Part One: Joseph ruled like Pharaoh in ancient Egypt
by
Damien F. Mackey
I am not alone in my view that Egypt’s Eleventh Dynasty was an appropriate era for Joseph and the Famine. Creationist Patrick Clarke is another of whom
I am aware who has proposed this same biblico-historical setting.
Introduction
The secret to uncovering the eras of Abraham, (Jacob) Joseph and Moses in relation to ancient Egypt is to recognise, as Dr. Donovan Courville had, that the Old and so-called ‘Middle’ kingdoms of Egypt were not purely linear, set hundreds of years apart, the one from the other, but that there was some overlap there – quite considerable overlap in my opinion.
My findings on this have enabled me to draw up this very simple, but rather neat table (I not being a table person):
Abraham (dynasties 1 and 10)
Joseph (dynasties 3 and 11)
Moses (dynasties 4 and 12)
More recently I, with my recognition of the multi-identifiable Joseph also with Den, thought to have been a First Dynasty pharaoh:
Jacob and Joseph, Step Pyramid, Famine
(2) Jacob and Joseph, Step Pyramid, Famine | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
have thus had slightly to modify my table:
Joseph (dynasties 1, 3 and 11)
Den would prove to be so fruitful for Joseph in that article, with his various names providing this relevant description of him:
Usaph- (Joseph);
the foreigner;
he who brings water;
that I had to spend a fair amount of space upon him, before I could even come to the better known candidate for Joseph, the genius Imhotep of the Third Dynasty.
And, while Joseph’s Famine Pharaoh became easily identifiable in all of this, he being the Third Dynasty king, Horus Netjerikhet, there was also to be considered, with regard to Den, Horus Djet, the First Dynasty king of “a great famine” (Manetho).
Djet’s identification will hopefully become clearer as we shift now to the so-called ‘Middle’ Kingdom’s version of the Pharaoh-Joseph-Famine scenario.
Joseph in the ‘Middle’ Kingdom
I am not alone in my view that Egypt’s Eleventh Dynasty was an appropriate era for Joseph and the Famine. Creationist Patrick Clarke is another of whom I am aware who has proposed this same biblico-historical setting, with his special emphasis on Joseph’s given Egyptian name, Zaphenath-paaneah, befitting an Eleventh Dynasty context.
Joseph’s Zaphenath Paaneah—a chronological key
https://creation.com/chronological-key-in-josephs-name-zaphenath-paaneah
“The origin and meaning of the name Zaphenath Paaneah, given to Joseph during his rise from obscurity to national prominence, has proved to be problematical for translators and Bible historians alike. New research reveals the name’s unusual archaic Egyptian roots, giving the true meaning of Joseph’s Egyptian name. Joseph’s three other titles mentioned in Genesis 45 also help to place him in the Early Middle Kingdom Period and consequently point to the likely pharaoh under whom he served”.
That “likely pharaoh” is, as both Clarke and I have concluded, Mentuhotep so-called II.
We meet the mighty Mentuhotep II Netjerihedjet also as a Famine Pharaoh.
As Nicolas Grimal explains the situation (A History of Ancient Egypt, Blackwell, 1994, p. 155. My emphasis):
Mentuhotpe [Mentuhotep] II ... came to the Theban throne under the name S'ankhibtawy ... his domain stretched from the First Cataract to the tenth nome of Upper Egypt; in other words, it was still curtailed to the north by the territory of the princes of Asyut. A hostile peace was maintained between the two kingdoms, but this was disrupted when the Thinite nome, suffering grievously from famine, revolted against the Herakleopolitan clan. Mentuhotpe captured Asyut and passed through the fifteenth nome without encountering resistance - this was effectively the fall of the Herakleapolitan dynasty.
A ‘grievous famine’ in Egypt was hardly likely to have been restricted to just the one nome (province), though. Nicolas Grimal will give more information for famine during the Eleventh Dynasty, though presumably after the passing of Mentuhotep II:
P. 158: ... Mentuhotpe III .... Hekanakht also described the problems of his time, including the onset of famine in the Theban region.
....
After the death of Mentuhotpe III ... the country was evidently left in a confused state. At this point the Turin Canon mentions ‘seven empty years’ which correspond to the reign of Mentuhotpe IV, whose coronation name, Nebtawyre (“Ra is the lord of the Two Lands”) perhaps represents a return to the values of the Old Kingdom. ….
Except that, this was the Old Kingdom!
I suspect that Egyptologists have either turned the one great king Mentuhotep into an unnecessary succession (III, IV) - just as they have done to a greater or lesser degree with later kings, Pepi and Amenemhet and Sesostris and Thutmose and Amenhotep - or, that later kings Mentuhotep (or their officials) were reflecting back to Egypt’s time of great Famine. For one would hardly expect more than one ‘seven empty years’ event!
The Famine - like Noah's Flood, like the life of Abram, and like the life of Moses - brings a much-needed cohesion to ancient geology (Geological Ages)/geography/ Stone Ages/archaeology/kingdoms-dynasties and rulers.
Indeed, cohesion is sorely needed.
For the famed Egyptologist, Sir Alan Gardiner, wrote shockingly that: “What is proudly advertised as Egyptian history is merely a collection of rags and tatters” (Egypt of the Pharaohs, Oxford University press, Oxford, p. 53, 1961).
Joseph and the Famine, Moses and the Exodus, can serve as golden threads for knitting back together again, into a coherent tapestry, the “rags and tatters” of Egyptian history.
Mentuhotep II (2060-2009 BC, conventional dating) was a powerful and long-reigning king, during whose reign the land of Egypt was united, North and South.
He became known as the “Uniter of the Two Lands.”
It must have suited Joseph - who would have been expected to lead Egypt’s armies - to have the entire land united in the face of the Famine. As Patrick Clarke tells, Joseph achieved this, however, largely in a peaceful fashion (op. cit.):
1. How the nomarchs were tamed
When the famine predicted by Joseph arrived, his first political move, acting on Pharaoh’s behalf, was to offer grain for ‘money’ (Genesis 47:14—Heb. כֶּסֶף keceph i.e. silver …).
All the monetary silver was placed in Pharaoh’s treasury. A year later the people exchanged their second-most-valuable commodities—their livestock—for grain. In the third year, all the people clamoured for more grain (Genesis 47:19) and offered their most valuable commodities—their bodies and land—in exchange for grain.
In the space of just three years Joseph had achieved what decades of internal struggles had failed to do. In an amazing tour de force, he handed the land of Egypt, along with its people, back into Pharaoh’s power, as in the days of the Old Kingdom [sic]; only the temples, their estates, and the priesthood were exempted. ….
The actual cost in all of this to Pharaoh? Nothing? The gain for Pharaoh? Everything—absolute control of Upper and Lower Egypt.
It is not unreasonable to say that Joseph had, in the process, helped create a semi-feudal system not dissimilar to the later European feudal system of the Middle-Ages; and this almost 3,000 years before the Europeans.
Coupled with Joseph’s grain policies, Mentuhotep II was free to initiate a strong policy of centralization, reinforcing his royal authority by creating the posts of Governor of Upper Egypt imy r sm‛w and Governor of Lower Egypt imy r t3 mḥw , who had power over the broken nomarchs. …. Mentuhotep also, importantly, created a mobile group of royal court officials who further controlled the activities of the nomarchs. Eventually nomarchs who had supported the Herakleopolitan kings of Lower Egypt, such as the governor of Sawty (modern Asyut), lost their power to the benefit of the pharaoh.
Unfortunately, most of the tombs of 11th Dynasty officials have been vandalized, which makes it impossible to identify a named official of the time as Joseph.
[End of quote]
More hopefully than Clarke here, I think that we can identify - and even have identified - the biblical Joseph in the old Egyptian records, now as Den, now as Imhotep, and now as Khasekhemwy-Hetep-Im(ef) (Imhotep again). While the latter two names pertain to the Third Dynasty, to the Famine Pharaoh, Horus Netjerikhet, Den may pertain - as I have surmised - to Horus Djet, a First Dynasty Famine king.
How to connect all of this, and bundle it up into one, including, now, Mentuhotep II?
And who can be the Joseph-like Vizier pertaining to this Mentuhotep II?
I think the key element may be the Djet in Mentuhotep’s other name, Netjerihedjet, linking Den’s potential Famine Pharaoh, Djet, to Famine Pharaoh Mentuhotep.
The name Netjerihedjet is not unlike the name Netjerikhet of the Third Dynasty Famine Pharaoh.
Joseph, who was Den to Djet, and (Khasekhemwy)-Imhotep to Netjerikhet, must now also be the Famine-connected (see Dr. Courville, op. cit.) Bebi, Vizier to Mentuhotep.
For Bebi was yet another of the names of Khasekhemwy-Imhotep:
http://www.phouka.com/pharaoh/pharaoh/dynasties/dyn02/07khasekhemwy.html
It may now be time for another table (readers always ask for them):
Famine Pharaoh: Djet Horus Netjerikhet Mentuhotep Netjerihedjet
Joseph: Den Khasekemwy-Imhotep Bebi
Conventionally, Netjerikhet (c. 2650 BC), Mentuhotep (c. 2050 BC), whom I have connected together as the one biblical Pharaoh of the Famine (c. 1700 BC, round date) would be regarded as being two distinct rulers existing some 600 years apart.
Mentuhotep Netjerihedjet is like Horus Netjerikhet in other ways as well.
Like Horus Netjerikhet, “[Mentuhotep] was a prolific builder [Heqaib and Satis at Elephantine; Deir el-Ballas; Dendera; Elkab; Gebelein; Abydos; Deir el-Bahri] ... he built himself a funerary monument modelled on the pyramid complexes of the Old Kingdom” (Grimal, N., op. cit., p. 156-157).
But, as I must repeat from above: This was the Old Kingdom!
Hence it is not surprising to read further (p. 157): “[Mentuhotep] also revived [sic] the foreign policy of the Old Kingdom by leading an expedition to the west against the Tjemehu and Tjehenu Libyans and into the Sinai peninsula against the Mentjiu nomads”.
Most significantly, the somewhat uncommon (and even more so, with our overlaps) Heb-Sed festival occurred in the case of Horus Netjerikhet, in the case of Mentuhotep.
[We have left behind the late Stone Age of Abram (Abraham’s) time and are now in the Early Bronze Age (EBA) city building era].
Father to Pharaoh
In the “Jacob and Joseph, Step Pyramid, Famine” article (above), I had noted this:
Some are of the opinion that Khasekhemwy-Imhotep may have been the father of Horus Netjerikhet: https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/djoser/
“It is possible that his father was Khasekhemwy”.
This would be true now only in the Genesis 45:8 sense that Joseph (Khasekhemwy-Imhotep) was the “Father” of Pharaoh. ….
Correspondingly, now in our parallel ‘Middle’ Kingdom context, Khasekhemwy-Imhotep (Joseph) may be the Intef (Imhotep?) who is thought to have preceded Mentuhotep as the latter’s father - although the blood relationship is queried. Thus: https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/intefiii/
“[Intef] is also thought to be the father of Montuhotep II, who successfully reunited Egypt. …. However, it is also proposed by some that Montuhotep II was not related to Intef … but wished to be associated with him to ensure his position as pharaoh”.
Before proceeding to consider Moses (Part Two), there is one more potentially significant ‘Middle’ Kingdom manifestation of Joseph to be mentioned, Ankhtifi.
Egyptian name and personality of Joseph
Genesis 44:45: “Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-Paaneah and gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, to be his wife. And Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt”.
Can the name Ankhtifi possibly be identified in Joseph’s given Egyptian name, Zaphenath-Paaneah? This is a difficult matter since no two commentators, it seems, have been able to reach a consensus on the meaning of Joseph’s new name.
Here I turn to professor A. S. Yahuda who has proven in the past to be a trustworthy guide in matters pertaining to Egyptian linguistics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaphnath-Paaneah
Abraham Yahuda suggested for Zapheath-paneah, ḏfꜣ n tꜣ pꜣ ꜥnḫ, "the living one is the sustenance of (the) land", or ḏfꜣ n tꜣ pw ꜥnḫ "the sustenance of the land is he, the living one." (Yahuda, A. S. (1930). Eine Erwiderung auf Wilhelm Spiegelbergs "Ägyptologische Bemerkungen" zu meinem Buche "Die Sprache des Pentateuch". Leipzig. p. 7., cited by Vergote, p. 144)”.
In professor Yahuda’s explanation of this Egyptian name I think that we can basically find, in hypocoristicon form, the three elements that constitute the name, Ankhtifi: viz., Ankh (ꜥnḫ); ti (tꜣ); fi (fꜣ).
I should mention that Eulalío Eguía Jr. has also proposed the identification of the biblical Joseph as Ankhtifi, whom he connects, however, with Egypt’s Ninth Dynasty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7oLeJannks
Who, indeed, was Ankhtifi, a high official of Egypt, seemingly a quasi-Pharaoh, who, in his Autobiography, did not even bother to observe standard Egyptian protocol by mentioning the current Pharaoh?
Which means that Egyptologists cannot be exactly sure when Ankhtifi lived.
Ankhtifi’s Famine
This was no ordinary famine. It was of long duration, driving Egyptians to resort to cannibalism (as Hekanakht would also testify).
Here I am following Dr. Doaa M. Elkashef’s account of it in “Self-Presentation in the Autobiography of Ankhtifi of Moalla between Tradition and Innovation” (2023):
https://ijtah.journals.ekb.eg/article_310487_7a8edbc44025d034d58e79abe4b91e05.pdf
“I gave bread to the hungry and clothes to the naked. I anointed the unanointed.
I shod the one who had no shoes.
I gave a wife to the one who had no wife. ….
Bearing a host of impressive titles, Anhktifi - or whoever wrote his Autobiography - boasted of his having been like no other man ever born:
“I am a man without equal …. I am the front of people and the
back of people because (my) like will not exist; he will not exist.
(My) like could not have been born; he was not born”.
Could Ankhtifi have been the renowned Joseph, who likewise was front and centre involved in a terrible Famine? Certainly Ankhtifi’s claim to have been the greatest ever to have been born seems to be echoed in Sirach’s short praise of Joseph (Sirach 49:15):
“Nor was anyone ever born like Joseph …”.
Ankhtifi again:
“All of Upper Egypt died because of hunger, every man eating his (own) children; but I never let death happen because of hunger in this nome.
I gave a loan of Upper Egyptian barley ….
Whilst Ankhtifi fails to refer to any king, and also makes scarce reference to the Egyptian gods, he does tell of his guidance by the god Horus, and he also mentions Hemen. Horus-Hemen can be reduced to the one compound deity.
Since Egypt would likely have had no name for – nor interest in – the God of the Hebrews, the best that the writer of Ankhtifi’s Autobiography might have been able to come up with may have been simply Horus, the god of kings.
The monotheistic pharaoh, Akhnaton, much later on, would have to grapple with the problem of how to represent the one true God to the polytheistic Egyptian people.
Joseph was, as we know from the Book of Genesis, pure (the case of Potiphar’s wife) (Genesis 39:6-20), grateful and reliable, and most competent (vv. 2-6).
But he was also forthright in declaring, based on his Dreams, that God had exalted him, even over his own father and mother, and brothers (37:1-9). This so rankled with his brothers that they eventually decided to kill him (vv. 4-8; 19-20).
His father, Jacob, on the other hand, though much surprised by what Joseph was telling the family, even to the point of having to rebuke Joseph for it, was discerning enough to ‘keep it in mind’ (vv. 10-11; cf. Luke 2:19).
All that Joseph had foretold to his family eventually came to pass.
Genesis 41:41-44: “So Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt’. Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his finger and put it on Joseph’s finger. He dressed him in robes of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck. He had him ride in a chariot as his second-in-command, and people shouted before him, ‘Make way!’ Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt. Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I am Pharaoh, but without your word no one will lift hand or foot in all Egypt’.”
The problem of Joseph riding in a chariot has been much discussed and debated, and even more so in the life of Moses when Egypt allegedly had hundreds of chariots. Horses and chariots are barely attested at this early period of Egyptian history.
Was Joseph’s chariot, mirkebet (מִרְכֶּבֶת), merely a palanquin?
King Solomon would later use one (Song of Solomon 3:9): “King Solomon made himself a palanquin [or sedan chair] of the wood of Lebanon”.
Joseph, as second to Pharaoh, would probably have led armies in the process of unifying Egypt. And he really laid the foundations for the cruel state absolutism of the Twelfth Dynasty of Moses’ era, by his buying up of all the people of Egypt during the Famine, and by his placing of all wealth and power in the hands of the ruling monarch.
His utter boastfulness, if he were Ankhtifi, is indeed surprising, but it has precedence in Joseph’s forthright outspokenness regarding his dreams.
For Joseph well knew that he was a Man of Destiny.
“Nor was anyone ever born like Joseph …”.
Part Two: Moses not a king, but a Vizier and a Judge
According to my simple table in Part One:
Abraham (dynasties 1 and 10)
Joseph (dynasties 3 and 11)
Moses (dynasties 4 and 12)
Joseph is to be found in Egypt’s so-called ‘Middle’ Kingdom’s Eleventh Dynasty, and Moses is to be found in Egypt’s so-called ‘Middle’ Kingdom’s Twelfth Dynasty.
But, with the necessary folding into one of the Old and ‘Middle’ kingdoms, we can just as accurately say that Joseph is to be found in Egypt’s Old Kingdom’s Third Dynasty, and Moses is to be found in Egypt’s Old Kingdom’s Fourth Dynasty.
And, as we eventually expanded Joseph to (dynasties 1, 3 and 11) in Part One, so, too, will it be necessary, in the even more complex case of Moses, to expand him, here in Part Two, to (dynasties 4, 5, 6 and 12, 13).
Background to the Birth of Moses
About sixty-four (64) years are estimated to have elapsed from the death of Joseph at age 110 (c. 1620 BC) to the birth of Moses (c. 1550 BC): round dates.
While that substantial period of time might explain, in part, why it is said of the Pharaoh of the Oppression (Exodus 1:8): “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph”, probably this refers to the rise of a new dynasty for whom Joseph and his deeds were no longer considered to be of much relevance.
“… did not know Joseph”?
The great Imhotep (Joseph), whose fame would only increase and become fabulously mythologised down through the centuries. Surely this “new” pharaoh ‘knew’ of him!
The Hebrew, lo yada (לֹא-יָדַע) here, translated as “did not know”, can also mean something along the lines of ‘did not take notice of’, which is not entirely surprising if more than half a century had elapsed.
Moreover, as we are going to find out from the testimony of Flavius Josephus, the crown of Egypt had at this stage passed into ‘a new family’.
A further consideration may be that the ‘new family’, the new dynasty, was not ethnically (entirely) an Egyptian one.
King Solomon, many centuries later, will be scathing in his Book of Wisdom about the Egyptian ingratitude towards the Hebrews (19:13-17):
On the sinners, however, punishments rained down not without violent thunder as early warning; and they suffered what their own crimes had justly deserved since they had shown such bitter hatred to foreigners.
Others, indeed, had failed to welcome strangers who came to them, but the Egyptians had enslaved their own guests and benefactors.
The sinners, moreover, will certainly be punished for it, since they gave the foreigners a hostile welcome; but the latter, having given a festive reception to people who already shared the same rights as themselves, later overwhelmed them with terrible labours.
Hence they were struck with blindness, like the sinners at the gate of the upright, when, yawning darkness all around them, each had to grope his way through his own door.
Balance this, though, with Joseph’s treatment of the Egyptians.
Admittedly, he saved the lives of many of them from the Famine, but he also brought them into complete servitude under Pharaoh.
Now, if I have been correct in setting Joseph to a revised Third (Old) and Eleventh (‘Middle’) Egyptian phase, then the “new king” of Exodus 1:8, presumably a dynastic founder, would likely be the first ruler of the Fourth (Old) and the first ruler of the Twelfth (‘Middle’) kingdom[s].
Beginning with the Fourth Dynasty, the “new king” would be none other than Khufu (Cheops), a best-known pharaoh because of his Great Pyramid at Giza (Gizeh).
Yet, for all of this, he is surprisingly unknown, qua Khufu. But he does have alter egos.
In fact, we have only one tiny statuette representation of pharaoh Khufu.
http://www.guardians.net/egypt/khufu.htm
“Although the Great pyramid has such fame, little is actually known about its builder, Khufu. Ironically, only a very small statue of 9 cm has been found depicting this historic ruler. This statue … was not found in Giza near the pyramid, but was found to the south at the Temple of Osiris at Abydos, the ancient necropolis”.
Thus Khufu, like the seemingly great, yet poorly known, Zoser, at the time of Joseph, is crying out for an alter ego.
And that we get, quite abundantly, I believe, in the person of Amenemhet [Amenemes] so-called I, the founder of the mighty Twelfth Dynasty, Moses’ dynasty.
John D. Keyser has, with this useful piece of research, arrived at the same conclusion as I, that Amenemhet I was the Book of Exodus’s “new king” (op. cit.):
In the works of Flavius Josephus (1st-century A.D. Jewish historian) we read the following:
Now it happened that the Egyptians grew delicate and lazy … and gave themselves up to other pleasures, and in particular to the love of gain. They also became VERY ILL AFFECTED TOWARDS THE HEBREWS, as touched with envy at their prosperity;
for when they saw how the nation of the Israelites flourished, and were become eminent already in plenty of wealth, which they had acquired by their virtue and natural love of labour, they thought their increase was to their own detriment; and having, in length of time, forgotten the benefits they had received from Joseph, PARTICULARLY THE CROWN BEING NOW COME INTO ANOTHER FAMILY, they became very abusive to the Israelites, and contrived many ways of afflicting them; FOR THEY ENJOINED THEM TO CUT A GREAT NUMBER OF CHANNELS [CANALS] FOR THE RIVER [NILE], AND TO BUILD WALLS FOR THEIR CITIES AND RAMPARTS, THAT THEY MIGHT RESTRAIN THE RIVER, AND HINDER ITS WATERS FROM STAGNATING, UPON ITS RUNNING OVER ITS OWN BANKS: THEY SET THEM ALSO TO BUILD PYRAMIDS, and by all this wore them out; and forced them to learn all sorts of mechanical arts, and to accustom themselves to hard labour. And FOUR HUNDRED YEARS [sic] did they spend under these afflictions.... (Antiquities of the Jews, chap. IX, section 1).
Within this passage from Josephus lie several CLUES that will help us to determine the dynasty of the oppression of the Israelites.
The Change of Rulership
Josephus mentions that one of the reasons the Egyptians started to mistreat the Israelites was because “THE CROWN [HAD]...NOW COME INTO ANOTHER FAMILY.” Does Egyptian history reveal a time when the crown of Egypt passed into the hands of a totally unrelated family? Indeed it does!
In the Leningrad museum lies a papyrus of the 12th DYNASTY, composed during the reign of its FIRST KING AMENEMHET I. The papyrus is in the form of a PROPHECY attributed to the sage Nefer-rehu of the time of King Snefru; and in it an amazing prediction is made: A king shall come from the south, called AMUNY [shortened form of the name Amenemhet], the son of a woman of Nubia, and born in Upper Egypt....
He shall receive the White Crown, he shall wear the Red Crown [will become ruler over ALL Egypt]....the people of his time shall rejoice, THE SON OF SOMEONE shall make his name for ever and ever....The Asiatics shall fall before his carnage, and the Libyans shall fall before his flame....There shall be built the ‘WALL OF THE PRINCE [RULER],’ and the Asiatics shall not (again) be suffered to go down into Egypt.
Here the NON-ROYAL DESCENT of Amenemhet I. is clearly indicated, for the phrase “son of Someone” was a common way of designating a man of good, though not princely or royal, birth. According to George Rawlinson: “There is NO INDICATION OF ANY RELATIONSHIP between the kings of the twelfth and those of the eleventh dynasty …. At any rate, he makes NO PRETENSION TO ROYAL ORIGIN, and the probability would seem to be that he attained the throne NOT THROUGH ANY CLAIM OF RIGHT, but by his own personal merits. (History of Ancient Egypt. Dodd, Mead and Co., N.Y. 1882, pp.146-147).
….
The inscriptions on the monuments make it clear that his elevation to the throne of Egypt was no peaceful hereditary succession, but a STRUGGLE for the crown and scepter that continued for some time. He fought his way to the throne, and was accepted as king only because he triumphed over his rivals. After the fight was ended and the towns of Egypt subdued, the new pharaoh began to extend the borders of Egypt.
The fact that the 12th Dynasty was a “maverick” dynasty -- one that did not conform to the royal blood line of the pharaohs -- was well known in the 18th Dynasty. According to information provided by the family pedigrees in several tombs of the 18th Dynasty, and by texts engraved or painted on certain objects of a sepulchral nature, the ANCESTOR of the royal family of this dynasty was worshiped in the person of the old Pharaoh MENTUHOTEP OF THE 11th DYNASTY, the 57th king of the great Table of Abydos. The royal family of the 18th Dynasty considered the dynasty of Amenemhet I. to be an aberration!
….
Thus, with the ascension of Amenemhet I. of the 12th Dynasty, the crown had “NOW COME INTO ANOTHER FAMILY”.
The implications of this choice for the “new king”, though, would certainly mean that Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty will need to be shortened, as I have long realised. The possibility of any such radical shortening of the Twelfth Dynasty will be seriously considered.
We also need to fill it out, though - as in the case of Joseph - with its Old Kingdom ‘other face’.
I have mentioned Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty, and shall return to him soon, but I find perhaps a more ready and striking alter ego for Amenemhet I in the founder of the Sixth Dynasty, Teti. As I have written previously:
Starting at the beginning of the 6th dynasty, with pharaoh Teti, we have found that he has such striking likenesses to the founder of the 12th dynasty, Amenemhet (Amenemes) I, that I have had no hesitation in identifying ‘them’ as one.
Thus I wrote in a “Bible Bending” article:
Pharaoh Teti Reflects Amenemes I
…. These characters may have, it seems, been dupli/triplicated due to the messy arrangement of conventional Egyptian history.
Further most likely links with the 6th dynasty are the likenesses between the latter’s founder, Teti, and Amenemes I, as pointed out by historians. Despite the little that these admit to knowing of pharaoh Teti - and the fact that they would have him (c. 2300 BC) well pre-dating the early 12th dynasty (c. 1990 BC) - historians have noted that pharaoh Teti shared some common features with Amenemes I, including the same throne name, Sehetibre, the same Horus name, Sehetep-tawy (“He who pacifies the Two Lands”), and the likelihood that death came in similarly through assassination.
This triplicity appears to me to be another link between the ‘Old’ and ‘Middle’ kingdoms!”
But Amenemhet I combined with Teti - shaping up remarkably well as the “new king” of Exodus 1:8 - may need further yet to include the alter ego of the Fourth Dynasty’s Khufu. Though, as noted earlier, “we have only one tiny statuette representation of pharaoh Khufu”, that one depiction of him finds a virtual ‘identical twin’ in a statue of Teti I have viewed on the Internet (presuming that this statue has rightly been labelled as Teti’s).
They look like twins!
Apart from the triplicity connecting Teti of the Sixth Dynasty with Amenemhet of the Twelfth Dynasty, as the “new king” of Exodus 1:8, how further can we tie up altogether, as one, the Fourth, Sixth and Twelfth dynasties of Egypt?
Well Artapanus the Jew, whose false information that Moses was a “king” had led me on a merry dance in search of the historical Moses, now comes greatly to our aid by providing names for Moses’s Egyptian foster-mother and her husband, who became Pharaoh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_in_Judeo-Hellenistic_literature
“As the foster-mother of Moses, Artapanus names Merris, the wife of Chenephres, King of Upper Egypt; being childless, she pretended to have given birth to him and brought him up as her own child. (Eusebius, l.c. ix. 27)”.
The names “Merris” and “Chenephres” will now enable for us to tie up a lot of early Egyptian history. Here is what I have previously written about the situation:
Linking the 4th, 6th and 12th dynasties?
We may be able to trace the rise of the 4th dynasty’s Khufu (Cheops) - whose full name was Khnum-khuefui (meaning ‘Khnum is protecting me’) - to the 6th dynasty, to the wealthy noble (recalling that the founding 12th dynasty pharaoh “had no royal blood”) from Abydos in the south, called Khui. An abbreviation of Khuefui?
This Khui had a daughter called Ankhenesmerire, in whose name are contained all the elements of Mer-es-ankh, the first part of which, Meres, accords phonetically with the name Eusebius gave for the Egyptian foster-mother of Moses, “Merris”.
….
I shall be taking this “Chenephres” (“Kheneferis”) to be pharaoh Chephren (Egyptian Khafra), the son of Khufu, since Chephren had indeed married a Meresankh.
“We know of several of Khafre's wives, including Meresankh … and his chief wife, Khameremebty I”.
….
… continuing our merging of kingdoms and dynasties, this family relationship may again be duplicated in that the 6th dynasty pharaoh, Piops [Pepi] I (Cheops?), had a daughter also called Ankhenesmerire, whom his son … married.
From the 4th dynasty, we gain certain elements that are relevant to the early career of Moses. Firstly we have a strong founder-king, Cheops (Egyptian Khufu), builder of the great pyramid at Giza, who would be an excellent candidate for the “new king” during the infancy of Moses who set the Israelite slaves to work with crushing labour (Exodus 1:8). This would support the testimony of Josephus that the Israelites built pyramids for the pharaohs, and it would explain from whence came the abundance of manpower for pyramid building. Cheap slave labour.
….
The widespread presence of ‘Asiatics’ in Egypt at the time would help to explain the large number of Israelites said to be in the land. Pharaoh would have used as slaves other Syro-Palestinians, too, plus Libyans and Nubians. As precious little, though, is known of Cheops, despite his being powerful enough to have built one of the Seven Wonders of the World, we shall need to fill him out later with his 12th dynasty alter ego.
In Cheops’ daughter, Mer-es-ankh, we presumably have the Merris of tradition who retrieved the baby Moses from the water. The name Mer-es-ankh consists basically of two elements, Meres and ankh, the latter being the ‘life’ symbol for Egypt worn by people even today.
Mer-es-ankh married Chephren (Egyptian, Khafra), builder of the second Giza pyramid and probably, of the Great Sphinx. He would thus have become Moses’s foster/father-in-law (as I am told the relationship is best expressed).
Moses, now a thorough-going ‘Egyptian’ (cf. Exodus 2:19), must have been his loyal subject. “Now Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became a man of power both in his speech and in his actions”. (Acts 7:22)
Tradition has Moses leading armies for Chenephres as far as Ethiopia. Whilst this may seem a bit strained in a 4th dynasty context, we shall find that it is perfectly appropriate in a 12th dynasty one, when we uncover Chephren’s alter ego.
From the 12th dynasty, we gain certain further elements that are relevant to the early era of Moses. Once again we have a strong founder-king, Amenemhet I, who will enable us to fill out the virtually unknown Cheops as the “new king” of Exodus 1:8. The reign of Amenemhet I was, deliberately, an abrupt break with the past. The beginning of the 12th dynasty marks not only a new dynasty, but an entirely new order. Amenemhet I celebrated his accession by adopting the Horus name: Wehem-Meswt (“He who repeats births”), thought to indicate that he was “the first of a new line”, that he was “thereby consciously identifying himself as the inaugurator of a renaissance, or new era in his country’s history”.
Amenemhet I is thought actually to have been a commoner, originally from southern Egypt. I have thought to connect him to pharaoh Khufu via the nobleman from Abydos, Khui.
“The Prophecy of Neferti”, relating to the time of Amenemhet I, shows the same concern in Egypt for the growing presence of Asiatics in the eastern Delta as was said to occupy the mind of the new pharaoh of Exodus, seeing the Israelites as a political threat (1:9): “‘Look’, [pharaoh] said to his people, ‘the Israelites have become far too numerous for us’.”
That Asiatics were particularly abundant in Egypt at the time is apparent from this information from the Cambridge Ancient History: “The Asiatic inhabitants of the country at this period [of the Twelfth Dynasty] must have been many times more numerous than has been generally supposed ...”.
Dr David Down gives the account of Sir Flinders Petrie who, working in the Fayyûm in 1899, made the important discovery of the town of Illahûn [Kahun], which Petrie described as “an unaltered town of the twelfth dynasty”.
Of the ‘Asiatic’ presence in this pyramid builders’ town, Rosalie David (who is in charge of the Egyptian branch of the Manchester Museum) has written:
It is apparent that the Asiatics were present in the town in some numbers, and this may have reflected the situation elsewhere in Egypt. It can be stated that these people were loosely classed by Egyptians as ‘Asiatics’, although their exact home-land in Syria or Palestine cannot be determined .... The reason for their presence in Egypt remains unclear.
Undoubtedly, these ‘Asiatics’ were dwelling in Illahûn largely to raise pyramids for the glory of the pharaohs. Is there any documentary evidence that ‘Asiatics’ in Egypt acted as slaves or servants to the Egyptians? “Evidence is not lacking to indicate that these Asiatics became slaves”, Dr. Down has written with reference to the Brooklyn Papyrus. Egyptian households at this time were filled with Asiatic slaves, some of whom bore biblical names. Of the seventy-seven legible names of the servants of an Egyptian woman called Senebtisi recorded on the verso of this document, forty-eight are (like the Hebrews) NW Semitic. In fact, the name “Shiphrah” is identical to that borne by one of the Hebrew midwives whom Pharaoh had commanded to kill the male babies (Exodus 1:15).
“Asian slaves, whether merchandise or prisoners of war, became plentiful in wealthy Egyptian households [prior to the New Kingdom]”, we read in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Amenemhet I was represented in “The Prophecy of Neferti” - as with the “new king” of Exodus 1:8 - as being the one who would set about rectifying the problem. To this end he completely reorganised the administration of Egypt, transferring the capital from Thebes in the south to Ithtowe in the north, just below the Nile Delta. He allowed those nomarchs who supported his cause to retain their power. He built on a grand scale. Egypt was employing massive slave labour, not only in the Giza area, but also in the eastern Delta region where the Israelites were said to have settled at the time of Joseph.
Professor J. Breasted provided ample evidence to show that the powerful 12th dynasty pharaohs carried out an enormous building program whose centre was in the Delta region. More specifically, this building occurred in the eastern Delta region which included the very area that comprised the land of Goshen where the Israelites first settled.
“... in the eastern part [of the Delta], especially at Tanis and Bubastis ... massive remains still show the interest which the Twelfth Dynasty manifested in the Delta cities”.
Today, archaeologists recognise the extant remains of the construction under these kings as representing a mere fraction of the original; the major part having been destroyed by the vandalism of the New Kingdom pharaohs (such as Ramses II).
The Biblical account states that: “... they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick” (Exodus 1:14).
The historical Moses has proven to be elusive
Eduard Meyer, the father of the “Sothic” theory mangling, was one (amongst many) who would deny the very existence of Moses and his work. We read this information in the Preface to Martin Buber’s book, Moses (1946): “In the year 1906 Eduard Meyer, a well-known historian, ex¬pressed the view that Moses was not a historical personality. He further remarked”:
After all, with the exception of those who accept tradition bag and baggage as historical truth, not one of those who treat [Moses] as a historical reality has hitherto been able to fill him with any kind of content whatever, to depict him as a concrete historical figure, or to produce anything which he could have created or which could be his historical work.
[This rates with professor Israel Finkelstein’s more recent, ill-informed remark: “Now Solomon, I think I destroyed Solomon, so to speak. Sorry for that!”]
One could reply to this that, thanks to Berlin School Meyer’s own confusing rearrangement of Egyptian chronology, an artificial ‘Berlin Wall’ has been raised preventing scholars from making the crossing between the text book Egyptology and a genuine biblical history and archaeology.
Admittedly Moses - not a native Egyptian, but a Hebrew fully educated in Egyptian wisdom (Acts 7:22): “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action” - has been most difficult for historians to identify in the Egyptian records. Impossible for conventional historians (thanks to the likes of Eduard Meyer), who will always be searching in the wrong historico-archaeological period, but also difficult for revisionists.
The situation has not been helped by some good revisionists, following Dr. Courville, trying to identify the biblical Joseph in the actual era of Moses, the Twelfth Dynasty.
According to John D. Keyser:
http://www.hope-of-israel.org/dynastyo.html
Some say the Israelites labored in Egypt during the 6th Dynasty; while others claim the dynasty of the oppression was the 19th. Still others proclaim the 18th to be the one -- or the period of the Hyksos rulers of Egypt!” Keyser then concludes: “By turning to the Bible and examining the works of early historians, the dynasty of the oppression becomes very apparent to those who are seeking the TRUTH with an open mind!
Keyser’s theory here is sound. However, it turns out to be much more difficult to realise in practice.
Horses and Chariots in Egypt
Concerning “the period of the Hyksos rulers of Egypt”, mentioned here by Keyser, there is at least one very good reason why some have fastened onto it.
It is because chariots - seemingly lacking to early Egypt - are thought to have become abundant at the time of the Hyksos conquest (c. 1780 BC, conventional dating).
The Pharaoh of the Exodus, we are told, pursued the fleeing Israelites with 600 war chariots (Exodus 14:7): “[Pharaoh] took six hundred of the best chariots, along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them”.
Yet, about two centuries earlier than that, we find (as referred to earlier) Joseph riding in “a chariot” (Genesis 41:43): “[Pharaoh] had [Joseph] ride in a chariot as his second-in-command, and people shouted before him, ‘Make way!’ Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt”.
While that may refer to a palanquin, as already suggested, I presume that when, later, Genesis 50:9, referring to the funeral procession of Jacob, father of Joseph, tells that: “Chariots and horsemen also went up with him. It was a very large company”, real chariots must this time have been involved.
Dr. Gerald E. Aardsma has clarified the situation somewhat:
https://www.biblicalchronologist.org/correspondence/horses_chariots.php
Specifically, archaeological data from Nahal Tillah seem to show unequivocal presence of domesticated horses within the Egyptian sphere of activity even prior to the Old Kingdom. Nahal Tillah is situated in the northern Negev of Israel. It displays a strong Egyptian presence in its archaeological record, causing the archaeologists involved to suggest royal Egyptian trading and administration relations at this site. The excavators took care to gather all bone fragments, as is normal today, and analyzed them according to type: sheep, pig, donkey, etc. They wrote:
The most surprising feature of the assemblage is the large number of equid remains, some of which are from domestic horses (Equus caballus). ... There was a general supposition that domestic horses were not introduced into the Levant and Egypt until the second millennium, but Davis (1976) found horse remains at Arad from the third millennium and small domestic horses seem to have been present in the fourth millennium in the Chalcolithic period in the northern Negev (Grigson 1993).
…. Thus the archaeological data which are presently available---indeed, some of which have been available since 1976---seem to seriously undermine the claim that Egypt was without horses until the Hyksos dynasties. The work at Nahal Tillah seems to show that horses were available just next door, in the northern Negev, very early on in the history of post-Flood Egypt, and Egyptians were clearly present where these horses were present. Are we to believe that these Egyptians failed to find domestic horses, with all their unique advantages for agriculture and transportation, of no interest, and chose to leave them all next door for century after century?
[End of quote]
Based on the extensive biblical evidence, it should be possible to find abundant traces of Moses both in history and in mythology, for, according to Exodus 11:3: “… the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people”.
More sympathetic to Moses and the biblical Patriarchs was the Hellenistic Jewish author, Artapanus (C2nd BC, conventional dating), who claimed in περὶ ʾΙουδαίων (“On the Jews”), some extraordinary innovations and inventions by the Patriarchs and Moses, as described at:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/artapanus
The purpose of this work was to prove that the foundations of Egyptian culture were laid by Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. When Abraham came to Egypt, he taught the pharaoh (Pharethothes or Pharetones) the science of astrology. Jacob established the Egyptian temples at Athos and Heliopolis. Joseph was appointed viceroy of all Egypt and initiated Egyptian agrarian reforms to ensure that the powerful would not dispossess the weak and the poor of their fields. He was the first to divide the country and demarcate its various boundaries. He turned arid areas into arable land, distributed land among the priests, and also introduced standard measures for which he became popular among the Egyptians (Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 9:23). But the one who excelled all was Moses, whom Artapanus identifies with Musaeus, teacher of Orpheus, and with Hermes-Thoth, god of Egyptian writing and culture. The name Hermes was given to Moses by the priests who revered him for his wisdom and paid him divine homage. Moses founded the arts of building, shipping, and weaponry, as well as Egyptian religion and philosophy. He was also the creator of hieroglyphic writing. In addition, he divided the city into 36 wards and assigned to each its god for worship. Moses was the founder of the cult of Apis the Bull and of Ibis. All these accomplishments of Moses aroused the jealousy of King Kheneferis, father of Maris, Moses' foster mother. He tried to kill Moses, but failed. ….
Here, undoubtedly, we have an interesting blend of fantasy and reality.
“Chenephres”, who in his Twelfth Dynasty manifestation was the sphinx-building Sesostris,
appears to have had the same sort of jealous dislike for Moses as King Saul of Israel would later display towards the highly popular and successful David.
Baby Moses
Since the Twelfth Dynasty rulers were Crocodile god (Sobek) worshippers, the dynasty concluding with the Crocodile-named woman, Sobek-neferu (Sebek-neferure), it may have happened that princess “Merris” found the baby Moses in Lake Faiyum (Fayum), rather than in the Nile. Exodus 1:22 has the baby cast “into the river”, hayorah (הַיְאֹ֙רָה֙)
“Merris” may have gone down there to worship Sobek, and found baby Moses instead.
The woman who, on behalf of “Merris”, wet-nursed Moses, his own mother (Exodus 2:7-10), is identified in some Jewish tradition as Shiphrah, the mid-wife who courageously resisted Pharaoh’s order to exterminate all male babies (1:15-20).
She must have been someone prominent.
We saw that her name (Shiphrah) was listed in the Brooklyn Papyrus along with other Semitic names.
The Moses-in-a-basket story, floating on the water, has given rise to many later legends, e.g. Greco-Roman, Hindu.
While all of these post-date Moses, another one does not: Sargon of Akkad, leading scholars to insist that the Sargon legend was the basis for the Exodus story.
At: http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/Content/Detail/7 we read: “The parallel lives of Sargon and Moses are intriguing. Both were born to Semite mothers. Both were placed in reed baskets lined with pitch and set afloat. Both were reared in the homes of non Semites, one Sumerian, the other Egyptian. As young men, both became part of their respective royal courts. Both confronted rulers. And both became mighty leaders over a great nation”.
However, while Sargon of Akkad certainly does pre-date Moses by several centuries, the legend about him is extremely late, almost a millennium later than Moses.
