by
Damien F. Mackey
“… the
Amen-em-hat [I] who was the FOUNDER OF THE TWELFTH DYNASTY … makes NO
PRETENSION TO ROYAL ORIGIN, and the probability would seem to be that he
attained the throne NOT THROUGH ANY CLAIM OF RIGHT,
but by his
own personal merits”.
History of Ancient Egypt
Eduard Meyer, the
father of the “Sothic” theory mangling, was one (amongst many) who would deny
the very existence of Moses and his work. We read this information in the
Preface to Martin Buber’s book, Moses (1946): “In the
year 1906 Eduard Meyer, a well-known historian, expressed the view that Moses
was not a historical personality. He further remarked”:
After
all, with the exception of those who accept tradition bag and baggage as
historical truth, not one of those who treat [Moses] as a historical reality
has hitherto been able to fill him with any kind of content whatever, to depict
him as a concrete historical figure, or to produce anything which he could have
created or which could be his historical work.
One could reply to this that, thanks to Berlin School Meyer’s own confusing
rearrangement of Egyptian chronology, an artificial ‘Berlin Wall’ has been
raised preventing scholars from making the crossing between the text book
Egyptology and a genuine biblical history and archaeology.
Admittedly Moses -
not a native Egyptian, but a Hebrew fully educated in Egyptian wisdom (Acts
7:22): “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was
powerful in speech and action” - has been most difficult for historians to
identify in the Egyptian records. Impossible for conventional historians
(thanks to the likes of Eduard Meyer), who will always be searching in the
wrong historico-archaeological period, but also difficult for revisionists. For
more on this, see e.g. my series:
If any revisionist historian had placed himself in a good position,
chronologically, to identify in the Egyptian records the patriarch Joseph, then
it was Dr. Donovan Courville, who had, in The Exodus Problem and its
Ramifications, I and II (1971), proposed that Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms
were contemporaneous. That radical move on his part might have enabled
Courville to bring the likeliest candidate for Joseph, the Vizier Imhotep of
the Third Dynasty, into close proximity with the Twelfth Dynasty – the dynasty
that revisionists most favour for the era of Moses.
According to John D. Keyser (http://www.hope-of-israel.org/dynastyo.html):
Some
say the Israelites labored in Egypt during the 6th Dynasty; while others claim
the dynasty of the oppression was the 19th. Still others proclaim the 18th to
be the one -- or the period of the Hyksos rulers of Egypt!” Keyser then
concludes: “By turning to the Bible and examining the works of early
historians, the dynasty of the oppression becomes very apparent to those who
are seeking the TRUTH with an open mind!
Keyser’s theory here is sound. However, it turns out to be
much more difficult to realise in practice.
Concerning “the period of the Hyksos rulers of Egypt”,
mentioned here by Keyser, there is at least one very good reason why some have
fastened onto it. It is because chariots - seemingly lacking to early Egypt -
are thought to have become abundant at the time of the Hyksos conquest (c. 1780
BC, conventional dating).
The Pharaoh of the Exodus, we are told, pursued the fleeing
Israelites with 600 war chariots (Exodus 14:7): “[Pharaoh] took six hundred of
the best chariots, along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers
over all of them”.
That incident would have occurred in 1533 BC according to P.
Mauro’s estimate (The Wonders of Bible
Chronology) - a date estimate that will ultimately need significant
lowering in light of a revised Persian-Greek history.
Yet, about two centuries earlier than that, we find Joseph
riding in “a chariot” (Genesis 41:43): “[Pharaoh] had [Joseph] ride in a
chariot as his second-in-command, and people shouted before him, ‘Make way!’
Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt”.
A plausible explanation for Joseph’s “chariot” can be found
at:
The enigma of chariots in the 3rd dynasty of Egypt is easily explained
….
The Bible records that Joseph was given a chariot to
travel through Egypt.
If Joseph and Imhotep were the same
person, this would mean that chariots existed in Egypt as early as
the third dynasty.
In the third dynasty, only high officials
like the pharaoh and his chancellor / sage / vizier were afforded a chariot to
travel in.
Chariots in the 3rd dynasty were not
horse drawn, they were carried by a procession of servants.
The Hebrew word ‘merkabah’ in
the Bible can be translated as ‘chariot’ or ‘riding seat’.
It does not distinguish between a vehicle that is horse drawn or a
vehicle that is carried.
In Joseph’s time, this word is better
translated as ‘Riding Seat’ as there were no horse drawn Chariots with wheels
in the third dynasty. ….
It is what we might call a palanquin.
King Solomon used one (Song of Solomon 3:9): “King Solomon
made himself a palanquin [or sedan chair] of the wood of Lebanon”.
I presume that when, later, Genesis 50:9, referring to the
funeral procession of Jacob, father of Joseph, tells that: “Chariots and
horsemen also went up with him. It was a very large company”, we may need still
to separate the “chariots” from the “horsemen”. Though Anne Habermehl has
offered a different view of all of this (“REVISING THE EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY:
JOSEPH AS IMHOTEP, AND AMENEMHAT IV AS PHARAOH OF THE EXODUS”:
Secular history books
are unanimous in claiming that horses were introduced into Egypt only during
the time of the Hyksos rule in the 15th Dynasty, after the Exodus (Bourriau, 2003, p.
202). However, the Bible says that the pharaoh gave Joseph his second-best
chariot for travel throughout Egypt (Gen. 41:43), and we would expect that it
was pulled by horses, although it does not say so. Certainly, 26 years later,
when Joseph buried his father in Canaan, there were chariots and horsemen in
the crowd that accompanied him (Gen. 50:9). This pushes horses in Egypt back to
the 3rd Dynasty, a not
impossible situation because there is evidence of horses in Nahal Tillah
(northern Negev, not a great distance from Egypt) in predynastic times
(Aardsma, 2007). In addition, the pharaoh of the Exodus had a large number of
chariots at his command when he pursued the Children of Israel at the end of
the 12th Dynasty (Ex. 14:7–9).
Things would be much more straightforward if we were talking
about Mesopotamia for which, by contrast, we have very early evidence of
chariots - going back as far as 2500 BC (conventional dating). See e.g.: https://traveltoeat.com/chariots-the-first-wheels-of-war/
Based on the extensive biblical evidence, it should be
possible to find abundant traces of Moses both in history and in mythology,
for, according to Exodus 11:3: “… the man Moses was very great in the land of
Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people”.
More sympathetic to Moses and the biblical Patriarchs was the Hellenistic
Jewish author, Artapanus (C2nd BC, conventional dating), who claimed in περὶ ʾΙουδαίων (“On the Jews”), some
extraordinary innovations and inventions by the Patriarchs and Moses, as
described at (http://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/artapanus):
The purpose of
this work was to prove that the foundations of Egyptian culture were laid by
Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. When Abraham came to Egypt, he taught the
pharaoh (Pharethothes or Pharetones) the science of astrology. Jacob
established the Egyptian temples at Athos and Heliopolis. Joseph was appointed
viceroy of all Egypt and initiated Egyptian agrarian reforms to ensure that the
powerful would not dispossess the weak and the poor of their fields. He was the
first to divide the country and demarcate its various boundaries. He turned
arid areas into arable land, distributed land among the priests, and also
introduced standard measures for which he became popular among the Egyptians
(Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 9:23). But the one who excelled all
was Moses, whom Artapanus identifies with Musaeus, teacher of Orpheus, and with
Hermes-Thoth, god of Egyptian writing and culture. The name Hermes was given to
Moses by the priests who revered him for his wisdom and paid him divine homage.
Moses founded the arts of building, shipping, and weaponry, as well as Egyptian
religion and philosophy. He was also the creator of hieroglyphic writing. In
addition, he divided the city into 36 wards and assigned to each its god for
worship. Moses was the founder of the cult of Apis the Bull and of Ibis. All
these accomplishments of Moses aroused the jealousy of King Kheneferis, father
of Maris, Moses' foster mother. He tried to kill Moses, but failed.
Here, undoubtedly, we have an interesting blend of fantasy and
reality.
We have previously read that the famous account of baby Moses
placed in a basket on the river bank (Exodus 2:2-10) was re-visited later in legends
about the mighty Sargon of Akkad, who actually pre-dated Moses by some
centuries.
At: http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/Content/Detail/7 we read: “The parallel lives of Sargon and Moses are intriguing. Both were born
to Semite mothers. Both were placed in reed baskets lined with pitch and
set afloat. Both were reared in the homes of non Semites, one Sumerian,
the other Egyptian. As young men, both became part of their respective
royal courts. Both confronted rulers. And both became mighty leaders
over a great nation”.
For my explanation
of this, see e.g. my article:
Did Sargon of Akkad influence
the Exodus account of the baby Moses?
https://www.academia.edu/35752394/Did_Sargon_of_Akkad_influence_the_Exodus_account_of_the_baby_Moses
Background to Birth of Moses
About sixty-four
(64) years are estimated to have elapsed from the death of Joseph at age 110
(1677 BC) to the birth of Moses (1613 BC): P. Mauro’s dates.
That phase of time
would probably be sufficient to explain why it is said of the Pharaoh of the
Oppression (Exodus 1:8): “Now there arose
a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph”. The great Imhotep (Joseph) –
surely this “new” pharaoh ‘knew’ of him!
The Hebrew (לֹא-יָדַע) here, translated as “did not know”, can also mean
something along the lines of ‘did not take notice of’, which is not surprising
if more than half a century had elapsed.
Moreover, as we are going to
find out from the testimony of Josephus, the crown of Egypt had at this stage
passed into ‘a new family’.
King Solomon, though, many centuries later, will be scathing
in his Book of Wisdom about the Egyptian ingratitude (19:13-17):
On the sinners, however, punishments
rained down not without violent thunder as early warning; and they suffered
what their own crimes had justly deserved since they had shown such bitter
hatred to foreigners.
Others, indeed, had
failed to welcome strangers who came to them, but the Egyptians had enslaved
their own guests and benefactors.
The sinners, moreover,
will certainly be punished for it, since they gave the foreigners a hostile
welcome; but the latter, having given a festive reception to
people who already shared the same rights as themselves, later overwhelmed them
with terrible labours.
Hence they were struck
with blindness, like the sinners at the gate of the upright, when, yawning
darkness all around them, each had to grope his way through his own door.
Now, if I have been correct in
setting Joseph to a revised Third (Old) and Eleventh (Middle) Egyptian phase,
then the “new king” of Exodus 1:8, presumably a dynastic founder, would likely
be the first ruler of the Fourth (Old) and the first ruler of the Twelfth
(Middle) kingdom[s].
Beginning with the Fourth
Dynasty, the “new king” would be none other than Khufu (Cheops), best-known
pharaoh because of his Great Pyramid at Giza (Gizeh).
Yet, for all this, he is
surprisingly, unknown.
In fact, we have only one tiny
statuette representation of pharaoh Khufu.
“Although the Great
pyramid has such fame, little is actually known about its builder, Khufu.
Ironically, only a very small statue of 9 cm has been found depicting
this historic ruler. This statue … was not found in Giza near the
pyramid, but was found to the south at the Temple of Osiris at Abydos, the
ancient necropolis”. http://www.guardians.net/egypt/khufu.htm
Thus Khufu, like the seemingly
great, yet poorly known, pharaoh Zoser, at the time of Joseph, is crying out
for an alter ego.
And that we get, quite
abundantly, I believe, in the person of Amenemhet [Amenemes] I, the founder of
the mighty Twelfth Dynasty, Moses’s dynasty.
John D. Keyser has, with this useful piece of research,
arrived at the same conclusion as mine, that Amenemhet I was the Book of
Exodus’s “new king” (op. cit.):
In
the works of Flavius Josephus (1st-century A.D. Jewish historian) we read the
following:
Now
it happened that the Egyptians grew delicate and lazy, as to painstaking; and
gave themselves up to other pleasures, and in particular to the love of gain.
They also became VERY ILL AFFECTED TOWARDS THE HEBREWS, as touched with envy at
their prosperity; for when they saw how the nation of the Israelites
flourished, and were become eminent already in plenty of wealth, which they had
acquired by their virtue and natural love of labour, they thought their
increase was to their own detriment; and having, in length of time, forgotten
the benefits they had received from Joseph, PARTICULARLY THE CROWN BEING NOW
COME INTO ANOTHER FAMILY, they became very abusive to the Israelites, and
contrived many ways of afflicting them; FOR THEY ENJOINED THEM TO CUT A GREAT
NUMBER OF CHANNELS [CANALS] FOR THE RIVER [NILE], AND TO BUILD WALLS FOR THEIR
CITIES AND RAMPARTS, THAT THEY MIGHT RESTRAIN THE RIVER, AND HINDER ITS WATERS
FROM STAGNATING, UPON ITS RUNNING OVER ITS OWN BANKS: THEY SET THEM ALSO TO
BUILD PYRAMIDS, and by all this wore them out; and forced them to learn all
sorts of mechanical arts, and to accustom themselves to hard labour. And FOUR
HUNDRED YEARS [sic] did they spend under these afflictions.... (Antiquities
of the Jews, chap. IX, section 1).
Within
this passage from Josephus lie several CLUES that will help us to determine the
dynasty of the oppression of the Israelites.
The Change of
Rulership
Josephus
mentions that one of the reasons the Egyptians started to mistreat the
Israelites was because “THE CROWN [HAD]...NOW COME INTO ANOTHER FAMILY.” Does
Egyptian history reveal a time when the crown of Egypt passed into the hands of
a totally unrelated family? Indeed it does!
In
the Leningrad museum lies a papyrus of the 12th DYNASTY, composed during the
reign of its FIRST KING AMENEMHET I. The papyrus is in the form of a PROPHECY
attributed to the sage Nefer-rehu of the time of King Snefru; and in it an
amazing prediction is made:
A
king shall come from the south, called AMUNY [shortened form of the name
Amenemhet], the son of a woman of Nubia, and born in Upper Egypt....He shall
receive the White Crown, he shall wear the Red Crown [will become ruler over
ALL Egypt]....the people of his time shall rejoice, THE SON OF SOMEONE shall
make his name for ever and ever....The Asiatics shall fall before his carnage,
and the Libyans shall fall before his flame....There shall be built the ‘WALL
OF THE PRINCE [RULER],’ and the Asiatics shall not (again) be suffered to go
down into Egypt.
Here
the NON-ROYAL DESCENT of Amenemhet I. is clearly indicated, for the phrase “son
of Someone” was a common way of designating a man of good, though not princely
or royal, birth. According to George Rawlinson: “There is NO INDICATION OF ANY
RELATIONSHIP between the kings of the twelfth and those of the eleventh
dynasty; and it is a conjecture not altogether improbable, that the Amen-em-hat
who was the FOUNDER OF THE TWELFTH DYNASTY was descended from THE FUNCTIONARY
OF THE SAME NAME, who under Mentuhotep II. [of the previous dynasty] executed
commissions of importance. At any rate, he makes NO PRETENSION TO ROYAL ORIGIN,
and the probability would seem to be that he attained the throne NOT THROUGH
ANY CLAIM OF RIGHT, but by his own personal merits. (History of Ancient
Egypt. Dodd, Mead and Co., N.Y. 1882, pp.146-147).
“His
own personal merits” probably included conspiracy: “We have to suppose that at
a given moment he CONSPIRED AGAINST HIS ROYAL MASTER [last king of the 11th
Dynasty], and perhaps after some years of confusion mounted the throne IN HIS
PLACE. A recent discovery lends colour to this hypothesis. A Dyn. XVIII
inscription extracted from the third pylon at Karnak names after Nebhepetre and
Sankhkare a ‘GOD’S FATHER’ SENWOSRE who from his title can only have been the
NON-ROYAL PARENT of Ammenemes I [Greek form of Amenemhet].” (Egypt of the
Pharaohs, by Sir Alan Gardiner. Oxford University Press, England. 1961,
p.125).
The
inscriptions on the monuments make it clear that his elevation to the throne of
Egypt was no peaceful hereditary succession, but a STRUGGLE for the crown and
scepter that continued for some time. He fought his way to the throne, and was
accepted as king only because he triumphed over his rivals. After the fight was
ended and the towns of Egypt subdued, the new pharaoh began to extend the borders
of Egypt.
The
fact that the 12th Dynasty was a “maverick” dynasty -- one that did not conform
to the royal blood line of the pharaohs -- was well known in the 18th Dynasty.
According to information provided by the family pedigrees in several tombs of
the 18th Dynasty, and by texts engraved or painted on certain objects of a
sepulchral nature, the ANCESTOR of the royal family of this dynasty was
worshiped in the person of the old Pharaoh MENTUHOTEP OF THE 11th DYNASTY, the
57th king of the great Table of Abydos. The royal family of the 18th Dynasty
considered the dynasty of Amenemhet I. to be an aberration!
According
to Henry Brugsch: “The transmission of the PURE BLOOD of Mentuhotep to the king
Amosis (Aahmes) of the EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY was made by the hereditary princess
Aahmes-Nofertari (‘the beautiful consort of Aahmes’), who married the said
king, and whose issue was regarded as the LEGITIMATE RACE of the Pharaohs of
the house of Mentuhotep.” (A History of Egypt Under the Pharaohs.
Second edition. John Murray, London. 1881, p. 314).
Thus,
with the ascension of Amenemhet I. of the 12th Dynasty, the crown had “NOW COME
INTO ANOTHER FAMILY”.
Anne Habermehl, too, has opted for Amenemhet I as the first
Pharaoh of the Oppression, whilst properly realising that such an
identification will present (Twelfth) dynastic complications (“Revising the
Egyptian Chronology”):
The
start of a new dynasty usually indicated a break of some kind, and we could
even wonder whether the pharaoh “who knew not Joseph” (Ex. 1:8) was the first
of the 12th Dynasty, Amenemhat I. Historians believe that this
pharaoh overthrew the one that preceded him, and had no royal blood (Gardiner,
1964, pp. 125 –26). He would indeed have qualified as a pharaoh who did not
continue the previous customs with respect to Joseph’s family, the Children of
Israel.
The implications of this choice for the “new king”, though,
would likely mean that Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty needs to be shortened, as I have
long realised. Thus Habermehl continues: “However, this would have
ramifications for the length of the 12th Dynasty, which would have
to be drastically telescoped; the secular chronology currently allots about 200
years from its beginning to the end of the reign of Amenemhat III (Shaw, 2003,
p. 482)”.
The possibility of any such radical shortening of the 12th
dynasty will be seriously considered as we proceed.
As with the revision of Abram (Abraham), slightly less so
perhaps with Joseph, there are some compelling historico-archaeological
features in support of our revised era for Moses - this being, in the case of
Moses, during Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty (so-called Middle Kingdom).
We also need to fill it out, though - as in the case of Joseph
- with its Old Kingdom ‘other face’.
I have mentioned Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty, and shall return
to him soon, but I find a more ready and striking alter ego for
Amenemhet I in the founder of the Sixth Dynasty, Teti.
As I have written previously:
Starting at the beginning of the 6th
dynasty, with pharaoh Teti, we have found that he has such striking likenesses
to the founder of the 12th dynasty, Amenemhet (Amenemes) I, that I
have had no hesitation in identifying ‘them’ as one. Thus I wrote in my “Bible
Bending” article:
Pharaoh Teti Reflects Amenemes I
…. These characters may have, it seems,
been dupli/triplicated due to the messy arrangement of conventional Egyptian
history.
Further most likely links with the 6th
dynasty are the likenesses between the latter’s founder, Teti, and Amenemes I,
as pointed out by historians. Despite the little that these admit to knowing of
pharaoh Teti - and the fact that they would have him (c. 2300 BC) well
pre-dating the early 12th dynasty (c. 1990 BC) - historians have noted that
pharaoh Teti shared some common features with Amenemes I, including the same
throne name, Sehetibre,
the same Horus name, Sehetep-tawy (“He
who pacifies the Two Lands”), and the likelihood that death came in similarly
through assassination.
This triplicity appears to me to be
another link between the ‘Old’ and ‘Middle’ kingdoms!”
But
Amenemhet I combined with Teti - shaping up remarkably well as the “new king”
of Exodus 1:8 - may need further yet to include the alter ego of the
Fourth Dynasty’s Khufu. Though, as noted
earlier, “we have only one tiny statuette representation of pharaoh Khufu”,
that one depiction of him finds a virtual ‘identical twin’ in a statue of Teti
I have viewed on the Internet (presuming that this statue has rightly been
labelled as Teti’s).
Linking the 4th, 6th
and 12th dynasties?
We
may be able to trace the rise of the 4th dynasty’s Khufu (Cheops) - whose full
name was Khnum-khuefui (meaning ‘Khnum is protecting me’) - to
the 6th dynasty, to the wealthy noble (recalling that the founding 12th
dynasty pharaoh “had no royal blood”) from Abydos in the south, called Khui. An
abbreviation of Khuefui?
This
Khui had a
daughter called Ankhenesmerire, in whose name are contained all the elements of
Mer-es-ankh, the first part of which, Meres, accords
phonetically with the name Eusebius gave for the Egyptian foster-mother of
Moses, “Merris”.
“Merris,
the wife of Chenephres, King of Upper Egypt; being childless, she pretended to
have given birth to [Moses] and brought him up as her own child. (Eusebius,
l.c. ix. 27)”.
Earlier,
we read a variation of this legend with “King Kheneferis [being the] … father of Maris, Moses'
foster mother”.
I
shall be taking this “Chenephres” (“Kheneferis”) to be pharaoh Chephren (Egyptian Khafra), the son
of Khufu, since Chephren had indeed married a Meresankh.
“We know of several of Khafre's wives,
including Meresankh … and his
chief wife, Khameremebty I”.
Apart
from neo-Assyrian literature picking up the biblical story of Moses and
re-applying it, restrospectively, to Sargon of Akkad, the story would also
become enshrined in later Greco-Roman accounts of Egyptian myth. Although, as
we have found, the ancient gods tend to have originated from major antediluvian
characters - and this may also apply to the Egyptian gods, Seth, Osiris, Isis
and Horus - Greco-Roman authors were wont to tell variant tales of them. This
is not the way “modern biblical scholarship” would explain it, however - as is
apparent from the following article by Gary Rendsburg, according to which the
Book of Exodus ‘borrowed’ from the pagan myths (http://forward.com/articles/9812/the-subversion-of-myth/):
A
major finding of modern biblical scholarship is the extent to which the
narrative in the book of Exodus is informed by the ancient Israelites’
knowledge of Egyptian culture, religion and literature. The birth story of
Moses in Exodus 2:1-10 provides an excellent illustration of both the extent of
and the transformation involved in such borrowing.
One
of the core myths of ancient Egypt concerned the gods Seth, Osiris, Isis and
Horus. Seth and Osiris were brother deities, the former representing evil and
chaos, the latter representing good and fertility. The battle between the two
resulted in the death of Osiris, but before he died Osiris had impregnated his
wife, Isis, goddess of wisdom and beauty. Isis in turn gave birth to Horus, the
falcon-headed god of kingship. When Seth learned that his brother Osiris’s
offspring had been born, he sought to kill the baby Horus. Isis prepared a
basket of reeds to hide him in the marshland of the Nile Delta, where she
suckled him and protected him, along with the watchful eye of her sister,
Nephthys, from the snakes, scorpions and other dangerous creatures until he
grew and prospered.
Scholars
have noted that the birth story of Moses is part of a larger motif of ancient
literature, namely the exposed-infant motif. The ancients delighted in telling
tales of their heroic leaders who at birth were exposed to nature, usually by
their parents who, for one reason or another, did not desire their newborn
sons. Among the most famous accounts are the stories of Oedipus from Greece and
Romulus and Remus from Rome, along with the less well known but equally
important story of Sargon of Akkad (in ancient Mesopotamia). There is a
difference, however, between the Moses story and the other exposed-infancy
narratives, for in Exodus, chapter two, the goal of Moses’ mother is not to be
rid of the child but to save him. This occurs elsewhere in ancient literature
only in the story of the baby Horus, whose mother, Isis, sought to protect him
from his wicked uncle, Seth. The Hebrew and Egyptian stories share this crucial
feature, which is lacking in the other parallels, and therefore beckon us to
read the former in the light of the latter.
The
list of specific features shared by the two accounts is truly remarkable. In
both stories, it is the mother who is the active parent (in the Egyptian
version, Osiris is dead; in the Hebrew account, Moses’ father is mentioned in
passing in Exodus 2:1, after which the role of the mother is highlighted). Both
mothers construct a small vessel of reeds and place the baby in the marshland
of the Delta. In both accounts, another female relative watches over the baby
(Nephthys in the Horus story; Miriam in the biblical account). Significantly,
in both stories the mother’s suckling of the child is emphasized: Isis’s
nursing of the baby Horus is a prominent feature of Egyptian artwork, with many
statues portraying this action; while in the biblical story, Miriam arranges
for Moses’ mother to nurse the child. Most importantly, in both stories the
baby is hidden and protected from the wicked machinations of the villain.
The
fact, noted briefly above, that Horus is the god of kingship is of critical
importance. It means that every pharaoh was considered the living embodiment of
Horus. ….
Thus,
if Moses is the baby in the bulrushes in the biblical account, he has become,
as it were, Horus, and thus the equivalent of the pharaoh. And if the pharaoh
of the biblical account is the one who commands that Hebrew baby boys be
drowned in the Nile, and who by extension seeks the death of the baby Moses,
then he has been transformed into the wicked Seth. The biblical author, in short,
subverts the foundational myth of ancient Egypt by portraying Moses as the good
Horus and by converting the pharaoh into the wicked Seth. Such subversions are
typical of the manner in which a weaker people (in our case, ancient Israel)
gains power, as it were, over the stronger nation (in our case, ancient Egypt).
The
story of Moses’ birth implies that not only did the author of our text possess
a thorough knowledge of ancient Egyptian culture, religion and literature, but
that his audience, or at least a significant portion thereof, did, as well. One
can imagine the ancient Israelite reader, conversant with all matters Egyptian,
delighting in such a tale portraying Moses, and not Horus or the pharaoh, as
the hero, and depicting the pharaoh not as the good force but as the evil force
identified with Seth.
But,
continuing our merging of kingdoms and dynasties, this family relationship may
again be duplicated in that the 6th dynasty pharaoh, Piops I
(Cheops?), had a daughter also called Ankhenesmerire, whom his son Merenre
married.
From
the 4th dynasty,
we gain certain elements that are relevant to the early career of Moses.
Firstly we have a strong founder-king, Cheops (Egyptian Khufu), builder of the
great pyramid at Giza, who would be an excellent candidate for the “new king”
during the infancy of Moses who set the Israelite slaves to work with crushing
labour (Exodus 1:8). This would support the testimony of Josephus that the
Israelites built pyramids for the pharaohs, and it would explain from whence
came the abundance of manpower for pyramid building. Cheap slave labour.
Thus
Josephus:
...
they became very abusive toward the Israelites, and contrived many ways of
afflicting them; for they enjoined them to cut a great number of channels for
the river, and to build walls for their cities and ramparts, that they might
restrain the river, and hinder its waters from stagnating, upon its running
over its banks: they set them also to build pyramids, and by all this wore them
out; and forced them to learn all sorts of mechanical arts, and to accustom
them to hard labor.
The
widespread presence of ‘Asiatics’ in Egypt at the time would help to explain
the large number of Israelites said to be in the land. Pharaoh would have used
as slaves other Syro-Palestinians, too, plus Libyans and Nubians. As precious
little, though, is known of Cheops, despite his being powerful enough to have
built one of the Seven Wonders of the World, we shall need to fill him out
later with his 12th dynasty alter ego.
In
Cheops’ daughter, Mer-es-ankh, we presumably have the Merris of
tradition who retrieved the baby Moses from the water. The name Mer-es-ankh
consists basically of two elements, Meres and ankh, the latter being the ‘life’
symbol for Egypt worn by people even today.
Mer-es-ankh
married Chephren (Egyptian, Khafra), builder
of the second Giza pyramid and probably, of the Great Sphinx. He would thus
have become Moses’s foster/father-in-law.
Moses,
now a thorough-going ‘Egyptian’ (cf. Exodus 2:19), must have been his loyal subject.
“Now Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became a man of power
both in his speech and in his actions”. (Acts 7:22) Tradition has Moses leading
armies for Chenephres as far as Ethiopia. Whilst this may seem a bit strained
in a 4th dynasty context, we shall find that it is perfectly appropriate in a
12th dynasty one, when we uncover Chephren’s alter ego.
From
the 12th dynasty,
we gain certain further elements that are relevant to the early era of
Moses. Once again we have a strong founder-king, Amenemhet I, who will enable
us to fill out the virtually unknown Cheops as the “new king” of Exodus 1:8.
The reign of Amenemhet I was, deliberately, an abrupt break with the past. The
beginning of the 12th dynasty marks not only a new dynasty, but an entirely new
order. Amenemhet I celebrated his accession by adopting the Horus name: Wehem-Meswt (“He
who repeats births”), thought to indicate that he was “the first of a new
line”, that he was “thereby consciously identifying himself as the inaugurator
of a renaissance, or new era in his country’s history”.
Amenemhet
I is thought actually to have been a commoner, originally from southern Egypt.
I
have thought to connect him to pharaoh Khufu via the nobleman from Abydos, Khui.
“The
Prophecy of Neferti”, relating to the time of Amenemhet I, shows the same
concern in Egypt for the growing presence of Asiatics in the eastern Delta as
was said to occupy the mind of the new pharaoh of Exodus, seeing the Israelites
as a political threat (1:9): “‘Look’, [pharaoh] said to his people, ‘the
Israelites have become far too numerous for us’.”
That
Asiatics were particularly abundant in Egypt at the time is apparent from this
information from the Cambridge Ancient
History: “The Asiatic inhabitants of the country at this period [of the
Twelfth Dynasty] must have been many times more numerous than has been
generally supposed ...”. Dr David Down gives the account of Sir Flinders Petrie
who, working in the Fayyûm in 1899, made the important discovery of the town of
Illahûn [Kahun], which Petrie described as “an unaltered town of the twelfth
dynasty”.
Of
the ‘Asiatic’ presence in this pyramid builders’ town, Rosalie David (who is in
charge of the Egyptian branch of the Manchester Museum) has written:
It
is apparent that the Asiatics were present in the town in some numbers, and
this may have reflected the situation elsewhere in Egypt. It can be stated that
these people were loosely classed by Egyptians as ‘Asiatics’, although their
exact home-land in Syria or Palestine cannot be determined .... The reason for
their presence in Egypt remains unclear.
Undoubtedly,
these ‘Asiatics’ were dwelling in Illahûn largely to raise pyramids for the
glory of the pharaohs. Is there any documentary evidence that ‘Asiatics’ in
Egypt acted as slaves or servants to the Egyptians? “Evidence is not lacking to
indicate that these Asiatics became slaves”, Dr. Down has written with
reference to the Brooklyn Papyrus. Egyptian households at this time were filled
with Asiatic slaves, some of whom bore biblical names. Of the
seventy-seven legible names of the servants of an Egyptian woman called
Senebtisi recorded on the verso of this document, forty-eight are (like the
Hebrews) NW Semitic. In fact, the name “Shiphrah” is identical to that borne by
one of the Hebrew midwives whom Pharaoh had commanded to kill the male babies
(Exodus 1:15).
“Asian
slaves, whether merchandise or prisoners of war, became plentiful in wealthy
Egyptian households [prior to the New Kingdom]”, we read in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica.
Amenemhet
I was represented in “The Prophecy of Neferti” - as with the “new king” of
Exodus 1:8 - as being the one who would set about rectifying the problem. To
this end he completely reorganised the administration of Egypt, transferring
the capital from Thebes in the south to Ithtowe in the north, just below the
Nile Delta. He allowed those nomarchs who supported his cause to retain their
power. He built on a grand scale. Egypt was employing massive slave labour, not
only in the Giza area, but also in the eastern Delta region where the
Israelites were said to have settled at the time of Joseph.
Professor
J. Breasted provided ample evidence to show that the powerful 12th dynasty
pharaohs carried out an enormous building program whose centre was in the Delta
region. More specifically, this building occurred in the eastern Delta region
which included the very area that comprised the land of Goshen where the
Israelites first settled.
“...
in the eastern part [of the Delta], especially at Tanis and Bubastis ...
massive remains still show the interest which the Twelfth Dynasty manifested in
the Delta cities”.
Today,
archaeologists recognise the extant remains of the construction under these
kings as representing a mere fraction of the original; the major part having
been destroyed by the vandalism of the New Kingdom pharaohs (such as Ramses
II).
The
Biblical account states that: “... they made their lives bitter with hard
bondage, in mortar and in brick”. (Exodus 1:14).
John Keyser, again, has written very interestingly, in a
compatibly revised context, of the oppressive pharaonic labour demands upon the
Israelite slaves, he now incorporating pharaoh Amenemhet III into the mix. Thus
Keyser has written (op.
cit.):
Josephus’
description of the type of labor the Israelites were forced to endure under the
new pharaoh is REMARKABLY SIMILAR to the observations of DIODORUS SICULUS, the
first-century B.C. Greek historian:
Moeris
... dug a lake of remarkable usefulness, though at a cost of INCREDIBLE TOIL.
Its circumference, they say, is 3,600 stades, its depth at most points fifty
fathoms. Who, then, on estimating the greatness of the construction, would not
reasonably ask HOW MANY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MEN MUST HAVE BEEN EMPLOYED [?],
AND HOW MANY YEARS THEY TOOK TO FINISH THEIR WORK? No one can adequately
commend the king’s design, which brings such usefulness and advantage to all
the dwellers in Egypt.
Since
the Nile kept NO DEFINITE BOUNDS in its rising, and the fruitfulness of the
country depended upon the river’s regularity, THE KING DUG THE LAKE TO
ACCOMMODATE THE SUPERFLUOUS WATER, SO THAT THE RIVER SHOULD NEITHER, WITH ITS
STRONG CURRENT, FLOOD THE LAND UNSEASONABLY AND FORM SWAMPS AND FENS, nor, by
rising less than was advantageous, damage the crops by lack of water. BETWEEN
THE RIVER AND THE LAKE HE CONSTRUCTED A CANAL 80 STADES IN LENGTH AND 300 FEET
IN BREADTH. Through this canal, at times he admitted the water of the river, at
other times he excluded it, thus providing the farmers with water at fitting
times by opening the inlet and again closing it scientifically and at great
expense. — The Pyramids of Egypt, by I.E.S. Edwards. Viking
Press, London. 1986, pp. 234-235.
These
engineering marvels are noted by author J. P. Lepre: “Amenemhat III is also
credited with the mighty engineering feat of constructing the irrigation canal
now known as the Bahr Yusif, and of using this canal to REGULATE THE FLOW OF
WATER FROM THE NILE to Lake Fayum during the flood season. This water was held
there by sluices, and later let out again, at will, back to the section of the
Nile from Assyout down to the Mediterranean Sea, REGULATING THE HEIGHT OF THE
RIVER in that area during the dry season. This irrigation system was the
PROTOTYPE for the modern High Aswan Dam.”
Although
Amenemhat III was involved in several great engineering works, the Bahr Yusif
endeavor is of special note. For here, two 20-mile long dykes -- one straight
and the other semicircular -- were constructed so as to aid in the ADJUSTMENT
OF THE WATER LEVEL through the use of sluices, and to reclaim 20,000 acres of
farmland by enriching the soil." (The Egyptian Pyramids.
McFarland & Company, Inc. Jefferson, N.C. 1990, pp. 217-218).
Obviously,
both Josephus and Diodorus Siculus are talking about THE SAME construction
project carried out during the reign of AMENEMHET III. OF THE 12TH DYNASTY!
Historians in pursuit of the Era of Oppression of the
Israelites have spent much time and consideration pondering the crucial geographical
information as provided in Exodus 1:11: “So they put slave masters over them to
oppress them with forced labour, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store
cities for Pharaoh”.
Lacking here, but no doubt crucial, is the extra piece of
information supplied by the Septuagint version of this verse, that the
Israelites also built On (Heliopolis): “And he set over them task-masters, who
should afflict them in their works; and they built strong cities for Pharao,
both Pitho, and Ramesses, and On, which is Heliopolis”.
{We recall that, thanks to the Septuagint Isaiah, the Tower of
Babel may more profitably (than in Sumer) be searched for in the vicinity of
Carchemish}.
Let us follow John Keyser further as he considers, in a
sensibly revised Twelfth Dynasty context, now (“The Strong City of
Ramesses”), and now (“The City of the
Sun!”), Heliopolis - however, I would not necessarily adhere to his view
that the city of Ramesses was so named before Rameses II ‘the Great’, as later
biblical editors were quite able to (as Moses certainly did with the older
patriarchal toledôt)
update geographical names:
The Strong City of
Ramesses
If
we go now to the book of Exodus in the Bible, we can uncover some more clues to
help us pinpoint the dynasty of the oppression:
And
there rose up another king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph....And he set over
them [the Israelites] taskmasters, who should afflict them in their works; and
THEY BUILT STRONG CITIES FOR PHARAO, BOTH PITHO [PITHOM], AND RAMESSES, AND ON,
WHICH IS HELIOPOLIS....And the Egyptians tyrannised over the children of Israel
by force. And they embittered their life by hard labours, IN THE CLAY AND IN
BRICK-MAKING, and all the works in the plains, according to all the works,
wherein they caused them to serve with violence. -- Exodus 1:8, 11, 13.
Septuagint”.
If
we can determine when the cities of Ramesses, Pithom and On were built, we can
place the Israelite slaves in the right dynasty!
Because
one of these cities was named “Ramesses,” many scholars believe it was named
after Ramesses the Great of the 19th Dynasty, and was therefore constructed
during this time -- but is this true? Notice the following:
LONG
BEFORE RAMESSES THE GREAT WAS BORN, THERE WERE SEVERAL KINGS, NOT KNOWN BY
MODERN HISTORIANS, WITH SOME FORM OF THE NAME RAMESSES. The record of these
kings of the delta, foolishly rejected by ALL historians today, is the KEY to
this enigma in the Bible. The names are preserved by Syncellus in the Book of
Sothis. A list of them may be found in Waddell’s Manetho, page 235...Among
these rulers is a Ramesses WHO LIVED IN THE DAYS OF JOSEPH and the fourth
dynasty. Many historians have been puzzled by the fact that the name of
Ramesses should appear on so many of the building blocks that went into the
early buildings of the THIRD AND FOURTH DYNASTIES. Their mistaken explanation
is that the later Ramesses had his servants take the time out to carve his name
on ALL these stones. It NEVER OCCURRED TO THEM that there might actually have
been a Rameses who assisted in the erection of these fabulous monuments of a
by-gone era. -- Compendium of World History, by Herman L. Hoeh.
Vol.I. Ambassador College, Pasadena, CA. 1963, pp. 94-95”.
There
is another reason why the Israelites cannot have built the city of Ramesses
during the reign of Ramesses the Great. The earliest reference to Israel
outside of the Bible is on the famous MERNEPTAH STELE. Merneptah was the
successor of Ramesses II (“the Great”). Notice what Hans Goedicke, chairman of
the department of Near Eastern Studies at John Hopkins University, has to say:
Merneptah’s
famous stele records his military achievements to the fifth year of his reign.
By that time, ISRAEL HAD SUCH SIGNIFICANCE AS A PEOPLE that it is listed among
these achievements: “ Israel’s seed is not,” Pharaoh Merneptah boasted, with
obvious exaggeration. The people of Israel was plainly a POLITICAL PROBLEM for
Merneptah. This could hardly have been the case if the people who became Israel
had SO RECENTLY become a “people” after the Exodus. Are we to believe that
within 75 years at most, the Exodus group became A POLITICAL AND MILITARY POWER
of the magnitude reflected in the Merneptah stele, especially after a 40-year
desert sojourn? -- BAR, September/October 1981.
The
answer is, obviously, NO!
In
1966, an Austrian archaeological team, headed by Dr. Manfred Bietak, began
long-term excavations four miles north of the delta town of Faqus -- at a site
called Tell el-Dab’a. Bietak was aware that this site had an earlier name, Tell
el-Birka -- “the mound of the LAKE.” Old maps revealed that this lake was at
one time joined to the old Pelusiac branch of the Nile by an artificial
waterway that anciently encircled the whole area. When aerial photography
revealed the ancient bed of the Pelusaic branch of the Nile, Bietak was
convinced he had found the SITE OF RAMESSES.
During
the 1979-80 excavation season, Bietak realized that the city had been built
DURING THE 12TH DYNASTY BY AMENEMHET I. -- WITH ADDITIONS AND/OR REBUILDING BY
SENWOSRET III. OF THE SAME DYNASTY!
Some
FIVE HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE THE TIME OF RAMESSES II. this had been a CAREFULLY
LAID OUT CITY of some importance during the time of Egypt’s MIDDLE KINGDOM, a
century or so PRIOR to Egypt’s takeover by the Hyksos. Readily discernible were
the foundations of an imposing 450-foot-long palace, with a huge court lined by
columns, that had probably served as a ROYAL SUMMER RESIDENCE....Records show
that order [in Egypt] was re-established by STRONG GOVERNMENT on the part of
the kings of Egypt’s MIDDLE KINGDOM, and IT IS TO THESE THAT CAN BE ATTRIBUTED
THE COLUMNED PALACE west of the Tell el-Dab’a mound, as well as a variety of
OTHER BUILDINGS AND MONUMENTS that seem to have surrounded the Birka lake. One
of these, a TEMPLE OF THE EGYPTIAN KING AMENEMHET I., was found to contain a
tablet specifically referring to the ‘TEMPLE OF AMENEMHET in [at] the water of
the town’ -- independent corroboration of the town’s abundance of water....
But
what is also quite obvious from Dr. Bietak’s findings is that not only was this
site the TRUE BIBLICAL RAMESSES, it quite evidently had a history MUCH EARLIER
than the time of Ramesses II. as well, and was in fact none other than the
HYKSOS CAPITAL, AVARIS, referred to in Manetho’s History. -- The Exodus
Enigma, by Ian Wilson. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London. 1985, pp. 48,
49 & 52.
The City of the
Sun!
Let’s
look at another city mentioned in the Septuagint version of the Bible -- On, or
Heliopolis. Although the city of On wasn’t originally settled during the Middle
Kingdom, it was, however, REBUILT ON A MASSIVE SCALE by a pharaoh of the 12th
DYNASTY! We read about this in Henry Brugsch-Bey’s book, A History of
Egypt Under the Pharaohs:
...a
remarkable document on parchment, which I had the good fortune to acquire at
Thebes in 1858, and which for some years past has been in the possession of the
Berlin collection of Egyptian antiquities, make the fact certain, that
USURTASEN I. [Sesostris I of the 12th Dynasty], at the very beginning of his
reign, occupied himself with BUILDINGS AT THE TEMPLE OF THE CITY OF THE SUN
[ON, HELIOPOLIS]. This important material informs us how, in the third year of
his reign, he assembled round his throne the first officials of his court, to
hear their opinion and their counsel as to his intention of RAISING WORTHY
BUILDINGS TO THE SUN-GOD. As usual in such assemblies, the king begins his
address with a solemn reference to his divine descent....From this he proceeds
to a discourse on the importance of the buildings and monuments dedicated to
the deities, starting from the idea that such alone are able to immortalize the
memory of a ruler. After the address, the assembled counsellors UNANIMOUSLY
APPROVE the good intentions of their lord, and encourage him to carry out the
same without delay. THE PHARAOH IMMEDIATELY GIVES HIS COMMAND TO THE PROPER
COURT OFFICIAL, ENJOINS HIM TO WATCH OVER THE UNINTERRUPTED PROGRESS OF THE
WORK WHICH HAS BEEN DETERMINED UPON, and then begins the solemn ceremony of
LAYING THE FOUNDATION-STONE by the king himself. -- Pp.151-152.
The
result of this ceremony was a work that can still be seen today! Not far from
Cairo, in the neighborhood of the village of Matarich, a huge obelisk made out
of the hardest and most beautiful rose granite points skyward, commemorating
the work of the Israelites as they slaved under this pharaoh to re-build the
“City of the Sun.”
Usurtasen
[Sesostris] erected a massive BRICK-BUILT double wall around the main temple at
Heliopolis, which also surrounded the area of present-day Tell Hisn. The area
this wall enclosed has been estimated to measure some 1,100 by 475 meters, or
1,203.4 by 519.7 yards! (Atlas of Ancient Egypt, by Baines and
Malek, p. 173).
Apart from the Era of Moses involving the Fourth, Sixth and
Twelfth Egyptian dynasties, we also need to add the Thirteenth, based on some
known correspondences of its officials with the Twelfth Dynasty. Dr. Courville has provided these useful, when
writing of the Turin list which gives the names of the Thirteenth Dynasty
officials (“On the Survival of Veliovsky’s Thesis in ‘Ages in Chaos”, pp.
67-68):
The thirteenth name [Turin list] (Ran-sen-eb)
was a known courtier in the time of Sesostris III …”.
“The fourteenth name (Autuabra) was found
inside a jar sealed with the seal of Amenemhat III …. How could this be, except
with this Autuabra … becoming a contemporary of Amenemhat III? The explanations
employed to evade such contemporaneity are pitiful compared with the obvious
acceptance of the matter”.
“The sixteenth name (RaSo-khemkhutaui)
leaves a long list of named slaves, some Semitic-male, some Semitic-female.
One of these has the name Shiphra, the
same name as the mid-wife who served at the time of Moses’ birth …. [Exodus
1:15]. RaSo-khemkhutaui … lived at the time of Amenemhat III.
This Amenemhet III, as we pick up from reading about him in N.
Grimal’s book (op.
cit.), was a particularly strong
ruler, renowned for massive projects involving water storage and channelling on
a gargantuan scale. He is credited with diverting much of the Nile flow into
the Fayuum depression to create what became known as lake Moeris (the lake
Nasser project of his time).
The grim-faced
depictions of the 12th dynasty kings, Amenemhet III and Sesostris III, have
been commented upon by conventional and revisionist scholars alike.
Cambridge
Ancient History has noted
with regard to the former …: “The numerous portraits of [Amenemhet] III include
a group of statues and sphinxes from Tanis and the Faiyûm, which, from their
curiously brutal style and strange accessories, were once thought to be
monuments of the Hyksos kings.”
For revisionists,
these pharaohs can - and rightly so - represent the cruel taskmasters who
forced the Israelites to build using bricks mixed with straw (Exodus 5:7, 8).
In fact, this very combination of materials can clearly be seen for example in
Amenemhet III’s Dahshur pyramid.
Amenemhet III,
according to Grimal …:
… was respected and honoured from Kerma to
Byblos and during his reign numerous eastern workers, from peasants to soldiers
and craftsmen came to Egypt. This influx of foreign workers resulted both from
the growth in Egyptian influence abroad and from the need for extra workmen to
help exploit the valuable resources of Egypt itself. For forty-five years
[Amenemhet] III ruled a country that had reached a peak of prosperity … and the
exploitation of the Faiyûm went hand in hand with the development of irrigation
and an enormous growth in mining and quarrying activities.
The Faiyûm was a
huge oasis, about 80 km S.W. of Memphis, which offered the prospect of a
completely new area of cultivable land. Exodus 1:14 tells of the Israelite
slaves doing “all kinds of work in the fields.”
Mining and
quarrying also, apparently, would have been part of the immense slave-labour
effort. Grimal continues …:
In the Sinai region the exploitation of
the turquoise and copper mines reached unprecedented heights: between the ninth
and forty-fifth years of [Amenemhet III’s] reign no less than forty-nine texts
were inscribed at Serabit el-Khadim …. The seasonal encampments of the miners
were transformed into virtually permanent settlements, with houses,
fortifications, wells or cisterns, and even cemeteries. The temple of Hathor at
Serabit el-Khadim was enlarged …. The expeditions to quarries elsewhere in
Egypt also proliferated ….
Amenemhet III was, it
seems, a complete dictator … (my emphasis):
The economic activity formed the basis for
the numerous building works that make the reign of [Amenemhet] III one of the summits of
state absolutism. Excavations at Biahmu revealed two colossal granite
statues of the seated figure of [Amenemes] III …. Above all, he built himself
two [sic] pyramids, one at Dahshur and the other at Hawara…. Beside the Hawara
pyramid were found the remains of his mortuary temple, which Strabo described
as the Labyrinth. ….
From the birth of Moses to the Exodus 80 years later, the Twelfth
Dynasty pharaohs sorely oppressed Israel, beginning with an infanticide that Herod
in Israel would later emulate.
King Solomon tells - in what could also be a wake-up call for
our own times - how Egypt paid for this pharaonic “decree of infanticide”
(Wisdom 11:5-16, emphasis added):
Thus, what had served to punish their
enemies became a benefit for them in their difficulties.
Whereas their enemies had
only the ever-flowing source of a river fouled with mingled blood and mud, to punish them for their decree of infanticide, you gave your
people, against all hope, water in abundance, once you had shown
by the thirst that they were experiencing how severely you were punishing their
enemies.
From their own ordeals,
which were only loving correction, they realised how an angry sentence was
tormenting the godless; for you had tested your own as a father
admonishes, but the others you had punished as a pitiless king condemns, and, whether far or near, they were equally afflicted.
For a double sorrow seized on them, and a
groaning at the memory of the past; when they learned that the punishments they
were receiving were beneficial to the others, they realised it was the Lord,
while for the man whom long before they had exposed and later mockingly
rebuffed, they felt only admiration when all was done, having suffered a thirst
so different from that of the upright.
For their foolish and wicked notions which
led them astray into worshipping mindless reptiles and contemptible beetles,
you sent a horde of mindless animals to punish them and to teach them that the
agent of sin is the agent of punishment”.
Adopted into the royal household of the mighty and prosperous
Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty, the Hebrew Moses would grow up to be a great man in
the land of Egypt.
