Moses and Akhenaten (3 page)

CHRONOLOGY OF THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY

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BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW

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and the king Akhenaten were the same person, certain other things must follow. It is necessary to demonstrate that they were born of the same parents in the same place at the same time; that the monotheistic religion of Moses and the monotheistic religion of Akhenaten, which he tried to impose upon Egypt, are similar; that, on falling from power in Year 17 of his reign, Akhenaten did not meet his end but fled to Sinai, where subsequent traces of worship of his God, the Aten, are to be found; that a number of other biblical characters can be identified with characters in Egyptian history; and, finally, that a chronology can be established for the Sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt which matches the chronology of the Pharaohs who ruled at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty and the beginning of the Nineteenth.

These, as will be seen, are complex matters. The evidence available is often contradictory and has been interpreted – and often misinterpreted – in various ways. The length of the Sojourn, the length of the reigns of various kings, whether or not Akhenaten had a coregency with his father, Amenhotep III, the precise location of the frontier fortified city of Zarw, where I believe Moses/Akhenaten was born, and various other matters have been the subject of protracted scholarly debate and disagreement. It will therefore be necessary not merely to put forward the positive evidence that points to the truth, but to expose the flaws in a variety of other theories that have been advanced.

The most detailed, but not the only, source we have for information about the life of Moses is the Old Testament and, in particular, the Book of Exodus.

The Book of Exodus begins with a brief repetition of the account in Genesis of the Israelite Descent into Egypt to join the Patriarch Joseph, who, having initially been sold into slavery by his brothers, had risen to the role of the country's vizier after interpreting Pharaoh's dreams about the seven good years that would be followed by seven lean years. As a result of occupying his high position, Joseph was able to obtain permission for his father Jacob (Israel) and the tribe of Israel to come down from Canaan and live in Egypt. In all, we are told, the number of Israelites, including Joseph and his family, who settled in Egypt as a result of this arrangement totalled seventy, sixty-nine of whom are named. The Israelites, who were shepherds, were not allowed to settle in Egypt proper, however, because shepherds had been looked upon as ‘an abomination' to Egyptians since the century-long occupation and rule of the Eastern Delta by the pastoralist Hyksos that preceded the foundation of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Instead they were given land at Goshen, in the same area to the east of the Nile Delta, which by biblical tradition was remote from the seat of Pharaoh's power.

The rest of the opening chapter of the Book of Exodus is taken up with a rather muddled summary of the story that is to follow. Almost at the very beginning of the tale, which is clearly set in the Eastern Delta, we are told that the Israelites had ‘waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them' (1:7). As the tribe of Israel consisted of only seventy men, women and children at the time of their arrival in Egypt, this vast increase in numbers suggests that some years must have elapsed in the interval, a view which appears to be confirmed by the next verse, with its reference to the king ‘which knew not Joseph' (1:8): until the time of Horemheb, who finally ended the Amarna era, there is no king of whom it can strictly be said that he did not know Joseph – whom I have identified as Yuya
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, vizier to Tuthmosis IV and his successor, Amenhotep III – since all the Amarna kings were descended from Joseph. Next comes an account of the Oppression, whose motive, it is said, is that ‘when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us ...'(1:10). The Egyptians set the Israelites to the task of building the treasure cities of Pithom and Raamses and made their lives ‘bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field' (1:14). Then we encounter a contradiction. When the Israelites continued to multiply, the ruling Pharaoh ordered that all male children born to them were to be killed. Yet we learn that at the time – just when Moses is about to make his appearance in the story – the Israelites had only two midwives, ‘of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah'. (1:15). This argues that the incident must have taken place
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in the Sojourn when two midwives were sufficient for the needs of the Israelite women, and that, as Pharaoh was able to speak to the midwives in person, he must have been resident at the time in the vicinity of Goshen where the Israelites had settled. The midwives failed to carry out Pharaoh's orders, whereupon he issued a further order that all male children born to the Israelites in Egypt were to be cast into the river.

With the second chapter we come to the story of Moses – his birth, his slaying of an Egyptian which caused him to flee from Egypt, his marriage and his eventual return to lead the Exodus – recounted with a more satisfactory chronology. He was born, we are told, to a man of the house of Levi and a daughter of Levi, whose name is given later as Jochebed. In face of the threat to all newly-born male Israelite children, Jochebed kept her son in hiding for three months. Then, unable to conceal him herself any longer, she hid him among the reeds along the banks of the Nile in a papyrus basket coated with pitch and tar. Pharaoh's daughter saw the basket when she went down to the river to bathe and sent a slave girl to fetch it. When she opened the basket the baby was crying and she felt sorry for him. ‘This is one of the Hebrew babies,' she said.

The implication up to this point is that Moses was the first-born in his family. Here, however, we learn that he already had an elder sister, Miriam, who had watched these events from a distance. She now approached and said to Pharaoh's daughter: ‘Shall I fetch one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?' When this suggestion proved acceptable, the sister summoned her mother, who agreed to nurse her own baby in return for payment. Later, when the child grew older, she took him back to Pharaoh's daughter, who adopted him as her son and only now, we learn, gave him the name of Moses, her choice (which will be the subject of analysis later) being explained by the laconic phrase ‘because I drew him out of the water'.

This familiar account of the birth of Moses has some curious aspects. It hardly seems logical that a mother, anxious to preserve the life of her three-month-old son, would set him afloat on the Nile in such a frail craft. Then, after the intervention of the princess, we have no further indication that, having been returned to his mother, the child was still in danger of losing his life. Finally, the explanation of his later being reared in the palace because the princess adopted him seems inherently improbable as the customs of the time would not have allowed an unmarried princess to adopt a child.

The Book of Exodus provides no details of the childhood of Moses. We next hear of him when he was grown up. He went out one day to watch his own people at their forced labour, came across an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, slew him and hid his body in the sand. On learning that news of the episode had reached Pharaoh's ears, Moses fled to Midian in Sinai to avoid execution. There, while he was resting by a well, the seven daughters of a priest of Midian arrived on the scene to water their father's flock of sheep. Some shepherds appeared shortly afterwards and tried to drive the daughters away, but Moses came to their rescue. On the girls' return home, Reu'el, their father, asked them: ‘Why are you back so early today?'

They told him about the encounter with the shepherds. ‘But an Egyptian rescued us,' they explained. ‘He even drew water for us and watered the flock.'

‘And where is he?' their father asked. ‘Invite him to have something to eat.' The invitation proved to be the start of a protracted stay. Moses became a guest in the house of the priest, who gave him one of his daughters, Zipporah, in marriage, and she bore Moses a son, whom he named Gershon.

Back in Egypt, after the passage of many years, a new Pharaoh had come to the throne, but the miseries of the Israelites continued and God heard their cries for help. One day when Moses was out tending the flock of his father-in-law – whose name is given at this point in the narrative as Jethro, not Reu'el – he found himself with the sheep at Mount Horeb (Mount Sinai), the mountain of God, where the Lord appeared to him in a bush that seemed to be burning but was not consumed by the flames. Attracted by this curious phenomenon, Moses approached, whereupon the Lord said to him: ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.' (3:6) He then went on: ‘I am sending you to the Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.'

Moses expressed doubts about his ability to carry out this task and asked: ‘If I go to the Israelites and say the God of their forefathers has sent me to them, and they ask me his name, how shall I answer them?'

The Lord replied: ‘I AM, that is who I am. Say that I AM has sent you to them … You must tell the Israelites that it is Jehovah, the God of their forefathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, who has sent you to them.'

Moses protested that the Israelites would never believe that the Lord had appeared to him. God asked: ‘What have you in your hand?'

Moses answered: ‘A staff.'

The Lord told him to throw it down on to the ground, whereupon it turned into a snake. The Lord said: ‘Put out your hand and seize it by the tail.' Moses did as he was told and the snake was transformed again into a staff.

The Lord then instructed him: ‘Put your hand inside the fold of your cloak.' Moses again did as he was told and, when he withdrew his hand, it was white with leprosy. The Lord told him to put his hand inside his cloak a second time and, when he withdrew it, his hand was healthy again. Finally, the Lord told him: ‘If they are not convinced by these two signs, fetch some water from the Nile and pour it out on dry ground, and the water will turn to blood.'

Moses continued to protest: ‘Lord, I have never been eloquent. I am slow and hesitant of speech. O Lord, please send someone else.' As this was the first time that Moses was to address the Israelites, it would appear that he was not sure he would be able to make them understand him.

The Lord's reply makes it clear that, in addition to the sister we already know of, Moses had a Levite brother who, in a subsequent passage, we are told was three years the elder: ‘What about your brother, Aaron? He will do all the speaking. He is already on his way to meet you. You will speak to him and put words in his mouth. He will be your mouthpiece.' God also reassured Moses that his life would not be in any danger if he returned to Egypt because ‘all those who wished to kill you are dead'.

Moses ‘took his wife and sons' – hitherto we had heard of only one son, Gershon – ‘and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt: and Moses took the rod of God in his hand.' (4:20) In the course of the journey he met his brother Aaron. On arriving in Egypt they appeared together before an assembly of the elders of Israel where Aaron gave an account of everything the Lord had said to Moses. Moses and Aaron then went to Pharaoh – here again there is no indication that they had to travel any distance – and asked permission to undertake a three-day trip into the wilderness to offer a sacrifice to the Lord. Pharaoh refused their request. Instead, he ordered the Israelites' overseers not to provide them with any more straw for brickmaking: they were to gather their own, yet still produce the same number of bricks. ‘They are a lazy people,' said the king. ‘That is why they are clamouring to go and offer a sacrifice to their God. Take no notice of a pack of lies.'

The Israelites blamed Moses and Aaron for their plight. Moses and Aaron, for their part, renewed their pleas that the Israelites should be set free to worship their Lord, but Pharaoh remained obdurate. God therefore kept his earlier promise that in these circumstances he would stretch out his hand and ‘smite the Egyptians'. He inflicted a series often plagues – blood, frogs, gnats, maggots, swarms of flies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts and darkness – upon the country. As a final punishment, God assured Moses: ‘It is the Lord's Passover. On that night I shall pass through the land of Egypt and kill every first-born of man and beast.' Before that night – the fourteenth of the month of Abib, which is to be regarded as the first month of the Jewish Year – was over Pharaoh sent again for Moses and Aaron and told them: ‘Be off. Leave my people, you and your Israelites. Go and worship the Lord, as you ask.'