompanied him (Gen. 50:9). This pushes horses in Egypt back to the 3rd Dynasty, a not impossible situation because there is evidence of horses in Nahal Tillah (northern Negev, not a great distance from Egypt) in predynastic times (Aardsma, 2007). In addition, the pharaoh of the Exodus had a large number of chariots at his command when he pursued the Children of Israel at the end of the 12th Dynasty (Ex. 14:7–9).
Things would be much more straightforward if we were talking about Mesopotamia for which, by contrast, we have very early evidence of chariots - going back as far as 2500 BC (conventional dating). See e.g.: https://traveltoeat.com/chariots-the-first-wheels-of-war/
Based on the extensive biblical evidence, it should be possible to find abundant traces of Moses both in history and in mythology, for, according to Exodus 11:3: “… the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people”.
More sympathetic to Moses and the biblical Patriarchs was the Hellenistic Jewish author, Artapanus (C2nd BC, conventional dating), who claimed in περὶ ʾΙουδαίων (“On the Jews”), some extraordinary innovations and inventions by the Patriarchs and Moses, as described at (http://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/artapanus):
The purpose of this work was to prove that the foundations of Egyptian culture were laid by Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. When Abraham came to Egypt, he taught the pharaoh (Pharethothes or Pharetones) the science of astrology. Jacob established the Egyptian temples at Athos and Heliopolis. Joseph was appointed viceroy of all Egypt and initiated Egyptian agrarian reforms to ensure that the powerful would not dispossess the weak and the poor of their fields. He was the first to divide the country and demarcate its various boundaries. He turned arid areas into arable land, distributed land among the priests, and also introduced standard measures for which he became popular among the Egyptians (Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 9:23). But the one who excelled all was Moses, whom Artapanus identifies with Musaeus, teacher of Orpheus, and with Hermes-Thoth, god of Egyptian writing and culture. The name Hermes was given to Moses by the priests who revered him for his wisdom and paid him divine homage. Moses founded the arts of building, shipping, and weaponry, as well as Egyptian religion and philosophy. He was also the creator of hieroglyphic writing. In addition, he divided the city into 36 wards and assigned to each its god for worship. Moses was the founder of the cult of Apis the Bull and of Ibis. All these accomplishments of Moses aroused the jealousy of King Kheneferis, father of Maris, Moses' foster mother. He tried to kill Moses, but failed.
Here, undoubtedly, we have an interesting blend of fantasy and reality.
We have previously read that the famous account of baby Moses placed in a basket on the river bank (Exodus 2:2-10) was re-visited later in legends about the mighty Sargon of Akkad, who actually pre-dated Moses by some centuries.
At: http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/Content/Detail/7 we read: “The parallel lives of Sargon and Moses are intriguing. Both were born to Semite mothers. Both were placed in reed baskets lined with pitch and set afloat. Both were reared in the homes of non Semites, one Sumerian, the other Egyptian. As young men, both became part of their respective royal courts. Both confronted rulers. And both became mighty leaders over a great nation”.
For my explanation of this, see e.g. my article:
Did Sargon of Akkad influence the Exodus account of the baby Moses?
https://www.academia.edu/35752394/Did_Sargon_of_Akkad_influence_the_Exodus_account_of_the_baby_Moses
Background to Birth of Moses
About sixty-four (64) years are estimated to have elapsed from the death of Joseph at age 110 (1677 BC) to the birth of Moses (1613 BC): P. Mauro’s dates.
That phase of time would probably be sufficient to explain why it is said of the Pharaoh of the Oppression (Exodus 1:8): “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph”. The great Imhotep (Joseph) – surely this “new” pharaoh ‘knew’ of him!
The Hebrew (לֹא-יָדַע) here, translated as “did not know”, can also mean something along the lines of ‘did not take notice of’, which is not surprising if more than half a century had elapsed.
Moreover, as we are going to find out from the testimony of Josephus, the crown of Egypt had at this stage passed into ‘a new family’.
King Solomon, though, many centuries later, will be scathing in his Book of Wisdom about the Egyptian ingratitude (19:13-17):
On the sinners, however, punishments rained down not without violent thunder as early warning; and they suffered what their own crimes had justly deserved since they had shown such bitter hatred to foreigners.
Others, indeed, had failed to welcome strangers who came to them, but the Egyptians had enslaved their own guests and benefactors.
The sinners, moreover, will certainly be punished for it, since they gave the foreigners a hostile welcome; but the latter, having given a festive reception to people who already shared the same rights as themselves, later overwhelmed them with terrible labours.
Hence they were struck with blindness, like the sinners at the gate of the upright, when, yawning darkness all around them, each had to grope his way through his own door.
Now, if I have been correct in setting Joseph to a revised Third (Old) and Eleventh (Middle) Egyptian phase, then the “new king” of Exodus 1:8, presumably a dynastic founder, would likely be the first ruler of the Fourth (Old) and the first ruler of the Twelfth (Middle) kingdom[s].
Beginning with the Fourth Dynasty, the “new king” would be none other than Khufu (Cheops), best-known pharaoh because of his Great Pyramid at Giza (Gizeh).
Yet, for all this, he is surprisingly, unknown.
In fact, we have only one tiny statuette representation of pharaoh Khufu.
“Although the Great pyramid has such fame, little is actually known about its builder, Khufu. Ironically, only a very small statue of 9 cm has been found depicting this historic ruler. This statue … was not found in Giza near the pyramid, but was found to the south at the Temple of Osiris at Abydos, the ancient necropolis”. http://www.guardians.net/egypt/khufu.htm
Thus Khufu, like the seemingly great, yet poorly known, pharaoh Zoser, at the time of Joseph, is crying out for an alter ego.
And that we get, quite abundantly, I believe, in the person of Amenemhet [Amenemes] I, the founder of the mighty Twelfth Dynasty, Moses’s dynasty.
John D. Keyser has, with this useful piece of research, arrived at the same conclusion as mine, that Amenemhet I was the Book of Exodus’s “new king” (op. cit.):
In the works of Flavius Josephus (1st-century A.D. Jewish historian) we read the following:
Now it happened that the Egyptians grew delicate and lazy, as to painstaking; and gave themselves up to other pleasures, and in particular to the love of gain. They also became VERY ILL AFFECTED TOWARDS THE HEBREWS, as touched with envy at their prosperity; for when they saw how the nation of the Israelites flourished, and were become eminent already in plenty of wealth, which they had acquired by their virtue and natural love of labour, they thought their increase was to their own detriment; and having, in length of time, forgotten the benefits they had received from Joseph, PARTICULARLY THE CROWN BEING NOW COME INTO ANOTHER FAMILY, they became very abusive to the Israelites, and contrived many ways of afflicting them; FOR THEY ENJOINED THEM TO CUT A GREAT NUMBER OF CHANNELS [CANALS] FOR THE RIVER [NILE], AND TO BUILD WALLS FOR THEIR CITIES AND RAMPARTS, THAT THEY MIGHT RESTRAIN THE RIVER, AND HINDER ITS WATERS FROM STAGNATING, UPON ITS RUNNING OVER ITS OWN BANKS: THEY SET THEM ALSO TO BUILD PYRAMIDS, and by all this wore them out; and forced them to learn all sorts of mechanical arts, and to accustom themselves to hard labour. And FOUR HUNDRED YEARS [sic] did they spend under these afflictions.... (Antiquities of the Jews, chap. IX, section 1).
Within this passage from Josephus lie several CLUES that will help us to determine the dynasty of the oppression of the Israelites.
The Change of Rulership
Josephus mentions that one of the reasons the Egyptians started to mistreat the Israelites was because “THE CROWN [HAD]...NOW COME INTO ANOTHER FAMILY.” Does Egyptian history reveal a time when the crown of Egypt passed into the hands of a totally unrelated family? Indeed it does!
In the Leningrad museum lies a papyrus of the 12th DYNASTY, composed during the reign of its FIRST KING AMENEMHET I. The papyrus is in the form of a PROPHECY attributed to the sage Nefer-rehu of the time of King Snefru; and in it an amazing prediction is made:
A king shall come from the south, called AMUNY [shortened form of the name Amenemhet], the son of a woman of Nubia, and born in Upper Egypt....He shall receive the White Crown, he shall wear the Red Crown [will become ruler over ALL Egypt]....the people of his time shall rejoice, THE SON OF SOMEONE shall make his name for ever and ever....The Asiatics shall fall before his carnage, and the Libyans shall fall before his flame....There shall be built the ‘WALL OF THE PRINCE [RULER],’ and the Asiatics shall not (again) be suffered to go down into Egypt.
Here the NON-ROYAL DESCENT of Amenemhet I. is clearly indicated, for the phrase “son of Someone” was a common way of designating a man of good, though not princely or royal, birth. According to George Rawlinson: “There is NO INDICATION OF ANY RELATIONSHIP between the kings of the twelfth and those of the eleventh dynasty; and it is a conjecture not altogether improbable, that the Amen-em-hat who was the FOUNDER OF THE TWELFTH DYNASTY was descended from THE FUNCTIONARY OF THE SAME NAME, who under Mentuhotep II. [of the previous dynasty] executed commissions of importance. At any rate, he makes NO PRETENSION TO ROYAL ORIGIN, and the probability would seem to be that he attained the throne NOT THROUGH ANY CLAIM OF RIGHT, but by his own personal merits. (History of Ancient Egypt. Dodd, Mead and Co., N.Y. 1882, pp.146-147).
“His own personal merits” probably included conspiracy: “We have to suppose that at a given moment he CONSPIRED AGAINST HIS ROYAL MASTER [last king of the 11th Dynasty], and perhaps after some years of confusion mounted the throne IN HIS PLACE. A recent discovery lends colour to this hypothesis. A Dyn. XVIII inscription extracted from the third pylon at Karnak names after Nebhepetre and Sankhkare a ‘GOD’S FATHER’ SENWOSRE who from his title can only have been the NON-ROYAL PARENT of Ammenemes I [Greek form of Amenemhet].” (Egypt of the Pharaohs, by Sir Alan Gardiner. Oxford University Press, England. 1961, p.125).
The inscriptions on the monuments make it clear that his elevation to the throne of Egypt was no peaceful hereditary succession, but a STRUGGLE for the crown and scepter that continued for some time. He fought his way to the throne, and was accepted as king only because he triumphed over his rivals. After the fight was ended and the towns of Egypt subdued, the new pharaoh began to extend the borders of Egypt.
The fact that the 12th Dynasty was a “maverick” dynasty -- one that did not conform to the royal blood line of the pharaohs -- was well known in the 18th Dynasty. According to information provided by the family pedigrees in several tombs of the 18th Dynasty, and by texts engraved or painted on certain objects of a sepulchral nature, the ANCESTOR of the royal family of this dynasty was worshiped in the person of the old Pharaoh MENTUHOTEP OF THE 11th DYNASTY, the 57th king of the great Table of Abydos. The royal family of the 18th Dynasty considered the dynasty of Amenemhet I. to be an aberration!
According to Henry Brugsch: “The transmission of the PURE BLOOD of Mentuhotep to the king Amosis (Aahmes) of the EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY was made by the hereditary princess Aahmes-Nofertari (‘the beautiful consort of Aahmes’), who married the said king, and whose issue was regarded as the LEGITIMATE RACE of the Pharaohs of the house of Mentuhotep.” (A History of Egypt Under the Pharaohs. Second edition. John Murray, London. 1881, p. 314).
Thus, with the ascension of Amenemhet I. of the 12th Dynasty, the crown had “NOW COME INTO ANOTHER FAMILY”.
Anne Habermehl, too, has opted for Amenemhet I as the first Pharaoh of the Oppression, whilst properly realising that such an identification will present (Twelfth) dynastic complications (“Revising the Egyptian Chronology”):
The start of a new dynasty usually indicated a break of some kind, and we could even wonder whether the pharaoh “who knew not Joseph” (Ex. 1:8) was the first of the 12th Dynasty, Amenemhat I. Historians believe that this pharaoh overthrew the one that preceded him, and had no royal blood (Gardiner, 1964, pp. 125 –26). He would indeed have qualified as a pharaoh who did not continue the previous customs with respect to Joseph’s family, the Children of Israel.
The implications of this choice for the “new king”, though, would likely mean that Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty needs to be shortened, as I have long realised. Thus Habermehl continues: “However, this would have ramifications for the length of the 12th Dynasty, which would have to be drastically telescoped; the secular chronology currently allots about 200 years from its beginning to the end of the reign of Amenemhat III (Shaw, 2003, p. 482)”.
The possibility of any such radical shortening of the 12th dynasty will be seriously considered as we proceed.
As with the revision of Abram (Abraham), slightly less so perhaps with Joseph, there are some compelling historico-archaeological features in support of our revised era for Moses - this being, in the case of Moses, during Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty (so-called Middle Kingdom).
We also need to fill it out, though - as in the case of Joseph - with its Old Kingdom ‘other face’.
I have mentioned Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty, and shall return to him soon, but I find a more ready and striking alter ego for Amenemhet I in the founder of the Sixth Dynasty, Teti.
As I have written previously:
Starting at the beginning of the 6th dynasty, with pharaoh Teti, we have found that he has such striking likenesses to the founder of the 12th dynasty, Amenemhet (Amenemes) I, that I have had no hesitation in identifying ‘them’ as one. Thus I wrote in my “Bible Bending” article:
Pharaoh Teti Reflects Amenemes I
…. These characters may have, it seems, been dupli/triplicated due to the messy arrangement of conventional Egyptian history.
Further most likely links with the 6th dynasty are the likenesses between the latter’s founder, Teti, and Amenemes I, as pointed out by historians. Despite the little that these admit to knowing of pharaoh Teti - and the fact that they would have him (c. 2300 BC) well pre-dating the early 12th dynasty (c. 1990 BC) - historians have noted that pharaoh Teti shared some common features with Amenemes I, including the same throne name, Sehetibre, the same Horus name, Sehetep-tawy (“He who pacifies the Two Lands”), and the likelihood that death came in similarly through assassination.
This triplicity appears to me to be another link between the ‘Old’ and ‘Middle’ kingdoms!”
But Amenemhet I combined with Teti - shaping up remarkably well as the “new king” of Exodus 1:8 - may need further yet to include the alter ego of the Fourth Dynasty’s Khufu. Though, as noted earlier, “we have only one tiny statuette representation of pharaoh Khufu”, that one depiction of him finds a virtual ‘identical twin’ in a statue of Teti I have viewed on the Internet (presuming that this statue has rightly been labelled as Teti’s).
Linking the 4th, 6th and 12th dynasties?
We may be able to trace the rise of the 4th dynasty’s Khufu (Cheops) - whose full name was Khnum-khuefui (meaning ‘Khnum is protecting me’) - to the 6th dynasty, to the wealthy noble (recalling that the founding 12th dynasty pharaoh “had no royal blood”) from Abydos in the south, called Khui. An abbreviation of Khuefui?
This Khui had a daughter called Ankhenesmerire, in whose name are contained all the elements of Mer-es-ankh, the first part of which, Meres, accords phonetically with the name Eusebius gave for the Egyptian foster-mother of Moses, “Merris”.
“Merris, the wife of Chenephres, King of Upper Egypt; being childless, she pretended to have given birth to [Moses] and brought him up as her own child. (Eusebius, l.c. ix. 27)”.
Earlier, we read a variation of this legend with “King Kheneferis [being the] … father of Maris, Moses' foster mother”.
I shall be taking this “Chenephres” (“Kheneferis”) to be pharaoh Chephren (Egyptian Khafra), the son of Khufu, since Chephren had indeed married a Meresankh.
“We know of several of Khafre's wives, including Meresankh … and his chief wife, Khameremebty I”.
Apart from neo-Assyrian literature picking up the biblical story of Moses and re-applying it, restrospectively, to Sargon of Akkad, the story would also become enshrined in later Greco-Roman accounts of Egyptian myth. Although, as we have found, the ancient gods tend to have originated from major antediluvian characters - and this may also apply to the Egyptian gods, Seth, Osiris, Isis and Horus - Greco-Roman authors were wont to tell variant tales of them. This is not the way “modern biblical scholarship” would explain it, however - as is apparent from the following article by Gary Rendsburg, according to which the Book of Exodus ‘borrowed’ from the pagan myths (http://forward.com/articles/9812/the-subversion-of-myth/):
A major finding of modern biblical scholarship is the extent to which the narrative in the book of Exodus is informed by the ancient Israelites’ knowledge of Egyptian culture, religion and literature. The birth story of Moses in Exodus 2:1-10 provides an excellent illustration of both the extent of and the transformation involved in such borrowing.
One of the core myths of ancient Egypt concerned the gods Seth, Osiris, Isis and Horus. Seth and Osiris were brother deities, the former representing evil and chaos, the latter representing good and fertility. The battle between the two resulted in the death of Osiris, but before he died Osiris had impregnated his wife, Isis, goddess of wisdom and beauty. Isis in turn gave birth to Horus, the falcon-headed god of kingship. When Seth learned that his brother Osiris’s offspring had been born, he sought to kill the baby Horus. Isis prepared a basket of reeds to hide him in the marshland of the Nile Delta, where she suckled him and protected him, along with the watchful eye of her sister, Nephthys, from the snakes, scorpions and other dangerous creatures until he grew and prospered.
Scholars have noted that the birth story of Moses is part of a larger motif of ancient literature, namely the exposed-infant motif. The ancients delighted in telling tales of their heroic leaders who at birth were exposed to nature, usually by their parents who, for one reason or another, did not desire their newborn sons. Among the most famous accounts are the stories of Oedipus from Greece and Romulus and Remus from Rome, along with the less well known but equally important story of Sargon of Akkad (in ancient Mesopotamia). There is a difference, however, between the Moses story and the other exposed-infancy narratives, for in Exodus, chapter two, the goal of Moses’ mother is not to be rid of the child but to save him. This occurs elsewhere in ancient literature only in the story of the baby Horus, whose mother, Isis, sought to protect him from his wicked uncle, Seth. The Hebrew and Egyptian stories share this crucial feature, which is lacking in the other parallels, and therefore beckon us to read the former in the light of the latter.
The list of specific features shared by the two accounts is truly remarkable. In both stories, it is the mother who is the active parent (in the Egyptian version, Osiris is dead; in the Hebrew account, Moses’ father is mentioned in passing in Exodus 2:1, after which the role of the mother is highlighted). Both mothers construct a small vessel of reeds and place the baby in the marshland of the Delta. In both accounts, another female relative watches over the baby (Nephthys in the Horus story; Miriam in the biblical account). Significantly, in both stories the mother’s suckling of the child is emphasized: Isis’s nursing of the baby Horus is a prominent feature of Egyptian artwork, with many statues portraying this action; while in the biblical story, Miriam arranges for Moses’ mother to nurse the child. Most importantly, in both stories the baby is hidden and protected from the wicked machinations of the villain.
The fact, noted briefly above, that Horus is the god of kingship is of critical importance. It means that every pharaoh was considered the living embodiment of Horus. ….
Thus, if Moses is the baby in the bulrushes in the biblical account, he has become, as it were, Horus, and thus the equivalent of the pharaoh. And if the pharaoh of the biblical account is the one who commands that Hebrew baby boys be drowned in the Nile, and who by extension seeks the death of the baby Moses, then he has been transformed into the wicked Seth. The biblical author, in short, subverts the foundational myth of ancient Egypt by portraying Moses as the good Horus and by converting the pharaoh into the wicked Seth. Such subversions are typical of the manner in which a weaker people (in our case, ancient Israel) gains power, as it were, over the stronger nation (in our case, ancient Egypt).
The story of Moses’ birth implies that not only did the author of our text possess a thorough knowledge of ancient Egyptian culture, religion and literature, but that his audience, or at least a significant portion thereof, did, as well. One can imagine the ancient Israelite reader, conversant with all matters Egyptian, delighting in such a tale portraying Moses, and not Horus or the pharaoh, as the hero, and depicting the pharaoh not as the good force but as the evil force identified with Seth.
But, continuing our merging of kingdoms and dynasties, this family relationship may again be duplicated in that the 6th dynasty pharaoh, Piops I (Cheops?), had a daughter also called Ankhenesmerire, whom his son Merenre married.
From the 4th dynasty, we gain certain elements that are relevant to the early career of Moses. Firstly we have a strong founder-king, Cheops (Egyptian Khufu), builder of the great pyramid at Giza, who would be an excellent candidate for the “new king” during the infancy of Moses who set the Israelite slaves to work with crushing labour (Exodus 1:8). This would support the testimony of Josephus that the Israelites built pyramids for the pharaohs, and it would explain from whence came the abundance of manpower for pyramid building. Cheap slave labour.
Thus Josephus:
... they became very abusive toward the Israelites, and contrived many ways of afflicting them; for they enjoined them to cut a great number of channels for the river, and to build walls for their cities and ramparts, that they might restrain the river, and hinder its waters from stagnating, upon its running over its banks: they set them also to build pyramids, and by all this wore them out; and forced them to learn all sorts of mechanical arts, and to accustom them to hard labor.
The widespread presence of ‘Asiatics’ in Egypt at the time would help to explain the large number of Israelites said to be in the land. Pharaoh would have used as slaves other Syro-Palestinians, too, plus Libyans and Nubians. As precious little, though, is known of Cheops, despite his being powerful enough to have built one of the Seven Wonders of the World, we shall need to fill him out later with his 12th dynasty alter ego.
In Cheops’ daughter, Mer-es-ankh, we presumably have the Merris of tradition who retrieved the baby Moses from the water. The name Mer-es-ankh consists basically of two elements, Meres and ankh, the latter being the ‘life’ symbol for Egypt worn by people even today.
Mer-es-ankh married Chephren (Egyptian, Khafra), builder of the second Giza pyramid and probably, of the Great Sphinx. He would thus have become Moses’s foster/father-in-law.
Moses, now a thorough-going ‘Egyptian’ (cf. Exodus 2:19), must have been his loyal subject. “Now Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became a man of power both in his speech and in his actions”. (Acts 7:22) Tradition has Moses leading armies for Chenephres as far as Ethiopia. Whilst this may seem a bit strained in a 4th dynasty context, we shall find that it is perfectly appropriate in a 12th dynasty one, when we uncover Chephren’s alter ego.
From the 12th dynasty, we gain certain further elements that are relevant to the early era of Moses. Once again we have a strong founder-king, Amenemhet I, who will enable us to fill out the virtually unknown Cheops as the “new king” of Exodus 1:8. The reign of Amenemhet I was, deliberately, an abrupt break with the past. The beginning of the 12th dynasty marks not only a new dynasty, but an entirely new order. Amenemhet I celebrated his accession by adopting the Horus name: Wehem-Meswt (“He who repeats births”), thought to indicate that he was “the first of a new line”, that he was “thereby consciously identifying himself as the inaugurator of a renaissance, or new era in his country’s history”.
Amenemhet I is thought actually to have been a commoner, originally from southern Egypt.
I have thought to connect him to pharaoh Khufu via the nobleman from Abydos, Khui.
“The Prophecy of Neferti”, relating to the time of Amenemhet I, shows the same concern in Egypt for the growing presence of Asiatics in the eastern Delta as was said to occupy the mind of the new pharaoh of Exodus, seeing the Israelites as a political threat (1:9): “‘Look’, [pharaoh] said to his people, ‘the Israelites have become far too numerous for us’.”
That Asiatics were particularly abundant in Egypt at the time is apparent from this information from the Cambridge Ancient History: “The Asiatic inhabitants of the country at this period [of the Twelfth Dynasty] must have been many times more numerous than has been generally supposed ...”. Dr David Down gives the account of Sir Flinders Petrie who, working in the Fayyûm in 1899, made the important discovery of the town of Illahûn [Kahun], which Petrie described as “an unaltered town of the twelfth dynasty”.
Of the ‘Asiatic’ presence in this pyramid builders’ town, Rosalie David (who is in charge of the Egyptian branch of the Manchester Museum) has written:
It is apparent that the Asiatics were present in the town in some numbers, and this may have reflected the situation elsewhere in Egypt. It can be stated that these people were loosely classed by Egyptians as ‘Asiatics’, although their exact home-land in Syria or Palestine cannot be determined .... The reason for their presence in Egypt remains unclear.
Undoubtedly, these ‘Asiatics’ were dwelling in Illahûn largely to raise pyramids for the glory of the pharaohs. Is there any documentary evidence that ‘Asiatics’ in Egypt acted as slaves or servants to the Egyptians? “Evidence is not lacking to indicate that these Asiatics became slaves”, Dr. Down has written with reference to the Brooklyn Papyrus. Egyptian households at this time were filled with Asiatic slaves, some of whom bore biblical names. Of the seventy-seven legible names of the servants of an Egyptian woman called Senebtisi recorded on the verso of this document, forty-eight are (like the Hebrews) NW Semitic. In fact, the name “Shiphrah” is identical to that borne by one of the Hebrew midwives whom Pharaoh had commanded to kill the male babies (Exodus 1:15).
“Asian slaves, whether merchandise or prisoners of war, became plentiful in wealthy Egyptian households [prior to the New Kingdom]”, we read in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Amenemhet I was represented in “The Prophecy of Neferti” - as with the “new king” of Exodus 1:8 - as being the one who would set about rectifying the problem. To this end he completely reorganised the administration of Egypt, transferring the capital from Thebes in the south to Ithtowe in the north, just below the Nile Delta. He allowed those nomarchs who supported his cause to retain their power. He built on a grand scale. Egypt was employing massive slave labour, not only in the Giza area, but also in the eastern Delta region where the Israelites were said to have settled at the time of Joseph.
Professor J. Breasted provided ample evidence to show that the powerful 12th dynasty pharaohs carried out an enormous building program whose centre was in the Delta region. More specifically, this building occurred in the eastern Delta region which included the very area that comprised the land of Goshen where the Israelites first settled.
“... in the eastern part [of the Delta], especially at Tanis and Bubastis ... massive remains still show the interest which the Twelfth Dynasty manifested in the Delta cities”.
Today, archaeologists recognise the extant remains of the construction under these kings as representing a mere fraction of the original; the major part having been destroyed by the vandalism of the New Kingdom pharaohs (such as Ramses II).
The Biblical account states that: “... they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick”. (Exodus 1:14).
John Keyser, again, has written very interestingly, in a compatibly revised context, of the oppressive pharaonic labour demands upon the Israelite slaves, he now incorporating pharaoh Amenemhet III into the mix. Thus Keyser has written (op. cit.):
Josephus’ description of the type of labor the Israelites were forced to endure under the new pharaoh is REMARKABLY SIMILAR to the observations of DIODORUS SICULUS, the first-century B.C. Greek historian:
Moeris ... dug a lake of remarkable usefulness, though at a cost of INCREDIBLE TOIL. Its circumference, they say, is 3,600 stades, its depth at most points fifty fathoms. Who, then, on estimating the greatness of the construction, would not reasonably ask HOW MANY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MEN MUST HAVE BEEN EMPLOYED [?], AND HOW MANY YEARS THEY TOOK TO FINISH THEIR WORK? No one can adequately commend the king’s design, which brings such usefulness and advantage to all the dwellers in Egypt.
Since the Nile kept NO DEFINITE BOUNDS in its rising, and the fruitfulness of the country depended upon the river’s regularity, THE KING DUG THE LAKE TO ACCOMMODATE THE SUPERFLUOUS WATER, SO THAT THE RIVER SHOULD NEITHER, WITH ITS STRONG CURRENT, FLOOD THE LAND UNSEASONABLY AND FORM SWAMPS AND FENS, nor, by rising less than was advantageous, damage the crops by lack of water. BETWEEN THE RIVER AND THE LAKE HE CONSTRUCTED A CANAL 80 STADES IN LENGTH AND 300 FEET IN BREADTH. Through this canal, at times he admitted the water of the river, at other times he excluded it, thus providing the farmers with water at fitting times by opening the inlet and again closing it scientifically and at great expense. — The Pyramids of Egypt, by I.E.S. Edwards. Viking Press, London. 1986, pp. 234-235.
These engineering marvels are noted by author J. P. Lepre: “Amenemhat III is also credited with the mighty engineering feat of constructing the irrigation canal now known as the Bahr Yusif, and of using this canal to REGULATE THE FLOW OF WATER FROM THE NILE to Lake Fayum during the flood season. This water was held there by sluices, and later let out again, at will, back to the section of the Nile from Assyout down to the Mediterranean Sea, REGULATING THE HEIGHT OF THE RIVER in that area during the dry season. This irrigation system was the PROTOTYPE for the modern High Aswan Dam.”
Although Amenemhat III was involved in several great engineering works, the Bahr Yusif endeavor is of special note. For here, two 20-mile long dykes -- one straight and the other semicircular -- were constructed so as to aid in the ADJUSTMENT OF THE WATER LEVEL through the use of sluices, and to reclaim 20,000 acres of farmland by enriching the soil." (The Egyptian Pyramids. McFarland & Company, Inc. Jefferson, N.C. 1990, pp. 217-218).
Obviously, both Josephus and Diodorus Siculus are talking about THE SAME construction project carried out during the reign of AMENEMHET III. OF THE 12TH DYNASTY!
Historians in pursuit of the Era of Oppression of the Israelites have spent much time and consideration pondering the crucial geographical information as provided in Exodus 1:11: “So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labour, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh”.
Lacking here, but no doubt crucial, is the extra piece of information supplied by the Septuagint version of this verse, that the Israelites also built On (Heliopolis): “And he set over them task-masters, who should afflict them in their works; and they built strong cities for Pharao, both Pitho, and Ramesses, and On, which is Heliopolis”.
{We recall that, thanks to the Septuagint Isaiah, the Tower of Babel may more profitably (than in Sumer) be searched for in the vicinity of Carchemish}.
Let us follow John Keyser further as he considers, in a sensibly revised Twelfth Dynasty context, now (“The Strong City of Ramesses”), and now (“The City of the Sun!”), Heliopolis - however, I would not necessarily adhere to his view that the city of Ramesses was so named before Rameses II ‘the Great’, as later biblical editors were quite able to (as Moses certainly did with the older patriarchal toledôt) update geographical names:
The Strong City of Ramesses
If we go now to the book of Exodus in the Bible, we can uncover some more clues to help us pinpoint the dynasty of the oppression:
And there rose up another king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph....And he set over them [the Israelites] taskmasters, who should afflict them in their works; and THEY BUILT STRONG CITIES FOR PHARAO, BOTH PITHO [PITHOM], AND RAMESSES, AND ON, WHICH IS HELIOPOLIS....And the Egyptians tyrannised over the children of Israel by force. And they embittered their life by hard labours, IN THE CLAY AND IN BRICK-MAKING, and all the works in the plains, according to all the works, wherein they caused them to serve with violence. -- Exodus 1:8, 11, 13. Septuagint”.
If we can determine when the cities of Ramesses, Pithom and On were built, we can place the Israelite slaves in the right dynasty!
Because one of these cities was named “Ramesses,” many scholars believe it was named after Ramesses the Great of the 19th Dynasty, and was therefore constructed during this time -- but is this true? Notice the following:
LONG BEFORE RAMESSES THE GREAT WAS BORN, THERE WERE SEVERAL KINGS, NOT KNOWN BY MODERN HISTORIANS, WITH SOME FORM OF THE NAME RAMESSES. The record of these kings of the delta, foolishly rejected by ALL historians today, is the KEY to this enigma in the Bible. The names are preserved by Syncellus in the Book of Sothis. A list of them may be found in Waddell’s Manetho, page 235...Among these rulers is a Ramesses WHO LIVED IN THE DAYS OF JOSEPH and the fourth dynasty. Many historians have been puzzled by the fact that the name of Ramesses should appear on so many of the building blocks that went into the early buildings of the THIRD AND FOURTH DYNASTIES. Their mistaken explanation is that the later Ramesses had his servants take the time out to carve his name on ALL these stones. It NEVER OCCURRED TO THEM that there might actually have been a Rameses who assisted in the erection of these fabulous monuments of a by-gone era. -- Compendium of World History, by Herman L. Hoeh. Vol.I. Ambassador College, Pasadena, CA. 1963, pp. 94-95”.
There is another reason why the Israelites cannot have built the city of Ramesses during the reign of Ramesses the Great. The earliest reference to Israel outside of the Bible is on the famous MERNEPTAH STELE. Merneptah was the successor of Ramesses II (“the Great”). Notice what Hans Goedicke, chairman of the department of Near Eastern Studies at John Hopkins University, has to say:
Merneptah’s famous stele records his military achievements to the fifth year of his reign. By that time, ISRAEL HAD SUCH SIGNIFICANCE AS A PEOPLE that it is listed among these achievements: “ Israel’s seed is not,” Pharaoh Merneptah boasted, with obvious exaggeration. The people of Israel was plainly a POLITICAL PROBLEM for Merneptah. This could hardly have been the case if the people who became Israel had SO RECENTLY become a “people” after the Exodus. Are we to believe that within 75 years at most, the Exodus group became A POLITICAL AND MILITARY POWER of the magnitude reflected in the Merneptah stele, especially after a 40-year desert sojourn? -- BAR, September/October 1981.
The answer is, obviously, NO!
In 1966, an Austrian archaeological team, headed by Dr. Manfred Bietak, began long-term excavations four miles north of the delta town of Faqus -- at a site called Tell el-Dab’a. Bietak was aware that this site had an earlier name, Tell el-Birka -- “the mound of the LAKE.” Old maps revealed that this lake was at one time joined to the old Pelusiac branch of the Nile by an artificial waterway that anciently encircled the whole area. When aerial photography revealed the ancient bed of the Pelusaic branch of the Nile, Bietak was convinced he had found the SITE OF RAMESSES.
During the 1979-80 excavation season, Bietak realized that the city had been built DURING THE 12TH DYNASTY BY AMENEMHET I. -- WITH ADDITIONS AND/OR REBUILDING BY SENWOSRET III. OF THE SAME DYNASTY!
Some FIVE HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE THE TIME OF RAMESSES II. this had been a CAREFULLY LAID OUT CITY of some importance during the time of Egypt’s MIDDLE KINGDOM, a century or so PRIOR to Egypt’s takeover by the Hyksos. Readily discernible were the foundations of an imposing 450-foot-long palace, with a huge court lined by columns, that had probably served as a ROYAL SUMMER RESIDENCE....Records show that order [in Egypt] was re-established by STRONG GOVERNMENT on the part of the kings of Egypt’s MIDDLE KINGDOM, and IT IS TO THESE THAT CAN BE ATTRIBUTED THE COLUMNED PALACE west of the Tell el-Dab’a mound, as well as a variety of OTHER BUILDINGS AND MONUMENTS that seem to have surrounded the Birka lake. One of these, a TEMPLE OF THE EGYPTIAN KING AMENEMHET I., was found to contain a tablet specifically referring to the ‘TEMPLE OF AMENEMHET in [at] the water of the town’ -- independent corroboration of the town’s abundance of water....
But what is also quite obvious from Dr. Bietak’s findings is that not only was this site the TRUE BIBLICAL RAMESSES, it quite evidently had a history MUCH EARLIER than the time of Ramesses II. as well, and was in fact none other than the HYKSOS CAPITAL, AVARIS, referred to in Manetho’s History. -- The Exodus Enigma, by Ian Wilson. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London. 1985, pp. 48, 49 & 52.
The City of the Sun!
Let’s look at another city mentioned in the Septuagint version of the Bible -- On, or Heliopolis. Although the city of On wasn’t originally settled during the Middle Kingdom, it was, however, REBUILT ON A MASSIVE SCALE by a pharaoh of the 12th DYNASTY! We read about this in Henry Brugsch-Bey’s book, A History of Egypt Under the Pharaohs:
...a remarkable document on parchment, which I had the good fortune to acquire at Thebes in 1858, and which for some years past has been in the possession of the Berlin collection of Egyptian antiquities, make the fact certain, that USURTASEN I. [Sesostris I of the 12th Dynasty], at the very beginning of his reign, occupied himself with BUILDINGS AT THE TEMPLE OF THE CITY OF THE SUN [ON, HELIOPOLIS]. This important material informs us how, in the third year of his reign, he assembled round his throne the first officials of his court, to hear their opinion and their counsel as to his intention of RAISING WORTHY BUILDINGS TO THE SUN-GOD. As usual in such assemblies, the king begins his address with a solemn reference to his divine descent....From this he proceeds to a discourse on the importance of the buildings and monuments dedicated to the deities, starting from the idea that such alone are able to immortalize the memory of a ruler. After the address, the assembled counsellors UNANIMOUSLY APPROVE the good intentions of their lord, and encourage him to carry out the same without delay. THE PHARAOH IMMEDIATELY GIVES HIS COMMAND TO THE PROPER COURT OFFICIAL, ENJOINS HIM TO WATCH OVER THE UNINTERRUPTED PROGRESS OF THE WORK WHICH HAS BEEN DETERMINED UPON, and then begins the solemn ceremony of LAYING THE FOUNDATION-STONE by the king himself. -- Pp.151-152.
The result of this ceremony was a work that can still be seen today! Not far from Cairo, in the neighborhood of the village of Matarich, a huge obelisk made out of the hardest and most beautiful rose granite points skyward, commemorating the work of the Israelites as they slaved under this pharaoh to re-build the “City of the Sun.”
Usurtasen [Sesostris] erected a massive BRICK-BUILT double wall around the main temple at Heliopolis, which also surrounded the area of present-day Tell Hisn. The area this wall enclosed has been estimated to measure some 1,100 by 475 meters, or 1,203.4 by 519.7 yards! (Atlas of Ancient Egypt, by Baines and Malek, p. 173).
Apart from the Era of Moses involving the Fourth, Sixth and Twelfth Egyptian dynasties, we also need to add the Thirteenth, based on some known correspondences of its officials with the Twelfth Dynasty. Dr. Courville has provided these useful, when writing of the Turin list which gives the names of the Thirteenth Dynasty officials (“On the Survival of Veliovsky’s Thesis in ‘Ages in Chaos”, pp. 67-68):
The thirteenth name [Turin list] (Ran-sen-eb) was a known courtier in the time of Sesostris III …”.
“The fourteenth name (Autuabra) was found inside a jar sealed with the seal of Amenemhat III …. How could this be, except with this Autuabra … becoming a contemporary of Amenemhat III? The explanations employed to evade such contemporaneity are pitiful compared with the obvious acceptance of the matter”.
“The sixteenth name (RaSo-khemkhutaui) leaves a long list of named slaves, some Semitic-male, some Semitic-female.
One of these has the name Shiphra, the same name as the mid-wife who served at the time of Moses’ birth …. [Exodus 1:15]. RaSo-khemkhutaui … lived at the time of Amenemhat III.
This Amenemhet III, as we pick up from reading about him in N. Grimal’s book (op. cit.), was a particularly strong ruler, renowned for massive projects involving water storage and channelling on a gargantuan scale. He is credited with diverting much of the Nile flow into the Fayuum depression to create what became known as lake Moeris (the lake Nasser project of his time).
The grim-faced depictions of the 12th dynasty kings, Amenemhet III and Sesostris III, have been commented upon by conventional and revisionist scholars alike.
Cambridge Ancient History has noted with regard to the former …: “The numerous portraits of [Amenemhet] III include a group of statues and sphinxes from Tanis and the Faiyûm, which, from their curiously brutal style and strange accessories, were once thought to be monuments of the Hyksos kings.”
For revisionists, these pharaohs can - and rightly so - represent the cruel taskmasters who forced the Israelites to build using bricks mixed with straw (Exodus 5:7, 8). In fact, this very combination of materials can clearly be seen for example in Amenemhet III’s Dahshur pyramid.
Amenemhet III, according to Grimal …:
… was respected and honoured from Kerma to Byblos and during his reign numerous eastern workers, from peasants to soldiers and craftsmen came to Egypt. This influx of foreign workers resulted both from the growth in Egyptian influence abroad and from the need for extra workmen to help exploit the valuable resources of Egypt itself. For forty-five years [Amenemhet] III ruled a country that had reached a peak of prosperity … and the exploitation of the Faiyûm went hand in hand with the development of irrigation and an enormous growth in mining and quarrying activities.
The Faiyûm was a huge oasis, about 80 km S.W. of Memphis, which offered the prospect of a completely new area of cultivable land. Exodus 1:14 tells of the Israelite slaves doing “all kinds of work in the fields.”
Mining and quarrying also, apparently, would have been part of the immense slave-labour effort. Grimal continues …:
In the Sinai region the exploitation of the turquoise and copper mines reached unprecedented heights: between the ninth and forty-fifth years of [Amenemhet III’s] reign no less than forty-nine texts were inscribed at Serabit el-Khadim …. The seasonal encampments of the miners were transformed into virtually permanent settlements, with houses, fortifications, wells or cisterns, and even cemeteries. The temple of Hathor at Serabit el-Khadim was enlarged …. The expeditions to quarries elsewhere in Egypt also proliferated ….
Amenemhet III was, it seems, a complete dictator … (my emphasis):
The economic activity formed the basis for the numerous building works that make the reign of [Amenemhet] III one of the summits of state absolutism. Excavations at Biahmu revealed two colossal granite statues of the seated figure of [Amenemes] III …. Above all, he built himself two [sic] pyramids, one at Dahshur and the other at Hawara…. Beside the Hawara pyramid were found the remains of his mortuary temple, which Strabo described as the Labyrinth. ….
From the birth of Moses to the Exodus 80 years later, the Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs sorely oppressed Israel, beginning with an infanticide that Herod in Israel would later emulate.
King Solomon tells - in what could also be a wake-up call for our own times - how Egypt paid for this pharaonic “decree of infanticide” (Wisdom 11:5-16, emphasis added):
Thus, what had served to punish their enemies became a benefit for them in their difficulties.
Whereas their enemies had only the ever-flowing source of a river fouled with mingled blood and mud, to punish them for their decree of infanticide, you gave your people, against all hope, water in abundance, once you had shown by the thirst that they were experiencing how severely you were punishing their enemies.
From their own ordeals, which were only loving correction, they realised how an angry sentence was tormenting the godless; for you had tested your own as a father admonishes, but the others you had punished as a pitiless king condemns, and, whether far or near, they were equally afflicted.
For a double sorrow seized on them, and a groaning at the memory of the past; when they learned that the punishments they were receiving were beneficial to the others, they realised it was the Lord, while for the man whom long before they had exposed and later mockingly rebuffed, they felt only admiration when all was done, having suffered a thirst so different from that of the upright.
For their foolish and wicked notions which led them astray into worshipping mindless reptiles and contemptible beetles, you sent a horde of mindless animals to punish them and to teach them that the agent of sin is the agent of punishment”.
Adopted into the royal household of the mighty and prosperous Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty, the Hebrew Moses would grow up to be a great man in the land of Egypt.
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