by
Damien F. Mackey
“Snofru
soon became a legendary figure, and literature in later periods credited him
with a genial personality”.
“Cheops
... is portrayed in [Papyrus Westcar] as the traditional legendary oriental
monarch, good-natured …”.
Nicolas
Grimal
Introduction
Throughout various articles now I have concluded that the
ancient Egyptian dynasty that oppressed the Israelites at the time of Moses
consisted of only four rulers, with the other names being duplicates, or
triplicates. These rulers were, in order:
1. The “new king”
of Exodus 1:8, who began the Oppression of Israel;
2. Moses, presumed son of 1., who ruled briefly
and who then abdicated;
3. “Chenephres”
of tradition, married to “Merris’ of tradition, the Egyptian foster-mother of
Moses; and, lastly, a
4. Female
Pharaoh.
And I have further concluded that the life of the
historical Moses actually spans two kingdoms (Old and ‘Middle’), conventionally
speaking, and five dynasties (4th; 5th; 6th;
12th and 13th).
As was the case with Joseph, son of Jacob, the life of
Moses starkly reveals the inadequacies of the received Egyptian dynastic
history and completely reforms it.
Here we are concerned only with Egypt’s so-called 4th
dynasty, the Giza pyramid and Sphinx building dynasty.
Fourth Dynasty of Egypt
My re-setting of ancient Egypt via Moses necessitates an
alteration to the first part of the Fourth Dynasty king list (1-4):
Four kings now needing to become three.
While kings 2-4 here now become fairly straightforward, 1.
Sneferu (Snofru) I have found to be something of an outlier.
2. Khufu (Cheops), whose daughter Meresankh married 4.
Khafre (Chephren), is clearly the oppressive “new king” of Exodus 1:8, the
dynastic founder, with Meresankh being “Merris”, the traditional (Artapanus)
foster-mother of Moses, who married “Chenephres”, 4. Khafre (Chephren).
That leaves 3. Djedefre, the presumed son of Khufu, as
the brief-reigning Moses.
Sneferu (Snofru)
1.
Sneferu,
a long-reigning king, can thus immediately be ruled out as Moses.
Arguments
could be mounted for Sneferu (“a genial personality”) to have been Cheops,
“good-natured” (though tell that to the Israelites groaning under his
oppression), or Sneferu, who was likewise (as was Khafre) associated with a
Meresankh.
Previously
I had written on this, following Nicolas Grimal (A History of Ancient Egypt,
1992):
Meresankh (“Merris”)
P. 170
Snofru is
also associated with a Meresankh, though she is considered to be his mother.
P. 67 [She
was] one of Huni’s concubines. There is no definite proof of this ....
Meresankh
will become something of a golden thread, linking the traditional “Merris” of
Moses’ childhood to the 4th Dynasty ….
Likenesses to Cheops
This
(somewhat semi-legendary) ruler, Sneferu, seems to me to connect well with
Cheops in various ways. For instance (the pages are taken from N. Grimal’s A
History of Ancient Egypt):
Great
“legendary” reputation – good natured
P.
67
....
Snofru soon became a legendary figure, and literature in later [?] periods
credited him with a genial personality. He was even deified in the Middle
Kingdom, becoming the ideal king who later Egyptian rulers … sought to emulate
when they were attempting to legitimize their power.
P.
70
Cheops ...
is portrayed in [Papyrus Westcar] as the traditional legendary oriental
monarch, good-natured, and eager to be shown magical things, amiable towards
his inferiors and interested in the nature of human existence.
Cult figure
P.
67
Snofru’s
enviable reputation with later rulers, which according to the onomastica was
increased by his great popularity with the people, even led to the restoration
of Snofru’s mortuary temple at Dahshur. P. 69 ... cult among Middle Kingdom
miners in the Sinai.
P. 165
There is even evidence of a Twelfth Dynasty cult of Snofru in the region of
modern Ankara.
P.
70
Cheops was
not remembered as fondly as Snofru, although his funerary cult was still
attested in the Saite (Twenty-Sixth) Dynasty and he was increasingly popular in
the Roman period. According to Papyrus Westcar, he liked to listen to fantastic
stories of the reigns of his predecessors.
Like his potential
alter ego Cheops,
P. 67
[Snofru’s] reign ... appears to have
been both glorious and long-lasting (perhaps as much as forty years).
Snofru
built
... ships,
fortresses, palaces and temples ...
Three pyramids.
If
Snofru were Cheops, as I am thinking, then Snofru’s three pyramids - built
perhaps early in his reign - would have been the perfect preparation for his
later masterpiece, the Great Pyramid at Giza:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneferu
“Under Sneferu
[Snofru], there was a major evolution in monumental pyramid structures, which
would lead to Khufu's Great Pyramid, which would be seen as the pinnacle of
the Egyptian Old Kingdom's majesty and
splendour, and as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World”.
Less
positive picture of the king
P.
71
... it is
difficult to accommodate within this theory [building immoderation =
unpopularity] the fact that Snofru’s reputation remained untarnished when he
built more pyramids than any of his successors.
Pp.
69-70
[Cheops’]
pyramid transforms him into the very symbol of absolute rule, and Herodotus’
version of events chose to emphasise his cruelty:
https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/hh2120.htm
124. ... Cheops
became king over them and brought them to every kind of evil: for he shut up
all the temples, and having first kept them from sacrificing there, he then
bade all the Egyptians work for him. So some were appointed to draw stones from
the stone-quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile, and others he ordered
to receive the stones after they had been carried over the river in boats, and
to draw them to those which are called the Libyan mountains; and they worked by
a hundred thousand men at a time, for each three months continually. Of this
oppression there passed ten years while the causeway was made by which they
drew the stones, which causeway they built, and it is a work not much less, as
it appears to me, than the pyramid; for the length of it is five furlongs and
the breadth ten fathoms and the height, where it is highest, eight fathoms, and
it is made of stone smoothed and with figures carved upon it. For this, they
said, the ten years were spent, and for the underground chambers on the hill
upon which the pyramids stand, which he caused to be made as sepulchral
chambers for himself in an island, having conducted thither a channel from the
Nile.
For the making of the
pyramid itself there passed a period of twenty years; and the pyramid is
square, each side measuring eight hundred feet, and the height of it is the
same. It is built of stone smoothed and fitted together in the most perfect
manner, not one of the stones being less than thirty feet in length.
Moreover:
126. Cheops
moreover came, they said, to such a pitch of wickedness, that being in want of
money he caused his own daughter to sit in the stews, and ordered her to obtain
from those who came a certain amount of money (how much it was they did not
tell me); but she not only obtained the sum appointed by her father, but also
she formed a design for herself privately to leave behind her a memorial, and
she requested each man who came in to her to give her one stone upon her
building: and of these stones, they told me, the pyramid was built which stands
in front of the great pyramid in the middle of the three, each side being one
hundred and fifty feet in length. ….
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