by
Damien F. Mackey
Ancient tradition (the Jewish-Hellenistic, Artapanus) has served us well by preserving the names of Moses’s Egyptian foster-mother, “Merris” and her pharaonic husband, “Chenephres”, thereby enabling us to situate Moses at the time of pharaoh Chephren and his wife, Meres-ankh.
This was the great Pyramid and Sphinx building age of Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty.
The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus had written that the oppressed Israelites built (amongst other things) pyramids for the pharaohs (Antiquities, Bk. II).
Moses would have begun, as a young adult, by officiating for the infanticidal ruler, Khufu (Cheops), the “new king who knew not Joseph” (Exodus 1:8). But his mature strides towards becoming a famous character in ancient Egypt (Acts 7:22): “Moses … was powerful in speech and action”, would have occurred during the next reign, that of pharaoh Chephren (“Chenephres”).
In Sixth Dynasty terms, Moses served, first Teti, then Pepi, in whose praenomen Neferkare, or Ka-nefer-re, we have, again, the Egyptian version of (the Greek) “Chenephres”.
And, fittingly, Pepi’s wife was Ankhesenmerire, or Meresankh, Greek “Merris”.
The ancients considered Moses to have been something of a genius. For example:
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1826-artapanus
“According to Artapanus (Eusebius, ibid. ix. 27), Moses is he whom the Greeks called Musæus; he was, however, not (as in the Greek legend) the pupil, but the teacher, of Orpheus. Wherefore Moses is not only the inventor of many useful appliances and arts, such as navigation, architecture, military strategy, and of philosophy, but is also—this is peculiar to Artapanus—the real founder of the Greek-Egyptian worship. By the Egyptians, whose political system he organized, Moses was called Hermes διἁ τῶν τῶν ἱερῶν γραμμάτων ἑρμηνείαν ("because he expounded the writings of the priests")”.
Here, undoubtedly, we have an interesting blend of fantasy and reality. Whilst some of this would be true, another legend that has Moses as “a king” is quite misleading. Though great, Moses was definitely subservient to the two pharaohs who had the power of life and death over him.
Indeed, “Chenephres” will even seek the life of Moses - as we shall read further on.
Joseph, on the other hand, we found to have been a veritable quasi-pharaoh.
In Twelfth Dynasty terms - the Dynasty that we shall be mainly following here (and we now know that it is the same as the 4th, 5th and 6th) - the two Oppressor pharaohs for much of Moses’s first 80 years on earth were Amenemhet and Sesostris.
Though these two names are multiplied in the Twelfth Dynasty king lists, Amenemhet I-IV, and Sesostris I-III, I would strip these down basically to just the two kings:
AMENEMHET (= Cheops; Teti);
SESOSTRIS (= Chephren; Pepi).
Thus Amenemhet so-called III (c. 1800 BC), dated in the text books roughly a century and a half after Amenemhet I (c. 1960 BC), was, in my opinion, the very same new dynastic king (of Exodus 1:8) as was Amenemhet I – this fusion (of names I and III) now to be re-dated to a more biblically compatible c. 1530 BC.
And well does the sour looking Amenemhet [III] fit the biblical description of “the new king who knew not Joseph” (1:8), that tyrannical baby killer!
Nicolas Grimal (A History of Ancient Egypt, 1994) has described Amenemhet’s reign as being “one of the summits of state absolutism”.
The Twelfth Dynasty, like the Fourth Dynasty which it was, was a pyramid building era. And, just as the Book of Exodus tells, the bricks were tempered with straw (5:7): ‘You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw’.
But, since the Giza pyramids were of a quality far higher than were the mudbrick ones, Egyptologists do not think of connecting them to the same pharaohs. After all, at least six centuries, conventionally (though not actually), separate Cheops from Amenemhet.
The qualitative differences would simply be due, I would suggest, to geographical location and accessibility of suitable building materials.
https://pharaohoppressionmosesisraelegyptdynasty.wordpress.com/category/mud-bricks-containing-straw/
“The pyramids of the 12th dynasty were made from mudbricks that contained straw as a reinforcement. Each pyramid would have contained millions upon millions of these mudbricks which were about 24 inches by 12 inches by 6 inches in size. The 12th dynasty pyramids thus had a core that was made of mud bricks but the outer veneer was made of limestone which was becoming more difficult to quarry by the 12th dynasty and therefore in short supply. Over the centuries, the outer veneer of limestone has fallen down and been pilfered exposing the inner mudbrick core.
Paradoxically, the first pyramids to have been built, those of the 3rd and 4th dynasty (Old Kingdom Pyramids), have stood the test of time better than those built in the 12th dynasty (Middle Kingdom Pyramids). This is because the Old Kingdom Pyramids were made entirely out of solid limestone blocks while the Middle Kingdom [sic] Pyramids were made largely from Mud Bricks (the core) and only had a veneer of limestone.
The pharaohs of the 12th dynasty would have required a large slave labor force to make the mudbricks for the 12th dynasty pyramids”.
The Hebrews would have comprised a sizeable portion of this “large slave labor force”.
The Tale of Sinuhe (TTS)
This, one of the most popular stories in ancient Egypt, is a garbled version of the life of Moses, serving, firstly pharaoh Amenemhet, and then Sesostris, before having to flee from the latter into exile.
Professor Emmanuel Anati has recognised “a common matrix” shared between TTS and the Exodus account of Moses (Mountain of God, 158).
One thing that TSS does for us is to confirm that the second pharaoh in the life of Moses was Sesostris (so-called I).
And, in the name Sinuhe (or Sanehat), we may also have Moses’s elusive Egyptian name (Mu-sa?).
Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie considered that the first element in the name, Sa, referred to “son”:
https://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/arch/egypt/Petrie/PetrieTale5.html#senehat
And nu (or mu, mw) is the Egyptian hieroglyphic for “water”.
The last element is just the typical Egyptian theophoric hat (for the goddess Hathor).
So Sinuhe could mean something like Son of the Water (drawn by Hathor), or, just, Water Baby.
This is only my suggestion. It may be wrong.
I have not read of anyone else having suggested it.
From a combination of TTS, and from the Sixth Dynasty records, we learn that our hero (presumably Moses) was a young Judge with special privileges under Amenemhet (Cheops/Teti), and that he became a leader of armies and renowned trader even in the Syrian region under Sesostris (= Chephren/Pepi).
Palace G at Ebla (Syria) was contemporaneous with pharaoh Pepi whom Moses served.
We are going to find that Moses, who was definitely not a king (pharaoh), would become Chief Judge and Vizier in the land of Egypt.
Sinuhe, an official attached to the royal household, accompanied prince Sesostris [I] to Libya. He overheard a conversation connected with the death of King Amenemhet as a result of which he fled to Upper Retjenu (Canaan), leaving Egypt behind. Amenemhet Sehetepebre (like Teti Sehetepebre) is thought to have been assassinated.
Sinuhe tells us:
Translated by Alan H. Gardiner (1916):
I was a henchman who followed his lord, a servant of the Royal harim attending on the hereditary princess, the highly-praised Royal Consort of Sesostris in the pyramid-town of Khnem-esut, the Royal Daughter of Amenemmes [Amenemhet] in the Pyramid-town of Ka-nofru, even Nofru, the revered.
In year 30, third month of Inundation, day 7, the god attained his horizon, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Sehetepebre [Amenemhet died]. He flew to heaven and was united with the sun's disk; the flesh of the god was merged in him, who made him. Then was the Residence hushed; hearts were filled with mourning; the Great Portals were closed; the courtiers crouched head on lap; the people grieved.
Now His Majesty had dispatched an army to the land of the Temhi, and his eldest son was the captain thereof, the good god Sesostris. Even now he was returning, having carried away captives of the Tehenu and cattle of all kinds beyond number.
And the Companions of the Royal Palace sent to the western border to acquaint the king's son with the matters that had come to pass at the Court. And the messengers met him on the road, they reached him at time of night.
Not a moment did he wait; the Falcon flew away with his henchmen, not suffering it to be known to his army. Howbeit, message had been sent to the Royal Children who were with him in this army, and one of them had been summoned. And lo, I stood and heard his voice as he was speaking, being a little distance aloof; and my heart became distraught, my arms spread apart, trembling having fallen on all my limbs. Leaping I betook myself thence to seek me a hiding-place, and placed me between two brambles so as to sunder the road from its traveller.
I set out southward, yet purposed not to approach the Residence; for I thought there would be strife, and I had no mind to live after him. I crossed the waters of Mewoti hard by the Sycamore, and arrived in Island-of-Snofru.
…. I went on at time of night, and when it dawned I reached Petni. I halted at the Island-of-Kemwer. An attack of thirst overtook me; I was parched, my throat burned, and I said: This is the taste of death.
Then I lifted my heart, and gathered up my body. I heard the sound of the lowing of cattle, and espied men of the Setiu.
Next we learn that a certain “prince” attested Sinuhe’s knowledge of the Egyptian tongue, “thou hearest the tongue of Egypt” (cf. Acts 7:22: “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians …”), and his wisdom, “he had heard of my wisdom”:
A sheikh among them, who was aforetime in Egypt, recognized me, and gave me water; he boiled for me milk. I went with him to his tribe, and they entreated me kindly.
Land gave me to land. I set forth to Byblos, I pushed on to Kedme. I spent half a year there; then Enshi son of Amu, prince of Upper Retenu, took me and said to me: Thou farest well with me, for thou hearest the tongue of Egypt. This he said, for that he had become aware of my qualities, he had heard of my wisdom; Egyptian folk, who were there with him, had testified concerning me. And he said to me: Wherefore art thou come hither? Hath aught befallen at the Residence? And I said to him: Sehetepebre is departed to the horizon [dead], and none knoweth what has happened in this matter. And I spoke again dissembling: I came from the expedition to the land of the Temhi, and report was made to me, and my understanding reeled, my heart was no longer in my body; it carried me away on the path of the wastes. Yet none had spoken evil of me, none had spat in my face. I had heard no reviling word, my name had not been heard in the mouth of the herald. I know not what brought me to this country. It was like the dispensation of God. (...)
[End of quote]
Like, but not the same, as the Exodus account.
Perhaps, pharaoh (Teti-) Amenemhet was assassinated about this time.
But there was a far more specific reason for the flight of Moses to Midian, as recorded in Exodus 2, than the vagueness surrounding the reason for Sinuhe’s flight to Canaan. It was this:
Exodus 2:11-19:
One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.
Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting.
He asked the one in the wrong, ‘Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?’
The man said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Then Moses was afraid and thought, ‘What I did must have become known’.
When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, ‘Why have you returned so early today?’
They answered, ‘An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock’.
There is much to say about this famous episode.
For one, this incident also reveals the origins of the unhistorical Buddha, a fictitious composite - the privileged one, who, like Moses, left the life of the palace, and who saw suffering, and became a wandering ascetic (famously known in Buddhist tradition as “The Great Departure”). Exodus 2:11: “One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor”. Obviously, this was a turning point in the life of Moses – although there would be other Departures for him as well: to the land of Midian, and in the glorious Exodus.
What do Moses and Buddha have in common?
Quite a bit, Nadav Caine will tell you:
https://jweekly.com/2001/02/02/what-moses-and-buddha-share-eighth-graders-others-will-learn/
"Both grew up as members of the royal court," said Caine. "Both had a life-changing
experience that caused them to flee the royal court. Both wandered — Buddha as a
yoga practitioner, Moses as a shepherd — not acquiring the skills to lead."
Both men achieved enlightenment — Moses through his encounter with the burning
bush and Buddha under a bodhi tree — and both became spiritual leaders.
Secondly, the words of the Hebrew to Moses: ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’ actually define Moses’s then status in Sixth Dynasty and Twelfth Dynasty Egypt, as Vizier (“ruler”) and Chief Judge (“judge”).
For, far more substantially than the semi-fictitious Sinuhe, Moses was the mighty Vizier of the Twelfth Dynasty, Mentuhotep, Chief Judge and Vizier.
Now, this is where certain revisionist researchers have (unwittingly) gone so wrong.
In previous articles we have learned that a trio of good Christian revisionists had erred by not recognising Imhotep of Egypt’s Third Dynasty as the biblical Joseph. And then they went and identified the great Twelfth Dynasty Vizier, Mentuhotep, not as Moses, as I think they should have, but as Joseph.
Once again this has catastrophic results for well-intentioned revisionism.
But this well-intentioned mistake is far less erroneous than is the favoured conventional view for the era of Moses and the Exodus, during Egypt’s mighty Nineteenth Dynasty, with Ramses II ‘the Great’ being popularly considered as the Pharaoh of the Exodus.
What a disaster this turns out to be!
Firstly, Ramses II’s conventional regnal dating of c. 1300 - 1233 BC does not accord at all with biblical calculations, since the demise of the great Pharaoh, by this reckoning, would have occurred over two centuries after the Exodus.
But, secondly, the correct era of Ramses II is the C8th-C7th’s BC, a whopping almost six centuries after his conventional beginning at c. 1300 BC.
Whose “king’s men” will put Humpty Dumpty Ramses back together again?
See my article on this:
The Complete Ramses II
https://www.academia.edu/108993634/The_Complete_Ramses_II
Scandalously, the disparate parts (alter egos) of this mighty, long-reigning pharaoh (66-67 years) can be found scattered over almost a thousand years (c. 1300- c. 350 BC) of eggshell conventional history.
Factoring in the Thirteenth Dynasty
Mention (above) of the Pharaoh of the Exodus, affords us now the opportunity to introduce yet another, and (sigh of relief) final, dynastic complication for the Egyptian Era of Moses.
Apart from the Era of Moses involving the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Twelfth Egyptian dynasties, as we have learned, we yet need to factor in the Thirteenth Dynasty, based on some known correspondences of its officials with the Twelfth Dynasty.
For Dr. Donovan Courville had provided the following most useful connections, when writing of the Turin list which gives the names of the Thirteenth Dynasty officials (“On the Survival of Velikovsky’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 so-called III, as we have picked up from reading about him earlier, was a particularly strong ruler. He was 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 Hebrew slaves would have been involved.
The grim-faced depictions of the Twelfth 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.”
But this mighty dynasty will die out - ending with a briefly-reigning female pharaoh, Sobekneferu[re] - while Moses was biding his time in the land of Midian. For the Lord will inform him in Midian (Exodus 4:19): ‘Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life [for killing the Egyptian] are dead’.
This means that Moses will return to Egypt from Midian with the Thirteenth Dynasty, formerly comprising Egyptian officials, now fully in charge of the land.
Moses in Egypt: 4th, 5th, 6th, 12th dynasties;
Moses in Midian: this regime dies out;
Moses back in Egypt: 13th dynasty.
We just read of Thirteenth Dynasty officials serving the two great Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs, Amenemhet and Sesostris. But the long Thirteenth Dynasty list also includes these two pharaohs, so I believe, under multiple kings Amenemhet, and, in the case of Sesostris, under the Crocodile (Sobek) name - like the woman Sobekneferu[re] who briefly succeeded him. Sobekhotep so-called IV, for instance, had the very same name, “Chenephres” (Khaneferre), as had Merris’s pharaonic husband.
While these kings, Amenemhet and Sobekhotep, are conventionally listed after the Twelfth Dynasty, as Thirteenth Dynasty rulers, they need to be tucked back into the Twelfth Dynasty.
Serving “Chenephres”
By taking account of the C2nd BC Jewish historian, Artapanus, we have learned that Moses was the foster-son of the Egyptian queen “Merris”, who had married “Chenephres”: https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/which-real-story-moses-was-he-criminal-philosopher-hero-or-atheist-008008
Moses, according to Artapanus, was raised as the son of Chenephres, king of Upper of Egypt. Chenephres thought Moses was his own son – but, apparently, the bond between a father and a son wasn’t enough to keep Chenephres from trying to kill him.
Chenephres sent Moses to lead his worst soldiers into an unwinnable war against Ethiopia, hoping Moses would die in battle.
Moses, however, managed to conquer Ethiopia. He became a war hero across Egypt. He also declared the ibis as the sacred animal of the city – starting, in the process, the first of three religions he would found by the end of the story.
He started his second religion when he made it back to Memphis, where he taught people how to use oxen in agriculture and, in the process, started the cult of Apis .
He didn’t get to enjoy his new cult for long. His father started outright hiring people to assassinate him, and he had no choice but to leave Egypt. ....
[End of quote]
The jealousy of pharaoh “Chenephres”, in the case of the highly successful Moses, will be played out again in the Bible when King Saul, envious of David’s military successes, will do everything he can to kill David. Though David was not the son of King Saul - as Moses was thought to have been the son of “Chenephres” - the erratic King of Israel will not even spare his own son, the honourable Jonathan, David’s unwavering friend, hurling his javelin at him intending to kill him (I Samuel 20:33), just as “Chenephres” had sought to kill the one who he thought was his son, Moses.
Again, just as “Chenephres sent Moses to lead his worst soldiers into an unwinnable war against Ethiopia, hoping Moses would die in battle”, so would King Saul demand that David, in order to marry Saul’s daughter, Michal, bring back 100 Philistine foreskins. “Saul’s plan was to have David fall by the hands of the Philistines” (I Samuel 18:25)”.
David, being David, brought back 2oo foreskins, and consequently married Michal.
But later Saul would take her back again, and give her to another (25:44).
When Moses slew the Egyptian overseer, this must have given “Chenephres” the perfect excuse to put aside any pretence and overtly hunt down Moses for his life.
So, Moses fled into the land of Midian.
Sixth Dynasty Moses
So far, we have identified Moses as the Vizier, Mentuhotep, and as the semi-fictitious, Sinuhe, both Twelfth Dynasty characters.
But, as we have learned, the Twelfth Dynasty is the same as the Sixth Dynasty, from which dynasty we actually acquire a more factual and detailed version of Moses.
Do we have Egyptian evidence for Moses serving as a military leader for “Chenephres”? Yes, we do.
For this we must turn to the Sixth Dynasty version of “Chenephres”, as pharaoh Pepi, whose high official, Weni, has the same impressive credentials as Vizier Mentuhotep, our Twelfth Dynasty Moses. Weni (or Uni) is presumably a type of nickname (hypocoristicon) that both the Egyptians and the Hebrews were fond of using. Another name of his may have been Nefer Nekhet Mery-Ra (see below).
Much relevant personal information is provided in Weni’s famous Autobiography.
Supposed to have served under three kings, Teti, Pepi and Merenre, the latter name, Merenre, needs (so I think) to be merged with the first name, Teti.
https://www.ancient-egypt.info/2012/04/story-of-weni-and-young-pepi-ii.html
“The exemplary life of the noble Weni, who served under the first three kings of the dynasty, is inscribed on the walls of his tomb at Abydos.
One of the longest narrative inscriptions of the period, the autobiography records how Weni rose from almost obscure origins through the court’s hierarchy from an ‘inferior custodian’ to a ‘Friend’ of Pepi and a High Court judge at Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) - the important cult centre of the vulture goddess Nekhbet. Eventually he was appointed Governor of the South under Merenre.
As a most respected judge (’I was more excellent to the heart of His Majesty than any official of his’) he was the sole arbiter in a harem conspiracy case involving the Queen Weret-lmtes: ‘Never before had the like of me heard a secret matter of the King’s harem, but His Majesty caused me to hear it’.
Bearing in mind Manetho’s assertion that the previous king, Teti (Pepi’s father), had been assassinated, no doubt the sentence on the queen was a capital one.
After that success Weni changed positions to be placed at the head of an army of ‘many tens of thousands' that marched against the bedouin in northern Sinai. He boasted that despite the numbers no one suffered on the route thanks to his policy of ‘living off the land’. In all he crushed five revolts in the area, culminating in the first recorded Egyptian attack on southern Palestine. Finally, in his capacity as Governor of the South under Merenre, Weni brought stone for the royal pyramid from the First Cataract quarries, and in so doing cut five channels to facilitate passage through the cataract”.
Presumably written in c. 2250 BC, this brilliant document ought at once give the lie to the ridiculous JEDP assumption that writing did not begin until c. 1000 BC.
Even if the 2250 BC is lowered to its more realistic place some 750 years later, c. 1500 BC, it still sits well before the JEDP estimation.
Here are some of the many parallels between Weni (in brown) and Mentuhotep:
INSCRIPTIONS OF MENTUHOTEP ….
531. Hereditary prince, vizier and chief judge
The exterior face of the north wall incorporates a large niche, and during excavations here a damaged false door inscribed for Weni the Elder was discovered in situ. Not only does this false door provide a nickname for Weni ("Nefer Nekhet Mery-Ra"--Egyptian nicknames were often longer than birth names!), but it also documents his final career promotion, a fact not recorded in his autobiography: Chief Judge and Vizier.
attached to Nekhen,
judge attached to Nekhen,
prophet of
prophet of
Mat (goddess of Truth), giver of laws, advancer of offices, confirming … the boundary records, separating a land-owner from his neighbor, pilot of the people, satisfying the whole land, a man of truth before the Two Lands … accustomed … to justice like Thoth, his like in satisfying the Two Lands, hereditary prince in judging the Two Lands …. supreme head in judgment, putting matters in order, wearer of the royal seal, chief treasurer, Mentuhotep.
Hereditary prince, count
the count
… chief of all works of the king, making the offerings of the gods to flourish, setting this land … according to the command of the god.
the whole was carried out by my hand, according to the mandate which … my lord had commanded me.
…. sending forth two brothers satisfied
pleasant to his brothers
with the utterances of his mouth, upon whose tongue is the writing of Thoth,
I alone was the one who put (it) in writing ….
And so on ….
Navigation
While we learned from Artapanus that one of Moses’s inventions was “navigation”, which is unlikely, what does come through in the case of the genius Moses, as Weni, was his skilful employment of sea and land warfare.
This is an area the study of which, so far, had been neglected, but which two scholars, Mohammad Al-Sharkawy and Mohamed Abd El-Maguid, have begun to rectify. Thus:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383001932_The_Autobiography_of_Weni_1_An_additional_source_on_Egypt's_nautical_activities_during_the_Old_Kingdom
“Weni's autobiography has been the subject of numerous publications since 1864. …. This autobiography recounts Weni's various actions and his service to three [sic] kings of the Sixth Dynasty (ca. 2345-2181 BCE) [sic]. …. Among these works are various nautical activities, whether in the Nile or in the Mediterranean Sea during the reigns of Pepi I and Merenre. Although he listed some details, Egyptologists did not analyze them at an adequate level. Perhaps because they are not specialized in the field of nautical archaeology. Therefore, this paper focuses on highlighting Weni's nautical activities and its importance as a source of knowledge at the end of the Old Kingdom. The research describes the five missions with navigational parts. It studies and analyzes in detail its various elements such as the types of ships, their names, sizes, types of wood used in building ships and their construction methods from the point of view of nautical archaeology. The importance of re-studying Weni's autobiography lies in trying to deal with this activity in an integrated manner between Egyptology and nautical archaeology.
The research concluded the existence of major economic activities and great projects in the Sixth Dynasty and the end of the Old Kingdom, despite the old beliefs about the weakness of the State in that period. It also clarifies and interprets some of the ambiguities of the text by subjecting it to the science of nautical archeology”.
This perfectly segués into my final identification of Moses (apart from Sinuhe, Weni and Mentuhotep) as Iny, a highly-trusted general and trader for the Sixth Dynasty.
Upon reading through Alessandro Roccati’s absorbing paper:
Iny’s Travels
(3) Iny's Travels | Alessandro Roccati - Academia.edu
finding common purpose in Iny’s adventures, by way of comparison with those of Weni - and throwing in Sinuhe, to boot - it occurred to me that Iny most likely was Weni. The latter, as well as Sinuhe (a semi-fictitious character along the lines of Imhotep at the hands of later scholars), I have already identified as the biblical Moses.
Since Iny served during the same Sixth Dynasty period as did Weni, travelled to some of the same geographical locations, and traded in the same sort of fine quality material (jewellery, precious stones, etc.), I think it a fairly safe bet that - Occam’s Razor and all - this was one and the same official of Old Egypt, Iny = Weni (Uni) = Sinuhe.
Weni:
“His majesty sent me to Hatnub to bring a huge offering-table …. of lapis lazuli, of bronze, of electrum, and silver; copper was plentiful without end, bronze without limit, collars of real malachite, ornaments (mn-nfr’t) of every kind of costly stone. of the choicest of everything, which are given to a god at his processions, by virtue of my office of master of secret things”.
No wonder that Moses later would be fit to supervise the skilled work of the Hebrews in providing religious artefacts, such as the Ark of the Covenant, and Tent of Meeting!
Moses, in his first Great Departure from Egypt, to the land of Midian, has come there because he had courageously intervened on behalf of his struggling Hebrew people. But, like Jesus Christ, he was not welcomed by them: ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’
Jannes and Jambres (Mambres)
Who were these two enigmatic characters at the time of Moses, later mentioned so unfavourably by St. Paul (2 Timothy 3:8): “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith”?
They are commonly thought to have been two of pharaoh’s magicians.
My preference for them had been as two pharaohs.
Not the king of Exodus 1:8, who never appears to have “opposed” the young Moses, but
surely the second king, “Chenephres”, for whom I had another possible alter ego in the Fifth Dynasty’s Unas, for which Paul’s Jannes would be a very good transliteration.
For Jambres (Mambres), I had searched for a compatible Pharaoh of the Exodus, favouring, for a time, the Fourteenth Dynasty ruler, Sheshi Maibre (= Mambres?).
But, as we have so often found, biblical characters for whose identifications one may search invariably turn out to be Hebrews (Israelites/Jews). And the two Hebrew characters whom Moses came across, brawling, Jewish tradition has identified as the Reubenite brothers, Dathan and Abiram, who, especially after the Exodus, will prove to be completely “opposed” to Moses (Numbers 16:1-2): “Korah son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, and certain Reubenites—Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth—became insolent and rose up against Moses”.
Their fate will be to be swallowed up by the earth (vv. 31-34).
Moses, when he arrived at the well in Midian where he assisted Jethro’s daughters against some rogue shepherds, was as if a thoroughgoing Egyptian. He walked, talked, dressed like an Egyptian. Thus the girls would report back to their father (Exodus 2:19): ‘An Egyptian delivered us from the hand of the shepherds, and he actually even drew the water for us and gave water to the flock to drink’.
