by
Damien F. Mackey
The Joseph story even appears to
have its resonance in the most famous of all Mesopotamian myths, the Epic of
Gilgamesh. Thus Astour believes that the Combabos
of the Phoenician tale "can
easily be recognized as Humbaba… of the Gilgameš epic …”.
The story
of the encounter between Joseph and the Wife of Potiphar can be read in full in
Genesis 39:6-20.
These
Genesis stories were written, not by Moses, but by the Patriarchs pre-dating
Moses. Moses later compiled them and substantially edited them in the form with
which are familiar today. See e.g. my:
Tracing the Hand of Moses in Genesis
The wife
of Potiphar’s attempted seduction of Joseph apparently became well-known in the
ancient world. M. Astour, for instance, taking the standard line that the Old Testament
was dependent upon pagan mythology, wrote (in Hellenosemitica, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1965, p. 259): “It has already
been repeatedly demonstrated that most of the motifs in the Joseph story are
more or less euphemerized motifs of the Tammuz-Adonis myth”.
And,
again, he wrote (p. 258): “In the W-S [West Semitic] world, the motif of the
"chaste youth" was very widespread".
The Egyptian
woman who had attempted to seduce the handsome young Joseph was the un-named (in
Genesis) wife of one Potiphar, pharaoh's captain of the guard, who had bought
Joseph from the Ishmaelites (var. Midianites?), to whom Joseph's brothers had
sold him for twenty pieces of silver (Genesis 37:28; 39:1).
For a
possible historical identification of Potiphar and his wife, see my:
Potiphera a priest of On
Potiphera a priest of On. Part Two: Potiphar and his wife
Potiphera a priest of On. Part Three: An Egyptian variant tale
According
to the Genesis story, Joseph, though innocent, was sent to prison based on the
accusation of the woman (who became Venus/Astarte in some of the later pagan
legends).
Astour again
has, like others, recognized that the story has its resonance in a famous
Egyptian tale: “After the discovery of the papyrus d'Orbiney, a quite similar
plot was revealed in the Egyptian story of the two brothers … Bata, its hero,
slandered by his sister-in-law and pursued by his angry brother, emasculated
himself to prove his innocence”.
The
Egyptian story, in turn, Astour believed to have been based upon Phoenician
tales.
For
example, the young healer-god Ešmun, pursued by the love of the goddess
Astronoë or Astronome (='Aštart-na'amã); and in Syrian Hierapolis, of Combabos,
the builder of the Atargatis temple, with whom Queen Stratonice, the wife of
the Assyrian king, fell in love. Notice in these Phoenician accounts the
Joseph-like elements also of the young hero as a ‘healer’ and a ‘builder’. For
the biblical Joseph was historically, as we have determined, the brilliant
Third Dynasty architect and inventor, Imhotep:
Giza Pyramids: The How, When and Why of Them. Part Two: Imhotep (Joseph)
introduces polished stone
The
Joseph story even appears to have its resonance in the most famous of all
Mesopotamian myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Thus Astour believes that the
Combabos of the Phoenician tale "can easily be recognized as Humbaba… of
the Gilgameš epic … [whilst] the same [Joseph] motif also appears in the
Gilgameš epic, tabl. VI, where Ištar [Venus] fell in love with Gilgameš and,
after having been rudely rejected by him, turned herself to the supreme god Anu
with a request to punish the hero" (Hellenosemitica,
pp. 258-259.; S.N. Kramer, “The death of Gilgamesh” in BASOR, Apr 1944, pp. 2-12).
Later Homer
would give his own colourful account of the famous story in his conflict
between Bellerophon(tes) and Anteia, King Proitos' wife.
Before
recounting that tale, however, the important fact needs to be noted that Astour
has rigorously identified the supposedly Greek name Bellerophonas equivalent to
the western Semitic Ba'al-rãph'ôn, "Lord Physician" (pp. 225-228).
The name is equivalent in meaning to that of the Sumerian god, Ninazu.
Most
appropriate again for Joseph, who became deified in antiquity as a god of
medicine and healing.
Now here
is the account of Bellerophon as told by Homer in The Iliad (VI: 156-170, as quoted by Astour, p. 257):
To
Bellerophontes the gods granted beauty and desirable manhood; but Proitos in
anger devised evil things against him, and drove him out of his own domain, since
he was far greater … Beautiful Anteia the wife of Proitos was stricken with
passion to lie in love with him, and yet she could not beguile valiant
Bellerophontes, whose will was virtuous. So she went to Proitos the king and
uttered her falsehood. "Would you be killed, O Proitos? Then murder
Bellerophontes who tried to lie with me in love, though I was unwilling".
So she spoke, and anger took hold of the king at her story. He shrank from
killing him, since his heart was awed by such action, but sent him away to
Lykia, and handed him murderous symbols, which he inscribed in a folding
tablet, enough to destroy life, and told him to show it to his wife's father,
that he might perish.
Many
Greek stories in fact carry this basic motif. For example, according to Astour (pp.
257-258):
The
Greeks told myths with the same plot about Hippolytus and his stepmother
Phaedra, and about Peleus and Astydamia (or Cretheïs), wife of king Acastos.
Bethe was perfectly right when, despite all his antipathy to Semitizing
Bellerophon, he nevertheless declared that [the story-motif] … of the shy youth
slandered by the rejected woman … had an Asiatic origin. ....
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