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 become most manifest 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")”.
In
my original draft of this article I had continued on to say (what this time
around I am going to have to correct in major part):
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.
Now, instead, I believe
that Moses, following the dynastic founder, was indeed king of Egypt for a
brief time, but who then abdicated.
In his Sixth Dynasty guise,
Moses was the mysterious pharaoh Userkare.
I shall come back to this
later.
In
Twelfth Dynasty terms - the Dynasty that we shall be mainly following here
- 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, a king (pharaoh) for a time, would become Egypt’s
Chief Judge and Vizier.
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 has turned 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:
“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”.
Gold was
considered to be the skin of the ancient Egyptian gods,
but
their bones were thought to be of silver.
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’.
Important additional
Between Teti, the “new king” of Exodus 1:8,
and Pepi (“Chenephres”), we have pharaoh Userkare, who I believe was Moses.
Most interestingly, as
an indication of the tension that existed between Moses (Userkare) and
“Chenephres” (Pepi), Userkare was most likely erased by Pepi in a damnatio
memoriæ.
Of further interest,
Pepi had the word “desert” (to where Moses fled) inserted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Userkare
Userkare (also Woserkare,
meaning "Powerful is the soul of Ra"; died c. 2332 BC) [sic] was
the second king of
the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt, reigning
briefly, 1 to 5 years, in the late 24th or the early 23rd century BC.
Userkare's relation to his predecessor Teti and successor Pepi … is unknown and his reign remains enigmatic.
Although he is attested in some historical
sources, Userkare is completely absent from the tomb of the Egyptian officials
who lived during his reign and usually report the names of the kings whom they
served. Furthermore, the figures of some high officials of the period have been
deliberately chiselled out in their tombs and their titles altered, for
instance the word "king" being replaced by that of
"desert". Egyptologists thus suspect a possible Damnatio memoriae on Pepi
I's behalf against Userkare. ….
[End of quote]
This was the great Moses!
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