Moses and Akhenaten (30 page)

Much argument has surrounded the question of whether the word
Khabiru,
used in the Amarna letter, is to be equated with the biblical word for ‘Hebrew'. The various points of view can be found summarized in a useful research by the biblical scholar H. H. Rowley.
¹⁰
(For my own conclusions – that the term indicated a social class rather than a people – see
Appendix G
.)

Part of Josephus' account of events in Egypt makes two points: ‘This king, he [Manetho] states, wishing to be granted … a vision of the gods, communicated his desire to his namesake, Amenophis, son of Paapis [son of Habu], whose wisdom and knowledge of the future were regarded as marks of divinity. This namesake replied that he would be able to see the gods if he purged the entire country of lepers and other polluted persons, and sent them to work on the stone quarries to the east of the Nile, segregated from the rest of the Egyptians. They included, he adds, some of the learned priests, who were afflicted with leprosy.'

The points in question may have their historical inspiration in the fact that:

1   Moses/Akhenaten preached about a God who, unlike the ancient gods of Egypt, had no visible image;

2   When Akhenaten was persuaded to leave Thebes for his new capital at Amarna, those of his followers who stayed behind were sent to work in the stone quarries.

Manetho's account also describes how Amenophis (Amenhotep III) subsequently advanced from Ethiopia with a large army and his son, Rampses, at the head of another, and that the two attacked and defeated the shepherds and their polluted allies, killing many of them and pursuing the remainder to the frontiers of Syria.

This is an allusion to Ramses I, during whose brief reign the Exodus took place.

Analysis of the origins of the tribe of Israel and of the Levites would need a book in itself. Here it is worth making a few points briefly.

Contrary to the general view, the name Amarna does not derive from a Muslim Arab tribe which settled in the area later. No evidence of such an event exists. The name derives from the name in the second cartouche of Akhenaten's god –
Im-r-n.
Amram, or Imran, was the name given in the Bible to Moses' father and it is the name Akhenaten gave to his ‘father', the Aten.

Across the river from Amarna there is the modern city of Mal-lawi (Mallevi), which means literally ‘The City of the Levites'. This could be explained by the fact that the Levites, who held priestly positions with Moses, held the same positions with Akhenaten at Amarna. For example, Meryre II was the High Priest of the Aten at his Amarna temple:
¹¹
the Hebrew equivalent of this name is Merari, who is described (Genesis, 46:11) as one of the sons of Levi. Similarly, Panehesy was the Chief Servitor of the Aten at Akhenaten's temple:
¹²
the Hebrew equivalent of this name is Phinehas, the son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron (Exodus, 6:25) in whose family the priesthood was to remain:

Wherefore say, Behold, I give unto him (Phinehas) my covenant of peace.

And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel. (Numbers, 25:12–13)

It is therefore a possibility that we are dealing here with the same people who served Akhenaten at Amarna and then followed him to Sinai after his fall from power.

Discovery late in 1989 of the tomb, almost intact, of Aper-el, the hitherto unknown vizier to Akhenaten, also provides a semantic link between the Israelites and the Amarna regime.

Similar names are known to have existed in Egypt at this time, but never in the case of high officials. The name ‘Aper' corresponds to the Egyptian word for ‘Hebrew', which meant to ancient Egyptians a nomad, and the final ‘el' is the short form of ‘Elohim', one of the words used in the Bible as the name of ‘the Lord'.

The fact that Akhenaten's vizier was a Hebrew worshipper of El confirms the link between the king and the Israelites living in Egypt at the time. Furthermore, the fact that Queen Tiye was associated with her husband, Amenhotep III, in donating a box to the funerary furniture of Aper-el (see
Chapter 8
) indicates the possibility that the vizier was a relation of the queen's, most probably through her Israelite father, Yuya (Joseph).

The Death of Moses

The account in the Old Testament of the failure of Moses to reach the Promised Land, his death and his burial in an unmarked grave is another curious episode.

We are told initially, as we saw earlier, that, when his followers complained of thirst, Moses used his rod to smite a rock and bring forth water. It was called ‘the water of Meribah' – a location in the north-centre of Sinai, south of Canaan – and it was for this action, although there is no indication that Moses had done anything forbidden to him, that he was denied his reward. When the Israelites were camped on the banks of the Jordan, near Jericho and opposite Canaan, he learned, according to the Book of Deuteronomy, that he was to be denied the opportunity to cross the river, no matter how hard he pleaded:

I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon.

… the Lord said … speak no more unto me of this matter …

… thou shalt not go over this Jordan. (Deuteronomy, 3:25–7)

Later in the Book of Deuteronomy we have an account of the actual death of Moses. The Lord said to him: ‘Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab' – the borders between Sinai and eastern Jordan – ‘that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession: And die in the mount … Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin … thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.' (32:49–52)

After admonishing and blessing his people, Moses left them with Joshua and climbed the mountain. There, after viewing the Promised Land, he met his death – and was buried by the Lord in an unmarked grave in the plains of Moab below.

In contrast to this straightforward story, Talmudic sources have a rich collection of contradictory accounts of the manner of Moses' death. A reference to a confrontation between him and the ‘Angel of Death' on the Mount before he died, with an indication of a struggle between the two, has persuaded some biblical scholars that Moses was killed. Sigmund Freud interpreted this suspicion in his book
Moses and Monotheism
to mean that Moses had been killed by his own followers for being too rigid in his views. I do not think this is an accurate interpretation of what happened.

The key, it seems to me, lies in the reason given why Moses was not allowed to enter Canaan, the Promised Land. According to the Book of Exodus, the reason is that Moses struck a rock with his rod to obtain water for his thirsty followers. This is not really convincing. Why should this practical action be the cause of punishment? It is not as if there is any suggestion that he had been forbidden to indulge in such conduct.

However, when we look back at the wars of Seti I, the second king of the Nineteenth Dynasty, against the Shasu we find that the first confrontation took place in the vicinity of one of the Egyptian fortresses on the route between Zarw and Gaza. Such fortresses were built in areas that had wells. It would therefore seem to be a more likely explanation – even if it can be only supposition – that Moses, under pressure from his thirsty followers, entered one or more of these fortresses and obtained water by using his royal sceptre. Intrusions of this type would have been reported by the Egyptian guards to their superiors at Zarw, resulting in Seti I sallying forth to put a stop to the unrest that the Shasu were causing among the Sinai settlements. After the initial battle, Seti I, as we saw earlier, chased the Shasu, identified as the Israelites, into northern Sinai – and, if these Talmudic references to the death of Moses are correct, it must have been there that Moses died, out of sight of his followers, most probably at the hand of Seti I.

This would explain how a new version of the Osiris-Horus myth came into existence from the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Osiris, the King of Egypt, was said to have had to leave the country for a long time. On his eventual return he was assassinated by Set, who had usurped the throne, but Horus, the son of Osiris, confronted Set at Zarw and slew him. According to my interpretation of events, it was in fact ‘Set' who slew ‘Horus'; but their roles were later reversed by those who wished to believe in an eternal life for Horus. This new myth developed to the point where Osiris/Horus became the principal god worshipped in Egypt in later times while Set was looked upon as the evil one.

This myth could have been a popular reflection of a real historical event – a confrontation between Moses and Seti I on top of the mountain in Moab.

EPILOGUE

L
ACK
of historical evidence to support the stories we find in the Old Testament has resulted broadly in three schools of thought.

Some people accept these accounts of miracles and abnormal happenings unquestioningly, although they demand rational or scientific explanations for the events they encounter in their everyday lives; some dismiss the Old Testament as a work of imagination, purely mythological, with no historical value; some have tried to marry these two schools of thought by setting a number of the better-known biblical tales against a historical background, although this must be regarded simply as story-telling, not serious historical research.

My own view has long been that the Old Testament is a historical work whose stories, recounted in language that frequently strikes our sophisticated ears as extravagant, became distorted and exaggerated during the many centuries when they were transmitted by word of mouth, and suffered further at the hands of various editors. It is difficult to imagine how all these biblical tales became etched so deeply in human memory if they did not have a basis in reality.

This is not to say that there are not genuine miracles in the Old Testament. There is no need to question the fact that, if he had a message for Moses, the Lord attracted his attention by means of a bush that appeared to be burning (radiant light is a recurrent feature in accounts of Marian apparitions in our own age, such as those at Lourdes). Yet to many modern minds the popular image of Moses as some kind of super-magician with a rod that could turn into a snake and part the waters of the Red Sea is an impediment to belief.

I hope that my work, in providing a link between biblical and known historical events and putting forward rational explanations for many of the seemingly mystifying events we find described in the Old Testament, will serve to overcome such doubts and objections. In the case of this particular book, it will enable Moses, the great law-giver who delivered the Ten Commandments, to be studied from two sources – the Bible and Egyptian history. In addition, it points the way to the identification of other biblical figures and, by fixing the date of the Exodus, makes it possible to establish when and how the Israelite entry into Canaan took place, as well as other events that have long been the subject of debate and argument.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

(i) The Shasu Wars

O
N
the east side of the northern wall of the great Hypostyle Hall in Amun's temple at Karnak we find two series of scenes distributed symmetrically on either side of the entrance to the temple. The action of the scenes converges towards the door at the centre, near which the god Amun stands to welcome the victorious Seti I. At the two extreme ends, far from the doorway, we find depicted the battles that took place in distant lands, and as we move towards the door we are shown the capture of war prisoners, followed by the arrival back in Egypt, the presentation of captives and spoils to Amun, culminating in the slaying of prisoners as sacrifices to the god. The scenes are arranged in three horizontal rows, each showing a different war.

The first chronologically, the bottom row of the east wall, is a representation of the war against the Shasu. After setting out on the route from Zarw to Gaza – known in the Bible as ‘the way of the land of the Philistines' (Exodus, 13:17) – and passing the fortified water stations, ‘pushing along this road in the Negeb the king scatters the Shasu, who from time to time gather in sufficient numbers to meet him. One of these actions is depicted in this relief as taking place on the desert road.
¹
… Over the battle scene stands the inscription: “The Good God, Sun of Egypt, Moon of all land, Montu (the Theban god of war) in the foreign countries: irresistible, mighty-hearted like Baal (an Asiatic god, the counterpart of the Egyptian Seth), there is none that approaches him on the day of drawing up the battle-line … The rebels, they know not how they shall (flee); the vanquished of the Shasu (becoming like) that which exist not.”
²
In his campaign it seems that Seti I pursued the Shasu into the northern Sinai area and Edom, which includes ‘the waters of Meribah', as well as Moab – the borders between Sinai and Canaan/Jordan – before returning to continue his march along the northern Sinai road between Zarw and Gaza until he reached Canaan itself. Just across the Egyptian border he arrived at a fortified town whose name is given as Pe-Kanan (the Canaan), which, according to Gardiner, is the city of Gaza.
³

In another scene we find the following inscription over the defeated Shasu: ‘Year 1. King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Menmare (Seti I). The destruction which the mighty sword of Pharaoh … made among the vanquished of the Shasu from the fortress of Tharu (Zarw) to Pe-kanan, when His Majesty marched against them like a fierce-eyed lion, making them carcasses in their valleys, overturned in their blood like those that exist not. Everyone that escapes his fingers says: “His might towards distant countries is the might of his father, Amun, who hath assigned to him victorious valour in the countries.” '
⁴