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?

---

[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.