Exodus and the Moses-Akhenaten Identity

by Seymour Light

After three thousand years, has the biggest mystery in history at last been cracked? In a remarkable trilogy

Stranger in the Valley of the Kings 1987

Moses: Pharaoh of Egypt     1990

Lost city of Exodus   2014[1]

the Egyptian Muslim Ahmed Osman has followed the identity-transform of the Man with Three Names. During the 18^th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhnaten, then years later as an exile and outcast he became Moses.  

The bright idea came to him “There is one god.”

He was the first person on record to have this idea. He stands out in eternity with great brilliance as the maverick pharaoh who was not interested in waging wars, and instead experienced an extraordinary closeness to a brand-new god.[2] A proclamation for his new capital city affirmed:

And the area between these four stelae… belongs to Aten my father, mountains, deserts meadows, islands, high ground and low ground, land, water, villages men, beasts and all things, which my father Aten shall bring forth into existence eternally forever. I shall not forget this oath, which I have made to Aten my father eternally forever.’[3]

We come across such personal proximity to this new deity later on, the way ‘Moses’ experienced his ‘adonai’ god - as if he could even talk to Him.[4]

Just as scholars were coming to believe that the whole Exodus narrative never happened, Mr Osman locates it, as during the short, sixteen-month reign of Ramses 1 – not the later reign of Ramses II as Hollywood films etc. have assumed. The fervour with which the pharaoh Akhenaten promoted his new religion, is what got him thrown out of Egypt. The ‘Levites’ who accompanied him into the Sinai desert seem to have been his bodyguards or Egyptians loyal to him – as indeed Sigmund Freud had earlier surmised.[5]

Right at the end of his life, Sigmund Freud the founder of psychoanalysis wrote his Moses and Monotheism, which makes Moses an Egyptian. Osman’s thesis builds upon this earlier opus of Freud.   

After three thousand years, has Ahmed Osman discerned the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, whereby the Egyptian and Hebrew stories interlock? Could this be a recipe for peace between Egypt and Israel, as he seems to hope? His story has the Hebrews dwelling in Egypt for a shorter period than traditional chronologies.

Finding Joseph

Figure: In the Valley of the Kings, this mummy of ‘Yuya’ was discovered in 1905.

There was one moment back in 1985 when all this began to dawn upon him. He was reading the Bible words of Joseph speaking to his brothers – ‘For God did send me before you to preserve life, and He has made me a father to the Pharaoh.’ (Genesis 45:6-8) It dawned upon him, that this was a formal Egyptian title, which had been bestowed upon Yuya, as inscribed in his tomb. Officials would commonly be called ‘Son of the pharaoh’ however only one person received the distinguished ‘Father of the Pharaoh’ title in the New Kingdom. Yuya was commander of the military chariots for Amenhotep III.

When Joseph died, ‘Doctors prepared his body for burial and put the body in a coffin in Egypt.’ Book of Exodus, 13:19 – yes, and what a fine job they made of it, that we thirty-three centuries later can admire it!

Looking at the amazingly well-preserved mummy of ‘Yuya’ we sense a powerful presence, a real character – but it’s not really an Egyptian face, is it? As the title  of Ahmed’s first book Stranger in the Valley of the Kings implies, what business had the mummy of this person – one with no royal blood nor even Egyptian - doing in that royal burial-chamber valley? He who had been the young man with a ‘coat of many colours’ then in mature years became the trusty counsellor of the great Amenhotep III - what a story! Indeed he was advisor to two pharaohs. As an interpreter of dreams he would even claim to foresee the future. The pharaoh gave him a ring, a golden chain (which was found with the mummy) and a chariot. Eventually he had been put in charge of the cavalry, such a position not existing prior to Yuya, court advisor to Amenhotep III.

He may have hung onto his Hebrew beliefs even while being accepted into the Royal household: his name probably derived from Egyptian attempts to pronounce the name of his deity, Yahweh. Experts accept that he had a daughter Tiya who became wife of the pharaoh.

Joseph introduced his father and brothers to the Pharaoh. Joseph’s family were given land in Goshen (Genesis 45:9-10), which Osman identifies as being around the North Sinai border. Generally speaking people have tried to identify the arrival of the Hebrews with the record of ‘Hyksos’ or shepherd-kings coming into Egypt – but that is far too early.

Joseph was the grandfather of Moses. The mother of Moses was the daughter of Joseph. Here is the statue of Amenhotep III looking very happy next to his wife Queen Tiye, from the Cairo Museum.

Here’s another profile picture of her. That glorious queen had Hebrew blood! Amenhotep loved Tiye and placed her name in a royal cartouche, which had not happened to any Egyptian queen before. She, Mr Osman argues, was the daughter of Joseph.

Here is one more image of her, found at Luxor.

The priests may not have liked Amenhotep marrying Tiye but could not stop it. The rules did not allow the offspring of such a marriage to become Pharaoh, and so the great power of Amenhotep III was a problem for them in this respect. Mr Osman views the story of Moses/Akhnaten having to be hidden away as a baby in such terms.[6]  

Akhenaten had ‘an extremely close relationship with his mother, Queen Tiye, who seems to have been his only confidante’[7] in his early years. That could have helped him to learn some of the Hebrew language, which would come in handy later on.

Exile

There came a point when the Egyptian bureaucracy and priesthood could not endure any longer Akhenaten’s exclusive devotion to the One God - they wanted back their Maat and Osiris, Thoth and Hathor - all the old, familiar crowd. The Two Kingdoms of Egypt soon became threatened with armed revolt and indeed a military coup may well have taken place. Akhenaten had to abdicate and let his son Tutenkhamun take over instead.

Akhenaten enters into exile in the wilderness of Sinai at a place called Sarabit-el-Khadim, a mountain area with many turquoise mines, near Mount Sinai, a hundred miles away. He lived there for twenty-five years, tormented we may suppose by memories of the wonderful city to his new god he had built, but then been forced to abandon. Flinders Petrie the great archaeologist found a stele at Sarabit made by Ramses I at the start of the 19^th Dynasty, which describes him as ‘ruler of all that Aten embraces’ – indicating that the presence as it were of Aten was still remaining there. Petrie also found there a statuette of Queen Tiye, Akheneten’s mother, plus evidence in the temple where ‘the rituals performed in the temple of Sarabit were of a semitic nature.’[8]

When Sigmund Freud advanced the theory that Moses was Egyptian, in his Moses and Monotheism, he pointed out that the ‘Aten’ deity became Adon in Hebrew and so Adonai means ‘my God’. This name of the deity first appears once Akhenaten was exiled.

Moses’ father was called ‘Amram’ (Exodus Ch.6), which would be Imran in Egyptian. The name of Aten was sometimes inscribed as Im-r-n or Imran.  Akhenaten regarded Aten as his divine father, so Imram became the name of his father. In exile he lost his royal names. No-one was allowed to use them - it became forbidden to pronounce his name and he was remembered only as ‘the rebel.’ Thereby he acquired the code name Moshe or Moses, which means ‘the son of.’ (‘Mose’ was used in a legal sense during the Nineteenth Dynasty to indicate an heir who inherits land) ‘Moses’ is a totally Egyptian name, as in Tutmoses, a Pharaoh’s name.

Manetho the Egyptian historian of the 3^rd century BC said that Moses (who he called Osarseph) was Egyptian not Hebrew. He it was who put the story of Moses into the great library of Alexandria.

The Talmud describes Moses as a handsome lad, dressed royally and honoured by the people, in all things of royal lineage.  But then something went wrong and he had to flee into exile… A key part of Osman’s thesis, is that no grave or tomb has been found for Akhenaten.

After Akhenaten abdicated, Tutenhamun reigned for 9 years. He must have liked the old solar religion of Aten, as one sees its motif expressed in his tomb on the back of his throne, where the royal couple are shown illumined by the solar-Aten god.

After him, Aye ruled for 4 years followed by Horemheb for 13 years. The latter had all mention of Aten chiselled out from official monuments, and turned the land of Goshen into a prison for Akhenaten’s followers.

That would have been the terminus of the 18^th dynasty. But, Akhenaten then reckoned he was the rightful heir. He still had his royal sceptre, a rod with a serpent-design at the top, which features prominently in the Exodus story. He made the decision, to try and wrest the throne from Ramses.

The Book of Exodus narrates this as God instructing Moses to return to Egypt and speak to the Hebrew people, whereupon Moses replies: ‘O Lord, I am not eloquent, either heretofore or since thou hast spoken to thy servant; but am slow of speech and tongue’ (Exodus 4:10). Akhenaten had a limited familiarity with the Hebrew language, having been brought up not far from Goshen where the Hebrews dwelt. His deity replies that his brother Aaron will help him as he is familiar with the Hebrew tongue.

His claim to the throne failed as Ramses was in charge of the Egyptian army. He then had to flee and took his mother’s Israelite relatives with him. To Ramses fell the destiny of being the Pharaoh of the Exodus. His short rulership is compatible with the Exodus story of Pharaoh dying in pursuing the Israelites. Thereby the 19^th dynasty of Egypt was initiated.

Here is the main dynasty-sequence that concerns us:

18^th Dynasty                   Reign                         Wiki dates                    Osman

Amenhotep III            38 yrs                      1391 – 1353        1405-1367

         Birth of Akhenaten[9]                              1380                     1394

Akhenaten                     17                          1353 -1336         1367-1361

Tutenkamun                  9                            1332- 1323         1361-1352

Aye                                  4                            1323 –1319        1352-1348

Horemheb                    13                           1319 – 1292       1348-1335

……………

19^th Dynasty

Ramses I                          2                            1292-1290          1335-1333 The Exodus  

Seti I                                                               1290-1279           Moses slain

Age of Moses at Exodus:                         1380-1291=89        1394-1334=60

Those in bold are the ones whose memories were deleted from Egyptian history, obliterated from all memory, remaining unknown for three millennia! They shared in common Hebrew blood, as well as being to varying degrees associated with the heretical Aten religion. Thus Tutenkamun asssumed the throne as Tutenkaten then in the fourth year of his regency changed his name.[10]

There is another quite interesting feature shared by these historically-obliterated (so-called ‘Amarna period’) pharaohs: ‘From Amenhotep to the close of 18^th dynasty is characterised by the mention and prominent representation of queens on all state occasions, in such a manner as is never found before.’[11] 

The ‘absolute’ dates given above are in a sense of no importance, as no absolute calibration exists, it’s the relative sequence that here concerns us. Comparing Osman’s dates with Wiki dates, we may start off with Osman’s view that ‘Akhenaten was born year 11 or 12 of his father.’ His dates put Moses at around sixty years when he led the Exodus - which is believable. The Book of Exodus put him at eighty years for this event (Ch.7), which greatly strains our credibility - especially if you want to have him to going up and down Mount Sinai twice, carrying heavy stone tablets and wrathfully smashing them, etc. The Wiki dates put him at 89 years for this climactic event – which will hardly concern Wiki users because it has Akhenaten die in his mid-thirties, at the end of his regency. Also, it’s hard to believe that Akhenaten would want to come back to claim some controversial right to rule, at much over sixty years of age.

Both sequences accept that Akhenaten ruled for 17 years, but Osman has the first 11 as a co-regency with Amenhotep III and only six alone whereas Wiki does not acknowledge the co-regency concept. For the later pharaoh Horemheb Wiki discusses whether the regency was 27 or 14 years, and seems to favour the latter, however its dates add on 27 years. Only a very old Moses/Akhenaten would be feasible with the Wiki dates.   

Wiki has Akhenaten die at the end of his regency, after ruling for 17 years, with no suggestion that anyone killed him: but such an assumption is totally gratuitous, without any evidence for cause of death. He fathered half-a-dozen children with Nefertiti, which indicates that he was quite fit. Over many years experts have tried and failed to find his body (But NB, the Wiki page avers that the tomb of Akhenaten has been found.[12])        

Joseph has to have arrived in the previous regency, if we accept that Amenhotep III married his daughter, and she had been conceived with an Egyptian mother some years after her father arrived in Egypt. This gives around a hundred years for the Israelite sojourn in Egypt, which accords with the period of four generations given in Genesis 15:16, 'But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again...'[13]  

If Akhnaten was born 1380, he then became Pharaoh of Egypt in 1353, fled from Egypt 1336 and returned to Egypt  c. 1292 aged 60.[14]

The Israelites dwelt around a town called Zarw in the North-Eastern part of Sinai. A century earlier Joseph had arrived with seventy or so relatives, and that total might have grown to hundreds. Others may well have been converted to that Hebrew faith (Exodus Ch.1) however their numbers are never going to resemble the biblical two million or so that surged out of Egypt… 

Those called Shasu by the Egyptians lived in tents and raised cattle and could roughly be compared to the Midianites in the Bible.

‘The Shasu wars are the only possible equivalent of the Biblical story of the Exodus.’[15]

The exodus of Semitic Bedouin groups out of Egyptian Sinai and into Canaan, happens during Ramses I’s short reign, recorded by the Egyptians as a migration of bedouin labour.  An ex-pharaoh would be too dangerous to be allowed to wander around and so the next pharaoh, Seti I makes war against them and kills Akhenaten/Moses.

Osman accepts Sigmund Freud’s suggestion, that the Levites were Akhenaten’s Egyptian followers and bodyguard, loyal to him. Thus, a high priest of Aten in the temple of Amarna named Meyre II became remembered as Merari after the Exodus, one of the sons of Levi (Genesis 46:11). Likewise ‘Panehesy’, chief servitor of Aten at Akhnaten’s temple, becomes Phinehas, grandson of Aaron (Exodus 6:25). He is rewarded with:

even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel. (Numbers 25:12-13)

The commandments given by Moses/Akhenaten were a reformulation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead’s confessions: ‘I have not Stolen, I have not killed, I have not told lies’ become, ‘Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not bear false witness.’ Akhenaten firmly banned the worship of the old gods, which appeared in the awesome First Commandment: ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’

Akhenaten and his Levite priests gave to the crowd who came with him a structure to their religious ritual, plus they insisted on maintaining the Egyptian practice of circumcision. The different vestments the priests had to wear were described in the Book of Exodus, and the ‘Ark of the Covenant’ had an Egyptian design. Much gold and silver was used in constructing Akhenaten’s capital city, and so it is reasonable to conjecture that he took some with him into exile, which motif turns up in the Book of Exodus.

The Egyptians liked to shave, but that was not a Hebrew custom.

Names of god

Whence then did this tiny and impotent nation derive the audacity to pass themselves off for the favourite child of the Sovereign Lord? 

Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, 1951 p.105

Prior to Moses/Akhenaten, old Canaanite deity-names had been in use: El, el-Shaddai, Elohim etc, whereas Moses introduced a new divine name, Aten = Adonai. Let us look forward to a translation of the Bible which has never happened in two thousand years that actually gives the names of god. The Bible could become worth reading if this monster cover-up were terminated, with a proper translation appearing at last. Is there something to fear, from using the names of God actually given in the old Greek/Hebrew/Aramaic texts?

On this view, Moses agreed to be with the Hebrews and lead them, provided the name of their old deity Jehovah/Yahweh was not to be pronounced any more, it could only be written down as four letters - which tradition has endured to this day. This would imply that older stories, eg of Abraham, David & Solomon etc. would not feature the Adonai name of God.

Akhenaten’s new religion abandoned all the detailed instructions given to the dead and how to handle the hereafter, so dear to the Egyptian priesthood. Mr Osman suggests that Akhenaten may not have even believed in these – he founded a this-worldly solar religion. Judaism thereby developed into a religion with no interest in the hereafter, it became a fairly materialistic this-worldly religion.

 His Aten-god was universal, for all the world, and not geographically localised like the old gods. ‘Unlike them, it had no anthropomorphic representation, no image, but was represented simply by a sun disc in the same way as the cross is today the symbol of Christianity.’[16]

Conclusion

In our modern world we do hear of eminent people going through identity-transforms, with a change of ID, and the time may have come to realise what has happened here. It could give monotheistic religions the shake-up that they need.

One doesn’t look for miracles in history - or as Mr Osman puts it, few will wish to believe in ‘Moses as some kind of super-magician with a rod that could turn into a snake and part the waters of the Red Sea.’ But on the other hand he avoids a modern scepticism, which rejects the entire story. The story of the birth of monotheism is here surely improved as it becomes a trans-cultural or inter-cultural act.   

This breakthrough could revitalise the Christian religion because it shows what a great and noble character was here involved: ‘The most remarkable of all the Pharaohs and the first individual in human history.’ – James Henry Breasted, the American scholar. He was a character having little interest in war which was one reason the Egyptian establishment didn’t like him. That could be problematic for some of the OT books.

In compelling detail Ahmed’s books have integrated ancient Egyptian history as recorded by Manetho of the 3^rd century BC, with Talmudic, Koran and OT stories about Moses. The discovery and identification of tombs is here central, eg the mummy of Ramses I was only found and clearly identified in 2003.

A few non-academic experts have endorsed Mr Osman’s work. Andrew Collins described Moses and Akhenaten as

‘The classic work which redefines the timeframe of the Exodus and places it firmly in the age of Akhenaten and Tutenkhamun. Essential reading for all Bible historians.’

while Robert Bauval wrote:

‘Ahmed Osman has done it again! Combining meticulous research with a sharp mind, Osman’s The Lost City of Exodus reads like an Agatha Christie whodunit and a Dan Brown thriller rolled into one! This literary gem of a book provides the long-awaited smoking-gun evidence and hard-to-refute arguments that show where, how, and when the biblical Exodus took place. A brilliant tour-de-force!’ 

Bauval is an Egyptian who has co-authored books with Graham Hancock – but, as he also co-authored a book with Osman[17] one may feel this does not count. Academics, timid by nature, would no doubt get into hot water by examining this bold re-vision of history.  Mr Ahmed’s reply here, is that if his view is rejected, one loses the whole Exodus/Moses story because there is nowhere else it is going to fit in.

A volcano-God? Freud’s View

What is a Semite?

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[1] US edition of his first book was Hebrew Pharaohs of Egypt (1988), that of his second was Moses & Akhenaten (2002)

[2] Or, almost: The name of Aten appears ‘consistently from the time of Tutmosis IV.’ His son Amenhotep III (father of Akhenaten) built the first temple to Aten, and had his royal barge called ‘Aten Gleams.’

[3] Osman, Moses & Akhenaten, p.126.

[4] Deuteronomy 34:10 ‘Since then, there has not been any spokesman in Israel comparable with Moses, whom Yahweh knew face to face.’

[5] Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism 1932,1951:‘He [Moses] must have brought his retinue with him, his nearest adherents, his scribes, his servants. These were the original Levites.’ p.63.

[6] His elder brother Tuthmosis died quite suddenly before Akhenaten was born, possibly relevant to the decision to hide him away as a little child in a reed boat (Exodus Ch.2). 

[7] Ahmed, Moses & Akhenaten, p.120.

[8] Osman, Moses and Akhenaten, 2014, p.113; Sir William Petrie, Researches in Sinai, 1906, Ch.13.

[9] Akhenaten was born ‘in year 11 or 12 of his father’ (M&A p.105.)

[10] There was also Semenkhare who held a co-regency with Akhenaten for his last few years and was maybe his brother: these four names were erased fr0m memory, giving the name of Horemheb as the king who followed Amenhotep to the throne.

[11] Osman, Stranger in the Valley of the Kings, p.71.

[12]  Wiki: ‘recent genetic tests have confirmed that the body found buried in tomb KV55 was the father of Tutankhamun, and is therefore "most probably" Akhenaten.’ Osman: the skeletal remains have since been shown to be those of Smenkhkare… It is now agreed that Akhenaten’s reign ended months, if not a few days, before the death of Smenkhkare.’ (M&A pp.144-5 + p.243. ‘Tomb KV55’ in Lost City of Exodus, p122-6)  The latter was co-regent with Akhenaten and likewise descended from Yuya/Joseph, so the DNA would be similar. The body is that of a man in his early twenties.

[13] The Book of Genesis ends with Joseph’s death, followed right away by the Book of Exodus starting with ‘the king who knew not Joseph’ and the birth of Moses. (Osman, Stranger in the Valley of the Kings, p.130), which period surely resembles four generations more than four centuries.

[14] Osman’s dates are the same as Sir Alan Gardiner’s in Egypt of the Pharaohs.

[15] Osman, Moses &Akhenaten, p.48

[16] Osman, Stranger in the Valley of the Kings, p.153

[17] Osman and Bauval, Breaking the Mirror of Heaven The Conspiracy to Suppress the Voice of Ancient Egypt, 2012.

A Volcano-God? Freud’s View

Sigmund Freud in his last published work characterized the Jewish god Yahweh as being a volcano-god:

Jahve was certainly a volcano-god…One of these [volcanic] mountains must have been the Sinai-Horeb which was believed to be Jahve’s abode. In spite of all the transformations the Biblical text has suffered, we are able to reconstruct – according to E Meyer – the original character of the god: he is an uncanny, bloodthirsty demon who walks by night and shuns the light of day.’[1] 

Yahweh surely did appear as being a god of everlasting rage, always blowing his top. You would hardly expect to come across Him in a mellow mood. He keeps being credited with fiery powers whereby a lot of people got killed. (See the video ‘Was god a volcano?’) 

Here is a rather volcanic appearance -

On the morning of the third day, a thick cloud came down onto the mountain. There was thunder and lightning and a very loud sound from a trumpet. All the people in the camp were frightened. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke. Smoke rose off the mountain like smoke from a furnace. This happened because the Lord came down to the mountain in fire. Also the whole mountain began to shake (Exodus, 19:16-18)

Or again,

 The mountains quake before him
    and the hills melt away.
The earth trembles at his presence,
    the world and all who live in it.
 Who can withstand his indignation?
    Who can endure his fierce anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire;
    the rocks are shattered before him.(Book of Nahum, 1,4-6

But, was there not originally a very different side to the Hebrew god? Freud recognised that the original monotheistic vision had come from the Pharaoh Akhenaten in Egypt:

It is the first case in the history of mankind, and perhaps the purest, of a monotheistic religion. (p.96)

Freud accepted that Moses was an Egyptian, and maybe he was the first to realise that. The grand conception by Akhenaten of one single Creator-god, was soon rejected by the Egyptians, who wanted their own religion back again -  and then it came to be taken over by the Hebrews, a nomadic, bedouin tribe. How on Earth did that happen? Freud well posed this question:

Whence then did this tiny and impotent nation derive the audacity to pass themselves off for the favourite child of the Sovereign Lord? (p.105)

He was probably the first to realize that:

The great religious idea for which the man Moses stood was, as we have stated, not his own; he had taken it over from his King Akhenaten. (p.175)

Although an atheist, Freud seems to have admired that vision:

Egyptian Moses had given another and more spiritual conception of God, a single God who embraces the whole world, one as all-loving as he was all-powerful, who, averse to all ceremonial and magic, set humanity as its highest aim a life of truth and justice. For, incomplete as our information about the ethical side of the Aton religion may be, it is surely significant that Ikhnaton regularly described himself in his inscriptions as "living in Maat" (truth, justice).

His hymns lay stress on not only the universality and oneness of God, but also His loving kindness for all creatures; they invite believers to enjoy nature and its beauties. Gp. Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience. (Moses and Monotheism, p. 81)

Thus, the glorious Psalm 104 to this One God appears as very much a transcription of the great Hymn to Aten (found in the tomb of Ay, cut into the cliffs overlooking the ruined city Akhetaten, the city built to honour the one God.)[2] Akhenaten himself surely composed that hymn, Psalm 104 - but as an outcast and an exile and no longer the mighty Pharaoh. Before these events, the Hebrew tribes did not have monotheism.

The idea of one god had developed, Freud suggested, as the huge expanse of the Egyptian empire came to stretch from the Nile across to the Euphrates, during the 18^th dynasty. That was the largest empire, ever known. The Aten-god of Egypt was not bloodthirsty, did not want sacrifice:

We may surely say that Jahve was quite unlike the Mosaic God. Aton had been a pacifist, like his deputy on earth or rather his model the Pharaoh Ikhnaton, who looked on with folded arms as the Empire his ancestors had won fell to pieces. For a people that was preparing to conquer new lands by violence Jahve was certainly better suited. Moreover, what was worthy of honour in the Mosaic God was beyond the comprehension of a primitive people.

Aton had begun his reign in Egypt in a happy period of security, and even when the Empire began to shake in its foundations his followers had been able to turn away from worldly matters and to continue praising and enjoying his creations. To the Jewish people fate dealt a series of severe trials and painful experiences, so their God became hard, relentless and, as it were, wrapped in gloom. (p.103)

Freud viewed these two incompatible aspects of the Jewish deity:

The god Jahve, to whom the Midianite Moses led a new people, was probably in no way a remarkable being. A rude, narrow-minded local god, violent and blood-thirsty, he had promised his adherents to give them " a land flowing with milk and honey " and he encouraged them to rid the country of its present inhabitants " with the edge of the sword. "

During the centuries since then the Levites had become one with the people or with the priesthood and it had become the main task of the priests to develop and supervise the ritual, besides caring for the holy texts and revising them in accordance with their purposes. But was not all this sacrifice and ceremonial at bottom only magic and black art, such as the old doctrine of Moses had unconditionally condemned ? (p.80, 82)

The Egyptian origin of their monotheism came to be, as Freud said, ‘something which the Jewish priesthood had certainly forgotten.’ p107.

In Verse 22 of Genesis we first encounter the nightmare-horror logic of Judaism:

And your people will live in cities that they will take from their enemies. Every nation on the earth will be blessed through your descendants.(22:17-18)

At least the first part of that prediction has come to pass.

This nightmare-god had moods when He wished to undo Creation. “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” (Genesis, 6:7)

Freud was spot-on with the timing of the Exodus – ‘We have placed the Exodus from Egypt in the time after the extinction of the Eighteenth Dynasty’ (p.78). He mistakenly believed that Akhenaten had died when he abdicated, after 17 years of rule - but, no tomb or mummy of his remains has ever been found. Freud was surely correct in his view about the Levites:

He (the Egyptian Moses) must have brought his retinue with him, his nearest adherents, his scribes, his servant. These were the original Levites. Tradition maintains that Moses was a Levite. This seems a transparent distortion of the actual state of affairs: the Levites were Moses’ people. (p.62)

Freud found Egyptian names ‘only among the Levites’ in the Hebrew texts, whereby he derived this conclusion. He never apprehended that Moses was Akhenaten himself, which would have further vindicated this view. Freud understood that the Hebrew name for God  ‘Adonai’ derived from Aten:

We have already mentioned that Jewish ritual ordains a certain economy in the use of the name of God. Instead of Jahve they had to say Adonai. 

 - and he surmised that this change was a result of the Egyptian Moses’ arrival on the scene.
     Freud died shortly after this book was published in English.

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[1] Freud, Moses and Monotheism, 1951, p.56

[2] For these two as the same hymn, see Moses and Akhenaten, Brothers in Alms, by Ted Loukes, 2015, pp.260-266.

What is a Semite?

Noah had three sons (Genesis 10:1) after the flood; from one of which, Shem, there derives the word ‘Semitic’ – according to the Oxford Dictionary. One descendent of Shem is Abram (11:26) - i.e. he’s a semite.

The first son of Noah was Japheth, and his descendents include ‘Ashkenaz’. The Jews of Europe many centuries ago decided to call themselves Ashkenazi, indicating that they believed they had descended from that lineage. So they are not semites. From the second son of Noah the line of descent goes to ‘Mizraim’ and the Egyptian Jews decided long ago to name themselves in this way, as Mizraim Jews. This applies to north African jews, (‘Sephardic’).

Modern Israel is mainly composed of Ashkernazi and Mizraim Jews, which means that only a small proportion maybe 10% or less of its citizens are what, based on the Bible, should be called semitic.

One of Shem’s descendants is called Eber, from whom the ‘Hebrews’ come. Thus The Book of Genesis alludes to Abram as ‘Abram the Hebrew’ (14:13). So he is both a Hebrew and a semite.

God makes his big promise to Abram, that his descendents will be as many as the stars in the sky (15:5). Near the river Jordan, He promises to give to Abraham’s descendants all the land that he can see – let’s say, a hundred square kilometres (13:15).

We eagerly await to hear who his lucky descendents will be - as Hebrews and/or semites - to gain this God-given inheritance. 

When Abraham and his wife Sarah were quite old, his first son Ishmael was born, from whom descend the twelve tribes of Arabia (17:20).

When the couple journey into Egypt they meet the pharaoh - on account of the beauty of Sarah: '...when Abram came into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.' (12:15)

'When the palace officials saw her, they sang her praises to Pharaoh, their king, and Sarai was taken into his palace.'

She's taken to the pharaoh who marries her.  Abraham offers his wife to the Pharaoh, explaining that she’s his sister (she is, it’s incest, they had the same father). We quote Ahmed Osman here: 'The Hebrew original makes clear that the marriage between pharaoh and Sarai had already taken place. that is why Abram was given Sarai's dowry.'  (Stranger in the valley of the Kings' Osman p,39) Surely the beauty of Sarai in the eyes of the pharaoh, is evidence that she was fertile for him. But, the Pharaoh's marital bliss is soon interrupted, as God denounces him for taking another man’s wife and some divine punishment begins.

Abram soon gets back his wife/sister and the two exit from Egypt, he being then a hundred years old (21:5). Sarah then has a child, Isaac, and it’s not too hard to guess to whom it belongs. The Talmud, an oral-tradition text, has people scoffing at Abraham because the child did not look like him[1]. Eventually he cannot bear it any longer, and takes the child to an altar to sacrifice him (Genesis 22) - but God stays his hand, and Isaac lives. 

Again we quote Ahmed Osman: 'The critical question, upon which everything else turns, is; Who was Isaac's father?' (p.41)

What is the point of this whole story? The point is, we suggest, that the grandson of Isaac, Joseph, can go into Egypt and get along with everyone there, and become the grand vizier, i.e. top advisor to the pharaoh. He can do that because he has got Egyptian blood in him. Indeed he has got royal blood - that of the pharaoh.

Abraham is given 'the covenant of circumcision - and here the Bible conceals the fact that circumcision was normal in Egypt long before the Hebrews started doing it. Every male child in Egypt was circumcised. Why would it conceal this fact?

'And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth' (Acts 7:8)

 That is evidence for the Egyptian princely lineage coming through there, that the Egyptian practice of circumcision  is here used - for the first time as given in the Bible - on Isaac, son of the (unspecified) pharaoh.

If you don't want to believe this, and accept instead the usual version, then the tale is merely silly and sordid: Abram pimps out his wife, 'God' colludes, and Abram in return gets a load of gold and silver. Do you really want to believe that?

Its worse than that: do you want to believe in a god who magically causes a hundred year old man to become fertile, and then inseminates his own sister? And then, for no reason, the Deity describes an operation called 'circumcision.' to be performed upon the child? Do you want to believe in a god who advocates incest?

The promise made by the deity to Abraham about his wife was: 'I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her."' (17:16) That did indeed come to pass - if we accept Ahmed Osman's argument, that Joseph when he came into Egypt married into the royal dynasty. Its an epic tale, as a result of which, four pharaohs had Hebrew blood - and this caused such a disturbance that they were blotted out from historical memory for three thousand years! Hebrew scribes were concerned to draw a veil over this marvellous process - i.e., where their 'Moses' had come from - but then, how could they claim that the prophecy has been fulfilled? They did so by making up the fictional and nonexistent kingdoms of David and Solomon - but that is another story. 

 Isaac has two children and they have a row about the birthright that is inherited from their father. What birthright was that? Were they not just nomadic shepherds? Only if Isaac had princely blood in him, would that make sense.

Returning to our original theme, what is a semite? The twelve tribes of Israel descended from Isaac. We conclude that, any divine promise was given to Abraham, concerning his descendants, applied to Ishmael but not Isaac. It is the descendants of Ishmael who have to be the semites and Hebrews and maybe they deserve to inherit that divinely-promised plot?

  

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[1] Quoted by Ahmed Osman, Stranger in the Valley of the Kings, 1987, p.41.

Deconstructing Hebrew History

Are Hebrews unique in having created a fictional version of their own past? An important article by Catherine Frisk on Veterans Today well evaluates the

current state of our knowledge, and we here quote extensively from it.

Was the Temple of Solomon destroyed in 586 BC – and are Jews about to knock down the Islamic Temple on the Rock to re-build it? That could trigger WW3.

But did that temple ever exist, in Jerusalem – indeed, did King Solomon ever exist?

Is the whole Jewish dream of a Greater Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, just history stolen from the Egyptians? Were the Hebrews just obscure hill tribesmen, who centuries later developed a talent for fictional history?

King David and King Solomon are the big names here, and did they have a mighty kingdom three thousand years ago – or not?

Israeli Zionists claim they have the right to build a third temple in line with “scriptural prophecies” to follow the tradition of the first and second ones built in ancient times.”

Over and above the political implications of this story, historians and archaeologists are having a problem with this whole concept, first and foremost because it appears that there never was a first temple, neither was “king David” the powerful ruler he is claimed to be. Little to no evidence after 70 years has been found for the building of the first temple, either inside of Jerusalem or in references to it in surrounding countries.

This is indeed the problem.

The concept of a “Greater Israel” historically does not apply to Judea but to Egypt that ruled from the Nile to the Euphrates river. 

Here we’re talking about the 18^th Dynasty of Egypt, which had the greatest empire ever known, including what is now Syria and Israel. We especially focus upon Amenhotep III in the 14^th century BC. He was the father of Akhenaten, the ‘rebel’ pharaoh who invented monotheism. King Solomon ‘in all his glory’ was probably that pharaoh.

...any land promised to Abraham for grazing rights by “god,” who in all likelihood was the Pharaoh of Egypt… 

Abraham gets the big promise from the deity, of land that he will have.

The agreement was cemented due to Joseph’s marriage to the Egyptian princess Asinath and his high status in the house of the “god” as steward to the king and master of the horse. Due to the family bond that now existed between the royal house of Egypt and Joseph the grazing rights bequeathed to Abraham now became legal tender and land rights, which Joshua the the great grandson of Joseph apportioned to each of the twelve tribes.

Joseph historically enters into the land of Egypt and becomes Vizier (chief advisor) to the Pharaoh. This is where real history begins in the Book of genesis: Egyptian records corroborate that historic event. (..)

I was not surprised during the “Arab Spring” that one of targets of the looting that went on in the Cairo Museum at the time, was the mummies of Yuya and Tuya, who many scholars have identified as the Biblical Joseph and his wife Asinath.

It is a terrible thing, if the mummy of the man Joseph, buried in the Valley of the Kings,  has been damaged – so well has it been preserved for thirty-three centuries..

The time spent in the wilderness coincides with the battles that were fought between the Egyptians and the Hittites between the rule of the military generals Horemheb and Ramses 11.

This period is the beginning of the 19^th dynasty, and is indeed the period of the Exodus etc., (from Ahmed Osman’s researches)

Moses and Joshua converted them to the monotheism that they had adopted from Ahkenaten. It is highly possible that the battles recorded in the Bible by Joshua, were in fact the battles fought by the Egyptians against the Hittites across the land of Palestine. 

She is here expressing the view first put forward by Sigmund Freud in his Moses and Monotheism, that Moses absorbed his monotheism from Akhenaten. A different view is here advocated, that they were the same person: Akhenaten became Moses. 

Comparisons with Egyptian texts suggest that many of the passages in Psalms and Proverbs were copied from similar Egyptian poetry during the time of Amenhotep III.

Yes indeed, especially the Psalm 104 which expresses Akhenaten’s vision of One God (Aten = Adon, ‘Adonai’ = my God).

All the evidence so far points to the first temple never having been built and that the kings of Judea were minor chieftans whose loyalty was subject to the countries that surrounded them.

 The concept of a “Greater Israel” historically does not apply to Judea but to Egypt, and although Abraham and Joseph were given land rights, they were still subjects of the Pharaoh.

Monotheism after all, was an Egyptian concept conceived by Akhenaton and adopted by Moses and Joshua, including the ten commandments which were copied and duplicated from the “Egyptian Coming Forth of Day.” Their “god” was similar to the Egyptian Amen-Ra. And Hebrew prayers ended with the word Amen. Their ancestor Joseph had also once been part of the royal household.

 Throughout history the Egyptians, unlike the Canaanites in Gehenna or the Babylonians, were not known for blood sacrifice in either human or animal form… Here is one example of many of Egyptian influence. Archaeologists Unearth 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Artifacts In Israeli Cave:

“Archeologists, working in an underground cave in southern Israel, found 3,000-year-old Egyptian artifacts left behind by robbers…“Egyptian authority was not only manifested in political and military control, but was a strong cultural influence that contributed to shaping society,” Dr. Amir Golani from IAA said, according to the Jerusalem Post, adding: “Along with an administration of Egyptian officials in Israel, a group of the local elite evolved in the country who adopted many of the Egyptian customs and their artistry.

 No archaeological evidence has yet been found for the building of the first temple in Jerusalem. This could be due to one of two factors. 1. Either it was never built and the texts referring to it and Solomon were copied from Egyptian texts, which leads us to Amenhotep III, or 2. It was completely destroyed right down to its foundations and nothing remained. No evidence, no proof, means no legal claim to the temple Mount.

“A stunning parallel to Solomon’s Temple has been discovered in northern Syria. The temple at ‘Ain Dara has far more in common with the Jerusalem Temple described in the Book of Kings than any other known building.

Again in spite of the war in Syria, the destruction of their antiquities, the damage done to their ancient temples, no documentation has been found, no correspondence between the Kings of Judea and the surrounding nations, no artifact and no evidence of a temple built in Jerusalem according to the dimensions given in the Biblical texts or of the whereabouts of the treasures of that temple and the Ark Of The Covenant in particular. There are many who think that there never will be. In every ancient civilization other than Judea, archaeological evidence, textual references and the remains of temples back up historical and religious records. The temple in Jerusalem so far has no such reference either inside of Jerusalem or outside of it.

Its fiction, a fictional tale. Hebrews never laid siege to the big cities of Syria.

Unless something emerges in the future, the conclusion that we have to come to is that the texts were either Egyptian describing an Egyptian temple during the time of Amenhotep III that was situated in Northern Syria, as the poetry and prose of Proverbs and Psalms suggests, or that the temple was Syrian built by the Mitanni 

 if there was an Ark of any type, it was the house of the “god” who was worshiped in the Syrian temple, similar to the Egyptian Arks that housed their gods and was not necessarily the repository of the ten commandments or the monotheistic god of Moses and Joshua. All things considered so far, the Ark Of The Covenant was never in the temple in Jerusalem. It was kept in the Tabernacle temple in the hills of Ephraim and after the Assyrian invasion was transported to the island of Elephantine. The Ark never returned to Israel nor was it installed in the “second temple,” built in Jerusalem.

The first Bishop of the early Christian church was James the Righteous, the brother of Jesus who in the opening paragraphs of his epistle makes no mention of the “King of the Jews” but instead says:

“James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.”