by
Damien F. Mackey
Some by now well
established biblico-archaeological parameters serve to fix, with some degree of
precision, the era of the patriarch Joseph, son of Jacob.
Introduction
Joseph, that much loved Hebrew of
Genesis who saved Egypt from its seven years of famine, is known from the
Genesis narratives to have existed after
Abraham, but before Moses.
In very round figures, the famine that
Joseph had predicted would have occurred about 200 years after Abram (later
Abraham) encountered the coalition of four kings led by Chedorlaomer, as
narrated in Genesis 14.
The same famine of Egypt occurred, in
turn, approximately 200 years before the Exodus in the time of Moses.
This roughly estimated biblical span of
400 years accords quite well with Dr. John Osgood’s estimation of it (after adding
another 40 years down to the Joshuan Conquest) of “464 years” (“From Abraham
too Exodus”: http://creation.mobi/from-abraham-to-exodus):
So we
are in fact dealing with a period between the events of Abraham's life
described in Genesis 14 and the conquest of Canaan by Israel in 1406 B.C., a
period of 464 years. Into that period we must fit the whole of the Early Bronze
age of Palestine (west of the Jordan River), that is, Early Bronze I, II and
III (see Figure 1). If this model is correct, then the whole of the Palestine
Early Bronze age to the end of the EB II of western Palestine encompasses
approximately 470 years.
[End
of quote]
Now, zooming in archaeologically, with
the assistance of the research still of Dr. John Osgood (“The Times of
Abraham”: http://creation.com/the-times-of-abraham),
we can thus pinpoint the invasion by the four kings:
1.
The Ghassul IV
culture disappeared from Trans Jordan, Taleilat Ghassul and Beersheba and the
rest of the Negev as well as from Hazezon-tamar or En-gedi apparently at the
same time. It is remarkable when looked at on the map that this disappearance
of the Ghassul IV culture corresponds exactly to the areas which were attacked
by the Mesopotamian confederate of kings. The fact that En-gedi specifically
terminates its culture at this point allows a very positive identification of
this civilization, Ghassul IV, with the Amorites of Hazezon-tamar.
2.
If that be the case, then we can answer Bar Adon's question very
positively. The reason the people did not return to get their goods was that
they had been destroyed by the confederate kings of Mesopotamia, in
approximately 1,870 B.C. in the days of Abraham.
Now as far as Palestine is concerned, in an isolated context, this may
be possible to accept, but many might ask: What about the Mesopotamian kings
themselves? Others may ask: What does this do to Egyptian chronology? And still
further questions need to be asked concerning the origin of the Philistines in
the days of Abraham, for the Philistines were closely in touch with Abraham
during this same period (Genesis 20). So we must search for evidence of
Philistine origins or habitation at approximately the end of the Chalcolithic
(Ghassul IV) in Palestine. All these questions will be faced.
The Mesopotamian complex of Chedor Laomer
Ghassul IV corresponds in Mesopotamia to the period known as the
Jemdat-Nasr/ Uruk period, otherwise called Protoliterate (because it was during
this period that the archaeologists found the first evidence of early writing).
Ghassul IV also corresponds to the last Chalcolithic period of Egypt, the
Gerzean or pre-Dynastic period ….
[End of quote]
Middle
Bronze I
Osgood and others, like Dr. Rudolph
Cohen, have also shown most conclusively that the wandering Israelites
correspond to the Middle Bronze I (MBI) people of archaeology, who destroyed
the towns and cities of the early Bronze III/IV civilisation in Palestine and
Transjordan.
These are the archaeological parameters
between which the time of Joseph must now be set.
Archaeology
for the Famine
Further assistance may be gained from
Dr. Osgood’s “From Abraham too Exodus”, wherein he proposes a Late Bronze II
setting for the great famine at the time of Jacob and Joseph:
By the
accepted model it is currently assigned 900 years, from approximately 3000 B.C.
to 2100 B.C., that is, almost double the proposed time claimed here.
Nearly
halfway through this time period - according to the biblical model - a great
famine occurred lasting seven years which affected the entire earth and
significantly affected many nations (Genesis 41, especially verses 54-57).
In the
archaeological record midway between the beginning and end of the Early Bronze
Age (EBA) a significant effect can be noted on the habitation of the land of
Canaan. The EB II civilization shrank in area and the further Bronze age was
geographically constricted.
It will
be reasoned that the most likely explanation of this archaeological phenomenon
was in fact the great famine of the Bible in Joseph's day.
[End of
quote]
The reader may like to peruse Dr.
Osgood’s full account of this.
In
easy-to-follow terms, the Abram incident occurred close to the beginning of Early Bronze I (city building era);
the
Famine of Joseph perhaps in Early Bonze
II; and
the
Conquest destroyed much of Early Bronze
III/IV.
Dynastic
Correlations
Abram
The above archaeological perspective
enables, in turn, for a fairly precise determination of which dynastic rule
(particularly Egyptian in the case of Abra[ha]m, Joseph and Moses) must have confronted
these patriarchs. Thus Osgood writes, in the case of Abraham
The chronological
conclusion is strong that Abraham's life-time corresponds to the Chalcolithic
in Egypt, through at least a portion of Dynasty I of Egypt, which equals
Ghassul IV through to EB I in Palestine. The possibilites for the Egyptian king
of the Abrahamic narrative are therefore:-
1. A late northern
Chalcolithic king of Egypt, or
Of these, the chronological
scheme would favour a late Chalcolithic (Gerzean) king of northern Egypt, just before
the unification under Menes.
[End of quote]
I have more recently argued for Menes as
the Pharaoh of Abram, and for Narmer as Naram-Sin, the Akkadian conqueror of this
Menes:
“Thanks to the important
revision of Dr. John Osgood, in “The Times of Abraham”, the Sothically
mis-dated monarch, Narmer (c. 3100 BC, though conventional dates vary) can now
be established archaeologically during the lifetime of Abraham (c. 1870 BC)”.
“…. what makes most intriguing a possible collision of …
Menes with a Shinarian potentate … is the emphatic view of Dr. W. F. Albright
that Naram-Sin … had conquered Egypt, and that the “Manium” whom Naram-Sin
boasts he had vanquished was in fact Menes himself (“Menes and Naram-Sin”, JEA,
Vol. 6, No. 2, Apr., 1920, pp. 89-98)”.
Joseph
Early Bronze II, Osgood’s choice for the
era of the biblical famine, is conventionally dated to c. 3000-2700 BC, a
period spanning Egyptian dynasties I-III.
Realistically, with Abram
contemporaneous with Dynasty I, we should expect to find Joseph situated in II
and/or III.
Now it just so happens that a famous Egyptian
inscription, known as the Famine Stela, tells of a seven-year famine that
occurred during Egypt’s 3rd Dynasty (III) (http://www.touregypt.net/03dyn02.htm):
The second king of the 3rd
Dynasty was Netjerykhet, the son of Khasekhemwy. Also known as Djoser, he ruled for
almost two decades and is accredited with building the Step
Pyramid at Saqqara. The
king's vizier, Imhotep, was the architect of that great tomb, and of the
magnificent Funerary Complex of Djoser at Saqqara. Egypt experienced a seven year famine
during Djoser's reign, so he sought the counsel of Imhotep and one of his
governors, Medir, and agreed to travel to Elephantine at Aswan. Once there he
erected a temple to the god Khnum, who was said to controlled the flow of the
Nile. The famine ended, miraculously enough, and people believed it was due to
this act of faith.
[End of quote]
Revisionist
historians have consequently fastened on to pharaoh Zoser’s famous vizier, Imhotep, as the historical Joseph of
Egypt. See, e.g. T. Chetwynd’s “A Seven Year Famine in the Reign of King Djoser
with Other Parallels between Imhotep and Joseph” (C and AH, January, 1987. Volume IX, Part 1).
I, too, regard Imhotep as the stand-out official in dynastic Egypt
for Joseph.
(See also next section).
Moses
Early Bronze III/IV, the revised era for
the time of the nomadic Israelites (MBI people), is conventionally dated to c.
2700-2200 BC, a period spanning Egyptian dynasties III (late) - VI.
Realistically, with Joseph contemporaneous with Dynasty III, we should expect
to find Moses somewhere around IV (the great pyramid building age) -VI.
And I, having accepted Imhotep as
Joseph, have indeed placed Moses during dynasties IV-VI in my:
Part
Two: Re-aligning Egypt’s Kingdoms
In order to gain
a fuller perspective on the era of Joseph in
Egypt, I believe that the so-called Old and Middle Kingdoms need to be
re-arranged side by side, rather than according to the conventional ‘Indian
file’ sequence.
To Sum Up What
Went Before:
Archaeologically, those biblical
patriarchs whose lives were heavily involved with Egypt, Abraham; (Jacob) Joseph; and Moses
(Joshua), are nicely situated with regard to the four phases of Bronze Age
Palestine:
Abram (Abraham) and Early Bronze I;
Joseph (famine) and Early Bronze II; and
Moses, the Joshuan Conquest, and Early Bronze III/IV.
Now, in terms of the early Egyptian
dynasties:
Abram (Abraham) was right at the
beginning, Dynasty [0]-1;
Joseph at Dynasty III; and
Moses around Dynasties IV-VI.
However, there is more to it than just that
simple outline.
Since, as I have argued:
and with the Old Kingdom era of Moses (as
above) now needing to be aligned with the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt’s so-called
Middle Kingdom:
then
it might well follow that the Eleventh Dynasty was contemporaneous with Joseph
(and some have argued for the Tenth Dynasty to have been contemporaneous with
Abraham). Indeed Creationist, Patrick Clarke, has suggested that the Eleventh
Dynasty is the most suitable era for Joseph, based on the name pharaoh
(Clarke’s Eleventh Dynasty ruler, Mentuhotep II) had given to the biblical
patriarch (“Joseph’s Zaphenath Paaneah—a chronological key”: http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j27_3/j27_3_58-63.pdf).
Thus the Egyptian dynasties (Old and
Middle Kingdoms) prior to the so-called New Kingdom (beginning with Dynasty
XVIII) are no longer, according to my revision, to be set out in Indian file,
but must significantly overlap. A very tentative re-arrangement would be:
Patriarch
|
Old
Kingdom
|
Middle
Kingdom
|
Archaeology
|
Abraham
|
0-I
|
X (?)
|
EBI
|
Joseph
|
[II]- III
|
XI
|
EBII
|
Moses
|
IV-VI
|
XII (XIII)
|
EBIII
|
Joshua
(Conquest)
|
MBI on EB
III/IV
| ||
Anarchy
in Egypt
|
VII-IX (?)
|
XIII-XVII
|
Now, a colleague in Canada has referred
me to some recent criticism of the rather popular view that the biblical Joseph
was the Vizier Imhotep of Egypt’s Third Dynasty. Whilst I shall attempt to deal
with this matter in Part Three, I would like to suggest, from what I have
already written in this series, that the biblical Joseph was most likely,
archaeologically speaking, to have belonged to the Third Dynasty era of
Egyptian history. Revisionists claim to have found various parallels between
Joseph and Imhotep, not least the common reference to a seven-year famine.
Also, Imhotep is credited with having
built the first pyramid, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. Now, given that Egyptologists (e.g. Joyce Tyldesley, Pyramids) have written of the pyramids as ‘staircases
to heaven’, then my view that the Step
Pyramid may have been a
‘material icon’ of his (as Joseph) father Jacob’s dream of a Stairway to Heaven
may not be all that far-fetched (Genesis 28:12):
“[Jacob] had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting
on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were
ascending and descending on it”.
Part
Three: Answering Some Criticisms
According to the
article, “Joseph was Imhotep”,
The idea that the Joseph of the Old Testament was
Imhotep[wp] is a mixture of the usual "Biblical
history" pseudo-historical distortion, with a bit of
crossover appeal to the lunatic fringe "Alternative" Egyptology nuts.
It's a kind of anti-intellectual, anti-historical supermarket, with
something for everyone.
Whilst I cannot wholly agree with it,
this article does, in fact, make some quite legitimate points. The revision of
history, in order to align with the Bible, is being promoted, in some cases, by
those who could at best be called rank amateurs, and at worst, as above,
“nuts”, “anti-intellectual” (as regards basic Egyptology), and I believe that one
could even add, charlatans.
One would be loathe, for instance, to
give any credence to the following ridiculous piece of ‘Egyptology’, or what
the article rightly refers to as shying “away from tackling the vagaries of the Egyptian language in a decisive
manner”:
"Imhotep was revered as the son of PTAH, a creator-god of Memphis, the patron god of craftsmen; equated
by the Greeks with Hephaestus. The cult of Imhotep reached its zenith in
Greco-Roman times when sick people slept in his temples with the hope that the
'god' would reveal remedies to them in dreams — much like Edgar Cayce's legendary abilities. The 'TA' in Ptah
means earth. Take the P and H and add them to (D)Jose(r) and you have Joseph — which
doesn't mean anything, but it is interesting just the same." —Betty Rhodes[7]
The article
is also highly critical of Mary Nell Wyatt,
wife of Ron Wyatt who died in 1999. In the past I have used the word
“charlatan” to describe the latter, who laid claim to some of the most awesome
biblical finds, but without ever having come up with anything solid to show for
it. His antics (and those also of Mary Nell Wyatt) are well summed up here
Surely,
Wyatt has not disappointed those who have supported him. Ron Wyatt claims to
have discovered far more than any credible archaeologist could ever expect to
discover in ten lifetimes, let alone one. Yes, according to the various
internet sites promoting W.A.R. products such as DVD’s, books, tours to Israel,
etc., among Ron Wyatt’s discoveries is Noah’s Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, the
Exodus Crossing, chariot wheels from the Exodus Crossing, the location of Mount
Sinai, the site of Christ’s crucifixion, actual blood from Jesus Christ with
only 24 chromosomes (an impossibility), Sodom and Gomorrah, actual samples of
the rain of fire from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and much more. Most
of these sites under different internet names and urls are run by the same
people. You see, dear reader, those shysters have to create various new
internet sites to try to keep their garbage on top on the search engines. Our
pages exposing their frauds are among the top ten pages of main search engines.
They have been quite busy trying to get our pages exposing them buried beneath
their avalanche of advertising using multiple web sites.
Since Ron
Wyatt’s death, his wife along with her new husband and a host of others are
still making money from Wyatt’s bogus claims. Recently, went to Israel to
re-open the way to the cave in which Wyatt claims lies the actual Ark of the
Covenant from Moses’ time. Wyatt claims the Ark of the Covenant was actually
covered with the blood of Jesus Christ who was supposedly crucified above the
cave. According to Wyatt, he discovered a hole in which the Cross of Christ was
planted. Beneath that hole was a crack that led into the cave in which the Ark
of the Covenant was situated. According to Ron Wyatt, he took samples of the
blood to an Israeli blood lab. They told him, according to Wyatt, that this
blood only had 24 chromosomes, and that it was alive! He also said that the
folks at the lab were ready to hear about Jesus as a result of this. You can
watch Ron Wyatt on YouTube discussing this. This supposedly happened years ago.
Of course, we don’t have any of this evidence available to us. The men at the
lab are anonymous. Ron Wyatt’s “evidences” disappear as quickly as he discovers
them. The blood of Christ has vaporized and we only have Ron Wyatt’s tales on
his videos and his recorded presentations some of which have been posted on
YouTube.
This last
visit to Israel by Mrs. Mary Nell Wyatt and her new husband was supposed to
uncover the cave that contained the Ark of the Covenant that was covered with
the very blood of Jesus Christ. They got permission from the Israeli
Antiquities Department to do some excavating near Zedekiah’s cave which is
where Ron Wyatt said the entrance to the tunnel to the Ark of the Covenant was
years ago. You, reader, might wonder, if Wyatt Archaeological Research is a
bogus operation, why would the Israeli Antiquities Department grant Mrs. Mary
Nell Wyatt and company a license to dig? That’s a good question. I asked my
source in Israel who used to be a curator at the Israeli Department of
Antiquities. He said “MONEY!”
[End of quote]
Emmet Sweeney is a terrific and
entertaining writer, and can come up with some great insights. But the article
is also correct in showing that some (though not all) of his lengthy and
hopeful comparisons between Joseph and Imhotep lack any sort of solid foundation.
To some extent, then, though not
entirely, this critical article is feeding off some quite wacky and wayward efforts
at Egyptology.
Moreover, the article is written from a
conventional basis and fully presupposes that Sothic dating (and Radiocarbon
dating) is accurate. For an alternative view about this, see my:
And,
regarding other dating methods, supposedly scientific, such as Radiometric,
Carbon - 14, see Dr. John Osgood’s “A Better Model for the Stone Age” (http://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age),
section: “Dating Techniques”:
…. It follows naturally that if the scientific method
cannot work in the past and conclusions about the past must rest on
assumptions, then there is not today a dating method that can be scientifically
substantiated as being correct, for every method will have built into it an
assumption.
Name Given to Joseph: Zaphenath-Paneah
According to Genesis 41:45: “Pharaoh gave Joseph the name
Zaphenath-Paneah and gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On
[Heliopolis], to be his wife. And Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt”.
Scholars with genuine Egyptological expertise have considered this
name to have an Egyptian basis. Thus we read (https://www.biblicaltraining.org/library/zaphenath-paneah):
ZAPHENATH-PANEAH
zăf’ ə năth pə ne’ ə, (Heb. צָֽפְנַ֣ת פַּעְנֵחַ; LXX Ψονθομφανήχ), is the
Hebraized form of the Egyp. name given to Joseph by the king of Egypt (Gen
41:45) after Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams. …. The most widely accepted
explanation of the name is that advanced by G. Steindorff (ZÄS 27 [1899], 41,
42; ibid., 30 [1892], 50-52), followed by Brugsch, Griffith, et al.: “the god
speaks and he lives” (or “the god said: he will live”); cf. J. Vergote, Joseph
en Égypte (1959), 141-146. E. Naville suggested that Zaphenathpaneah is a
title, not a name: “the head of the sacred college of magicians” (JEA 12
[1926], 16-18). Other interpretations, largely rejected, include that of A. S. Yahuda,
who proposed “food, sustenance, of the land ‘is the living’ or ‘is this living
one’” (The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian [1933], 33).
- See more at: https://www.biblicaltraining.org/library/zaphenath-paneah#sthash.0BRJ0HXQ.dpuf)
[End of
quote]
P. Clarke, though, is critical of earlier
efforts to interpret the meaning of the name. For instance, “Zaphenat is the English
transliteration of the Hebrew transliteration of the original Egyptian word”.
He continues, arguing that “Zaphenath” is probably a “title” :
The first
section of Joseph’s Egyptian name is, as earlier indicated, not a proper name;
rather it is a very important and, as far as I can discern, unique title. The
Egyptian equivalent of Zaphenath is almost certainly ḏf3wn‘ty, which translates into modern English as ‘Overseer/Minister of the
Storehouse of Abundance’. The title ḏf3wn‘ty . can be easily
broken down into its composite elements of ḏf3w ; n ; and ‘ty . Part one, ḏf3w, is a noun derived from the verb ḏf3—(to provide for/to abound in
supplies), where ḏf is the etymological equivalent of the Hebrew tsof. Part two, n, is the masculine genitival adjective ‘of’. Finally, part three, ‘ty—is a noun expressing the official title ‘Storehouse Overseer/ Minister’,
which is drawn from the Archaic Egyptian30 root ‘t—storehouse . The second section, p3nn’i3ḫ , is a proper
name, and like the ending ‘ty of ḏf3n‘ty, exhibits
Archaic
traits. This name, p3nn’i3ḫ, is also composed of three elements—p3n ; n’i ; 3ḫ . The first part, p3n, ‘he of’ is written but there is no grammatical or historical evidence for
it necessarily being vocalized. The second part, n’i, and the third, 3ḫ, combine to express Joseph’s new Egyptian name literally as [p3n]n’i3ḫ ‘[He of the] Excellent/Gracious Spirit’ where n’i translates as ‘excellent/gracious’ and 3ḫ translates as ‘spirit’.
In the list of proposed names
shown earlier, many indicate the belief that the end of Joseph’s name is to be
translated as ‘life’ (Egy. ankh anḫ). This is,
however, completely wrong. In the Hebrew ‘spirit’ is rendered as ruwach (pronounced rü’·aḫ) with the
entirely legitimate understanding of ‘impelling a prophet to utter instruction’
or ‘warning’. Ancient Egyptian has a number of words for ‘spirit’, but it is 3ḫ, the equivalent
of the Hebrew ruwach, that confirms the intimate inside knowledge of the writer of the
Joseph narrative. The Egyptian 3ḫ
most
often refers to spiritual power and/or intellectual ability; both qualities
agree with the Hebrew and were abundantly exhibited by Joseph. This accords
perfectly, when compared contextually, with Genesis 41:38–39:
“And
Pharaoh said to his servants, ‘Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is
the Spirit of God?’ Then Pharaoh
said to Joseph, ‘Inasmuch as God has shown you all this, there is no one as discerning and wise as you
[emphases added].’”
Pharaoh is clearly asking his
courtiers a rhetorical question; in his mind he has already decided the right
course of action. Pharaoh wastes little time in conferring upon Joseph a title
and a new Egyptian name, ḏf3n‘ty
p3nn’i3ḫ ;
the Hebrew Tsophnath Pa`neach, better
known in English as Zaphenath
Paaneah.
There were many holders of the
title ‘overseer of the storehouse’ (Egy. imy.r.šnwt
),
yet Joseph’s particular title appears to be unique in the record as indicated
by the etymological link between the Hebrew tsophnath pa`neach and the Egyptian ḏf3n‘ty p3nn’i3ḫ.
Moses has rendered the Egyptian
name almost identically in Hebrew, giving the final part of the name as
‘spirit’—further
evidence that Moses had a profound knowledge of the Egyptian language and
culture, including spiritual matters—a subject of considerable importance to
ancient Egyptians.
Significantly,
when Joseph revealed himself to his brothers (Genesis 45) he made no mention of
his office of Overseer of the Storehouse of Abundance, but chose to refer to
himself by three other titles:
“… a father to Pharaoh, and
lord of all his house, and ruler throughout the land of Egypt” (Genesis 45:8).
These three titles are
consistent with known Egyptian titles from the Middle Kingdom and generally
were retained for life. (‘Father to Pharaoh’) was equivalent (though subtly
changed by Joseph to avoid any connection with the Egyptian priesthood) to the
Egyptian it nṯr and as a
result became an honorary title denoting not only rank but degree of intimacy
with the king; (‘Lord of all his house’), was the equivalent to the Egyptian imy r pr nsw (pr nsw being of
archaic root as with elements of Joseph’s name discussed above) ; and ‘… ruler
throughout all the land of Egypt’ was equivalent to the Egyptian … sḥḳ3.n i n kmt ḫt t3 pn r ḏr.f (… caused me
to rule throughout the entire land of Egypt.) , where t3 pn r ḏr.f translates
literally as ‘this entire land’. ….
[End of quote]
Obviously a lot more work has to be done
if the Joseph = Imhotep equation is to be fully achievable. A big part of this
will involve, I believe, bringing together the two pieces of the puzzle, the
Old and Middle kingdoms, presumably the 3rd and 11th
dynasties.
Clarke claims to detect the following actions
of Joseph during the Eleventh dynasty:
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. כּסֶֶף keceph i.e. silver 40).
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; only the temples, their estates, and the priesthood were
exempted.41
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.42 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.
[End of quote]
The Famine Stela
The article is also highly critical of
the efforts by revisionists to interpret this Stela in accordance with the
account of the Genesis famine at the time of Joseph. Though belonging to a time
far later than Imhotep, when he had become virtually ‘canonised’ and deified
(see Wildung, Imhotep und Amenhotep, Munich, 1977), the stela does however hark
back to those early days (see: http://www.geopolymer.org/fichiers_pdf/FAMISTEL.pdf): “… certain
reliable clues have led Egyptolgists to believe that, in an amplified form it
had already become an authentic document by the beginning of the Old Kingdom
(2,750 BC)”.
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