by
Damien F. Mackey
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.
WORLD INTO WHICH MOSES WAS BORN
As we draw near to the birth of Moses, the ancient world (at least in the environs of Egypt) enters into a sophisticated new phase of pyramid building, travel, maritime ventures, harbours, art and architecture, and the influx of foreign workers.
The Early Bronze Age II will continue on into the Early Bronze III, which two eras often tend not to be clearly distinguished – except that EBIII is known to have ended in ‘collapse’. Thus:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.901.2193&rep=rep1&type=pdf
“Early Bronze II–III was dated from ~3100 to 2300 BC and correlated with the Egyptian Protodynastic period and the Old Kingdom down to the late 6th Dynasty. Early Bronze IV (also called the Intermediate Bronze Age) was dated from ~2300 to 2000 BC, to the onset of the Middle Bronze Age, and roughly correlated with the First Intermediate period in Egypt (de Miroschedji 2009; Sowada 2009; Harrison 2012).
While the Early Bronze II–III period saw the rise of strong fortified urban centers throughout the southern and central Levant, almost all of these “first cities” collapsed at the end of the Early Bronze III period …”.
That ‘collapse’ of these cities belongs to the spectacular archaeological phase of the Joshuan and Israelite Conquest of Palestine.
From a supposedly Old Kingdom point of view, the cultural surge referred to above is reflected in the kingship of Snofru (Sneferu), Egypt’s most prolific pyramid builder:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneferu
To enable Sneferu to undertake such massive building projects, he would have had to secure an extensive store of labour and materials. According to Guillemette Andreu, this is where the king's foreign policy played a large part. Sneferu's conquests into Libya and Nubia served two purposes: the first goal was to establish an extensive labour force, and the second goal was to gain access to the raw materials and special products that were available in these countries. …. This is alluded to in the Palermo Stone:
"[Reign of] Sneferu. Year ...
The building of Tuataua ships of mer wood
of a hundred capacity, and 60 royal boats of sixteen capacity.
Raid in the Land of the Blacks, and the bringing in of seven thousand
prisoners, men and women, and twenty thousand cattle, sheep, and
goats... The bringing of forty ships of cedar wood (or perhaps "laden with cedar
wood")...".
According to this inscription, Sneferu was able to capture large numbers of people from other nations, make them his prisoners and then add them into his labour force. During his raids into Nubia and Libya, he also captured cattle for the sustenance of his massive labour force. Such incursions must have been incredibly devastating to the populations of the raided countries, and it is suggested that the campaigns into Nubia may have contributed to the dissemination of the A-Group culture of that region.
Sneferu's military efforts in ancient Libya led to the capture of 11,000 prisoners and 13,100 head of cattle. …. Aside from the extensive import of cedar (most likely from Lebanon) described above, there is evidence of activity in the turquoise mines on the Sinai Peninsula. …. There would also have been large-scale quarrying projects to provide Sneferu with the stone he needed for his pyramids. ….
The “Moses” as presented by the later Jewish historian, Artapanus, bought into – and indeed greatly contributed to – this technological advancement: “As a grown man [Moses] was the source of many great inventions for humankind: ships, cranes for lifting large stones, Egyptian weaponry, devices for lifting water and for war, and philosophy”:
https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195151429.001.0001/acprof-9780195151428-chapter-7
The grandiose Snofru was, according to my reconstruction (and apart from his other alter egos), Amenemhet (or Amenemes) I of the Twelfth Dynasty, who will be a focal point of this article. During his time there was in Egypt (especially in the Delta region), as we shall find, a large population of foreigners who had begun to pose a serious logistical problem for the new dynastic ruler.
The combination of extensive pyramid building and abundance of foreign immigrants in Egypt is a perfect mix for the testimony of Josephus that the Israelite slaves built the pyramids, as well as walls for cities (Antiquities, ch. 9):
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/ant-2.html
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 enjoyned 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 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 did they spend under these afflictions: for they strove one against the other which should get the mastery. The Egyptians desiring to destroy the Israelites by these labours; and the Israelites desiring to hold out to the end under them. ….
That is not to say that the Israelites were the only peoples enslaved by Twelfth Dynasty Egypt, but just the people of vital interest to the biblical scribe(s).
King Solomon (Book of Wisdom), recalling the attitude of the ancient Sodomites, will slate the Egyptians for their wretched ingratitude and inhospitality to Israel:
file:///C:/Users/lib_pubaccess.INTERNAL/Downloads/Wisdom_of_Solomon_and_Biblical_Interpret.pdf
…. The Sodomites guilty of inhospitality In Wis 19:13–17 … Solomon describes the Egyptians as particularly inhospitable, ungrateful hosts to the Israelites: they received the Israelites only to turn right around and enslave them. He then adds a curious statement in v. 14: “Others had refused to receive strangers when they came to them.” Who were these “others”?
We find out in v. 17, where we read that the Egyptians were punished for their treatment of the Israelites by “loss of sight—just as were those at the door of the righteous man.” In this passage, we see another example of … Solomon’s linking two seemingly unconnected events: this “loss of sight” is an allusion to the ninth plague (Exod 10:22–23); and “those at the door of the righteous man” are those who came to the house of Lot (the “righteous”) demanding he hand his guests over to them and whom the angels struck blind (Gen 19:11). It is worth noting that … Solomon adduces the story of Sodom’s destruction to buttress his condemnation of Egypt’s inhospitality. He is free to do so because, at least on one level, he understands the sin of Sodom as not specifically sexual misconduct, but rather as the Sodomites’ refusal “to receive strangers”—that is, their inhospitality. … Solomon is not alone in this view, and there may even be some scriptural support for such a notion. Ezekiel 16:49–50 condemns the inhabitants of Sodom, saying Sodom “had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” What seems to be in view here is the Sodomites’ mistreatment of other people rather than their sexual misconduct (although the latter is certainly not excluded). Moreover, Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities 1.194 also regards the sin of the Sodomites as inhospitality, dislike of foreigners, and arrogance. ….
Compare, Book of Wisdom (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.
The Cretans and Therans were most prominent trading partners with Twelfth Dynasty Egypt. Magnificent palaces were being erected throughout the region at the time.
For abundant information on the trade interaction between Twelfth Dynasty Egypt and Crete, one could read Gavin Menzies (The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed (HarperCollins, 2011), whilst making allowance for his adherence to inflated conventional dates and basic historical construction. Menzies, writing of the “highly prized”, distinctive Cretan pottery (pp. 41-44), will tell of how Egyptian chronology is the yardstick for dating Cretan pottery:
The pottery told us loud and clearly that the Minoans [sic] had traded much more than foodstuffs and olive oil. The Kamares designs are dramatic, a modern-looking black and red, and the pottery was first excavated here [Kamares cave] in the early 1900’s.
I’d learned by now it had been highly prized across the entire Mediterranean. It has been found across the Levant and Mesopotamia, from Hazor and Ashkelon in Israel to Beirut and Byblos in Lebanon and the ancient Canaanite city of Ugarit, near what is now the sea-town of Ras-Shamra in modern-day Syria. Judging by the finds in Egyptian tombs and elsewhere across the region, the Minoan skill in art seems to have given the Minoans of ancient Crete a free pass to the glamour, science and civilisation of the two most advanced cultures of the Early Bronze Age, Mesopotamia and Egypt.
In the 14th century B.C., said Professor [Stylianos] Alexiou, the bounty of Crete – its skilled metal-work, olive oil, pottery, saffron and so on – was exchanged as gifts between Mediterranean rulers. In return, the Egyptians sent exotica: gold, ivory, cloth and stone vessels containing perfumes.
The wealth of pottery, sculpture and jewellery that has been found in Crete was so old that no one could accurately date it, according to Professor Alexiou. So many Minoan artefacts are in Egypt that experts are best able to date Cretan finds by comparing them to Egyptian ones, whose chronology is better understood. ….
Whilst the following quote from professor Alexiou will show how the successive palatial periods of Cretan history are to be aligned with Egypt, on the basis of pottery finds, the problem is that Egyptian dynastic history itself has not been properly dated, meaning that, for instance, Cretan pottery synchronous with the era of pharaoh Thutmose [Thutmosis] III of 18th dynasty Egypt, i.e., Neo-Palatial Cretan, will be dated about 500 years earlier than it should be. Menzies continues:
According to Professor [Stylianos] Alexiou:
The absolute date in years of the various Minoan periods is based on synchronisms with ancient Egypt, where the chronology is adequately known [sic] thanks to the survival of inscriptions. Thus the [Cretan] Proto Palatial Period [2000-1700 BC] is thought to be roughly contemporary with the [Egyptian] XIIth dynasty [1991-1783 BC] because fragments of [Cretan] Kamares pottery attributed to Middle Minoan II [c. 1800 BC] have been found at Kahun in Egypt in the habitation refuses of a settlement found in the occasion of the erection of the royal pyramids of this [XIIth: 1991-1783 BC] dynasty.
One Kamares vase was also found in a contemporary tomb at Abydos [Egypt - Valley of the Kings]. The beginning of the Neo Palatial period [Crete -1700 BC] must coincide with the Hyksos epoch [1640-1550] since the lid of a stone vessel bearing the cartouche of the Hyksos Pharaoh Khyan was discovered in Middle Minoan III [c. 1700-1600 BC] levels at Knossos [Crete].
Equally the subsequent Neo-Palatial Cretan period [1700-1400 BC] falls within the chronological limits of the new kingdom with particular reference to the Egyptian] XVIIIth dynasty [1550-1307 BC]: an alabaster amphora with the cartouche of Tuthmosis III [1479-1425 BC] was found in the final palatial period at Katsaba [Crete]. ….
“NEW KING” OF EXODUS 1:8
He was the first king of Egypt’s so-called Twelfth Dynasty, namely, Amenemhet I – but now to be considered with a whole host of Old and Middle Kingdom alter egos, including Snofru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneferu
“Reused building materials found at the pyramid complex of Amenemhat I that are thought originally to have been a depiction of the Sed festival for Sneferu”.
“Reused”, or is it that Snofru is to be identified as Amenemhet I as I have already suggested?
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, ex¬pressed 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.
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 that will ultimately need significant lowering in light of the need for a radically revised Persian-Greek history.
Yet, about two centuries earlier than that, we found 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”.
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”:
http://www.creationsixdays.net/2013_ICC_Habermehl_Joseph.pdf
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).
The fact that there were “horses in Nahal Tillah”, though, does not, in itself, mean that the Egyptians had horse-drawn chariots.
About sixty-four (64) years we found to have elapsed from the death of Joseph at age 110 to the birth of Moses.
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 have already learned from the testimony of Josephus, the crown of Egypt had at this stage passed into ‘a new family’.
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, little known.
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, 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”. ….
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.
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 another 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”.
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.
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. Egypt’s ruler 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’.”
ISRAEL HAD BECOME “TOO NUMEROUS”
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 (Emeritus Professor 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 Egypt’s rulers.
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 Twelfth 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 Egyptian labour demands upon the Israelite slaves, he now incorporating 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!
BUILDING “PITHOM AND RAMSES”
The mention of a store city named “Rameses” in Exodus 1:11 has led to the prevailing opinion today that Ramses II ‘the Great’ belonged to the era of Moses.
But this name is quite an anachronism, being added later by an editor who must have lived when the name of the city had been changed by Ramses II to “Rameses”.
John Keyser continues:
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”.
Apart from the Era of Moses involving the Fourth, Fifth, 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 (Amenemes) so-called III, as we pick up from reading about him in N. Grimal’s book (A History of Ancient Egypt, 1994), 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 rulers 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 cruel “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”.
