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 18th 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 is one
more image of her, found at Luxor.
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 19th 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 3rd 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 18th 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 19th dynasty of Egypt
was initiated.
Here is the
main dynasty-sequence that concerns us:
18th 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
……………
19th
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 18th 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 3rd
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.
[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.
[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.
